sookraj

The Pilot

2009-08-13T16:26:00.001Z

Daniel clenched the stick tighter. Fruggin’ ‘ceratops. He throttled back and dipped the nose, the F14 vibrated violently, briefly, then settled into its shallow dive. In his peripheral vision he saw the treetops rise slowly up toward him, then the altitude warning began to ping. Fruggin’ ‘ceratops. Daniel held steady. He turned his head to allow him a better view through the HUD. He saw the clearing and the grey lumps of the dinosaurs tiny then small then getting bigger, the prerecorded voice calmly asked pull up, pull up. He was close enough to see one of the triceratops turn its horned head as he squeezed the trigger, the minigun thrummed beneath his seat, he opened his jaws, the perfect killing machine, a Tyrannosaurus Rex in a fighter jet.

He pulled back hard, wrestling the huge plane’s nose skyward, servos and ailerons and stressed steel skin resisting then relenting. He punched the afterburners and was pushed back into the chair. The g-force made him giddy. Daniel whooped and spittle flecked the canopy. Fruggin’ ‘ceratops, they weren’t expecting that. Ha ha!

A Nice Easy Start

2009-07-30T17:46:00.000Z

A nice easy start? Bollocks.

I don’t want to fall. The tendons anchored in my forearms sing. Everything is tight. Everything. I could stay here indefinitely but that isn’t really an option. Climb or fall. The excitement in the back of my throat sours into fear, spreading out, quickening my breath, imagination tumbling. Is the equipment good, the rope knotted right, harness buckled tight. Bollocks. I think I’m stuck. How far above the gear am I? Too far, I don’t want to let go. Breathe, blow. Drop your heel.

What will they tell my parents? What if someone checks my internet history?

Staying In

2008-09-07T16:23:00.003Z

“I like it balmy” She had said “With an L not an R”

So they lay there sweating, the heating on high, sun outside, still heavy air. Pretending it was a New York summer instead of a London spring. Him naked, her semi-nakedness made somehow more blatant by the open dressing gown. He lay on his back with his head on her belly, drifting in and out of sleep as the percussive music wove together his conscious and unconscious thoughts.

Suddenly, gripped by the fear that he may have been talking in his sleep he forces his eyes open and turns his head to see her wake from parallel dreams.

Soft belly fat, muscles underneath. Her ribs by one ear her pelvis by the other. That subterranean thump of this girl’s heart sounding from somewhere deep inside.

The Resurrection

2008-03-21T11:15:00.002Z

Already I find it hard to imagine my old life, it doesn’t even seem like it happened to me, but somebody who I know, a friend who has since drifted away. So big is the change, geographical in scale that the borders haven’t been redrawn so much as I have become an entirely different country. Subsidence, erosion, a gradual loss of topsoil, the occasional tectonic tremor may have been hints but the final event was so sudden, so fierce that the landscape and all the tiny people who roamed it didn’t stand a chance. They were engulfed, crushed, wiped out before they had chance to take in what was happening (even though they had seen the signs, the failed crops, the way the birds hadn’t returned that spring, but they had convinced themselves that it would never actually happen in their lifetime). The land folded in on itself, fell into the sea, rose up as strange new mountains.

Recently an archaeologist arrived by boat. She is pretty and young and still passionate. Her love for academia has yet to be ground down by the day-to-day effort of making a living from it. She has found bones, not yet complete skeletons but many fragments and there is a picture emerging, the edges of which she has yet to discover. Best of all she enjoys it here. The weather is mild, the midges don’t seem interested in her. The view from the tent is still beautiful enough to surprise her most mornings.

Doors

2007-03-12T12:25:00.000Z

That night in the near dark they were haunted by doors.

Abi, who was older and used to these hauntings no longer cared what was on the other side of her door.

In her room, even though it was too dark to make out, Lucy was quietly excited about what her door might contain or where it might lead to.

Terrified, Emma pulled the duvet up to her nose. Too scared to flee she crossed her toes and prayed for the morning.

Bertie Ross

2006-12-12T00:20:00.000Z

Brian awoke with a start. For a brief moment he imagined everyone was staring at him, but the feeling passed as he blinked the sleep away. After the clatter and white noise rush of his dreams the train was noticeably quiet, just the sound of moving air and rumble of wheels from somewhere distant outside. It was busy though, enough that people stood swaying like synchronised drunks in the aisle.

They were leaving the city now, through a derelict looking industrial park. Worn down looking metal sheds, sad machinery and baleful silos slid indifferently past. It was the middle of the day but Brain couldn’t spot a single human being. A hundred miles of scenery scrolled by. Urban housing fading to industrial sprawl fading to open countryside and then back again as the train approached Leamington.

Bertie Ross’ house was pretty much as he had expected: Ramshackle. The organic chaos of shrubs and vines in the small front yard seemed to continue inside the front hallway. Overlapping leaves and twisted branches where replaced by stacked ephemera on row after row of mismatched shelves. Hundreds of books. Small ceramic statuettes lying on their sides, scraps of papers, pens. Dust. Old things and dead skin, a warm-but-not-in-a-pleasant-way human smell. The voice in the intercom guided Brian toward the rear of the house, past half open doors onto half lit rooms filled with more shelves and boxes piled so deep and high that it became impossible to judge the true volume of the building.

The crumpled old man Brian found seemed apt. Once the collecting gravity it seemed now Bertie Ross was being crushed under the weight of the things around him, squeezed into this one last room and pushed into the sagging brown chair. Brain was surprised by just how ancient the man looked. There was no make-up let alone surgery. His clothes didn’t fit. His clothes were so out of style Brian couldn’t even tell how out of style they were. Three plastic dwarves shuffled around the room laying out tea and biscuits on a low coffee table. The jerky movement made him nervous, his distrust of the robots heightened further by their designed-in subservient stooped posture and downcast blank faces.

“Sit down, sit down, son”. Brian looked up, the man’s sing song accented voice seemed lifted straight from an old movie. Bertie Ross was smiling a curious half-smile, looking straight at him while vaguely gesturing at the only empty chair in the room.

Interview

2006-09-20T22:20:00.000Z

A thin spike of nausea rose through his body. What am I doing? Brian asked himself.

He was seeing her under perfectly legitimate circumstances. A follow up interview. She had left a message, there was more to talk about, things she hadn't considered when they first spoke. Maybe she had seen the man at the cafe. Not that it mattered to Brian, it was just another reason to see her.

Like all kids of his generation he had a list of childhood diagnoses he carried round like a notebook of prewritten excuses. Protanomaly. High metabolism. Something on the very fringes of the broadest spectrum definition of Aspergers. Well that's what the doctor had said. His mum had said he shouldn't worry about being a little awkward, that even she was a little awkward. But he was back in that wheel within a wheel, watching himself thinking. Did everyone do this? Analysing his emotions, root causes. A network of paranoia, fears and worries that extended back even before puberty. Empricising every decision, the reactions of those around him. Breaking them down into threads and repeating patterns. This cold calculating was psychopathic behavior, surely?

He hadn't seen Rachel in nine days.

What Would Ray Mears Do?

2006-06-29T15:46:00.000Z

Pushing the headphones off his head so the plastic loop rested around his neck Martin looked round. Meerkat-like he peered over the top of his monitor. Had nobody else noticed?

The workmen had arrived an hour earlier. Shaven heads, faded tattoos. Little yellow logos on the blue of their management company issued t-shirts. He hadn’t paid much attention then, it was just the normal clattering, thick local accents, guttural chuckling. Doing whatever it is these guys do.

He hadn’t paid much attention when one guy had gone round the doorframe with a spirit level. Or to the drilling. Or the hammering. He was too busy, his schedule was full. New media, contrary to popular belief, won’t make itself you know.

Now though he needed a piss. And now he noticed there was no longer any way of leaving the room, just a smooth partition wall. The old six panels in worn off-white, and now one noticeably cleaner panel where the door had been.

Stephen looked up and leaving his headphones on (to deter anybody from hassling him) silenced iTunes. He listened. Had anybody else noticed? Why was Martin pissing in the corner of the room?

Not Cricket

2006-05-15T18:35:00.000Z

Dragging the bat they left the field. It had been a good game though. Tim batted, Neil bowled. Neil and Sarah’s terrier, Lella, was the solitary but ever willing fielder.

The air was thick with pollen but the sun dipped quickly and a breeze raised goose-bumps. A reminder it was still spring, and the summery day just a false start. As they turned the corner Tim’s battered Landy came into view and the afternoon’s conversation resumed. So why is it people with such terrible taste in music insist on playing it so loud?

“Windows down, sat at the traffic lights” said Tim.

“When I was on my way back form Lancaster the other day” said Neil, “This kid sat behind me. Tone deaf and no idea about rhythm. Didn’t stop him whistling and tapping all the way from bleeding Crewe to bleeding Euston, did it?”

In Motion

2006-05-11T11:18:00.000Z

Brian lived a disjointed life in a town of equally disjointed citizens. He speaks to more people via email than by any other means. Occasionally he uses the phone, usually for work-related matters or to speak to his parents. Housemates and girlfriend aside his face-to-face interaction rarely extends beyond an eye-contactless thanks to some teenage checkout drone.

A Lesson Learnt

2006-04-02T20:26:00.000Z

Ok, time for a little truth. People who know me will recognise occasional snippets from my life throughout this blog, but this is straight up, a story from today.

Well, a story from the past few days, which actually begins several years ago.

At university. At university I wouldn’t say I was a slag, I wasn’t whoring myself round in a self-destructive way but I was having fun. I liked to think I was in control, I liked to be in control. I didn’t like the idea of growing old with regrets. I didn’t sleep with loads of people, I didn’t have a steady boyfriend for four years either.

I’m reasonably confident that I’m not ugly. I did a little modelling. Porn. Actually, it was fun. Nothing exploitative. The guy ran his own website, small then, bigger now. I felt sexy, I laughed a lot, I came at least once. He stayed behind his camera, his assistant, a motherly woman with the dirtiest laugh alternated between passing cups of tea and passing tubes of lube.

And I really did come away feeling empowered. In control of my sexuality. It was a sly secret that very few people knew about me. Something you remember sat on the bus and smile to yourself about.

Hot Teen Fingers Ass. This is the third time I’ve seen myself in an as many months. Yes I fingered my ass, however I was twenty-one at the time. I knew the images would be public domain, but I never thought about how they might be presented, or just how public they might become. I mean, I don’t watch loads of porn, but three times in three months feels like a lot. Click the link, oh, it’s me again.

Cute, Smart Girl Likes The Idea of Being Watched. That’s what more what I had in mind.

In one way I’m proud of the photos, proud of the strong, sexy young woman I see in them, but there is something about their new context that I just find a little grubby. Hot Teen smacks of unwashed middle-aged men paying money, that I was acting against my own volition. Of fantasies I don’t subscribe too, ideas and opinions I don’t want to encourage.

I know I signed a piece of paper and I know there’s no going back. It does feel like what a sexy giggle at the time has been hijacked by intentions contrary to my own.

Razor Blades

2006-02-21T12:40:00.000Z

Lying in the water, suds up to his chin, rustling and popping in his ears. His body singing stories of the night before. Drinking red wine on the train. She slapping him, him pulling her hair. Bruises on his arms and legs, scratches on his back. His lips are still tender. The smell of her there or just imagined?

Unwrapping the towel from around his waist he lifts it up to wipe condensation from the mirror. Clove fumes from the shaving oil pinprick tears from his eyes. The razor moves smoothly across his top lip, left side then right. Monday and Tuesday are shaping up well. Snag, bounce, reflex pulls his hand and the blade away from his chin before blood is drawn. Wednesday doesn’t look so promising.

Water gurgles down out of the sink. Swirls of cut bristle, a tide line of short hair. Eddies and counterflows, the next month, maybe two, mapped out.

Balls out

2006-02-15T15:46:00.000Z

We didn’t wake up one morning and decide this was a good idea. Like so much fashion it evolved. Friends dared each other further. Who’s the fly-est bro’ on 22nd street?

Our caps (no basketball logos!) at an angle, trousers low, flies undone. Folds of wrinkled scrotum exposed, pinkish flesh with its sparse curly hairs out for all to see. No cock though, nobody is interested in that.

The style has become more refined of late. Now just showing your balls is not enough of a statement. I’ve taken to borrowing my girlfriend’s hair bands to plump and push and maintain the look. Just don’t wrap too tightly, and don’t use rubber bands - the way they catch on skin and tug at hair can be painful.

Fog

2006-01-23T22:24:00.000Z

I pretend that I know where I’m going. That I’m in some way closer to the animal kernel at the root of my brain. Gut instinct: this way is good, that way is bad. I pretend that I can trust the theoretical compass hard-wired into my head.

In fact I am lost. The fog rolls around me. Familiar streets become underwater caves. Everything is alien, strange. The fog fills my ears, nose and mouth. I swallow it down. The fog fills my body.

A Man's Face

2006-01-10T16:55:00.000Z

His facial hair, moustache and sideburns, gave him a stately air. Like a manor house or an expensive car. Like a Rolls Royce.

Eyebrow ASBO

2005-12-23T21:14:00.000Z

Fifteen was when things started to go wrong. I had started shaving a few months before. That was when the hirsute horrors first shook their hairy hands across the bridge of my nose.

My eyebrows were beyond unruly. They’d steal beer from the fridge. They’d play music loud late into the night. My parents tutted and sighed. The neighbours complained.

Once, on a date, a first date, a formative date, I popped to the gents between courses. Looking in the mirror I realised my left eyebrow had gone. When had it escaped, how long had my guest been sat staring at the freak with one eyebrow? What could I tell her, that this boy didn’t even have the strength of character to keep his facial hair in check?

Housebreaking

2005-11-30T14:23:00.000Z

When I was younger I used to ask my mother why everyone looked at me. She pointed out that maybe they were staring at me because I was staring at them.

That’s the first rule, don’t be noticed. I’m pretty sure there is nobody else on the quiet residential street. There was no one here when I started walking, I don’t think anyone has arrived since. If I don’t look suspicious why should anyone suspect me? I don’t look around, my hand reaches for the low wall, the muscles in my forearms tense and twist. There is a childish joy in the physicality of my own body as I vault into the back garden.

All the lights are on in the first house. A middle-aged couple sit silently watching TV in the living room. Something boils in the kitchen steaming up the window. I crouch watching. I landed in a bush and something has cut my leg, there is a dull warm pain, a wet sensation that may be blood. (Later that evening back at home I will discover an inch long twig pushed under the skin of my calf). I can’t quite figure out what they’re watching. From the sliver of screen I can see it looks kind of like porn, and then there’s the rhythmic motion of the man’s shoulders… but the woman sits reading a magazine, apparently oblivious. People are strange. I decide not to dwell.

Moving across the back wall I (rather ungraciously by my own standards) tumble over the dividing hedge into the next garden.

It’s dark, quiet, it’s only nine in the evening, this is all good. I tug a branch from the small-leafed bush next to me and throw it forward. If you wake up to a load of foliage on your patio now you know what’s been going on: Somebody was in your back garden checking for security lights.

There are no lights. I walk forward, stooping to pick up one of the fist-sized smooth stones that edge the lawn. I’m not one to carry tools with me, a crowbar down one's trouser leg is never easy to explain away. Instead there is a small maglite torch on my keyring and I’m wearing a canvas jacket. To break a window quietly simply hold the jacket against the glass then strike it with something hard and heavy. Be quick, be sure. A friend of mine used to swear that all he used was a cap and his fist. He’s in prison now.

But first things first. The kitchen door is locked, the window however is not, the latch isn’t even down. There is even a bench on the patio underneath it. I pop the window open and slither through.

Input Input

2005-11-29T16:35:00.000Z

She was biting his shoulder. No, not biting, but her mouth was open against him, teeth pressing down, her breath warm and damp through his clothes. She squirmed around the point between her legs. His fingers kept moving. A whimper was muffled against the crook of his neck; he couldn’t see but suspected she was biting her lip. Her body flicked and tensed against him, animal. Animal. ANIMAL.

The Man who Wished Himself Bald

2005-11-15T16:49:00.000Z

Daniel screwed his eyes tight and concentrated really hard. The blood rushed through his ears; he could feel his face redden. At first there was a sensation like pin pricks across his skull, then it was like popping candy beneath his scalp. A hundred imploding follicles per second.

Phillip's Misfortune

2005-11-02T17:06:00.000Z

Phillip was a friend of mine who suffered an unfortunate accident while passionately necking his partner. His concentration lapsed for the merest second and...

SNAP!

His tongue was in plaster for a fortnight.

It completely ruined Phillip's sex-life. Have you ever received head from man whose tongue is wrapped in plaster and bandages? It's very disappointing, I assure you.

For a fortnight he had to drink liquidised bananas, milkshakes and soup through a straw.

While eventually he did recover, things were never quite the same. An improperly set cast meant his tongue healed at an angle. For the rest of his life Phillip was obliged to kiss with his head tipped slightly to the left and he could only perform oral sex while lying on his side. To this day he has never sipped another milkshake nor nibbled a banana.

Spain

2005-10-26T16:57:00.000Z

George crouched, pushing himself into the corner. His heart was hammering, trying to escape from his chest. The voices in the street below had stopped moving, there were several men, more than four. A car idled, its engine popping and echoing in the square.

George was scared. If he was discovered then it really would be the end, an ignoble death. An unnamed corpse in an unmarked grave. Maybe torture first? Certainly there would be tormenting, a beating. He would be used for sport and then killed. He knew that.

Past decisions lined up in his mind. Now he wasn’t sure what he was doing here. He wasn’t really political, of course the fascists were bad but… he was young, and wanted to be an idealist. He wanted to be romantic, to do something meaningful. He wanted to live a life like he’d read about in books. George wanted to believe in believing.

It had only taken him three months to fall in love with this country. Lulled by the warm weather, inspired by the peoples’ passion. In this country the ground seemed to sigh at his touch. When he woke the hills stretched and yawned with the rising sun, as he lay down at night the soft sounds and smells of woodland curled around his sleeping body

This wasn’t just a taste of greener grass. Being from a middle class family he had been allowed the time and money to travel. He’d toured from Mexico to Canada. He’d attended art class in Paris. He had drunk in these experiences and grown as a man because of them, but returning home had never been in doubt until Spain. Spain consumed him; she put her hands on his chest and whispered in his ear. Spain kissed his eyelids and stroked the base of his spine. There were endless depths beyond this bloody civil war that he wanted to explore.

He was English though, perhaps he wasn’t a flag waving patriot but he was definitely English. England was where his friends and family were. Grey skies, wet ground and wool coats. He had history there. There were places where he grew up, where his parents grew up. He used to walk past one of his old schools on the way to work, the train to Leeds took him past the steel mill in which his grandfather had worked. There was a snug George-shaped hole in England.

The Captain and the Clown

2005-10-22T22:49:00.000Z

Actually, Don¹ seemed to be around quite a bit over the three months or so we took to record Hot Rats. Him and Frank had been peers and then friends for a while. There weren’t many people swimming in their pond at the time so I guess it was inevitable that they would be drawn to one another.

Don had a reputation for being this mystic recluse character, Frank was typically portrayed as an extrovert jester. There’s no smoke without fire I guess, but in reality they were a lot more similar than their public personas suggest. They were both fiercely intelligent, educated, well spoken. They were both charming. Not in a smart-ass way but, well I guess they didn’t feel like they had anything to prove. Don was quieter, or Frank was louder, depending on how you looked at it but they weren’t that far apart and man did they talk. I had my family with me at the time we were recording the album so I wasn’t partying as much as they were but whenever they were out together, as part of the same group, invariably they’d be together, heads down, oblivious to the drink, the music, the girls around them. Well, that's how it seemed to me.

Like everyone at the time, Zappa carried his scene round on his back. There was always this circus around him. Some were equals, various musicians, friends, people like Don. Then there was always this crowd of hangers on, groupies, journalists, wannabes. Man, it felt like there were hundreds of them. And Frank loved them all, he didn’t care. They stayed in his hotels, he bought them drinks, he got stoned with them. It was an instant party, just add Zappa and it was all good, so long as they stayed outside the studio.

Frank didn’t have his own band² but there was this kind of travelling troupe of musicians with him. Not only musicians, but technicians too. He brought his own keyboards and homemade effects pedals. He had this kind of musical paintbox which he could pick and choose colours, people from. He was like, let’s try this tune with that guitarist there, and the same keyboard player but with this keyboard instead. Man, we’d try the same tune a thousand times, jamming it through until it was unrecognisable and then Frank would say stop and it’d go in the trash and that was that. I guess the process was as important as the finished record, no matter how often I told them that process won’t make a dime and some of us hoped to feed our kids when the record was finished.

So at some point Don made the move from one side of the soundproof glass to the other. It wasn’t obvious when. You see, everyone spent as much time on one side as they did the other, even Frank. The drummer would be in the booth, I’d be on the desk, then there’d be half a dozen musicians loitering behind me humming and tapping and figuring stuff out. Then we’d record the bass, the guitars. Keyboards, percussion. Vocals. Then we’d record a new drum track. Then Frank would want to re-record his solo. Round and round and so on. Things grew, it was much more like some kind of science project than musical endeavour. Don probably contributed to half a dozen different tracks, but there was just Willie the Pimp that ended up on the album. Go figure.

¹ Don Van Vliet, more commonly known as Captain Beefheart
² The Mothers Of Invention were disbanded a year before serious work began on Hot Rats.

Sharkface

2005-10-19T16:10:00.000Z

Jacob was a philanderer. He was a skunk, a low-down dirty cunt.

So God punished Jacob by giving him shark lips. As he kissed his lips quickly wore away leaving exposed, fleshy strips. Given time a new set of lips would push forward, replacing the worn out pair. At any one time Jacob had at least fourteen sets of lips in various stages of growth.

While receiving oral sex from a man with fourteen lips sounded great on the internet, the reality was somewhat more grotesque.

Jacob now had to take care who he kissed, which pained him. You see, Jacob liked few things more than kissing girls. Naked girls were nice, and like many men he enjoying the various combinations a girl and his penis afforded. But kissing was what he really liked. The sensual proximity of the act, all lips and tongues and breath. The way different girls were fast or slow, vigorous, forceful or submissive. Jacob liked kissing.

Whores didn’t count. Jacob kind of looked on those affairs as luxurious masturbation. And anyway, he rarely kissed whores. Not with meaning anyway. God kind of agreed, or at least left him to his own devices on this one.

Now when he returned home late from work his wife Felicity, a strong women with a fine mind, could tell whether her husband had strayed. She could even judge how passionately he had strayed and what kind of kisser he had strayed with. Jacob’s tattered skin and bloody smears revealed everything to his discerning wife.

However, Felicity was proud and soon grew weary of discovering her husband’s infidelities only after they had been committed. She was tired of both him and his presumptuous arrogance. Now, as he finishes tying his shoes she leaps upon him, grabs his hair, pulls his face toward hers. She kisses him, not with love, but with a blood lust. She kisses until his lips are shredded, his teeth exposed, until red drops drip upon his shirt. Then she sends him out the door, his mouth a jagged hole.

The Sleeper

2005-10-18T11:44:00.000Z

Now would be the ideal time. Mark had long been trying to cultivate a form of selective narcolepsy, he remembered reading about car crash victims, and how you’re more likely to survive if you’re asleep. Not being tense, being unprepared was apparently the best preparation. Face your problems while unconscious, it sounded great.

A long time ago, while he was still at junior school, a doctor had said his behavioural problems exhibited what could be a mild form of autism. Mark often reminded himself of this, that his lack of empathy might be why he struggled to laugh as loud as the others in the pub, why the kettle took hours to boil while there was somebody else in the kitchen. Those awkward moments when he passed his boss by the toilet door. Secretly however, he thought he actually had a pretty good grasp of people. If you say X to person A then, depending on their mood they will do either J or K. If they do K and you say Y they will… and so on. An ever expanding web of possibilities that with careful consideration can be navigated to the required conclusion.

He looked up from his knotted fingers. Mr Crowle was still talking. Mark forced his eyelids to droop slightly, his shoulders relaxed, a warm wave ran up his neck.

Two Brians

2005-10-10T20:37:00.000Z

Brian number one, small, slim, snake-hipped. “Just do it” he says. Your father wouldn’t like him, your mother would think he is utterly charming but needs feeding up. He smokes dope in bed. He likes bathing as a sensual experience but isn’t really bothered about being clean. Brian number two claims to have caught him shadow boxing while listening to gangster rap.

Brian number two, wears a suit to work. Sometimes he wears the same suit to the pub. He does something obscure in accounting which even he admits is boring. However, “work is a means to an end right? So long as I can pay for this round and have the time to enjoy a drink then it’s all good, right? Right?” He has a savings account, he has a rough plan to get onto the property ladder. He would rather stay silent than risk being wrong.

If they weren't housemates and best friends I couldn't really imagine them in the same room let alone talking to one another.

Easy

2005-10-06T10:31:00.000Z

The greying light of a stolen afternoon, curled up together reading comics and yesterday’s papers. Reading books we won’t finish. The sheets twisted around us, she is a warm mass against me. A leg is resettled… sensation! Her body as a structure, the bones of her hips, the soft flesh of her belly, the coarse hair between her legs. A twist in her shoulders as she stretches her neck. As this weight moves I can feel toast crumbs stuck to my back.

We have been here for a hundred years. Kings have come and gone, cities risen, empires fallen. There are beer bottles by the alarm clock. Coffee stains and spilt wine. Tobacco and pot. The smell of sex. Soft slept in skin. Messy hair.

A note from the author

2005-10-03T21:42:00.000Z

I am deeply embarrassed by almost everything posted on this site so far. I can offer only my sincerest apologies for the wear on your retina, the wasted rods and cones, for the never-to-be-recovered burnt synapses. You should have done something more interesting instead. You should have washed those dishes. Bought those flowers. You should have started your own blog.

Slacker.

I’m trying to get better. I will get better. Come back in a year.

Maybe come back in two years

A Wasted Youth

2005-10-03T21:39:00.000Z

As a youth he spent too much time thinking and too little not giving a fuck. More time should have been dedicated to putting his cock in stuff, rather than worrying about how said decision reflected on him as a person.

The urge to criticise small things went back to the playground. There was no desire there to preserve culture, to uphold obscure etymological ideals, to better his fellow man. This was childish pointing and laughing at the less fortunate, less experienced, less educated. Of course this was tempered by his repressed adult eyes. Grammar, taste in music, news channel of choice were all fair game. Dead parents and tumours were off limits. Because someone was gay, straight, physically unsuited to contact sports, these all changed depending on context and company. He laughed at the beautiful and the vain, but only behind their backs.

Psychology buffs will be pleased to note this propensity to snideness was one of the more unpleasant traits shared with his father.

Bob Dylan Sez

2005-10-03T21:32:00.000Z

If you ain't busy being born, then you're busy dying.

Or something like that. He still has a funny voice though (so does Joanna Newsom) and I've yet to be convinced by his suck-blow faux-naive harmonica tooting.

He Said / She Said II

2005-10-03T21:19:00.000Z

SHE: the truth doesn’t really interest me.
HE: The Trurh is for pusies
SHE: like spelling?
HE: yeah, like that
HE: spelling is for pussies

He Said / She Said

2005-10-03T21:14:00.000Z

SHE: you realise this is doomed
SHE: that I will never leave him
HE: god yeah. I know. I don’t want you to.
SHE: but
SHE: but I’m here.
SHE: that what I feel for you is confusing, contradictory and fucking brilliant.
SHE: I’m not really thinking as hard as I should be maybe.
SHE: just doing
HE: it’s all good :)

Thai Fish Curry

2005-02-21T18:53:00.000Z

I don’t really do measurements. Sorry.

Q. So how do you know if its right?
A. Stick your finger in it. If it tastes good then its right.

Ok, (for two) you will need:
2 Tuna Steaks (Tuna’s best but expensive. The recipe also works with Swordfish and Salmon. Basically any red, meaty fish)
Thai Red Curry Paste (Decent paste should oily, with a grainy, almost fibrous texture)
Coconut Milk (400ml? A can of)
Coriander, roughly chopped (leaving some aside for garnish)
Lemon grass, finely chopped
Lime

For the Rice you will need
Rice
Tumeric
Cardamon Pods

To Prepare the Rice:
Take a handful or rice per person and using a sieve rinse it thoroughly (until the water runs clear). Stick it in a pan and add roughly three parts water to every two of rice. Put the pan on the hob and bring it to the boil.

When the water is boiling add a teaspoon of tumeric and a couple of cardamon pods. Turn down the heat until the water is gently simmering and partially cover the pan. Leave it for approximately twenty minutes, until the water has evaporated and voila: Perfect rice.

To Prepare the Fish:
Add a generous spoonful of curry paste and a couple of hundred millilitres of water to a heavy-bottomed frying pan. Give them a good mix and bring them to a simmer over a medium heat. Add the lemon grass and half the coriander and let it cook for five minutes. Then pour in the coconut milk and let it cook for a further five minutes (or until the sauce reaches a pleasing consistency).

Chuck in the remaining coriander (remembering to leave a couple of twigs aside for decoration) and add the fish steaks. These will cook pretty quickly; give them about five minutes each side (you should only need to turn them once).

When the fish is on the plate add a generous squeeze of lime, your coriander garnish and serve.

New Band Manifesto

2004-12-08T11:19:00.000Z

I want to start a band, and I want them to win the Turner Prize next year. And the MTV music awards.

They will be very loud and very fast.

They will be angry and bitter and twisted. They want to kill everybody and their stupid iPods and their offensive lack of courtesy. Having won the MTV award for best new band they will then set fire to the podium with lighter fluid and the stubs of their hand-rolled crack-laced cigarettes.

They’ll be dangerous like James Brown was in the 60s, but white and middle class.

They will rock.

They will probably be called something like THE BLACK ANGLE.

Their first song will be called “I Like to Fuck (You in the Ear)”. It will sound like Death’s own freight train rolling out of your speakers.

Scream of feedback, tumultuous speed-metal drum roll, scream of feedback. Repeat to fade.

Cleaning Lobster

2004-12-06T13:04:00.000Z

He pushed on down the street. Across the road a policeperson in uniform was talking to a hunched old woman, a careful hand hovering over her shoulder providing a private space for them to converse while not being threatening or over-familiar. A policeperson in uniform, now there’s a novelty. Sake thought that with the exception of traffic cops and security guards pretty much everyone was plain clothes these days, heard but not seen, or whatever the tag-line was.

Always with you.

The woman was pointing up the street, the policeperson’s head lifted, following her fingers.

Forever Close.

The policeperson began to move off in the direction indicated by the woman, she stood watching him.

Silent Securi... to your left”

It was the machine’s frantic beeping that snapped him back into his more immediate surroundings. He rocked forward on his toes, almost tipping onto the smooth shape in front of him. Some kind of cleaner. Big, dark dull grey metal (well, metal-look, it was almost certainly plastic). Its two covered brushes becoming the claws of a lobster –like form, a one metre tall, one metre wide art-deco crustacean.

“Please move to your left”

The same voice he’d heard on train stations, road crossings, at airports.

“Please move to your left”

The convincingly human voice was comically incongruous with squat, functional looking machine in front of him.

“Please move to your left”

And its limited vocabulary an indication of its limited intelligence.

Sake stepped to his left. The machines brushes began to whir and with a lurch resumed its forward course.

There are some really intelligent engines about. HUB#01 (his main work-related port-of-call) and its various distributed systems was, in theory, several times more powerful than the human brain but, in real life, this wasn’t really a meaningful comparison. HUB#01 was all about correlation and pattern recognition, tracking car registrations, retina scans, cash-card transactions and then trying to convert this into meaningful data. But it couldn’t judge for itself how useful this output was, that needed another set of engines and several humans to pare it down, to distinguish the patterns from the coincidences.

Between HUB#01 and the curt cleaner there were a range of intelligences, each tailored to the task in hand. Impressions of consciousness were all around, but most didn’t take much stirring to reveal their transistor core.

(Not that engines used transistors anymore)

Across the street the woman stood watching him, from where he was stood he could see her muttering to herself.

November Nail Varnish

2004-11-19T15:51:00.000Z

Autumn was definitely here. The air outside was cool and damp, the dark pavements where flecked with first fallen leaves. Inside it was warm and humid, the windows steamed up, there always seemed to be more coats than customers.

She looked at her nails. Definitely too pink, they looked slightly weird against the deep brown of her skin. Another expensive bottle for the bathroom shelf. Damn.

The Referee’s a C**t

2004-11-18T21:08:00.000Z

Lying seems to have become part of modern football. If one team doesn’t do it then their opponent’s will. The game now harbours a not-so-hidden subterfuge arms race with each side raising the stakes in turn. Off-side traps, professional fouls, bullying the ref, insults hurled from sidelines. Every stumble is pursued as a misdemenour and every foul contested as an attempt to hoodwink the referee.

Palms are held out in appeal, arms raised in protest. Spittle flicks from mouths as tempers mount. Those protesting innocence are suddenly on the offensive, badgering the referee, chests out, shoulders up. The opposition change tact, calmly and insistently presenting themselves as the misunderstood naif, victims of circumstance framed by a wily opponent. If the referee supports your side then clearly the opposing team are bad losers unwilling to play by the rules of the game, if the opposite happens then you are being victimised, the referee has been biased by outside influences and dark forces are obviously at play.

Whether a foul actually occurred quickly becomes beside the point, secondary to the referee’s opinion. This desultory shouting is no longer about principals, its about politics.

A Drinker’s Tale

2004-11-13T19:07:00.000Z

On the scale of international drinking waters, I’m sure London’s isn’t actually that bad, but the thought is always there: This sip has been sipped before, sipped by thousands of people, thousands of times. Sipped, pissed, processed. Dripped from a tap, processed. Sipped, digested along with a meal of caviar and toast then pissed. The occasional drop may have holidayed for a week or two in Camden pub, abandoned in glass lost amongst the wilder edges of the beer garden, or perhaps taken a year’s sabbatical in a Battersea flat’s central heating system. And then, with no pause for sediment to collect it’s back into the system. Process, sip, piss. Process.

It all ends up tasting the same. Artificially clean. Absolved of its former lives and associated misadventure. The hint of chlorine a negative image of evidence removed.

I always filter it though, just in case.

Jonny Happic is Dying

2004-10-26T08:38:00.000Z

Or at least Sake was pretty sure Jonny Happic was dying.

The tailored drugs, the swarm of microscopic, half chemical half mechanical aides, the technology that had kept him alive just wasn't available out here in the suburbs, and even if it was attempting to access it would raise flags right across the net.

He would be holed up somewhere, alone and disconnected from the world around him. To all intents decomposing, his body and mind unraveling as their various supports reached the end of their predetermined lives and began to shut down.

Into the Suburbs

2004-10-25T13:03:00.000Z

Sake pushed open another door and there it was again, that smell peculiar to the suburbs. high, thin, skin, sweat, digestion. Biological. Then a waft from the ventilation obliterated it and all that remained was the scentless non-smell of neutrair or uniscent or some such product, an inoffensive touch of synthesized lime on the very edge of his nose.

The lobe of his ear itched. He scratched it, glanced around the room and walked toward the door opposite.

Saturday Night

2004-10-25T10:22:00.000Z

It’s clear, looking back on the evening, that from the tree of possibilities presented we chose a rotten branch which was then followed right through to the shrivelled fruit at its end.

Bars were shut, full, too busy or too loud. A local drink took on bus and train and taxi journeys.

The tequilas made us nauseous rather than numb (even failing to remove the taste of cheap white wine). Combined with shouting over the obnoxious sub-music cigarettes just hastened hoarseness. Queasy and silent we sat wondering whether we’d had our eight pound entrance fee’s worth of fun while considering the knots and twigs of a mediocre night out.

Signs

2004-10-20T13:50:00.000Z

It was the obvious signs that he noticed first: Twenty-four tiny, regular bubbles forming a letter J floating amongst the semi-submerged pans, plates and cutlery in the kitchen sink.

That evening he was presented with a whorl of tissue in the toilet bowl bearing an uncanny resemblance to his mother-in-law’s bad tempered terrier.

Once he’d seen a couple he began to see them everywhere.

Following a week of overheard telephone conversations, billboards glanced through the steamed up windows of the train to work and the improbable wandering of a favourite pen (a gift from his eldest) the man contemplated his own sanity. An active sceptic he’d always sneered at his mother’s superstitions, or clucked disinterestedly along to his wife’s weekly horoscope predictions. Fears of the unknown stilled by tales of the intangible. Well, that’s what he thought.

But these things were there, solid and real. The spilt sugar he’d pushed around with a deliberate index finger, feeling the coarse grains against his skin. The newspaper he’d been able to pick up and smooth out, transforming it’s abstract instruction into an innocuous (if typically doom-laden) headline. The signs were real, but his sensible mind couldn’t shake the improbability of what was happening.

It never really felt like a supernatural thing, these weren’t spirits whispering from the other side, the signs were far bigger than that. Whether they were creation’s cogs, muttered calculations for what would be, or whether they were echoes from a future universe he was never sure but clearly there was some truth in them. Admittedly it was a sideways, half glanced kind of truth, and more often not, even as he became more adept at recognising the signs themselves, their actual meaning remained frustratingly opaque.

None the less, as time ambled onward and the signs showed no intention of abating the man began to slowly string together a web of relations, contexts and meaning. The structure was loose and unpredictable, but like a shoal’s silver flutters there was an apparent collective intent. Though occasionally signs spoke independently, typically they were part of a sequence or combination. Often sets of signs would overlap and it was only after they’d passed he would be able to see how they meshed together and what they meant.

Not that they said anything directly. Certainly there were no insights he would bet on. Not the he was a betting man and certainly not the type to bet on evidence gleaned from pooled coffee in a cupless saucer left outside the office canteen. He never told a soul, though often those around him were affected by his interpretations and actions. The signs were there, he could show them, collect them, save them up but there was one element they needed to to give them meaning, an essential and irreplacable part of the mechanism the thought of which kept awake at night.

The signs were anthropic by nature. It was his interpretation that gave them meaning, without him they were just easily ignored coincidence or ceased to exist at all. With him they told of things that had happened or could happen or will happen.

Lucky for me, he thought, that haven’t yet chosen to tell of anything more important than a delayed train or an unexpected phone call.

In the Beginning there was Nothing

2004-10-18T09:09:00.000Z

And Nothing was bored.

Without anything to judge the passage of time it is difficult to know how long Nothing has been bored for, or indeed when Nothing first became bored.

But none the less, Nothing was bored.

So, Nothing, in a moment of inspiration, created a space within itself. This gap within the fabric of Nothing, a void within a lack of anything looked around, recognised it’s companion, established their differences and named itself.

Nothing and Something became playmates, friends and lovers. They talked and argued, confided and despised. Yet however much they wished to be parted a fundamental love bound them together and however much they wished to be one their irreconcilable differences meant they remained forever seperate.

This is how Everything began...