Very Famous American Writer

'The coldest winter I ever had was a summer in San Francisco'

These words encapsulate the very essence of the fair city of San Francisco. For whilst it is a city of prosperity, culture and success It is also a city of contradiction. This quotation, written by none other than the person who wrote them, were written by a famous writer from the United States who was known to everyone by his name, umm well I've forgotten his name actually but I shall keep writing anyway as San Francisco is a fascinating city.



Now I think about it the writer could be a she who wrote it but I can't check this as I don't know the person's name. But when I do find out their name I will endeavour to find out who they are, which is a bit of a stupid thing to write actually because when I have found out their name then I will know who they are because I will already have their name and by default I will know who they are just simply by having their name in front of me.

Irrespective of all this the author was nevertheless attempting to convey, through analogy, modern San Francisco’s inherent multi-faceted structural nature that encapsulates not just the city as it is but also the state of California and one would dare say the United States of America in its entirety.

Of course this is dependent on the author still being alive. I mean if he died 200 years ago then he couldn't have been making a reference to California as it wasn't in existence then. Indeed San Francisco was barely all that much 200 years ago and almost certainly wasn't as contradictorily structured as it is at the moment so the initial statement can’t be applicable and the author must have been more contemporary.

Unless the author was demented of course in which case it wouldn't have mattered what San Francisco was like 200 years ago as lunacy has a tendency to instil anything that the author wishes to project onto their object of disaffection.

It is worth pointing out that there could easily be other explanations here as to how the author could have written what he or she wrote making it perfectly feasible that the author was alive 200 years ago. So being demented isn’t the only explanation for the author having written what he or she wrote. So what I wrote earlier about the necessity of the author to be still alive doesn't necessarily hold true.

For example, the author may just have got lucky and made up the statement whilst passing water in a dry latrine and ended up looking very clever. One supposes that the author could even have overheard the phrase being uttered in a dry latrine and decided to use it to look very clever at a social function the following day. Or perhaps someone had written it on a wall somewhere in a dry latrine and the author had spotted it and used it thenceforth also to look very clever. Incidentally, the dry latrine example really is just that, an example, I was merely attempting to elucidate the scope of possibilities relating to the author's inspiration by using one scenario extrapolated into a myriad of variations. I do not have a fixation on dry latrines.

It is also worth pointing out here that none of this precludes the author from being alive today as there are indeed still many dry latrines in the world. Some of them are also very old and still in use and also very dry so the dry latrine that the author may have found the quote in (if indeed that is how they came across it) may have been constructed 200 years ago and also been daubed with the quote, to which this article is about, not long after the aforementioned dry latrine had been built.

What I am trying to say here is that assuming the author had stumbled upon this quote in a dry latrine he or she could easily have done this 200 years ago or even last Wednesday not long after the quote had been written on the wall of the dry latrine (assuming it was indeed found by the author that way) Not that they didn't find it in a dry latrine but there is always that possibility.

Naturally when I say that the the quote had been written on the wall of the dry latrine not long after it had been constructed, it doesn't follow that the famous author had not seen it a long time after it had been written. The person whom had written it on the wall may well have indeed written it soon after the wall's construction but the famous writer who everyone knows but whose name I can't remember may easily have found the quote many many many years later. Either way until I find the name of this shittin author I can't prove nor disprove any of this. In fact I am not really interested in doing that I really just want to get to grips with the wonderful subject of San Francisco!

However the author conjured up the quote, whether it be through their imagination or their wife or husband or a loved one inspired them to write it somehow or maybe the author had actually been to San Francisco or by finding it scrawled upon a wall in a dry latrine the fact that everybody knows who the author is, except me is starting to get on my pissing nerves. Anyway the author would have gained many kudos points for coming up with this poignant phrase and no doubt for all the other very clever things they had done to make themselves famous and therefore would have looked very good in social circles and functions and would also have been more than able to get on the nerves of a very annoying neighbour or ex-girlfriend or boyfriend if they were feminine.

Although it is worth pointing out that it may still have been a boyfriend even if the author was a homosexual man or indeed a lesbian woman, although just to clarify a lesbian woman would not have had a boyfriend she would have had a girlfriend. Well usually, most of the time lesbian women have girlfriends and not boyfriends. If they had boyfriends they wouldn't be lesbians would they? They would in fact be err women who have boyfriends assuming they were going out with one that is. If they weren't going out with anyone then they would in fact be a woman who was not going out with anyone, or more commonly known as ’a woman....’ and of course this goes without saying the same is true of a man not going out with a woman. That is not to say that a man not going out with a woman is called a woman, he is in fact a man that is not going out with a woman and is therefore a simply referred to as a err man. Or in some parts of the United States ’a loser’ while in other parts of the United States ’an A-hole,’ re-tard or creep’ and so on.

Of course none of the aforementioned interpersonal bonds title's precludes the individual concerned from being labelled as a ’man’ or ’woman’. Of course men or women are perfectly entitled to use those titles irrespective of the fact of them having been in or indeed being in a relationship with another person. Men and women are not to be defined according to who they have not been out with. They are to be defined by the things that encapsulate the essence of their personage. For example my friend "’Stupid’ Pat Cheeseman" is not known primarily for being a woman but instead for not being very intelligent, which is reflected in her nick-name ’Stupid’ Pat Cheeseman.’ In a certain irony here Pat is woman called Cheeseman, when it would be more accurate to call her Pat Cheesemanwoman or Cheeseperson or indeed Cheesewoman. Personally I think the Cheesemanwoman is more a reflection of what her name should be despite it sounding like a trifle uninspiring character from a comic 'Cheeseman-Woman' like 'Catwoman' or Elephantman.'

Incidentally, both these examples of adjectivised nouns belie their intended nomenclature, catwoman is a super villain from the Marvel Comic magazine, memorably portrayed by Ertha Shit in the Batman television series who had special powers that bore a similarity with a feline. Whilst the Elephantman was a name given to an Englishman named John Joseph Merrick a Victorian circus freak whose nebrofibromatosis deformed his body and face into something that resembled an Elephant. Unlike Catwoman he was devoid of Elephantine powers to get him out of silly shenanigans. In fact, Catwoman was also devoid of elephantine powers, she was endowed with feline powers only. What would be the point of calling her 'Catwoman' if she only had elephantine powers and physical characteristics? Can you imagine a feline-like woman threatening to spray a trunk full of water over for some reason. She wouldn't be a super-villain she would just look demented.

But I digress, John Joseph Merrick was not endowed with elephantine powers although word on the street has it that he apparently did suffer from very bad constipation. So you can imagine that maybe when he did eventually need to evacuate the latter part of his digestive system the shear quantity of material released could very well have weighed the same as the matter released by an elephant. That aside he had no special powers. Not that doing 'big-jobs' is a special power of course but well I don't know about you but if someone, resembling an elephant, approached me in a pub and threatened to deposit a ton of 'plip-plops' where I was standing I would be out of there like a shot. Anyway just to reiterate, John Merrick had no special powers, he was just very ugly. And of course Catwoman had no elephantine powers either. She just had feline powers and probably would not use the threat of doing 'number-twos' to eject people from a pub.
Right now that that is that cleared up, which is something you would not have heard John Joseph Merrick say very often, I can return to the quote and beautiful city of San Francisco. Alternatively, rather than writing the quote to get back at an annoying neighbour the author may have written it because they simply had far too much time on their hands. Which, by a not too peculiar coincidence, I suspect, is precisely what anyone reading this article is thinking about myself.

Mark Pierro


Please note that not many animals were harmed during the writing of this article.