Posted on September 22, 2011
If the moon was real how could we tell
I have often considered the moon to be real, usually to the disbelief and increasing anger of those that hear my voice mellifluousing on the subject. The idea that so beautiful a vision could be little more than an artifact of cornearial refraction feels so sickening and unfair that I would be forced to believe in more gods than I currently do just so I could curse their unhinged cruelty.
It is to this end that I have been working on an experiment designed to prove once and for all the existence of its queenly beauty beyond just the rubbery lenses of our eyes. It is, as you would expect, a difficult problem, but one which I believe I can master, as I have mastered the problems of fractalised soundwaves and rigid body harmonics.
Although I can not elaborate further on my methods until my fungal sculptures are complete, I hope to have further news on my discoveries before the snow months approach and are gone.
Posted on September 20, 2011
force out
ears keep ringing. can’t sleep, sounds like alarm bells in my head. ever since they took me.
pulsing in my brain. slow, sweaty throb. pills and potions offer no relief. ever since I escaped.
not sure why I always end up a prisoner of something, or someone. not that important, surely. not that “special”. but out of the blue I am wrapped in a sack and bundled into a van, or fuzzed into the air by gleaming lights. prodded from both sides, and below. stared at by unblinking eyes.
ears keep ringing and the volume goes up when I try to drown it out. throat dry and sore from yelling to be heard, heard by myself. everyone else can hear, of course – they tell me to shut up, I imagine, but I can’t be sure. maybe they enjoy my screams.
place my hands on my head to see if head genuinely throbbing. unsure if resultant feeling, undeniable movement, is coming from hands or head or brain or mind. doesn’t really matter, suppose.
head into pillow. eyes cram shut. force out.
Posted on September 13, 2011
Tigers
It’s not cruel to hunt tigers, it’s fun. I found this out recently while hunting tigers. I am not a fan of gunpowder or moving parts, so I have been using a harpoon left over from a recent whaling expedition. It still has some whale on it, and that drives the tigers crazy.
Hurling from the shoulder, I watch the sharpened tip pierce the striped fur and fell another beast. I am the deadliest creature alive. However, since I’m socially responsible, I’ve been planting one new tiger for each one that I chop down. I’ll go back in a few weeks to check that they’re growing properly.
Posted on August 11, 2011
The moon and its reflected disciples
It appeared I was in the park. History does not reveal why. I glanced up, then turned the glance first into a look, then belatedly a stare. The moon peered back at me through the eye socket of a tattered and screaming cloud witch’s face.
This sight caused in me the activation of the reminiscinal gland, and I was drawn back to a happening from days long past. Four days past, or maybe even five. Time is strange here, in the parklands of Hull.
On that occasion I was walking upon the heath, or perhaps trapped between the hedges in a particularly narrow garden. As is well known, due to my well trained and supple lips, I can whistle two distinct notes at the same time, and I was caught here in an absentminded duel between the right note and the left note that threatened to arouse a number of unwanted passions in any nearby lingering cats.
It is at times like this (or more accurately that, as I am still recounting the past, and will be for some time) that I wish I had been able to master too the middle whistle – for here it could have helped provide a calming note that would have turned the loins of not only cats but all the warm fleshed creatures to ice – but unfortunately I had been so far incapable of sustaining it beyond the second bar, whereupon it would cause the collapse of the complex wave function of my lips, and all sound would be reduced to a flat and unmelodious abomination.
The hedges turned, and around the corner glowed a mysterious figure. The light emanated from a bulb planted in the right eye, powered seemingly by the brain direct. The shadows cast across his face gave him a gnarled and unseemingly look, and made the hunch of his back loom ominously and it could definitely be said hugely over us both. My whistling was startled to a halt.
“Good evening sir,” I offered. He grasped it with both claws.
“It is, it is.” He turned his head to the right and turned his good eye sideways upon me. “Although maybe by now it is the night. Who knows when one begins and the other dies?”
I started to tell him the very precise definitions of evening and night and the exact demarcation points but I noticed then that his eyebulb was of the old fashioned sort.
“Sir, sir,” I lamented. “Sir, the bulb upon your eye is the inefficient kind, 100 watts used when only 15 are needed, if the progress of the technology would just be accepted.”
“Yet the mercury within them is bad for the brain”, he replied. “And they protrude further than is polite.”
I nodded, ambiguously, and bid him good night. I scuttled backwards, revoked the turn I had made earlier, and the encounter was finished.
Posted on July 25, 2011
I walked
I walked until I fell down and then I got up again. A crowd began to form, and some of them hung bunting. There was a real carnival atmosphere after a while, as they watched me stagger. Round and round the village square I went, feet bloodied and battered in my tattered old shoes. An old woman had baked cakes, and everyone seemed to have one. I tried to grab one as I stumbled past but the cobbles seemed to fall away and my grasping hand met only air.
I began to despise them after a while. Nobody gathers to shout encouragement to the joggers in the local park, and I wished for no encouragement myself. It was already clear that I would walk until I could go no further. It was an itch I needed to scratch, and I didn’t feel the need to share that with the world. I could do little to get rid of them, however; already too exhausted to shout, I waved my arm slightly but they just laughed and kept bellowing choice words. A boy threw a stick and it clattered from my shin.
After that it turned quite nasty, the child’s futile attack seemingly inspiring the previously-positive villagers into a newfound state of ignorant rage. The butcher’s wife started chasing me around, though with little effect as she struggled with the poorly-paved streets that I had already adapted to. The other children found new things to throw, jagged things, stinking things, their own excrement.
I began to smile, and adjusted my pace accordingly. It was going to be a long night.
Posted on July 18, 2011
Cloak
I’ve been wearing this cloak. It’s not very comfortable but it keeps my shoulders warm. Somebody stopped me in the street and said “I like your cape”, but it isn’t a cape, it’s a cloak. It’s black, obviously, with a red lining, obviously. The man Dracula had some style, and I don’t forget that. When I turn a corner, it swooshes. It is beginning to chafe slightly against the neck, but nothing that I cannot handle. A man on a building site shouted at me. “Nice cape”, he shouted, but the sarcasm was evident in his voice. I turned to look – his shoulders looked rather cold, despite the red glow of last week’s sunshine. Both ailments could have been prevented by a cloak.
If I were to review the cloak, I would say that I liked it and would recommend it to any man or woman.
Posted on July 5, 2011
Beneath the Earth, I Slay Thee (excerpt)
To the Galapagos, and a secret dungeon therein. For those who are willing to pay a price, the adventures of such heartrendingly dull “role-playing games” as Dungeons & Dragons, Fighting Fantasy and Menacing Warlocks IV can be brought to life with genuine adventures in a custom built, artificially aged catacomb in this remote location.
—
I scrimp and save to get the funds together – for journalistic purposes only, you understand. I have been approached by a small-time news rag to cover this new phenomenon (in so much as something that nobody has heard of can be called a phenomenon, which is to say, not at all). “You will pay your own way”, they said. I admired their honesty and fancied the challenge. Weeks later, they fail to publish my article, despite the ultimate dedication I have displayed in submitting all 100,000 words on enchanted parchment scroll. No matter, I suppose I started this inter-net web-log for a reason. As my own harshest editor, I present the condensed version here; only the best words survive.