I remember my first encounter with the world of
comedy. I was four years old, and a clown came to the door of our house
offering to wash our dog for food. I laughed at his funny red nose and bright
purple wig, and then my father shot him, and that too was funny in its way. It
was then I thought seriously about going into comedy myself, and by the age of
five had written an eight-hour one-man show, entitled, "Laughter: The
Harbinger of Death".
I performed this show daily in front of my parents for the next six years, and
it was, I admit, a source of tension, argument and self-mutilation at the time.
Nowadays we laugh about it, but at the time, the comedy was so bitingly real
that my mother was at times moved to tears, and at other times moved to
Calgary.
I gave up the one-man show at eleven, and began work on my sitcom. Amusingly,
my dictionary was missing some pages, and so I gained a false impression of
what a "sitcom" was. In fact, rather than working on a sitcom, I
began working on a stegosaurus, which was a far more thankless task, and less
funny than I had anticipated. It got even worse when the stegosaurus ate our
gardener. I had thought stegosauruses were herbivorous, but then I found I had
read the instructions wrong. It seemed that every book in the house was missing
pages, and later on we found out my father had been eating them. I asked him
why and he said he was trying to stop the cravings he had to eat the gardener.
I suppose that in the end, my sitcom DID end up being quite successful, though
not commercially.
In my teenage years, my love of comedy did not wane, but it did go in exciting
new directions. I explored the possibilities of physical comedy, experimenting
with comedic sexual intercourse and slapstick ethnic cleansing. But I soon grew
tired of the cheap and easy laughs to be had by setting Koreans on fire, and by
my graduation year was ready for fresh challenges and strange new worlds of
humour.
It was at university that I began devising a surrealist, avant garde brand of
comedy, beginning with jokes such as:
Q. What do you call a man with an octopus on his face?
A: Glenn
Q: How many ligtbulbs does it take?
A: Twenty-eight (laugh malevolently)
These jokes found great success among the cafeteria ladies, and emboldened, I
set out to expand the themes I was working with, thus:
An Englishman, an Irishman and a rabbi walk into a bar. The Englishman says,
I can't fall out of this plane, my goldfish are dead. How did the Welshman
know?
A: The surgeon was his mother.
Sherlock Holmes and Watson are out camping, and Watson says, Why the long face,
to which Holmes replies, I am a cocaine addict. He then makes Watson lick
yoghurt off his violin until dawn. What does this tell you, Watson, he asks.
Watson replies, Now comes the viola solo. (laugh malevolently)
Many people loved my new brand of comedy, and I found great acclaim among the
Beat Generation, who were by then terribly old and mostly demented. However,
the cultural elite did not, and there were calls in several thousand newspapers
for me to be banned for life from all sporting events and chemically castrated.
Years later I found out all of these newspapers were fakes printed on a home
press by my mischievous prankster college roommate Fuzzy Slamwindow. How we
laughed. But at the time I was most distressed and went into exile in Tibet,
where I learned how to love again.
Upon my return, I set to work rehearsing for my most ambitious show yet,
"Breasts: The Musical". The show consisted entirely of me standing on
stage in a rubber catsuit showing slides of dead strippers and groaning
rhythmically.
The show was a commercial and critical success, described by one eminent critic
as "the funniest thing I have ever seen", and by another as
"mmmmm". Although box office receipts were huge, I suffered from my
poor judgment in signing a contract which guaranteed 80% of ticket sales would
go to Richard Branson's Virgin Corporation, in return for which I would have a
long needle inserted into my brain. Looking back, I'm not sure what I was
thinking.
And so we come to today. I am not resting on my laurels, by any means. In fact,
I just published my book, "Not Resting On My Laurels", which is a
collection of humorous essays and line drawings of rabbit ovaries. I am about
to release "Not Resting On My Laurels Too", a collection of the same
humorous essays, but with a foreword by Kirstie Alley.
All in all, I have learnt a lot about comedy in my seven or eight years on this
planet. What you need to remember is, it's all about the audience. You're not
up there for your own glorification, you are up there to make the audience
laugh, and if they don't laugh, to be honest, you deserve all the poisonous
gases you get. So the lesson is: make them laugh at all costs. If that means
that you have to take off your pants, or eat a small boat, or hang yourself
from a tree, so be it.
Laughter is everything, and I assure you, when you hear a roomful of people
laughing and clapping and gently tongueing your thighs, you'll know that it was
worth it.
Showing posts with label stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stories. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Franz Kafka: Grocery Boy
Franz looked up at the
shelf stretching away into the upper reaches of the store, and sighed deeply.
His only option was to use his pogo stick, and it had only three pogos left
before it lost all power and had to be sent to Battery Land
He was instantly transported to a realm of pleasure seldom seen in everydayBudapest
But alas, like all good things, his visit to the Bucket-Folk came to an abrupt end, exemplified by the fierce scarring on his nose, and he found himself back in the grocery store, bouncing high into the air, hurling boxes onto the shelf, and sneezing violently on the manager's hair, an act that brought relatively few short-term reprisals, but would, unbeknownst to him, result in his being banished to the lowest circle of hell and poked with teflon spatulas for several millennia.
As the last box tottered in place, and then tumbled gracefully to the floor, killing the Queen who had popped in for a bag of pepper, Franz felt an unearthly tingling in his immoral regions. He sighed. He was turning into an insect again. And still twenty minutes till his break. That was all he bloody needed.
He was instantly transported to a realm of pleasure seldom seen in everyday
But alas, like all good things, his visit to the Bucket-Folk came to an abrupt end, exemplified by the fierce scarring on his nose, and he found himself back in the grocery store, bouncing high into the air, hurling boxes onto the shelf, and sneezing violently on the manager's hair, an act that brought relatively few short-term reprisals, but would, unbeknownst to him, result in his being banished to the lowest circle of hell and poked with teflon spatulas for several millennia.
As the last box tottered in place, and then tumbled gracefully to the floor, killing the Queen who had popped in for a bag of pepper, Franz felt an unearthly tingling in his immoral regions. He sighed. He was turning into an insect again. And still twenty minutes till his break. That was all he bloody needed.
Memories of Rockweld
Ah,
Rockweld. I can still see his furrowed brow, poring over ancient Sumerian texts
in the study we shared for all those years. Come away, let's relax for an
evening, I would say, but he would not budge from those parchments. He was
determined to find proof that the Sumerians had a widespread potato crisp
industry.
"I know it, and I must have the proof!" he would cry, his hair standing on end and his ears rotating slowly. "It is here somewhere!" I humoured him, but was amazed when he proved his theory and published his monograph. It was utterly ignored by the world, but Rockweld felt vindicated, and was content for a while. He even took up pipe smoking, until instructed not to by a plumber.
Rockweld was, in many ways, my alter ego, my mirror image, and certainly the best friend I could ever have. Today I feel quite wistful, recalling those long days spent in fevered debate and discussion, testing our wits and logic against the keen razor of the other's intellect. How fondly I remember those lengthy, jocular sparring matches, as we argued vehemently back and forth over which was "the weird one" in Shakespear's Sister. Happy days indeed, as we lived off our modest stipends, and imparted wisdom to our students and ourselves.
I remember when his first novel was published, Rockweld came bustling into our rooms, delighted and waving the first copy above his head in triumph. We drank long into the night in celebration, and he was quite red-faced later when I informed him that in his intoxicated state, he had attempted to write a thesis on the prevalence of fennel in aviary kiosk menus. How we laughed, as I showed him the ornamental Japanese bread bin he had worn on his head, while standing by the fireplace and demonstrating a new dance he had just invented called "The Menorah Bop"
Unfortunately, Rockweld's joy had quickly turned to dust as his book was an unmitigated failure. He blamed the reviews, and there is no doubt that certain critics had harmed the commercial prospects of the work when they pointed out that the plot was predicated entirely on the (supposedly) fanciful notion that the lead character was a zebra who had managed to convincingly disguise himself as a wealthy stockbroker with a stapler and some felt. If one did not give credence to this idea, claimed the nitpickers, then the book, as a narrative, made no sense at all. After sales plummeted from their already subterranean levels, Rockweld, fixated upon literary respect, embarked on a much-publicised experiment to prove that a zebra could, in fact, achieve this task. He failed in this attempt, too, becoming bitter and retreating to our study to drink heavily and occasionally snort derisively at my interior decorating skills.
Still, there is no doubt Rockweld had a dizzying intellect, and I will forever think of him as the most admirable academic, indeed the most admirable man, of our times. It was only later in life that his wits were dulled to a certain extent, and where once he would dazzle parties with his rapier wit and best any challenger at chess, checkers, or whist, he now mainly went to the cinema and threw jaffas at Chinese people.
At least, in this phase, he was happy, and I think his seventy-third birthday, around this time, may have been the most joyous of his life, especially considering his early childhood, when every year his parents would pretend to be wheeling in an enormous cake, only to pull off the cover to reveal an assortment of huge, venomous spiders, which they would then exhort young Rockweld to "round up and pacify", or he would get no presents. Once he had performed this task, they would chuckle knowingly and give him an Al Jolson commemorative keyring, engraved with the wrong initials. Rockweld later discovered that they were, in fact, laudanum-addicted psychotherapists who had stolen him in infancy to perform mind-experiments on, but the hurt never fully healed, and all his life he looked for these people's approval.
I do remember that awful day, the beginning of the end. Rockweld had been unpredictable in his moods of late, and on this day, the final straw appeared to be placed on the camel.
We were calmly sitting, reading and enjoying the view of the black smoke from the smelting plant across the road, when I passed an innocent remark to the effect that I considered West Side Story to be too heavily stylised for my tastes.
Rockweld instantly flew into a terrible rage, hurling his brandy glass out the window, striking me sharply with the corkscrew, and accusing me of being a crypto-fascist and in league with Hammerskjold. I tried to placate him with promises of compensation and trips to the zoo, but he kept up his abuse, screaming that I was trying to trick him into voluntary organ donation, and then crawling under the rug, biting his fingers and crying out "I'm a linen press, you mustn't look at me!"
Sadly, I had to call a doctor, who sedated Rockweld and took him for the last time from his beloved study. He didn't last long after that, of course, dying peacefully in his sleep after confiding to me that he had never really loved his wife, and in general preferred Italian cheese. It was a sad end for a great man, but I shall always remember him with fondness, respect, and...yes, I should say, love.
"I know it, and I must have the proof!" he would cry, his hair standing on end and his ears rotating slowly. "It is here somewhere!" I humoured him, but was amazed when he proved his theory and published his monograph. It was utterly ignored by the world, but Rockweld felt vindicated, and was content for a while. He even took up pipe smoking, until instructed not to by a plumber.
Rockweld was, in many ways, my alter ego, my mirror image, and certainly the best friend I could ever have. Today I feel quite wistful, recalling those long days spent in fevered debate and discussion, testing our wits and logic against the keen razor of the other's intellect. How fondly I remember those lengthy, jocular sparring matches, as we argued vehemently back and forth over which was "the weird one" in Shakespear's Sister. Happy days indeed, as we lived off our modest stipends, and imparted wisdom to our students and ourselves.
I remember when his first novel was published, Rockweld came bustling into our rooms, delighted and waving the first copy above his head in triumph. We drank long into the night in celebration, and he was quite red-faced later when I informed him that in his intoxicated state, he had attempted to write a thesis on the prevalence of fennel in aviary kiosk menus. How we laughed, as I showed him the ornamental Japanese bread bin he had worn on his head, while standing by the fireplace and demonstrating a new dance he had just invented called "The Menorah Bop"
Unfortunately, Rockweld's joy had quickly turned to dust as his book was an unmitigated failure. He blamed the reviews, and there is no doubt that certain critics had harmed the commercial prospects of the work when they pointed out that the plot was predicated entirely on the (supposedly) fanciful notion that the lead character was a zebra who had managed to convincingly disguise himself as a wealthy stockbroker with a stapler and some felt. If one did not give credence to this idea, claimed the nitpickers, then the book, as a narrative, made no sense at all. After sales plummeted from their already subterranean levels, Rockweld, fixated upon literary respect, embarked on a much-publicised experiment to prove that a zebra could, in fact, achieve this task. He failed in this attempt, too, becoming bitter and retreating to our study to drink heavily and occasionally snort derisively at my interior decorating skills.
Still, there is no doubt Rockweld had a dizzying intellect, and I will forever think of him as the most admirable academic, indeed the most admirable man, of our times. It was only later in life that his wits were dulled to a certain extent, and where once he would dazzle parties with his rapier wit and best any challenger at chess, checkers, or whist, he now mainly went to the cinema and threw jaffas at Chinese people.
At least, in this phase, he was happy, and I think his seventy-third birthday, around this time, may have been the most joyous of his life, especially considering his early childhood, when every year his parents would pretend to be wheeling in an enormous cake, only to pull off the cover to reveal an assortment of huge, venomous spiders, which they would then exhort young Rockweld to "round up and pacify", or he would get no presents. Once he had performed this task, they would chuckle knowingly and give him an Al Jolson commemorative keyring, engraved with the wrong initials. Rockweld later discovered that they were, in fact, laudanum-addicted psychotherapists who had stolen him in infancy to perform mind-experiments on, but the hurt never fully healed, and all his life he looked for these people's approval.
I do remember that awful day, the beginning of the end. Rockweld had been unpredictable in his moods of late, and on this day, the final straw appeared to be placed on the camel.
We were calmly sitting, reading and enjoying the view of the black smoke from the smelting plant across the road, when I passed an innocent remark to the effect that I considered West Side Story to be too heavily stylised for my tastes.
Rockweld instantly flew into a terrible rage, hurling his brandy glass out the window, striking me sharply with the corkscrew, and accusing me of being a crypto-fascist and in league with Hammerskjold. I tried to placate him with promises of compensation and trips to the zoo, but he kept up his abuse, screaming that I was trying to trick him into voluntary organ donation, and then crawling under the rug, biting his fingers and crying out "I'm a linen press, you mustn't look at me!"
Sadly, I had to call a doctor, who sedated Rockweld and took him for the last time from his beloved study. He didn't last long after that, of course, dying peacefully in his sleep after confiding to me that he had never really loved his wife, and in general preferred Italian cheese. It was a sad end for a great man, but I shall always remember him with fondness, respect, and...yes, I should say, love.
Themroc van Harryhausen, Gnu Buster
The
kid looked down at the dirt and spat his tobacco out, killing a passing
centipede instantly.
'We movin' out?' the kid asked, trying not to show his impatience.
Themroc van Harryhausen, the greatest gnu-buster the West had ever known, looked up from the fire where he was raking over the embers of the morning, swallowing the last of the toasted marzipan.
'You're too eager, kid. I know, I was once like you.' Themroc looked at the sky, almost blinding in its mixture of bright blue and damnation orange, and felt tears prick the edge of his eyes. He refused to cry. He hadn't cried in nigh-on thirty years, and he wasn't about to start now. Standing up and hitching up his belt, he applied his medicated eyedrops and blinked for an hour or so. Finally, he nodded to his protege, and they made their way slowly to the horses.
They were called horses, but Themroc knew, in that deep, elemental, dry-boned way, that they were horses only in name. In fact, the kid's was actually a dachsund. For himself, Themroc had secured himself a thoroughbred ibex, but as had always been the way amongst gnu-busters, the apprentice rode a dog. Some traditions were worth holding onto.
The weary-faced 'buster allowed a smile to insinuate itself across his face with the memory of his own apprenticeship, when he himself had ridden tall in the saddle on a fiery shih tzu. That had been under the tutelage of the famous Portobello Siffredi, and in some ways they had been the happiest days of his life. In other ways they hadn't, for instance, the intermittent hand-holding and French kisses, but he was willing to forget that for the sake of the gnu-busting secrets Siffredi had vouchsafed him. Those days were long gone now, and Siffredi's mantle had been quietly devoured by Themroc himself. Some days, though...he wondered...
The kid was looking at him strangely. It took a few minutes for Themroc to realise that this was because he had been captured by a lynch mob and hung from a tree during his previous musings. Shaking his head at the kid's bulging eyes and throaty gurgles, Themroc cut him down with his shiny gnu-machete, laid him gently on the savannah and kissed his eyelids tenderly.
'Gotta watch for the mobs in these parts, kid,' he said after the young fellow had recovered and they were mounting up. 'Some people don't take too kindly to gnu-busting. Post-modernists and such. City folk. Russians. Franciscan monks.'
'But gnu-busters built this land,' protested the kid, outraged at such goings on and suspecting, as always, that it was all Jack Kerouac's fault.
Themroc sighed and stabbed his ibex in the neck to get it moving. 'Times are changing, kid,' he said wistfully and with a touch of lavender. 'The ranges ain't so open no more, the grass don't grow quite so tall, folks ain't free and easy with their vittles, the towns have swallowed up the prairie, the hippo's gone a-lookin' for greener pastures, and the nabob, we he just up and scuttled, y'all.'
The kid was silent. He looked down at the neck of his dachsund, and stroked it thoughtfully. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering in his heart of hearts what Themroc was talking about. Sometimes it seemed they spoke a different language. Sometimes they did speak a different language, and it was Urdu. Some days all that was ahead of them was grass, heat, a herd of giraffes and an overdraft, and if it wasn't for his faith in gnu-busting as a man's pursuit, he would crawl into the bottom of a whisky bottle and make a model ship.
Themroc noticed his partner's taciturnity. he reached over with the gnu-prod and shocked him with concern.
'K, kid?' he asked, with the lazy southern drawl that he had picked up last week in a saloon. 'The gnus'll be comin' up by an' by.'
'I'm fine, sir,' said the kid loyally as his arm slowly slipped from its socket due to a congenital disorder. 'Just doin' a mite thinkin''
'Better wrap it up, son,' said Themroc, smiling evilly for the hell of it. 'Them gnus be comin' over the horizon, and there's bustin' to be done.'
He spoke the truth. In two minutes time, they were the centre of a heaving, sweaty tornado of hoofs, horns, wild, unbridled grunting and whispered murmurings of romance and indiscretion. At the end of it, seventy fine gnus had been busted, and many hundreds more were dead. The kid, screaming wildly, was feasting on the remains, face covered with blood and pale as a midnight hamster. Themroc laid a weatherbeaten glove on his shoulder.
'None o' that, son,' he said. 'We came to bust these gnus for Mister Gramboko, and we done busted 'em. Now we bring 'em in, but let the rest bury their loved ones. Never step on a gnu' religious traditions, it shows disrespect. And out here, sometimes, respect's all a body's got to stop him becoming sexually confused.'
'They're just gnus,' the kid protested, mouth full of the peculiarly sticky mass you get in gnu bladders. 'And ain't we gnu-busters?'
'A gnu-buster don't despise the gnus he busts, kid. That's a lesson you gotta learn if'n ever you wanna get offa yer dachsund. We fight 'em, we bust 'em, we even kill 'em, but we respects 'em. We're like brothers. Who kill each other. Man and gnu gotta be able to look each other in the face, or else, there's no point to this crazy ol' world, and we may as well just go pick up whores inNairobi
'What's the gnu-buster's code?'
'3X-ZQF-40.'
'And what does that mean, huh?'
'You'll find out, son, you'll find out.'
'And Themroc, with a dig of his heels and a vibration of his thighs, wheeled his ibex around and headed for home. but in his heart he remembered the day he found out what the code meant, and the way his life was never the same afterwards, as family, friends, and motor function left him and he found himself out on that lonesome savannah, busting gnus, bedding women, eating spinifex and playing practical jokes on slow-witted zebras. Life could never stay in one place for a gnu-buster, not even the greatest the world had ever known. because that world was changing, and no matter how many times he busted a gnu, trained an apprentice, married a Filipino or rode that long, lonesome trail fromCairo to Cape Town
He felt the pricking again. He wiped his eyes, dug his heels in, and rode...away.
'We movin' out?' the kid asked, trying not to show his impatience.
Themroc van Harryhausen, the greatest gnu-buster the West had ever known, looked up from the fire where he was raking over the embers of the morning, swallowing the last of the toasted marzipan.
'You're too eager, kid. I know, I was once like you.' Themroc looked at the sky, almost blinding in its mixture of bright blue and damnation orange, and felt tears prick the edge of his eyes. He refused to cry. He hadn't cried in nigh-on thirty years, and he wasn't about to start now. Standing up and hitching up his belt, he applied his medicated eyedrops and blinked for an hour or so. Finally, he nodded to his protege, and they made their way slowly to the horses.
They were called horses, but Themroc knew, in that deep, elemental, dry-boned way, that they were horses only in name. In fact, the kid's was actually a dachsund. For himself, Themroc had secured himself a thoroughbred ibex, but as had always been the way amongst gnu-busters, the apprentice rode a dog. Some traditions were worth holding onto.
The weary-faced 'buster allowed a smile to insinuate itself across his face with the memory of his own apprenticeship, when he himself had ridden tall in the saddle on a fiery shih tzu. That had been under the tutelage of the famous Portobello Siffredi, and in some ways they had been the happiest days of his life. In other ways they hadn't, for instance, the intermittent hand-holding and French kisses, but he was willing to forget that for the sake of the gnu-busting secrets Siffredi had vouchsafed him. Those days were long gone now, and Siffredi's mantle had been quietly devoured by Themroc himself. Some days, though...he wondered...
The kid was looking at him strangely. It took a few minutes for Themroc to realise that this was because he had been captured by a lynch mob and hung from a tree during his previous musings. Shaking his head at the kid's bulging eyes and throaty gurgles, Themroc cut him down with his shiny gnu-machete, laid him gently on the savannah and kissed his eyelids tenderly.
'Gotta watch for the mobs in these parts, kid,' he said after the young fellow had recovered and they were mounting up. 'Some people don't take too kindly to gnu-busting. Post-modernists and such. City folk. Russians. Franciscan monks.'
'But gnu-busters built this land,' protested the kid, outraged at such goings on and suspecting, as always, that it was all Jack Kerouac's fault.
Themroc sighed and stabbed his ibex in the neck to get it moving. 'Times are changing, kid,' he said wistfully and with a touch of lavender. 'The ranges ain't so open no more, the grass don't grow quite so tall, folks ain't free and easy with their vittles, the towns have swallowed up the prairie, the hippo's gone a-lookin' for greener pastures, and the nabob, we he just up and scuttled, y'all.'
The kid was silent. He looked down at the neck of his dachsund, and stroked it thoughtfully. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering in his heart of hearts what Themroc was talking about. Sometimes it seemed they spoke a different language. Sometimes they did speak a different language, and it was Urdu. Some days all that was ahead of them was grass, heat, a herd of giraffes and an overdraft, and if it wasn't for his faith in gnu-busting as a man's pursuit, he would crawl into the bottom of a whisky bottle and make a model ship.
Themroc noticed his partner's taciturnity. he reached over with the gnu-prod and shocked him with concern.
'K, kid?' he asked, with the lazy southern drawl that he had picked up last week in a saloon. 'The gnus'll be comin' up by an' by.'
'I'm fine, sir,' said the kid loyally as his arm slowly slipped from its socket due to a congenital disorder. 'Just doin' a mite thinkin''
'Better wrap it up, son,' said Themroc, smiling evilly for the hell of it. 'Them gnus be comin' over the horizon, and there's bustin' to be done.'
He spoke the truth. In two minutes time, they were the centre of a heaving, sweaty tornado of hoofs, horns, wild, unbridled grunting and whispered murmurings of romance and indiscretion. At the end of it, seventy fine gnus had been busted, and many hundreds more were dead. The kid, screaming wildly, was feasting on the remains, face covered with blood and pale as a midnight hamster. Themroc laid a weatherbeaten glove on his shoulder.
'None o' that, son,' he said. 'We came to bust these gnus for Mister Gramboko, and we done busted 'em. Now we bring 'em in, but let the rest bury their loved ones. Never step on a gnu' religious traditions, it shows disrespect. And out here, sometimes, respect's all a body's got to stop him becoming sexually confused.'
'They're just gnus,' the kid protested, mouth full of the peculiarly sticky mass you get in gnu bladders. 'And ain't we gnu-busters?'
'A gnu-buster don't despise the gnus he busts, kid. That's a lesson you gotta learn if'n ever you wanna get offa yer dachsund. We fight 'em, we bust 'em, we even kill 'em, but we respects 'em. We're like brothers. Who kill each other. Man and gnu gotta be able to look each other in the face, or else, there's no point to this crazy ol' world, and we may as well just go pick up whores in
'What's the gnu-buster's code?'
'3X-ZQF-40.'
'And what does that mean, huh?'
'You'll find out, son, you'll find out.'
'And Themroc, with a dig of his heels and a vibration of his thighs, wheeled his ibex around and headed for home. but in his heart he remembered the day he found out what the code meant, and the way his life was never the same afterwards, as family, friends, and motor function left him and he found himself out on that lonesome savannah, busting gnus, bedding women, eating spinifex and playing practical jokes on slow-witted zebras. Life could never stay in one place for a gnu-buster, not even the greatest the world had ever known. because that world was changing, and no matter how many times he busted a gnu, trained an apprentice, married a Filipino or rode that long, lonesome trail from
He felt the pricking again. He wiped his eyes, dug his heels in, and rode...away.
A Tale Of Men
‘Smoke.’
I looked up from the ashes I was dutifully raking over and shot a quizzical
glance at my companion, who was pointing southwest.
‘Smoke over there.’
‘That’s another one gone then.’ I sighed and raked some more ashes. The wind, once arrived, would blow the ashes away, as per the agreement, but for now it was very important to rake them into piles. The piles were very important. But still, my back was starting to ache. I had not been warned about this. I wished I had chosen a lighter rake.
My companion was putting on a hat. For the sun, he said, although privately I thought it was just to make him look pretty. He was not pretty. He had a long nose and his chin was too bony. The hat didn’t help. It made him look like a cow.
I hated him sometimes. But he was my friend, so I kept it hidden.
I sighed, again. ‘It’s always them that blow the cities up,’ I said, ‘and us that have to clean up.’
‘Yes,’ said my friend. I hated how he said that. I raked another pile and wondered where the wind was. The wind was always late. Someone should write a letter.
‘What will they do with the city now?’ he asked. ‘Rebuild it again?’
‘Probably,’ I said, kicking the ashes playfully.
‘That’s what they did last year.’
‘Yes.’
We were silent for a while, enjoying the sunlight and the view of the explosions. He was first to speak.
‘They caught him, you know.’
‘Caught who?’ I was so startled by the sudden speech that I kicked over one of my ash-piles, and inside I cursed the knowledge that I would now have to work overtime.
‘The fellow who did it.’
‘Who was he?’ I tried to sound disinterested, as I didn’t want him to know that his information was important.
‘I’m not sure. A mad bomber I expect. They tend to be.’
‘Well, why would you do it if you weren’t?’
‘Unless it was a sane bomber.’
‘Hm. That’s a scary thought.’
Once again silence as we contemplated the horror of a sane bomber. Eventually I decided that some things are best unthought of, and returned to the issue at hand.
‘Where is he?’ I asked my companion, who had just changed hats. This one softened his chin but made his eyes stick out. I looked at him with undisguised loathing. He blushed prettily.
‘It was a present from Graham,’ he explained. I waved impatiently. I didn’t care.
‘Where is he?’ I shouted, all pretence dissolved.
He pointed wordlessly, with what looked like a finger.
Upon the blasted landscape, I saw a courthouse. A squat brown box, distinguished only by the huge aluminium scales atop it. They were in perfect balance, the iron dagger of justice weighed evenly against the wooden owl of truth. The scales were blindfolded, and I myself could not believe my eyes.
‘How in the world did that survive the explosion?’ I asked in tones of incredulity and anger, mingled with sugared persuasion, for I knew my companion to have little patience for aggression.
‘It didn’t.’
‘What?’ this was beyond all reasonable bounds.
‘It didn’t survive. It was flown in specially.’
‘Well I’ll be damned.’ I was stunned enough to lean on my rake for a full five seconds so as to catch my breath.
‘The wonder of modern science!’
‘Indeed. When I was a boy courthouses had to be taken to pieces and transported brick by brick in vans. They had to be reassembled at the other end.’
We stood in nostalgia for a moment.
‘Shall we go?’ My companion was giving me a roguish grin. He had another hat on, a huge one with a leather brim. It was absolutely revolting.
I decided to play dumb. Pulling a moronic face I slurred, ‘Go where?’
‘To the courthouse,’ he replied, winking.
I had had enough. ‘We have ashes to rake!’ I yelled. ‘Don’t you even care?’
‘Let the wind take care of them,’ he replied. ‘This is a chance for adventure. I’ve never been in a courthouse before. Besides, I’m hungry.’
I considered. He had a point. He was hungry. A man needed food, did he not? And the wind was sure to be along. I looked at my feet, struggling with the moral choice: go and have adventures at the courthouse bistro, or stay and attend to duty, and let my partner starve to death? The latter option was tempting, not least because I hated my friend as much as it is possible for one man to hate another without somewhat disliking him. I stared at my feet a while longer, enjoying the patterned suede, but my shoes held no real answers.
‘Very well,’ I said at last. ‘We will go. But first let me do something.’
I gathered all my ash-piles up and poured them into my apron. If I was caught out, I planned to produce them as evidence.
Overhead a helicopter whirred. It was dumping water on the remaining fires left over from the bomb. The pilot looked down on us through huge goggles and waved cheerfully, before releasing several tons of water onto our heads.
‘Do you have a towel?’ I asked my partner, heaving myself back to my feet. ‘I’m wet.’
‘I’m wet too,’ he replied, sobbing quietly to himself. ‘And hungry.’
“You poor thing,’ I said, faking concern, and yawning. ‘We’d better get to the Courthouse. They have automatic hand driers in the bathrooms. We’ll put you under one of those, and buy you some sandwiches. All right sweetie?’
‘Yes,’ he sniffled, miserably, like a filthy drooling coward.
And so we walked to the courthouse, ash in our pockets and water in our hair. And as we walked, the courthouse moved away, and as we walked faster, it moved further, and as we ran, it took flight, and as we cried out for it to stop, we saw that the helicopter had picked it up, and it was flying away again. The trial was over, the bomber had been sentenced, and the courthouse was going home for a well-earned rest.
But my companion and I were lost in the wasteland, and we sat, weeping onto our rakes, eating ashes and mourning what might have been.
‘Smoke over there.’
‘That’s another one gone then.’ I sighed and raked some more ashes. The wind, once arrived, would blow the ashes away, as per the agreement, but for now it was very important to rake them into piles. The piles were very important. But still, my back was starting to ache. I had not been warned about this. I wished I had chosen a lighter rake.
My companion was putting on a hat. For the sun, he said, although privately I thought it was just to make him look pretty. He was not pretty. He had a long nose and his chin was too bony. The hat didn’t help. It made him look like a cow.
I hated him sometimes. But he was my friend, so I kept it hidden.
I sighed, again. ‘It’s always them that blow the cities up,’ I said, ‘and us that have to clean up.’
‘Yes,’ said my friend. I hated how he said that. I raked another pile and wondered where the wind was. The wind was always late. Someone should write a letter.
‘What will they do with the city now?’ he asked. ‘Rebuild it again?’
‘Probably,’ I said, kicking the ashes playfully.
‘That’s what they did last year.’
‘Yes.’
We were silent for a while, enjoying the sunlight and the view of the explosions. He was first to speak.
‘They caught him, you know.’
‘Caught who?’ I was so startled by the sudden speech that I kicked over one of my ash-piles, and inside I cursed the knowledge that I would now have to work overtime.
‘The fellow who did it.’
‘Who was he?’ I tried to sound disinterested, as I didn’t want him to know that his information was important.
‘I’m not sure. A mad bomber I expect. They tend to be.’
‘Well, why would you do it if you weren’t?’
‘Unless it was a sane bomber.’
‘Hm. That’s a scary thought.’
Once again silence as we contemplated the horror of a sane bomber. Eventually I decided that some things are best unthought of, and returned to the issue at hand.
‘Where is he?’ I asked my companion, who had just changed hats. This one softened his chin but made his eyes stick out. I looked at him with undisguised loathing. He blushed prettily.
‘It was a present from Graham,’ he explained. I waved impatiently. I didn’t care.
‘Where is he?’ I shouted, all pretence dissolved.
He pointed wordlessly, with what looked like a finger.
Upon the blasted landscape, I saw a courthouse. A squat brown box, distinguished only by the huge aluminium scales atop it. They were in perfect balance, the iron dagger of justice weighed evenly against the wooden owl of truth. The scales were blindfolded, and I myself could not believe my eyes.
‘How in the world did that survive the explosion?’ I asked in tones of incredulity and anger, mingled with sugared persuasion, for I knew my companion to have little patience for aggression.
‘It didn’t.’
‘What?’ this was beyond all reasonable bounds.
‘It didn’t survive. It was flown in specially.’
‘Well I’ll be damned.’ I was stunned enough to lean on my rake for a full five seconds so as to catch my breath.
‘The wonder of modern science!’
‘Indeed. When I was a boy courthouses had to be taken to pieces and transported brick by brick in vans. They had to be reassembled at the other end.’
We stood in nostalgia for a moment.
‘Shall we go?’ My companion was giving me a roguish grin. He had another hat on, a huge one with a leather brim. It was absolutely revolting.
I decided to play dumb. Pulling a moronic face I slurred, ‘Go where?’
‘To the courthouse,’ he replied, winking.
I had had enough. ‘We have ashes to rake!’ I yelled. ‘Don’t you even care?’
‘Let the wind take care of them,’ he replied. ‘This is a chance for adventure. I’ve never been in a courthouse before. Besides, I’m hungry.’
I considered. He had a point. He was hungry. A man needed food, did he not? And the wind was sure to be along. I looked at my feet, struggling with the moral choice: go and have adventures at the courthouse bistro, or stay and attend to duty, and let my partner starve to death? The latter option was tempting, not least because I hated my friend as much as it is possible for one man to hate another without somewhat disliking him. I stared at my feet a while longer, enjoying the patterned suede, but my shoes held no real answers.
‘Very well,’ I said at last. ‘We will go. But first let me do something.’
I gathered all my ash-piles up and poured them into my apron. If I was caught out, I planned to produce them as evidence.
Overhead a helicopter whirred. It was dumping water on the remaining fires left over from the bomb. The pilot looked down on us through huge goggles and waved cheerfully, before releasing several tons of water onto our heads.
‘Do you have a towel?’ I asked my partner, heaving myself back to my feet. ‘I’m wet.’
‘I’m wet too,’ he replied, sobbing quietly to himself. ‘And hungry.’
“You poor thing,’ I said, faking concern, and yawning. ‘We’d better get to the Courthouse. They have automatic hand driers in the bathrooms. We’ll put you under one of those, and buy you some sandwiches. All right sweetie?’
‘Yes,’ he sniffled, miserably, like a filthy drooling coward.
And so we walked to the courthouse, ash in our pockets and water in our hair. And as we walked, the courthouse moved away, and as we walked faster, it moved further, and as we ran, it took flight, and as we cried out for it to stop, we saw that the helicopter had picked it up, and it was flying away again. The trial was over, the bomber had been sentenced, and the courthouse was going home for a well-earned rest.
But my companion and I were lost in the wasteland, and we sat, weeping onto our rakes, eating ashes and mourning what might have been.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Alan Jones - A Male Life
Alan Jones was born a male man in Queensland sometime in the early twentieth century, and enjoyed an idyllic childhood in the sunny Australian outback, where he learnt all about life from observing animals on the Jones family farm. In particular, he noticed that there were some differences between male chickens, horses and pigs and female ones, in that the female ones tended to be incompetent, lazy, and funny-smelling. It was these early, formative agricultural experiences - along with the time a shelf full of feminine hygiene products collapsed onto his head at the chemist - that forged within him a steely desire to change the world for the better by standing up against injustice/womanhood wherever he might find it.
However, school life became stale and uninspiring for Alan, and a traumatic experience at an Easter Parade, when he was run over by a clitoris-shaped float, sealed his decision to enter the world of sport and become a rugby coach, where he could thrive in an especially manly environment.
Many of course have tried to destroy him with feminine tricks, but Jones has always stood fast for his principles. Firmly believing that we do not own this world, we merely borrow it from our penises, he is determined to leave Australia a better place than he found it, by breaking down the walls of matriarchy that keep us enslaved to feminist ideology. "Australia has been swallowed by a cervix of shame," he famously declared at 2003's Convoy Of No Oestrogen, at which thousands of Cosmopolitan magazines and lipsticks were burnt to symbolise the casting off of the distaff shackles that bind Australians.
Whence comes his enormous inner strength, the stamina and drive to keep going in the face of insults and smears and those gross curves that women have? Partly it is simple patriotism: he knows that Australia was a great country before women arrived in it, and can be again as long as they are kept quiet or given regular electric shocks. Part of it is personal integrity: Alan's father always told him never to give in to bullies, and ever since a ringleted young girl savagely beat Alan to a pulp in the early 90s, he has been steadfast in his defiance of the elites and vested interests who wish to impose perfumed servitude on decent hard-working testicular Aussies. He stands up for "Struggle St" and makes no apologies, or at least not very convincing ones.
But part of it is just good ol' Queensland country scrappiness. Like all good men, Alan relishes a fight, and if it's a fight for right, all the better. That's why the so-called "women" of Australia will never beat him down, because he's got enough fight in him to last a lifetime, and it doesn't matter how many bears your periods attract, ladies, this is one testosterone milkshake you'll have a hard time drinking.
Alan rescuing a friend from feminist dog-eaters
It was this zeal that led him first to a career teaching things to young men. A student of his from this period remembers:
Alan was always teaching us things, as young men. He instilled in us the values of youth, and of manliness, and of being youthful and manly. "Never be an old woman," he used to say every day, and it frankly got a bit repetitive. But there's no doubt he taught us things, and without him those things may have gone un-taught. I never observed an inappropriate behaviour on his part, unless you consider wandering the school grounds at night in his pyjamas, firing a shotgun into the air and daring the feminists to "stop hiding like rats and come out and fight him face to face" to be inappropriate.
However, school life became stale and uninspiring for Alan, and a traumatic experience at an Easter Parade, when he was run over by a clitoris-shaped float, sealed his decision to enter the world of sport and become a rugby coach, where he could thrive in an especially manly environment.
Alan being attacked by a vagina
It was in rugby where he really thrived, leading the Wallabies to a Grand Slam on the 1984 tour of Britain, a success which more than one player attributed to Jones's revolutionary "don't talk to girls" strategy. A 1986 Bledisloe Cup victory, built on the back of manly bonding and hissing loudly at women in the street, was further vindication, but Jones cruelly lost the job after the 1987 World Cup, which was lost following a disastrous dip in morale which was later traced to several members of the tight five having disobeyed team rules and kissed ladies while in camp. Although Jones knew the debilitating effect that girl germs have on sportsmen, he nobly took the fall, refusing to let his handsome players get blamed even though they actually were to blame, and instead hurled himself into his media career.
Alan fighting misandry
On radio, television and print media, Alan has for the best part of three decades been fighting the good fight against the growing womanisation of our society. His scholarly background has provided him with the research muscle to back up his arguments with cold hard facts:
Every society that has ever collapsed has contained women. That's not polemic, that's simple historical reality. I don't make history, I report it, and I'm telling you that where you find civilisations in ruins, there are breasts just around the corner. Make of that what you will, I'm just the messenger.
-Alan Jones, 1997
Many of course have tried to destroy him with feminine tricks, but Jones has always stood fast for his principles. Firmly believing that we do not own this world, we merely borrow it from our penises, he is determined to leave Australia a better place than he found it, by breaking down the walls of matriarchy that keep us enslaved to feminist ideology. "Australia has been swallowed by a cervix of shame," he famously declared at 2003's Convoy Of No Oestrogen, at which thousands of Cosmopolitan magazines and lipsticks were burnt to symbolise the casting off of the distaff shackles that bind Australians.
Whence comes his enormous inner strength, the stamina and drive to keep going in the face of insults and smears and those gross curves that women have? Partly it is simple patriotism: he knows that Australia was a great country before women arrived in it, and can be again as long as they are kept quiet or given regular electric shocks. Part of it is personal integrity: Alan's father always told him never to give in to bullies, and ever since a ringleted young girl savagely beat Alan to a pulp in the early 90s, he has been steadfast in his defiance of the elites and vested interests who wish to impose perfumed servitude on decent hard-working testicular Aussies. He stands up for "Struggle St" and makes no apologies, or at least not very convincing ones.
But part of it is just good ol' Queensland country scrappiness. Like all good men, Alan relishes a fight, and if it's a fight for right, all the better. That's why the so-called "women" of Australia will never beat him down, because he's got enough fight in him to last a lifetime, and it doesn't matter how many bears your periods attract, ladies, this is one testosterone milkshake you'll have a hard time drinking.
Alan casting a paralysis spell on Emily's List
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Hey You!
Yes, you! I got a few questions!
Do you like READING THINGS?
Do you like LAUGHING AT THINGS?
Do you like ELECTRONIC DEVICES?
Do you like - and pay close attention here - ME?
Hey, I know you're answering yes to all those questions! But I know that YOU'RE asking a question too!
You're asking, "But Ben, HOW can I satisfy ALL these preferences of mine for the INCREDIBLY LOW price of $2.99, in a convenient manner delivered instantly over the world wide web?"
OH MY GOD I HAVE THE ANSWER!
That's right! HANDY LATIN PHRASES!
Handy Latin Phrases is the anthology of stories and poetry, known as my equivalent of Woody Allen's "Early, funny stuff" that I self-published several years ago. You can still get it as an old-fashioned dead-tree edition, but NOW! FOR THE FIRST TIME! ON AMAZON! You can get it as a Kindle eBook! For $2.99!
Only $2.99? Why you'd be cruel and foolish NOT to buy it am I right?
Haha! Of course I am!
Go buy it NOW!
Do you like READING THINGS?
Do you like LAUGHING AT THINGS?
Do you like ELECTRONIC DEVICES?
Do you like - and pay close attention here - ME?
Hey, I know you're answering yes to all those questions! But I know that YOU'RE asking a question too!
You're asking, "But Ben, HOW can I satisfy ALL these preferences of mine for the INCREDIBLY LOW price of $2.99, in a convenient manner delivered instantly over the world wide web?"
OH MY GOD I HAVE THE ANSWER!
That's right! HANDY LATIN PHRASES!
Handy Latin Phrases is the anthology of stories and poetry, known as my equivalent of Woody Allen's "Early, funny stuff" that I self-published several years ago. You can still get it as an old-fashioned dead-tree edition, but NOW! FOR THE FIRST TIME! ON AMAZON! You can get it as a Kindle eBook! For $2.99!
Only $2.99? Why you'd be cruel and foolish NOT to buy it am I right?
Haha! Of course I am!
Go buy it NOW!
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Brecht and Coleridge
"Ah, well-played, sir, well-played indeed!" The mellifluous baritone rang throughout the drawing room as Bertolt Brecht, playwright, poet, and champion middle distance runner placed the tray of marzipan delights in front of his friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, lover, and foster mother.
"Did you hear that?" said Brecht, a nervous look in his eye as he sank into the deep folds of the comfortable couch.
"Hear what, sir?" boomed Coleridge, reaching for a treat and licking his lips, less in anticipation than in unstoppable nerve spasm.
"I could have sworn I just heard a mellifluous baritone," said Brecht. "It told me 'well-played, sir'"
"Ah, you Germans are a cunning bunch," said Coleridge, lifting his cup and pouring tea down his neck. "That was me, sir, complimenting you on that clever move you performed, placing the tray upon the table at the precise psychological tipping point. Quite an advantage you have over me, I think you'll agree."
Brecht studied the undercover poet intensely, noting well the curve of his neck, the cleft of his chin. In some ways, he thought to himself, man is little more than a cow with an aptitude for algebra. In some ways. He spoke:"It was prophesied that I would be killed by a man with a mellifluous baritone."
"I don't see how," Coleridge punctuated himself by quickly hemming his trousers, "a mellifluous baritone makes a poor choice of weapon. I once attempted to assassinate a Maharajah with my mellifluous baritone. He suffered only a superficial flesh wound and shot me in the knees."
Brecht was silent a moment, contemplating the futility of struggling against the machine. Sometimes he thought things would have been much simpler if he had been born a magical talking cushion. Sometimes. He spoke again:"Erst komm das Fressen," he said urgently, squinting hard at Coleridge, and leaning forward.
Coleridge hesitated. He had suspected this might be where it was all leading. When Brecht had invited him up to his room, he had accepted, not out of eagerness for company, but from respect for the bond they had forged with each other in Korea. But now, with Brecht's hand strongly massaging his thigh, he realised his initial instincts had been right: Brecht had invited him here to speak German at him."What does that mean?" he asked, reaching inside his sweater and removing his brassiere through an armhole so as to keep the mood light.
"It means, 'now we dance, tomorrow we urinate'," replied Brecht, sucking Coleridge's ear.
"FILTHY LIAR!" screamed Coleridge, leaping up and upsetting the marzipan. "It means nothing of the sort!"As quickly as it had come, the flash of rage passed, and Coleridge smiled pleasantly at his companion and took up a seat on the windowsill, contemplating the quadrangle."Do you sometimes feel, Bertie, that we are not doing enough?"
"What do you mean, enough?" replied Brecht, furtively. Coleridge turned from the window and saw Brecht attempting to climb into the kettle. He sighed. This happened so often these days he was beginning to regard it as part of the daily routine. Walking across the room, he yanked Brecht's head from the steaming jug and rubbed his hair with a towel. Brecht gasped. "You shouldn't have done that," he wailed. "Death is the only answer for me, I fear."
"Come, come," said Coleridge. "That's no way to talk. Talk like this instead," and he demonstrated with a low guttural moaning. Brecht tried it, and his mood imediately lifted.
"This IS fun!" he chuckled, capering about like a schoolboy. "Wunderbar!"
Coleridge laughed like a carefree schoolgirl, until he glanced once more out of the window. Ducking down, he hissed, "Stop it!"
"Why?" cackled Brecht. "I've never felt so alive! MOoooooo! MooooooO!" he warbled, twisting his nipples as he scampered onto the top of the bookcase.
"Stop it, man! This is serious!" Coleridge barked. "We've attracted humpback whales! They're in the quadrangle, bumming cigarettes."
Brecht sighed and climbed down. He perched once more on the sofa and mournfully vomited into Coleridge's teacup. "They will only get cancer," he said. "In the end, everyone gets cancer."
"This is true," Coleridge nodded. "I've had it six times this year, and frankly it's getting a bit much." Brecht nodded back, and so they proceeded in this fashion for several hours, bobbing their heads like deranged budgerigars, neither one willing to break down and mention the real cause of their dissatisaction. Deep down, both of them knew that the summer in Lesotho was weighing them down intolerably.
Eventually, the silence had to be broken. The detergent man was at the door, demanding he be paid for this week's detergent. Brecht dutifully slipped him a fifty, and sent him on his way with a tender kiss. Returning to his chair, he mournfully wrote a pessimistic modernist play and ate it without fanfare. In the opposite corner, Coleridge was talking animatedly on his mobile phone. Snapping it shut, he stormed across the floor. "Dammit! The Atkins account just fell through!" he raged.
"What's the Atkins account?" asked Brecht timidly, a pen up each nostril.
"Oh, I've no idea," said Coleridge, so airily that a ballon emerged from his ear. "I just like to occasionally shout that it's fallen through. It's a hobby."
"I thought poetry was your hobby."
"Oh no, poetry is my PASSION," corrected Coleridge genially, taking half an hour to punch Brecht repeatedly in the head for daring to say such a thing. "Poetry is my LIFE. I wrote one just the other day. It's about raccoons. Would you like to hear it?"
"I would rather be raped at gunpoint by a syphilitic anteater while a mountain lion slowly ate my head," said Brecht, with his usual suave Bavarian charm.
"Oh good, here it is then," Coleridge assumed a splay-legged stance, threw his head sideways and took on the facial appearance of a paralysed toad, his normal recitation pose. He began:
Entirely spent, Coleridge spun around and shouted, "Lawks!" before collapsing on top of Brecht's meticulously constructed Lego pirate ship.
The next few hours were spent in hostile silence, Coleridge avoiding Brecht's gimlet gaze and Brecht tattooing Persian swearwords on his penis. The first to speak was Coleridge. He cleared his throat, using a catheter, and addressed his old friend in a high, reedy voice, apparently in an attempt to impersonate Glynis Johns.
"I saw Gerard Manley Hopkins the other day," he said.
"Oh yes," said Brecht. "How is he? Still a hopeless old drunk?"
"He's looking very well. Tanned. He just came back from Pakistan. He's got a girlfriend over there. Met her on the internet."
"Mein gott. How did he manage that?"
"Apparently she's morbidly obese, but very creative in bed."
"How so?"
"She makes cheese sandwiches in there. Got a jaffle maker hooked up to the electric blanket. Hopkins says it's divine. Anyway, they were going to be married, but they were caught having sex and she was stoned to death." Coleridge demonstrated how it would have looked like with a short and amusing mime.
"That's terrible," Brecht put on his "sad" hat, to indicate that he was sad. "How's he taking it?"
"Oh, he said c'est la vie."
"He's philosophical about it?"
"No, he just likes to prove he can speak French. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to tell you. Hopkins took me aside in the tavern and told me in confidence that he recently realised he doesn't actually like dappled things at all."
Brecht nearly leapt out of his seat, and then nearly had a stroke, and very nearly exploded. "WHAT?"
"He said, and I quote, Dappled things, they're rubbish, innit?"
Brecht fanned himself with a nearby otter. "I don't believe it, I just...all these years, he's been living a lie."
"He told me not say anything, he said it might ruin the Welsh economy." Brecht nodded. This was typical. Gerard Manley Hopkins was a talented silversmith, a competent monk, and a wonderful lover, but if he had one weakness, it was his obsession with the Welsh economy. If he had two weaknesses, it was the hideous growths the sides of his head which made him look like an eland. But Brecht tried not to think about that. It reminded him too much of the pain he carried inside him every day. On an impulse, he decided to confide in Coleridge.
"Samuel," he said, haltingly, "I have a great pain inside me, and I think it is something you need to know. Es tut mir leid, but I did something a few Jahren back which I am not particularly proud of."
"Is this the Vin Diesel thing again?" said Coleridge, yawning with barely disguised contempt and a completely disguised midget submarine.
"No, no, it's much worse," said Brecht, crying into his cornflakes.
"Where did you get those cornflakes?" roared Coleridge, his anger as sudden and terrifying as a summer's day or a delicate dandelion, perhaps even more so. Certainly more sudden than a dandelion. It is in fact difficult to imagine in what way a dandelion could be thought of as "sudden".
Brecht shrunk into his seat. "I bought them earlier."
"GIVE THEM TO ME!" screamed Coleridge, in a blind, unstoppable rage, hurling books and pot plants at his hapless Teutonic chum. Brecht cried and cried, shrieking for him to stop, promising him everything, and in the end, as always, it ended in a sweaty, passionate embrace, naked on the floor, exploring each other's bodies with remorseful passion. "I'm sorry," sobbed Coleridge. "Cornflakes, they just..."
"I know," Brecht soothed, stroking his hair. "They set you off." Indeed they did. Coleridge and cornflakes had had an uneasy relationship, ever since at the age of six he had watched his mother run off with Will Kellogg, and his father run off with a bag of pears, only to return shamefaced and admit he did not actually know the way to his car. From that day forth, young Samuel's father had forced him to eat cornflakes three times every day, for the next sixteen years. "We must confront our demons!" Coleridge senior would screech maniacally, shovelling more crunchy golden leaves of doom into his son's bowl. "Strength through indomitability! Here, have some milk!" he would hiss, throwing carton after carton at the boy's head. Poetry was Samuel's way of dealing with the nightmarish reality of his childhood. At that stage, he didn't actually write poetry, but he had sneaked a copy of the collected works of Emily Dickinson from the school storage cupboard, and every night, he would take the precious volume from his bedside table and lie beneath the covers, thrilling at the strange new emotions which awoke in him when he rubbed the book vigorously between his thighs. Coleridge often described those times as the happiest of his life, although when pressed further he would crumble and admit that in fact they were unspeakably awful and he wanted to kill himself whenever he thought of them. Eventually, his mother had returned, full of exciting stories about high society in Vienna, flaunting her newly acquired oboe-playing ability and kicking Samuel in the stomach at regular intervals. His father degenerated further and further into madness, until ten years ago he had planted himself in the backyard and begun to produce figs from his armpits.
"Anyway," said the undercover poet, covering his nakedness with his trenchcoat, the warm afterglow making him strangely shy, "what was it you wanted to tell me?"
"Oh yes..." Brecht hesitated. Did he really dare? He thought back to his days in the hospital in Munich. Proper equipment had been in short supply. He hadn't flinched at the thought of using a harpoon to remove a patient's spleen, even when it was completely medically unnecessary. He could not flinch now. He took a deep breath and inhaled a bee.
Five hours later, in his hospital bed, Brecht looked up at the swarthy Adonis holding his hand, smiling and reciting a new epic poem about parsnips, and realised how lucky he was to have found a true friend. Across the ward, some head trauma patients were performing an impromptu rendition of The Threepenny Opera. Bertolt smiled indulgently. Let them have their fun. After all, who's to say Mack The Knife wouldn't be better with several verses concerning a mischievous juggling rabbit? Not he, that's for sure. "Nicht mich," he murmured sleepily. "Nicht mich."
And now, the secret didn't seem so terrible and daunting after all. "Sam," he said, trying to focus on Coleridge, the task made difficult by the poet's insistence on running back and forth past the bed at high speed, squeaking loudly. "Sam, I'm ready to tell you what's been bothering me for so long..." he coughed, for no reason. "You...you remember New year's Eve 1946?"
"How could I forget?" grinned Coleridge, swigging from his Gatorade bottle.
"Yes, well...after the party was over, you'd fallen asleep on the couch."
"Ha ha ha," said Coleridge in an oddly unconvincing manner. "I was so drunk. Whatever possessed me to liquefy those Jessie Matthews records?"
"Yes, well...while you were asleep, I sort of...."
"Yes?" Coleridge was nude with anticipation.
"I set you up on your hands and knees, dressed you as a Dalmatian and took photos of you with Kurt Weill's testicles in your mouth."
Coleridge gazed levelly at Brecht. "I see."
"Then Kurt played the piano and we wrote a song together called Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Big Flabby Girlie Man, Let's All Shove Things Up Him'" Brecht looked carefully at his friend. "It went to number one in Japan, it made us both millionaires. Every night I call him up and we laugh at how much fun it was to humiliate you because you're so stupid and we hate you so much. We did that last night for hours. I hope you're not angry about this."
In many ways, this marked the beginning of the deterioration of their friendship.
"Did you hear that?" said Brecht, a nervous look in his eye as he sank into the deep folds of the comfortable couch.
"Hear what, sir?" boomed Coleridge, reaching for a treat and licking his lips, less in anticipation than in unstoppable nerve spasm.
"I could have sworn I just heard a mellifluous baritone," said Brecht. "It told me 'well-played, sir'"
"Ah, you Germans are a cunning bunch," said Coleridge, lifting his cup and pouring tea down his neck. "That was me, sir, complimenting you on that clever move you performed, placing the tray upon the table at the precise psychological tipping point. Quite an advantage you have over me, I think you'll agree."
Brecht studied the undercover poet intensely, noting well the curve of his neck, the cleft of his chin. In some ways, he thought to himself, man is little more than a cow with an aptitude for algebra. In some ways. He spoke:"It was prophesied that I would be killed by a man with a mellifluous baritone."
"I don't see how," Coleridge punctuated himself by quickly hemming his trousers, "a mellifluous baritone makes a poor choice of weapon. I once attempted to assassinate a Maharajah with my mellifluous baritone. He suffered only a superficial flesh wound and shot me in the knees."
Brecht was silent a moment, contemplating the futility of struggling against the machine. Sometimes he thought things would have been much simpler if he had been born a magical talking cushion. Sometimes. He spoke again:"Erst komm das Fressen," he said urgently, squinting hard at Coleridge, and leaning forward.
Coleridge hesitated. He had suspected this might be where it was all leading. When Brecht had invited him up to his room, he had accepted, not out of eagerness for company, but from respect for the bond they had forged with each other in Korea. But now, with Brecht's hand strongly massaging his thigh, he realised his initial instincts had been right: Brecht had invited him here to speak German at him."What does that mean?" he asked, reaching inside his sweater and removing his brassiere through an armhole so as to keep the mood light.
"It means, 'now we dance, tomorrow we urinate'," replied Brecht, sucking Coleridge's ear.
"FILTHY LIAR!" screamed Coleridge, leaping up and upsetting the marzipan. "It means nothing of the sort!"As quickly as it had come, the flash of rage passed, and Coleridge smiled pleasantly at his companion and took up a seat on the windowsill, contemplating the quadrangle."Do you sometimes feel, Bertie, that we are not doing enough?"
"What do you mean, enough?" replied Brecht, furtively. Coleridge turned from the window and saw Brecht attempting to climb into the kettle. He sighed. This happened so often these days he was beginning to regard it as part of the daily routine. Walking across the room, he yanked Brecht's head from the steaming jug and rubbed his hair with a towel. Brecht gasped. "You shouldn't have done that," he wailed. "Death is the only answer for me, I fear."
"Come, come," said Coleridge. "That's no way to talk. Talk like this instead," and he demonstrated with a low guttural moaning. Brecht tried it, and his mood imediately lifted.
"This IS fun!" he chuckled, capering about like a schoolboy. "Wunderbar!"
Coleridge laughed like a carefree schoolgirl, until he glanced once more out of the window. Ducking down, he hissed, "Stop it!"
"Why?" cackled Brecht. "I've never felt so alive! MOoooooo! MooooooO!" he warbled, twisting his nipples as he scampered onto the top of the bookcase.
"Stop it, man! This is serious!" Coleridge barked. "We've attracted humpback whales! They're in the quadrangle, bumming cigarettes."
Brecht sighed and climbed down. He perched once more on the sofa and mournfully vomited into Coleridge's teacup. "They will only get cancer," he said. "In the end, everyone gets cancer."
"This is true," Coleridge nodded. "I've had it six times this year, and frankly it's getting a bit much." Brecht nodded back, and so they proceeded in this fashion for several hours, bobbing their heads like deranged budgerigars, neither one willing to break down and mention the real cause of their dissatisaction. Deep down, both of them knew that the summer in Lesotho was weighing them down intolerably.
Eventually, the silence had to be broken. The detergent man was at the door, demanding he be paid for this week's detergent. Brecht dutifully slipped him a fifty, and sent him on his way with a tender kiss. Returning to his chair, he mournfully wrote a pessimistic modernist play and ate it without fanfare. In the opposite corner, Coleridge was talking animatedly on his mobile phone. Snapping it shut, he stormed across the floor. "Dammit! The Atkins account just fell through!" he raged.
"What's the Atkins account?" asked Brecht timidly, a pen up each nostril.
"Oh, I've no idea," said Coleridge, so airily that a ballon emerged from his ear. "I just like to occasionally shout that it's fallen through. It's a hobby."
"I thought poetry was your hobby."
"Oh no, poetry is my PASSION," corrected Coleridge genially, taking half an hour to punch Brecht repeatedly in the head for daring to say such a thing. "Poetry is my LIFE. I wrote one just the other day. It's about raccoons. Would you like to hear it?"
"I would rather be raped at gunpoint by a syphilitic anteater while a mountain lion slowly ate my head," said Brecht, with his usual suave Bavarian charm.
"Oh good, here it is then," Coleridge assumed a splay-legged stance, threw his head sideways and took on the facial appearance of a paralysed toad, his normal recitation pose. He began:
I have come, said the spider crab,
To bring you great news
News that will fill you with joy
For unto us a king is born
A great fat ugly dibbly boy
The spider crab proceeded to leap on the rocks
And do an amusing little dance
And all who saw him were sore amazed
And set fire to each other's pants
I have come, said the spider crab,
Not to abolish, but to complete,
To complete the undertakings of yore
Wackle wackle doodle, piffle goggle blee,
Slampitskin greddle weddle CAW!
Entirely spent, Coleridge spun around and shouted, "Lawks!" before collapsing on top of Brecht's meticulously constructed Lego pirate ship.
The next few hours were spent in hostile silence, Coleridge avoiding Brecht's gimlet gaze and Brecht tattooing Persian swearwords on his penis. The first to speak was Coleridge. He cleared his throat, using a catheter, and addressed his old friend in a high, reedy voice, apparently in an attempt to impersonate Glynis Johns.
"I saw Gerard Manley Hopkins the other day," he said.
"Oh yes," said Brecht. "How is he? Still a hopeless old drunk?"
"He's looking very well. Tanned. He just came back from Pakistan. He's got a girlfriend over there. Met her on the internet."
"Mein gott. How did he manage that?"
"Apparently she's morbidly obese, but very creative in bed."
"How so?"
"She makes cheese sandwiches in there. Got a jaffle maker hooked up to the electric blanket. Hopkins says it's divine. Anyway, they were going to be married, but they were caught having sex and she was stoned to death." Coleridge demonstrated how it would have looked like with a short and amusing mime.
"That's terrible," Brecht put on his "sad" hat, to indicate that he was sad. "How's he taking it?"
"Oh, he said c'est la vie."
"He's philosophical about it?"
"No, he just likes to prove he can speak French. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to tell you. Hopkins took me aside in the tavern and told me in confidence that he recently realised he doesn't actually like dappled things at all."
Brecht nearly leapt out of his seat, and then nearly had a stroke, and very nearly exploded. "WHAT?"
"He said, and I quote, Dappled things, they're rubbish, innit?"
Brecht fanned himself with a nearby otter. "I don't believe it, I just...all these years, he's been living a lie."
"He told me not say anything, he said it might ruin the Welsh economy." Brecht nodded. This was typical. Gerard Manley Hopkins was a talented silversmith, a competent monk, and a wonderful lover, but if he had one weakness, it was his obsession with the Welsh economy. If he had two weaknesses, it was the hideous growths the sides of his head which made him look like an eland. But Brecht tried not to think about that. It reminded him too much of the pain he carried inside him every day. On an impulse, he decided to confide in Coleridge.
"Samuel," he said, haltingly, "I have a great pain inside me, and I think it is something you need to know. Es tut mir leid, but I did something a few Jahren back which I am not particularly proud of."
"Is this the Vin Diesel thing again?" said Coleridge, yawning with barely disguised contempt and a completely disguised midget submarine.
"No, no, it's much worse," said Brecht, crying into his cornflakes.
"Where did you get those cornflakes?" roared Coleridge, his anger as sudden and terrifying as a summer's day or a delicate dandelion, perhaps even more so. Certainly more sudden than a dandelion. It is in fact difficult to imagine in what way a dandelion could be thought of as "sudden".
Brecht shrunk into his seat. "I bought them earlier."
"GIVE THEM TO ME!" screamed Coleridge, in a blind, unstoppable rage, hurling books and pot plants at his hapless Teutonic chum. Brecht cried and cried, shrieking for him to stop, promising him everything, and in the end, as always, it ended in a sweaty, passionate embrace, naked on the floor, exploring each other's bodies with remorseful passion. "I'm sorry," sobbed Coleridge. "Cornflakes, they just..."
"I know," Brecht soothed, stroking his hair. "They set you off." Indeed they did. Coleridge and cornflakes had had an uneasy relationship, ever since at the age of six he had watched his mother run off with Will Kellogg, and his father run off with a bag of pears, only to return shamefaced and admit he did not actually know the way to his car. From that day forth, young Samuel's father had forced him to eat cornflakes three times every day, for the next sixteen years. "We must confront our demons!" Coleridge senior would screech maniacally, shovelling more crunchy golden leaves of doom into his son's bowl. "Strength through indomitability! Here, have some milk!" he would hiss, throwing carton after carton at the boy's head. Poetry was Samuel's way of dealing with the nightmarish reality of his childhood. At that stage, he didn't actually write poetry, but he had sneaked a copy of the collected works of Emily Dickinson from the school storage cupboard, and every night, he would take the precious volume from his bedside table and lie beneath the covers, thrilling at the strange new emotions which awoke in him when he rubbed the book vigorously between his thighs. Coleridge often described those times as the happiest of his life, although when pressed further he would crumble and admit that in fact they were unspeakably awful and he wanted to kill himself whenever he thought of them. Eventually, his mother had returned, full of exciting stories about high society in Vienna, flaunting her newly acquired oboe-playing ability and kicking Samuel in the stomach at regular intervals. His father degenerated further and further into madness, until ten years ago he had planted himself in the backyard and begun to produce figs from his armpits.
"Anyway," said the undercover poet, covering his nakedness with his trenchcoat, the warm afterglow making him strangely shy, "what was it you wanted to tell me?"
"Oh yes..." Brecht hesitated. Did he really dare? He thought back to his days in the hospital in Munich. Proper equipment had been in short supply. He hadn't flinched at the thought of using a harpoon to remove a patient's spleen, even when it was completely medically unnecessary. He could not flinch now. He took a deep breath and inhaled a bee.
Five hours later, in his hospital bed, Brecht looked up at the swarthy Adonis holding his hand, smiling and reciting a new epic poem about parsnips, and realised how lucky he was to have found a true friend. Across the ward, some head trauma patients were performing an impromptu rendition of The Threepenny Opera. Bertolt smiled indulgently. Let them have their fun. After all, who's to say Mack The Knife wouldn't be better with several verses concerning a mischievous juggling rabbit? Not he, that's for sure. "Nicht mich," he murmured sleepily. "Nicht mich."
And now, the secret didn't seem so terrible and daunting after all. "Sam," he said, trying to focus on Coleridge, the task made difficult by the poet's insistence on running back and forth past the bed at high speed, squeaking loudly. "Sam, I'm ready to tell you what's been bothering me for so long..." he coughed, for no reason. "You...you remember New year's Eve 1946?"
"How could I forget?" grinned Coleridge, swigging from his Gatorade bottle.
"Yes, well...after the party was over, you'd fallen asleep on the couch."
"Ha ha ha," said Coleridge in an oddly unconvincing manner. "I was so drunk. Whatever possessed me to liquefy those Jessie Matthews records?"
"Yes, well...while you were asleep, I sort of...."
"Yes?" Coleridge was nude with anticipation.
"I set you up on your hands and knees, dressed you as a Dalmatian and took photos of you with Kurt Weill's testicles in your mouth."
Coleridge gazed levelly at Brecht. "I see."
"Then Kurt played the piano and we wrote a song together called Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Big Flabby Girlie Man, Let's All Shove Things Up Him'" Brecht looked carefully at his friend. "It went to number one in Japan, it made us both millionaires. Every night I call him up and we laugh at how much fun it was to humiliate you because you're so stupid and we hate you so much. We did that last night for hours. I hope you're not angry about this."
In many ways, this marked the beginning of the deterioration of their friendship.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
A Bargain!
Hello there.
Would you like to know a way to be entertained and delighted while also contributing to a worthy cause?
Oh good.
Then here is Fault Lines. It is an ebook collection of short pieces by some special writers and also me, put together by the estimable Matt Granfield, to raise money for the Red Cross relief efforts in Japan and New Zealand. For a $10 donation, this charming publication - including my story "Themroc van Harryhausen, Gnu Buster" could be yours!
Go ON!
Would you like to know a way to be entertained and delighted while also contributing to a worthy cause?
Oh good.
Then here is Fault Lines. It is an ebook collection of short pieces by some special writers and also me, put together by the estimable Matt Granfield, to raise money for the Red Cross relief efforts in Japan and New Zealand. For a $10 donation, this charming publication - including my story "Themroc van Harryhausen, Gnu Buster" could be yours!
Go ON!
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Catching Up
I was asked by someone if there was an archive where might be stored all my articles. Well, all my articles at New Matilda of course can be accessed here, and the ABC Unleashed is where you'll find my weekly wraps - though I don't know how long those stay in the system, but I thought I'd round up what I could of stuff published in other places, and link to it, for anyone who might have come in late and want to browse some of the more exotic corners of Pobjieville:
My work from Crikey, in no particular order:
On Kyle and Jackie O
On my bid to become the right-wing Philip Adams
On Kelli Underwood's AFL commentary
On Hey Hey It's Saturday
On Michael Jackson
On Tiger Woods
On Australia Day patriots
Then there was this, from The Punch:
On Twitter
This, from Christmas 2008, in The Age:
And of course, on Twins, from babble.com.au.
Also, a couple pieces from the Australian Rationalist Society's Journal - latest one here about refugees and such. And my first here, about becoming an atheist.
Hope you enjoy reading those.
Apart from online, if you were in the mood to buy real paper books you could find my ramblings in the EWF Reader, on the subject of comedy writing. Or the Death Mook, with my short story, "The Black Angel's Love Song".
Or of course, go to http://www.lulu.com/benpobjie for my own collections, or email mrbehemoth@hotmail.com to buy them direct.
Of course, if you REALLY want a handy, nationally distributed collection of my pieces, start lobbying your local publishing house to contact me IMMEDIATELY.
But until then, thanks for reading!
My work from Crikey, in no particular order:
On Kyle and Jackie O
On my bid to become the right-wing Philip Adams
On Kelli Underwood's AFL commentary
On Hey Hey It's Saturday
On Michael Jackson
On Tiger Woods
On Australia Day patriots
Then there was this, from The Punch:
On Twitter
This, from Christmas 2008, in The Age:
And of course, on Twins, from babble.com.au.
Also, a couple pieces from the Australian Rationalist Society's Journal - latest one here about refugees and such. And my first here, about becoming an atheist.
Hope you enjoy reading those.
Apart from online, if you were in the mood to buy real paper books you could find my ramblings in the EWF Reader, on the subject of comedy writing. Or the Death Mook, with my short story, "The Black Angel's Love Song".
Or of course, go to http://www.lulu.com/benpobjie for my own collections, or email mrbehemoth@hotmail.com to buy them direct.
Of course, if you REALLY want a handy, nationally distributed collection of my pieces, start lobbying your local publishing house to contact me IMMEDIATELY.
But until then, thanks for reading!
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