Origins Of The Name “Vancouver Deluxe”

This was written when Vancouver Deluxe were still playing to explain where the name came from. At least one of these explanations is true.

Vancouver Deluxe is…

01) The name of a sandwich ordered by an eight year-old girl in an unpublished manuscript by JD Salinger.

02) A three star hotel in Vancouver, Canada. Try the fish.

03) Charlie Sheen’s breakfast cereal, which he allegedly eats with kahlua rather than milk.

04) A sexual manoeuvre formed by black Eskimos (NB one of the six trials of Cojuka, which prepare the adult male for short-term unemployment).

05) A virulent strain of monkey flu, causing frenzied shuffling and fatal priapism (the first recorded human afflicted was actor Tom Sizemore)

06) A rare wrestling hold, popularised by the double-jointed and alcoholic wrestler of the 1920s, Beardo ‘The Drool’ Mahoganie.

07) A synthetic drug prepared and imbibed by Nicholas Cage in the film ‘So Dead Was My Lovely’ (1992, dir. Seamus Fearty).

08) Real bad juju.

09) A sect of incorruptible priests, reformed from select cuts of pork (10% impiety), named for Jesse Vancouver, a Christian missionary who refused sexual relations with JFK on thirteen separate occasions, before his martyrdom at the end of Dean Martin’s slick, dirty flick-knife.

10) A mighty oak in the grounds of Kensington Palace, housing space-elves who are unbuilding our universe one atom at a time, using the matter to create giant green golf-visors for Ted Danson.

11) Ralph Macchio’s dirt bike, marketed in stores Christmas 1992; when Scott Baio’s Scotia Supreme bike instead captured the imagination of the biking youth, the diminutive actor was forced to sell his role in the Karate Kid series to Hilary Swank.

12) The unquantifiable feeling when your recently estranged Canadian girlfriend discovers that everything you ever told her was a lie, and therefore the material that you submitted for inclusion in her publication-ready biography of Nicholas Cage may be entirely erroneous.

13) The title of a Jesus Jones B-side.

14) The pairing of the thirty-third and three-hundred-and-thirty-third words in Charles Bukowski’s Ham On Rye.

15) The title of a bawdy rhyme, scrawled on the wall of Arthur Rimbaud’s adolescent room, in Charlemagne, France.

16) The punchline of a joke once told by Truman Capote at a dull dinner party, later documented by Kenneth Tynan in a mocking facetious tone.

17) A military manoeuvre, involving first the deployment of troops in the guise of stoned Thai prostitutes, then the relentless finger-pointing and jeering of opposition soldiers.

18) An acrostic: Voluminous Adults Never Can Out-manoeuvre Ugly Virgins Even Really Dour Enervating Loveless Under-achieving Xenophobic Easy-lays.

19) Vince Neil of Motley Crue’s favourite brand of silk underwear.

20) The ocean liner that carried Nicholas Cage to freedom in his 1992 film ‘Iceberg Am I None’ (dir. Nick Coppola)

21) The result of two previous bands merging: ‘Vancouver Vitriol’ and ‘Dirt Dirt Deluxe’

22) A computer ‘skitching’ game exclusive to the Amiga 500 with a soundtrack by Chris Huelsbeck, which cashed in on the brief trend for skateboarding while hanging on to the rear-bumpers of automobiles.

23) The name of the metal surfboard created for Christian Slater in ‘Gleaming The Cube II: Never Come Down’ (1992, dir. Dean Stockwell)

24) Derived from a misheard lyric, sung in heavily accented Spanglish by Leonard Cohen: ‘Come on Peqita / let me manoeuvre the locks / on your l’il chastity box’ (from ‘Spanish Harem’ by Leonard Cohen, 1992)

25) The solution to a puzzle that shaped the lives of four boys, each of whom was given just one piece – three letters each, meaningless without the other pieces – with the proviso that they guard their respective pieces until the day of reckoning dawned. Years passed until the boys, meeting entirely by chance on the reality show Shipwrecked, found that their pieces fit together like keys in a lock. On that day Vanver Coudel were born. However, legal action by Leeds band Vulva Cuddle led to the band reforming with Uxe (an eccentric Greek drum-machine), and the rest is history.

26) The alphabetical translation of an ancient numerical sequence (22-1-14-3-15-21-22-5-18-4-5-12-21-24-5), found throughout history in, variously, the margins of the writings of Hermes Trismegistus, the hem of Cleopatra’s nightie, and Nicholas Cage’s bank statement.

27) The third episode of sadly defunct nineties documentary series ‘Cage’s Coronation'(1992) which followed Nicholas Cage as he travelled Northern America, competing in each city’s major Elvis lookalike competition with the intention of proving himself King of Kings. Sadly, Cage was refused entry in to the states upon his return from Canada in episode four, and now must live in a bucket suspended over Niagra Falls.

28) The giant silver tourbus of legendary Aussie rockers The Orange Organics.

29) The result of copious amounts of drugs ingested by one band member, who controversially entered into a psychic conversation with electronic artist Hrvatski in a Norfolk Butlins, wherein the aforementioned performer transmitted the name into said bandmember’s tiny little mind.

30) The name given to the 1992 short-run comic book featuring a group of superheroes led by the mysterious Explodo, and consisting of Bombface, Terror Lad and Anne Frankenstein. This ran intermittently for ten years before a promotional ‘Are you Explodo?’ bomb recipe was condemned by the mainstream media and it had to be cancelled.

31) An anagram, from the french phrase “l’eve coeur dan veux”, first coined by Voltaire and later appropriated by the situationist Guy Debord to describe his approach to physical love.

32) Taken from the words found written in dust beneath a chest of drawers in a Victorian brothel, undisturbed since the time they were created. The room containing the chest was said to house the secret grandchild of the Queen who was considered, somehow, to pose a threat to the crown.

33) A paraphrase of the last words spoken by Sid Vicious.

34) A truncheon issued to the South West division of the Canadian Mounted Police.

35) The winner of the 1992 Kentucky Derby.

36) The shooting title for the pilot episode of popular comedy/drama Due South (1992).

37) A popular cheap liqueur smuggled over the border and sold on the black market in Detroit during the prohibition-era.

38) Skoda’s only attempt to create an automobile for the Canadian market, which failed when the entire run had to be withdrawn because the steering wheel was on the wrong side.

39) A magazine popular among ‘splosh’ fetishists, famous for it’s cover mounted give-aways, including sachets of baked beans, soy sauce and human excreta.

40) The smallest attraction contained within the world’s largest Canadian-themed Amusement Park, located in French Bulgaria.

41) The name of a Canadian World War 2 nighttime bomber that was salvaged from a lake outside Dusseldorf in 1992.

42) An all-star team that was to be Ice Hockey’s answer to the Harlem Globetrotters. Their debut game in 1992 was marred when their defenders got into an argument – over a particularly flashy and dangerous skid stop – which culminated in a 3 hour riot in downtown Vancouver. They never played again.

43) A software company, incorporated in 1978. In 1982 they had a breakthrough in user interface technology and in 1985 they were bought out by a young Bill Gates so their development could be exploited to produce what would later become the Windows operating system.

44) A prototype sex toy brought by Dutch explorer Johann Van Coever from the East Indies in 1692.

45) An Eco friendly hammock made from hemp and sustainable evergreens.

46) The combination of words suggested by German philosopher Hegel to represent the apotheosis of western imperialism.

47) The name of the jukebox built by ‘Vancouver Phonographic Incorporated’ for Elvis Presley. It was covered in rhinestones and rubies. It had a deep-fat fryer and bun toaster built-in and was run by a small-block Chevy V8. Elvis died before it could be completed and efforts to market it to the public failed in the aftermath of the King’s sweaty death. The company went bust just two years later having failed to diversify. The only complete model was sold to a cockney foot-fetishist; it is now kept in the entrance hall to ‘Toe-Jam’ in the centre of Soho’s red light district.

48) Derogatory nickname given to a loose affiliation of Canadian-Christian ex-pat actors who blamed Hollywood for the downturn in church attendance and targeted several major film studios in Los Angeles with hate mail in the summer of 1929.

49) A type of curtain that shuts out harmful gamma, but not helpful alpha or beta rays.

50) An isotope of hydrogen, containing three protons and one so-called ‘punk’ electron.

51) A controversial envelope introduced by the Canadian postal service in 1992 that would not fit through any letterbox in the Christian west.

52) A revolutionary rocket fuel, developed by an eccentric Canadian chemist, which NASA refused to adopt because he wouldn’t consent to it’s re-branding as ‘Freedom Juice’.

53) A one-cylinder three-wheeler developed by Henry Ford to fill the niche in the market for ‘dwarf’ drivers. After millions were spent on it’s development, the car was withdrawn from the market when a four year-old child was implicated in the 1992 ram-raiding of a Kentucky Toys ‘R’ Us store.

54) A popular brand of maple syrup that Kaiser Willhelm II enjoyed drinking straight from the bottle. It was found in 1927 to contain copious amounts of lead. Undeterred, the ex-Kaiser consumed up to 10 bottles a day until his death in 1992.

55) An early version of the lazi-boy armchair, taken off the market in 1976 amid rumours that its triple coiled springs contributed to male impotence

56) American food conglomerate Klaxo-Beecham’s ‘Quorn’ substitute for maple smoked bacon

57) Gospel separatist Wilkins R Mackenzie’s west coast interpretation of the Toronto Blessing

58) A prose poem written by Charles Dickens on his visit to the American continent in the 1860s which would later be the inspiration for Monty Python’s lumberjack sketch.

59) A Douglas Coupland novel concerning the bizarre meeting between a disabled stunt bike rider, a Native American shaman and a hotel heiress at a Starbucks launch in Seskachaun.

60) A colloquial expression used in parts of Oregon to describe the Zen like feeling of disgust acquired after selling the farm for a night with a high class hooker; a regional variation of the Memphis blues.

61) Vin Diesel’s pet name for his manhood, revealed accidentally by Skeet Ulrich on an August 2004 episode of Letterman.

62) A 4-barrelled pump action shotgun issued to Canadian troops in the closing stages of the Great War as a trench-clearing weapon. Notoriously unreliable, it’s only confirmed kills were when a Canadian soldier outside a brothel slung the weapon over his shoulder and it discharged instantly, killing a fat, club-footed French wench, an Algerian mess cook and the poet Siegfried Sassoon.

63) A bastardisation of the motto of French political dandies ‘La Chanson Socialiste’. The motto was based upon a remark made by Jean Luc Godard to Louis Althusser during the May ’68 Riots, translation: “You know Louis, we French excel at three things: wine, rebellion and poetry”. The motto was embroidered on the party uniform in the 1970s: ‘Vins, Coup, Vers, De Luxe’.

64) The name given to a design for a submersible steam train that would link Vancouver with London via rail and sea. The design, first conceived in 1879 was abandoned, however, when no one could come up with a practical design for a telescoping smokestack.

65) Dialogue from the infamous film ‘Shore Leave’ (1935) starring Errol Flynn. Returning to his ship, trousers around his ankles and literally three sheets to the wind, Captain Janus Funt (Flynn) is accosted by his first mate/erstwhile love interest Bruno De Luxe (Fatty Arbuckle), who jealously growls “where ya been, cap’n?” With a sly, crooked grin Flynn utters the immortal line “Vancouver, De Luxe… and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” The comma has been removed to indicate a lack of pretension on the band’s part.

66) The original title of Annie Proulx’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’. When first conceived in 1978, it was a screenplay based on the lives of two lesbian taxi drivers working in Vancouver, Canada. The company they worked for was to be called ‘Deluxe Taxis’, and the original title of the film was ‘The Deluxe Drivers of Vancouver’. As the script struggled to find backing, it was alternatively referred to as ‘Lonely Limos of Lesbos’, or simply, ‘Vancouver Deluxe’.

67) A robot companion created by Alanis Morrissette and designed to cook, cuddle and nod approvingly as she writhes inconsolably on her bedroom floor, emitting guttural animal noises.

68) A cult among Afro wig aficionados. The ‘Vancouver’ wig originally found mainstream popularity in the 1970’s Disco scene. However as larger rival Afro wigs became more successful, it’s manufacturers Groove Time created the ‘Vancouver Deluxe’, boasting a 4-foot circumference and wire frame construction. However in 1980’s it was discovered that its incredible weight resulted in a huge surge in cases of repetitive strain injury among regular wig wearers; Groove Time were successfully sued and the company was forced into bankruptcy. Today, despite the obvious dangers, original Vancouver Deluxes command a high price and are sought after by collectors.

69) The title given to a 1970 sketch by Salvador Dali of his lover Gala’s ovaries. The sketch, made on a restaurant napkin in Nova Skotia, was made in order to cover the large bar tab run up by Dali’s entourage. Restaurant owner Scooby Nuisance donated the sketch to Barcelona’s Dali Museum upon his death, remarking only “it is a beautiful likeness, but no one can tell me why he gave them sunglasses”

70) A reversal of the words ‘Exuled Revuocnav’, colloquial Russian that loosely translates as ‘exalted revolver’, where ‘revolver’ is meant literally. These are the words found in early Russian religious tracts, and are meant to convey power – when chanted – upon those who follow the once widespread cult of Revuocnav. Practices of this cult included: spinning on the spot until the mind enters a kind of religious reverie, bringing the ‘revolver’ closer to their God; freezing and then breaking of any and all extremities of the body; and collecting and arranging potatoes into attractive compositions. The use of reversal by the band is intended as a buffer against arcane elements.

71) A term coined by Professor Stephen Hawking. In the early 90s, Hawking and hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash collaborated on a machine that would allow vocally impaired b-boys to communicate. They decided that the traditional ‘quick brown fox’ keyboard test needed a relatively super-fly update: “Vancouver gots that quick whip rhythm – its phat-jammin beatz, so deluxe, fool.” When Professor Hawking balked at Flash’s original title (‘Grandmaster Retardo-Jam’) and his suggested replacement (‘Supa-Fly Spaz-Man Fixxa’), they settled upon the more anodyne ‘Vancouver Deluxe Test’ instead.

72) A kind of Hickory steak favoured among the mountain men of the southern Iowa. This specially prepared steak is superstitiously held to encourage monstrous growth of the testes.

73) The name of Leslie Nielson’s cat in Police Squad.

74) A Maple Syrup Flavoured Profilactive made by Trojan to commemorate 100 years of Peace between Canada and the U.S. Its slogan “International relations just got a whole lot stickier!” was heavily criticised by the Canadian Advertising standards agency, and so was replaced by “Maple Love, not War”.

75) A reference to George Vancouver, sexual adventurer and town planner. When the plans for Vancouver City Hall were proposed in the early 1930’s, City Officials wished to commemorate the site by erecting a statue of the founding

father of the city, George Vancouver. The Mayor of Vancouver at the time was quoted as saying, “The statue should be grand, a deluxe reflection of George Vancouver’s stature as a social and sexual giant.” The competition to design the statue was jokingly referred to as ‘The Vancouver Deluxe’ in the local press. Several erotic proposals were rejected, including a particularly graphic depiction of George Vancouver engaged in mortal combat with a Grizzly Bear, armed only with his own comically enlarged member.

76) The proposed rebranding of an American city. As the city of Vancouver in the US State of Washington was settled some sixty years before Vancouver in Canada, there have been periodic proposals to better name the city to give it more distinction. Such proposals have included ‘Old Vancouver’, ‘Vancouverland’ and ‘Sexxylvania’. In 1992, some residents put forward the idea that the city should be called ‘Vancouver Deluxe’, however, when sanctions were brought upon them by the Canadian government, the city yielded to protests in order to ensure shipping of Maple Syrup and Canadian bacon would resume and that the actors Donald and Kiefer Sutherland could return to work.

77) The 1992 debut album of Starry Nites, a soft-rock band featuring Celine Dion before she found international success with her single ‘Wobble Rocka’. Starry Nites sales were poor, and this coupled with the bands propensity for wearing Nazi regalia onstage heavily contributed to the early demise of the groundbreaking band. However, their debut has since gained infamy after being listed alongside the likes of Nazi-Sh()-Beats and Screwdriver in a CNN report on the music used to torture detainees at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp Delta.

78) Now a regular highlight of the annual St Joseph Vancouver Sausage Feast in Vancouver, Washington. In 2001, the event celebrated it’s 30th anniversary and to mark the occasion, several local butchers collaborated to make a commemorative gourmet sausage (consisting of pork, potato chips and lashings and lashings of Ambrosia creamed rice) called ‘The Vancouver Deluxe’, named for the city’s founding father and in deference to his renowned sexual and culinary adventures.

79) The code-name for an early CIA investigation into North Korea’s developmentof long-range missiles. Initially it was believed that the Dictatorship under Kulas Kim Deal III had developed a cannonball capable of hitting Vancouver in the state of Washington, however it is now widely acknowledged that the projectile’s range could only take it as far as Alaska, South Korea.

80) Hitler’s toothpaste.

81) The name of the room-sized computer that Nicholas Cage falls in love with but must eventually kill in his directorial debut ‘Silicon Super Bitch 1999’ (1992) also starring Jonny Lee Miller as the voice of the computer.

82) Some self-named mong from the first Canadian Big Brother, evicted in week 4 and eventually elected to parliament.

83) A style of beard popular in 1880s North America, worn long and woven tightly together, then sealed with beeswax to provide extra storage space for already heavy-laden frontiersmen. Brought back to prominence by Bonnie Prince Billy who keeps his harmonium – along with a spare plectrum and a chunk of black tar opium – under his chin.

84) A powerful hallucinogenic spirit popular in Fin De Siecle New York among the bohemian community. It was distilled in casks made from British Colombian poplar saplings and was introduced to the city by a raggedy troupe of Cajun Minstrels, who, mistaking it for the Mississippi, sailed down the river Hudson and founded the Greenwich Village Folk Scene. A reference to the drink can be found in recently discovered unpublished folio of Walt Whitman’s 1892 edition of Leaves of Grass:

From the mescal of baha to the sweet vines of Napa

From the Tennessee mash (that oft fills my glass)

To Appalachian moonshine (ahh those spirits divine)

From the bottles I’ve stolen from Bowery Trucks

To Vancouver’s elixir of nector Deluxe

I have tasted none sweeter than love, my love,

I have tasted none sweeter than love

85) A synthetic Tibetan moustache steeped in mystery. This legendary moustache is made in the tradition of Tibetan monks from simple Yeti pelt and dyed using the dung of obese mountain yaks. Driven from Tibet by their Chinese oppressors, the actor Burt Reynolds (‘Evening Shade’ 1992) secured the monks’ safe passage to North America where they continue to thrive in defiance of the Christian God. The monks now make their pseudo-moustaches in seclusion in Vancouver, attempting to homogenise their product to avoid suspicion. There, these ancient and mystical mouth pelts are shipped in boxes marked ‘Vancouver Lip Wigs Deluxe’. N.B. there is already a band from Northampton called Lip Wigs.

86) A garlic-fried burger introduced by McDonalds in the 2005 at the behest of the Canadian government. This was an attempt to economically balance the disastrous re-branding by American executives of KFC in French Quebec as ‘You Are What You Eat, Boc Boc’.

87) From a journal entry by comedy also-ran Pauly Shore. Throughout the late nineties, self proclaimed comedian Pauly Shore kept an explicit sex diary where he would carefully note the location of any liaison along with a rating of his own performance. His critical approach was methodical and he marked himself on a scale of ten, ranging from “Forgive Me Mother” as the lowest, through

“Gunslinger”, “Deluxe” and “Nuclear Gypsy Thrust” towards “F( ) You Dad” as the highest. During his ill-fated coupling with actor Rob Schneider, Shore recorded the following entry on 4th November 1999: “Vancouver: ‘Deluxe’… He touches me the deepest. To Rob, I’m more than just Mr. Biodome…” The diary hit the internet after it was found abandoned on Less Than Jake’s tourbus.

88) A celebrated live improvisation by jazz dog Miles Davis recorded on his 1978 tour. It begins “Get canuttta here… live from Vancouver…[this is] deluxe radiation, baby!” Backed on 12″ with “Scat-a-Long With Miles”, and “My First Jazz Book”, covered by the vdx at their earliest gigs.

88) A pirate ship famous for housing the only successful crew of overtly homosexual pirates. Of course homosexuality was common among the sailors of the day, but the crew of the Vancouver Deluxe are said to have made an asset of being “young, dumb and full of rum” and are commonly held to be the inspiration for the song “friggin’ in the riggin'”.

89) A paper stock highly sought after by French poets, as it soaks up excess melancholy, ennui and grease.

90) From a nightmare experienced by a bandmember. Although dreams can seldom be related in terms of the emotional reactions they provoke – they are typically highly subjective – this particular reverie was remarkable for the depth of its intensity. The dreamer was scolded by an elderly teacher with the face of a burnt toddler, who screamed at him “If you please, I will never leave you”. Simultaneously, the slumbering gentile was nursed by a crippled eagle that whispered “they will never reach us, for we are the vancouver deluxe” before gouging said sleepy joe’s eye out.

91) Peter Stringfellow’s High-class strip club aimed at Shoreditch’s burgeoning ‘lumberjack’ scene. Stringfellow became embroiled in a lengthy legal battle with Hackney Borough Council’s planning division over a provocative neon sign depicting Grizzly Adams in a women’s lingerie beneath the slogan “Don’t Pine, we’ve got plenty of Beavers to give you Wood”.

92) A bus ticket purchased by a young Nic Cage in ‘Rumbleshark’ (1989, dir. Francis Ford Coppola), the Israel-only sequel to Rumblefish, in which Cage and Diane Lane tour seedy pool halls in search of Rusty James (Matt Dillon), frowning and indulging in angry, monochromatic sex with homeless people.

93) The means by which highly (excited)ed transylvanians lubricate their keyholes. Think about it.

94) A 19th Century Trapper grooming style revived by Soho Boho types in the early 1980s. The elaborate ‘do’ consisted of a pair of thick mutton chops to protect against the wind, lank hair over the ears to prevent sunburn, a bald patch on the crown for ventilation, and a fringe held up by rancid bear grease to act as a sun visor.

95) A vanity project championed by the French. In the second half of the 19th century Franklin Vancouver’s Travelling Carnival was a popular attraction at many of the towns and cities it visited throughout Eastern Europe. A traditional freak-show was at the heart of the carnival, and legends including Baw-Jaws and The Enormous Midget Man were stalwarts. A clandestine affair between Vancouver and Madame Luxe (the syphilitic hunchback, with one wooden thigh and half a dozen eyebrows) produced a single batwinged son. This woeful beast was smuggled to America to escape persecution from those that had accused the Carnival of practising pagan sodomy/accountancy rituals. The actor Nicholas Cage later claimed kinship with Vancouver’s son and dramatised the tale of his forebears in ‘From Luxe, Of Vancouver’. The musical debuted in New York in 1992, but Cage’s casting of himself in several key, nude roles was met with consternation. The show was critically reappraised during its Paris run, where it was billed ‘Vancouver De Luxe’.

96) A brand of fridge first made after WW2, it was part of a presentation by the American Government held in Russia in the late 1950’s to promote Western Capitalism in the Communist country. The fridge was secretly designed to emit a gas that would make the Russian populace more susceptible to Bing Crosby’s anti-red ballads. Ironically it was in fact produced by Vancouver Products, owned and operated by Hans Vancouver, a staunch socialist, who was later convicted as a communist and ended his days in Salt Lake City running mobile strip shows ‘Scarlet Ladies’, and later ‘Prostitutes of The People’.

97) A reference to a doomed 1971 utopian experiment, the result of a drunken exchange between John Lennon, Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary, in the Whiskey-a-Go-Go. They planned to stage the greatest draft dodge in history by transporting every young man in America to a commune north of the border via a secret psychedelic railway made of pipe cleaners, paper clips and the wires from publicly burnt brassieres. Miraculously Kesey’s merry pranksters, with the help of speed-addled Hunter S Thompson and several people hallucinated by the Gonzo pioneer, completed the track in just three months. One month later Kesey, Thompson and lefty bandwagoniers Jane Fonda and Warren Beatty had successfully transported half of Kentucky to a field in Seskachaun and planned to tackle Missouri next. The plan was only thwarted when Leary turned CIA stool pigeon and revealed the location of the railway line to elite operative Uri Geller. Geller caused flagship train the Vancouver Deluxe to derail ten miles west of Twin Falls Idaho, abruptly ending the project and ringing in the death-knell of a nation’s optimism.

98) Based on a coded message sent by King Edward to his mistress, relating his struggle to deal with a young courtier. The youth, although removed from the King’s presence after losing a duel he had provoked, elected to engage in a game of cat and mouse with the King’s guards, tormenting his sleep and eluding arrest. The coded message was found engraved on the inside of a Knight’s visor, to be read aloud to the mistress, who would then decode it according to prearranged rules. The message was rediscovered in 1992 by bespectacled singletons: ‘VAN’COU’VE,R. D,ELU’X.E’ or ‘VANquished COUrtier VExed, Returns Daily, ELUsive X Ed’

99) Just words, dude. Just one letter after the other, till there’s a syllable. After one syllable comes the next and perhaps another, until: A Word. One word needs another, and so it goes. Until all the things in all the worlds have words to reduce their true meaning, to classify and pigeon-hole and teach us how to think in boxes. Words for Things are like Knives in Hens; they are practical and

definitive, but also reductive. Does a knife define a hen? You can never perceive all the sides of a diamond at once. Words, ultimately, can only ever really teach us to reduce things, to close our eyes to the whole, to hold us back. So brothers and sisters, reject the world of letters! Reject them and embrace the illegible, the unintelligible and the vague!

100) The name of the Jet Ski with which Arthur Fonzarelli jumped the shark in the waning days of rose-tinted homily to racist patriarchy ‘Happy Days’ (Dir. Samuel Beckett, 1978).