It smells like farts in my office. Old dusty farts. As if the worlds oldest bum had slept in here last night after feasting on egg-salad sandwiches down at the homeless shelter. It's not an oppressive smell, but I keep craning my head around, sniffing, and catching little wisps of it here and there. I am not sure what to make of it. Pretty sure it's not me.
This morning when I was sitting in traffic I saw a large truck go by that belonged to some central Florida speech and hearing center. The logo they had on the side of the truck was a painted mime cocking his ear out at you with a look of bafflement on his face. I found that to be such misappropriate and an absurd logo that I started laughing. I mean... mimes cannot talk, right? So you make one a logo for a speech center. I bet there was a lot of back slapping when they dreamed that one up.
Actually, I think more aspiring young actors should be mimes. Why? Because everyone hates mimes. They are annoying. They strive to be attention whores without making a sound. People will taunt mimes, abuse them, and generally loath them. And, personally, I think that is great training for an actor. If you plan on being an actor you need to learn how to take some abuse, because the cold reality is that not everyone is going to love and adore you, no matter how many times you ran that scenario through your head while getting glamour shots done at the local Wal-Mart.
So, when such said aspiring actors are up on stage and the insults and the tomatoes start hurling, they won't lose their cool because when they were mimes they had mastered the art of self humiliation.
Speaking of aspiring actors I can not get over this character I came across when, out of boredom, I googled 'The fop with no name".
http://www.fluffhouse.org.uk/yves/me2.html
She lives in England, even though it took me a little while to actually figure out it was a 'she'. Because of the haircut and the obviously English face, she can easily pass off as some sort of Old England peasant lad. Running around in his stockings for shillings or kippers whatever English lads of yore did. But, nope, it's a chik. Rock on Fop chick, I salute you.
Last night I stopped in the pub after work and had a couple of quick pints. Aaah, refreshing. I got home, puttered about, and then settled in my bath for a good soak. That is when my phone rang. My sister's house had sprung a water leak and she needed some help. Sigh. So I got out of my tub and threw on some clothes and headed over to see if there was any way I could help.
When I showed up I expected to see a big hole in a pipe streaming out a flurry of water as if from a fire hose with my sister screaming and holding up a garbage can lid to fend off the aquatic onslaught while her dog howled uselessly next to her and the lights flickered. However, it was just an itty bitty little pinhole leak. I at first had the absurd thought of getting a bunch of old hot wheel race car tracks and using them to build a little aqueduct to funnel the water out. Instead I showed my sister how to shut off the water in her house until she can get someone over to fix it. No big deal.
I also checked out where the city of Sanford had been working on the sewer in my yard. Not really sure what they were doing. Replacing a pipe or something that I had asked them to do several months ago. When I came home I checked to see if perhaps they had laid down sod over the big dirt pile they had made. No such luck. Although they did smooth the dirt back down.
I am on day three of leftover chicken noodle soup. Yum.
2026 Update
Turning the dial back twenty years: Ed is sniffing his office like a baffled mime while the internet counsels him on fops.
Ah, 2006: a world where your biggest technical challenge was a pinhole leak and a pile of dirt, and the office smell was still a mystery rather than a subscription. I miss when 'I googled it' was a verb you admitted with shame and a stray web page could eat your evening. Now water leaks are diagnosed by someone on a ring camera while a plumber sends a link to pay before he arrives. The phone in your bath was just a phone: no video call, no meaningless notification, just your sister and a demand that you physically leave the house. That mime logo would never survive modern focus groups; it would be a smiling avatar with a hearing aid and a sponsored post about custom earplugs. And a woman with an English face and stockings could lurk in obscurity; now she would be an influencer with a Patreon. Even your soup proved legendary: day three of chicken noodle, because wasting food was not yet a personality. Sanford's sewer crew smoothed dirt without livestreaming it. We had dirt, Ed. Dirt and farts.
“2006 Ed, be honest: did you google 'The fop with no name' before or after you decided everyone hates mimes, and did you really think that lady's haircut was the main thing worth saluting?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I think the mime hatred came first, then the googling. I was sitting there sniffing those old farts and my brain just wandered off the leash, and before I knew it I was typing “The fop with no name” just to see what the hell would happen. So the mimes were already on my mind, and then I found that chick and thought, “Ah, perfect, another attention-getting weirdo,” only this one’s got stockings and a face that could pass for a Tudor peasant boy. And no, the haircut wasn’t the main thing worth saluting, it was the whole package, the attitude, the mystery, the fact that she’s out there being a fop in England while I’m stuck in an office that smells like a dead man’s egg-salad fart. But yeah, the haircut did a lot of heavy lifting. Rock on, fop chick. You earned that salute.
