How I should be doing things.

Looking accomplished is the way to go.

Wear your clothes loose, and orally fidget with a unlit Schimmelpennick, moving it to the corners of your mouth when you talk (don’t take it out!).

Walk slow, stop and look at random things in the street and then shake your head in a world-weary and bemused fashion. Carry an unloaded shotgun and a glass of Pimm’s everywhere. Particularly the video store.

At the video store, ask the clerk if they have popular American films dubbed into other languages, or are at least subtitled.

Shake your head in a world-weary and bemused fashion when the kid shrugs. Go to the Dairy Queen, order a banana split and douse the thing in Cognac. It’s up to you if you want to light it on fire. If the clerk is attractive, wink at them. Come in next week and give him or her a limoge box filled with cocaine as a tip.

Eat at quiet bistros, reflecting on the beautiful sadness of life. Get drunk and order everything en flambe, even the bread. Sigh, then get a hot lather shave from the waiter.

Life is better now, isn’t it?

Pomade things. Pomade your hair straight back and encourage your teeth to buck out. Wear colognes made from things not generally acknowledged to smell all that nice, like old polo mallets.

Take tango classes, and insist on carrying a bowie knife in your teeth as you dance.

Carry sheet music, Debussey, and ask grocery clerks if they can read music, and if they do, ask them to hum a few bars of Debussey. “I am willing to pay whomever to have this service performed.”

Bring a saber to Home Depot and hack away at two-by-four made of exotic wood. Explain: “I’ll pay for this. I enjoy the smell of steel on teak. Reminds of my time in the legion.”

That’s the life for me.