 
A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES

BY ALFRED SAMUELS
CONTENTS

LIFE CYCLES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

'BARNEY KINK IS DEAD'

A LETTER TO FATHER CHRISTMAS

F.A.O:—ARNIE RE: TWO TREATMENTS

THE OBITUARY OF LIZA SCRUNCH--BY LORENZO MIFKIN

THE ADVENTURES OF ERROL: THE OBSTINATE NATURALIST

HOW DID I ARRIVE AT THIS AWFUL PREDICAMENT?

THE DREAM JOURNAL OF HUMBERT BICKER

A LIBIDINOUS PUBESCENT

THE CONFESSIONS OF THORPE POGROM

CUPID'S SHAFT THROUGH THE SKULL OF BEN GUFFIN

IT WASN'T THE PHONE IT WAS HIM

CLARENCE: L'ÂME QUI PORTE

A SMALL THING THAT IS A BIGGER THING

THE GAY DOG

ANHEDONIA: A PLACE IN INDONESIA?

EPIPHANY

F.A.O:—POSTERITY RE: ENTERTAINMENT

A NOTE FROM THE OVERGROUND (DATE UNKNOWN)

VEDA, CHEESE, & THE SMALL DOG GOING BY THE CHOCOLATE SHOP

BOSTON TEA PARTY

THE ROBBERY

TELFORD HAYES READS 'BUMBLEBEE'

LONDON EXPLODED

LOVE ON A SOFA BED (ONE DIRECTION EROTIC FAN FICTION)

25 QUID JOB (IN THE CITY)

PUTULA ALLEGRO'S SUNSHINE FACTORY by WES ANDERSON

THE LOST INBETWEENERS SCENE

A VINDICATION OF THE B-MOVIE

FUNCTIONING SOCIOPATHS [EXTRACT]

ANNUAL LEAVE

A TURING TEST: NAZIS AND HOMOSEXUALS.

GIFTS FOR SUSANNA (AN ULYSSES)

SUBTLE BUT STILL THE SAME

LET US BE SERIOUS FOR A MOMENT ...

MOONSHINE SKETCHES

THEY ALL MEAN WELL

THE FRIDGE IS FULL OF JARS

EPHEBOPHILIA

COLLOQUIAL VULGARITY

THE DARK CHAMBER

THE COMFORT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE

THE FUTURE IS JUST AS SHIT AS NOW

WELLYWHAMMER

'EVERYONE IS A PRISONER OF THEIR OWN EXPERIENCE'

THE THERAPIST WORE EXPENSIVE SHOES

A COMPLICATED BIRTH

'HONEY, I'M HOME!'

SPORFF OLOFF

INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
'High intelligence has originated only once, in human beings . . . All the other . . . millions of species get along fine without [it].'

—Ernst Mayr

'
LIFE CYCLES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

You are gestated, birthed, developed through education until your government can resolve how much you are to earn; your credit is amended depending upon the economic conditions of the time, and you spend your lives busied by fashionable consumption, until your molecular constituents begin to revert to their natural state of disorder, and you are slowly extinguished.
'BARNEY KINK IS DEAD'

On the 17th of November of this year whilst following up on a call received from a Mrs. A. Butterworth of 21 Nork Rise, Surrey, police officers found the body of Mr. Barney Kink. Aside Mr. Kink's mangled form, laid a piece of paper with notes of a various sort scrawled incomprehensibly. What could be understood from this page is transcribed below. What has been left out was impossible to discern due to lack of eloquence on Mr. Kink's part. It does not appear that these apparent suicide notes were addressed to anyone in particular.

The tipping point was a muffin. I bought it from the sandwich lady. It was rubbish.

My dog keeps running away from the house pretending that he's owned by a neighbour or is otherwise a street dog. He's doing it on purpose. We were at the park the other day, and he ran off to muck around with a family having a picnic, and I was stood in a puddle. Then we got home, and he kept getting sick and then eating the sick, and the sick was cake.

Please give him accommodation, and not execute him at the kennel for crimes that I have committed. I won't tell you his name. That way, the new owners can feel it a newer dog.

There is a cat somewhere.

I always hated school. But it was better than work, and the bullies were often smaller. If I had done something wrong as a kid people would tell me. It's different now. The adult world is so passive aggressive. People mainly just listen to music at me.

I've spent too much time watching other people's children play sports. Their parents are not my friends and do not like it. Kids call me a bag man. I don't know what it means, but I assume it is an insult. Better than being called a paedophile, I suppose.

Maybe I should have gotten married. I could have hidden in a marriage. I'm too out in the open on my own. I should have just got married, had kids, and changed my name to Dad. I can't remember if my Dad even had eyebrows. He must have. If I were married, I could have given my wife some of this debt. As it is, I have no-one to share it with and am all alone.

Being born should be a choice. You should be allowed to decide if you can be bothered with it at all. But it isn't. You just wake up as six-years-old and people seem to know you, and then you're locked into the whole thing. It would've been better parachuting into some sort of Hobbesian war-zone. At least I would have felt something. Fear probably.

I have decided to end it, and I've got to say it feels pretty good. The idea that I'm doing things for the last time makes everything wonderfully bearable. It's good-bye fridge, good-bye shoes, good-bye friendly Asian who brings me my photocopies. It feels like going home after a really shit holiday. Maybe I am. I don't know if there's an afterlife but if there isn't and there's just nothing, then that'll still be pretty good.

I won't be missed. But who is these days? I guess some people still miss Diana.

I've got no-one left. I'm leaving. I bought a hunting rifle to kill an owl once. I'll use that. 
A LETTER TO FATHER CHRISTMAS

Dear Father Christmas,

My name is Nathaniel. I am nine. I live in a house with my mummy and daddy. When I have a house, it's gonna be huge. Are you real? How do you get around so fast? Mummy says you're magic. Are you? Are you magic? Daddy says he gave you a key to our house. Is that allowed? How do you carry all the keys? Do you not lose them? You must have heavy pockets.

People at school say of course you're real because you give us presents. But I've never seen you. I stayed up once to try but fell asleep. My teacher says that I'm a nosey parker when I ask about you. Can you punish her?

Do you not get bored of being Father Christmas? I have to go to school every day, and I hate it. Is the North Pole like school? Do you hate it there? Do you have to do all the work? What are the elves like? Are they nice or mean?

Do you read all the letters yourself? How do you have time? I always post mine on the same day, do you ever get letters not a Christmas? What do you do with them? What if someone sends you a letter and then sends you another letter? How do you decide which letter to use? Are the reindeer's nice to pat? Have you got a favourite one? Have you met God? Is he nice? My nanny is with God, do you know her?

Can I have a remote control slave robot to do my chores and bring me drinks, Father Christmas?

Nathaniel
F.A.O:—ARNIE RE: TWO TREATMENTS

Dear Mr. Schwarzenegger,

It has been hard for those of us not in diabetic comas to help but notice that your planned return to the medium of film was somewhat hampered by the slanderous facts of your personal life. Having been an avid fan of the art-form in which you once so prominently dwelt I cannot help but feel utter consternation in this regard. As such, and given the security tag on my ankle preventing me from other activities, I have been giving a great deal of thought to your situation and feel I may have some ideas re: ways to proceed.

The problem certainly to my mind is one of image; and what is needed, in my opinion, for you to reclaim your place among the eminent thespians of your tradition, is a project that completely reinvigorates your portfolio.

Below are two treatments with regards possible scripts that given your approval can be dashed off in under a week and sold to your fine self for not unreasonable amounts of cash. Alternatively, if capital is not as liquid as you would hope—not knowing how such scandals bear with regards your wad—an all-inclusive excursion to the Planet Hollywood in Rio de Janeiro, if, and when, it eventually opens.

Kind Regards to you and your families,

Eric Hogwheldon

Love in the Time of Mutants

The film will be likened to the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel in name only, along with a small amount of unavoidable plagiarism. Thematic variation is a must. I first came upon the idea when watching your 90s masterpiece Total Recall. I remember coming out of it almost completely satisfied. My only wish was that Verhoeven would have developed, no doubt dealt more comprehensibly in the Dick novel, themes related to the mutated anatomy of the Martian, Vis-à-vis the three-titted whore the perfidious taxi driver gropes.

Love will possess the good humour, romance, and social commentary of a Forster novel. Your character is a shy boy named Reginald. He will either possess a stutter or be mute dependent upon your preference, although I would suggest mute as this would make for more reasonably achievable dialogue.

The first half of the film will be set on the estate in which Reginald resides with his overbearing mother and nurturing younger sister. His sisters name will be Rhea after the Greek titanees known as 'Mother of the Gods'. His mother's name is unimportant as she will be exploded before the second act and is largely irrelevant. I only include her to ensure audiences do not get confused as to where Reginald came from.

After establishing such themes as the loneliness of a puritanical society and Reginald's struggle to connect with a beautiful socialite who hems his sister's dress in preparation for a cotillion, an asteroid hits the Sussex countryside and everyone is turned into mutants, who for all intents and purposes are zombies, just much better.

The only ones not affected are Reginald, his sister Rhea, the socialite named Foxy Glacier, Reginald's and Rhea's long-lost brother Liam (who turns out to be a spy working for the US government), a couple of wise talking and largely inconsequential black chaps, and a vicar with a bad attitude.

The rest of the film centres around the various relationships that arise amongst the band of survivors, as they wander the countryside in search of the ancient tomb of somthingorother, killing sexy mutants.

The film's climax will be set at the cotillion, where many mutants engage in a bizarre ceremonial orgy. The mutants try to persuade the remaining members of the group to join them—the black chaps having by this time snuffed it—and Reginald wrestles metaphorically with this decision as the rest of the group fall prey to the orgy's lascivious appeal. In the pivotal moment of the scene, a mutant Rhea tries to persuade Reginald to join them and is largely successful. But, at the last moment he comes to his senses and goes 'Edwardian' on the entire cotillion.

The film ends with Reginald cutting mutants to shreds with the .303 calibre Bren gun whilst lamenting the woes of cosmic loneliness.

Possible tagline: 'No Medicine Cures What Semtex Does Not.'

Al

You play Albert Einstein, the eminent theoretical physicist known for developing the theory of relativity. Or did you? I first came upon this idea when I saw the delightfully thought-provoking political thriller Anonymous, directed by that fellow who makes serious money making disaster films. If you have yet to see it, I won't spoil it for you, but suffices to say it will make you question all of your preconceptions regarding the veracity of Shakespeare's authorship of those plays that he did.

The opening scene will be set in the Federal Office of Intellectual Property in which Einstein famously worked.

Note: This role may require of you a methodological approach, but if handled right, is Oscar bait!

The film will have to plod along like all Oscar winners do, so the opening scenes should see you engaging in mundane tasks around the office: making tea for Susan your myopic colleague, filling out patent forms for disgruntled customers. Basically it should all be very bleak. Sometimes you could just sigh.

This establishes that the real Einstein is anything but the happy man seen poking his tongue out in pictures on the Internet.

Note: The movie should declare from the outset that the story told is nothing but speculation, as this would help in alleviating certain hostilities the scientific community, and communities in general, would have towards the picture.

Einstein's drudgery is interrupted when he meets a young man named Lewis Zimmerman who has come to patent his ideas of theoretical physics. Zimmerman is the antithesis of Einstein: young, confident, strapping, dashing—and other such adjectives. Einstein is immediately threatened by this brash young physicist and concocts a plan to murder Zimmerman and steal and successfully patent his ideas.

The scene in which the grisly murder occurs will be juxtaposed by the famously beautiful canals of Bern. It should have tones of romantic period Gothic literature, and I am thinking of giving Einstein a deformed or simply far too obsequious servant named Hectorb. Originally, I thought of naming him Hector, but if he is deformed the B will make the name more appropriate. I do not think this method that of onomatopoeia but not wholly unlike it either.

Once Einstein has executed Zimmerman with a nail gun, his body is sold to gravediggers who cash it into medical scientists—which you would assume Zimmerman would have wanted, had he actually existed—and Einstein and Hectorb go home to Mrs. Einstein, played by whoever takes your fancy at the time of filming, and have a quiche.

The rest of the film will examine Einstein's struggle with guilt as he is shot to stardom, indulging in all the luxuries that would have of come from this major breakthrough in scientific investigation. Along the way, the wife discovers his terrible secret, and, unable to cope with the shame, kills herself out of a window. I added this plot point in case the actress is flapping her mouth too much and you just want her gone.

The climax of the film sees the philosopher Bertrand Russell show up at your mansion and announce that through the powers of deductive logic he has uncovered your secret. He tells you to sign the famous Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955, and you do so whilst weeping. He then rips the emblem from your blazer and calls you a cad. You are left to lament, not the woes of cosmic loneliness this time, but how come you had to get caught.

This scene should be, for you, a cinch.

Possible tagline (obviously): The Truth... is Relative.
THE OBITUARY OF LIZA SCRUNCH—BY LORENZO MIFKIN

On March 18th, the tarpaulin-cocooned corpse of Liza Scrunch was discovered decomposing behind a bin in one of the seedier parts of whichever city you happen to be living in. The apparent suicide seemed an appropriate end to the widely successful pop-star's troubled career in the media spotlight. Liza, known for such hits as 'Mr. Bubalashoos' and 'Cock-it, Rock-it', shot to fame as part of the girl group Sexy Legs, alongside Lucy 'Left Leg' Louonsa—now famed presenter of TVs Vet-Shack—and Donna Mullet who was just in Sexy Legs.

The groups first and only hit 'Women's Troubles' became an overnight sensation when it broke in the mid-90s, staying at the top of the UK charts for 82 weeks. The groups manager, Roger Screwjar, in his widely controversial tell-all memoirs, famously commented upon the single's staying power on the radio show News and Weather with Hymlick Hesslebottom, stating he was just glad not all women's troubles lasted that long—possibly referring to menstruation.

The groups follow up 'FHaPPo', the seven-minute postmodernist scrap-pop medley, was received with mix reviews, and following poor sales the group soon disbanded. In the following months, Liza released the duet with future husband, British underground producer Jay-Jay, Ho! that would shoot both to stardom.

'Lip-Locked' wasn't just a huge commercial success; it also signalled the beginning of the public's obsession with the couple. The reality TV show Lip-Locked: Living Like Liza gave audiences a rare glimpse into the couple's entire life. And after six series' that featured proposals, marriages, terminations, pregnancies, and finally, financially crippling dissolution, Liza had become a National treasure. Jay-Jay, Ho! could be taken or left.

Naturally, it was not long before film producers began calling and in 2000 Liza Scrunch starred in the box office flop G-Speed, based on the true story of the hallucinated second life of Eric Hooger—that he had experienced whilst a patient at St. Gibbons hospital for the terminally tired—in which he was a high-charged galactic speedster.

The film's Director, Amg Rizzoli, equated the film's failure to Hooger's lack of imagination, and the film itself is best remembered for the nude scenes Miss Scrunch publicly petitioned to have removed from the film, the success of which Rizzoli also thought stopped people going to see it.

After her disappointing venture into film, Liza released a string of mediocre singles, including the universally despised 'Window-Lean' that featured American bad-boy rapper Juic-E Boxx waxing profanity shirtless on a bed watching the X-rated scenes cut from G speed whilst Liza takes turns inhaling on what appears to be a crack pipe with an unknown youth.

Her appearance on Tonight: with Tommy Pant saw Liza maintaining that her role in the music video was of the method. This led to the now infamous 'Meth-Acting' headline ran by the tabloid 'Tit!' featuring pictures of the singer, that having gained entry into her inner circle undercover journalist Kenny Fop surreptitiously acquired, in which Scrunch appears 'smoking the rock' with three of the five members of the boy band Just So You Know.

Croxton, Marc, and P-Funk all later publicly apologized for the incident, stating stress as the reason for their brief lapse in judgment, accusing Liza of providing the pipe, and Kenny of providing the Meth. However, Steven Frugali, of whom Screwjar had at that time on retainer, argued that Just So You Know were a legal entity and as such three fifths had no legal right to speak for the whole, destroying the story's credibility.

Liza appeared to have hit rock bottom on a Perse Donahue Seasonal Special, appearing with her then love interest, lean 62-year-old speed freak Johnny Pinkis, who spoke at great lengths about nothing in particular, whilst a strung-out Liza spoke in sotto equal amounts of nonsensical verbiage, making matters all the worse by inadvertently displaying her vulva throughout.

Liza returned a year later, sober and coherent, admonishing the celebrity system that had shanghaied her into a life of unnecessary and damaging excess. But by that time, the public had grown tired of looking at her face and were, for the most part, unimpressed by her insights.

She is survived by no one.
THE ADVENTURES OF ERROL: THE OBSTINATE NATURALIST

Errol became taken one day with the idea of living amongst the animals. He had just finished Henry David Thoreau's Walden in his comfortably furnished bedroom when he was surprised by the notion. Over the course of his twenty years on earth, he had tried co-existing with his fellow human beings, but after much meditation had decided that he was simply unimpressed with the intelligence that they possessed. So with his few personal effects, along with savings acquired inadvertently through a mugging, he set off for the wild forests of Trestlewell, traversing winding country lanes whilst whistling various jaunty television theme tunes.

Upon entering the wild forests, he met a reticent faun.

'Why will you not talk to me, oh rustic god of the forest. I am beyond man, as are you. We have much in common, and I do not know in what direction I must go. I seek your guidance.' Errol said in gentle tones, to a faun.

'The faun will speak to no man!'. A snake bellowed.

'Why, pray tell?' asked Errol, growing immediately suspicious of this second chap.

The snake confessed that he did not know the faun well and that his previous statement was one of pure hyperbole, introducing himself as Eric. Eric the snake was about to begin a journey to the depths of the wild forest to collect some money he was owed by a possum.

In an attempt to dodge the payment, the possum had absconded and Eric figured him holding up with a relative. Errol asked if he could travel with the snake, the snake agreed, and Errol set about the difficult task of being swallowed for the long journey ahead. Halfway through the process Errol decided against the idea, and the snake left muttering a trail of expletives.

Being semi-digested by the snake had taken it out of Errol, and as it had been a pretty long day already he decided to postpone journeying to the forest's depths and instead ventured back town-ward in search of chips, before returning to the wild forests opening and reposing beneath the stars. Next-day Errol again set off for the depths of the forest once more. Along the way, he met a number of animals that journeyed also.

At the journey's midpoint, when morale had become dangerously low a faction of the group kidnapped Errol. The faction's leader, a crow, had gotten it into his head that Errol came from money, and they all hid out in a cave whilst crow decided their next move.

'What we gonna do, Crow?' asked the runt of a piglet litter.

'Let me think!' squawked the crow.

'If he is from money, they're gonna be all over this cave by the morning, Crow. Whatever we're gonna do; we got to do it now!' barked a duck, 'I know a rivulet nearby where we can lay low.'

Once Errol realized how disorganized a faction lacking opposable thumbs was, he easily escaped and was again in the solitude of the wild wood.

'It is with nature; I relate.' He soliloquized.

'With not the one; but the whole.' he enunciated.

'There is only I and thee, mother of all!' he wailed.

He then fell into a bog and was drowned.
HOW DID I ARRIVE AT THIS AWFUL PREDICAMENT?

Wilfred Pickle had lived a fast and unimportant life, the success of which he had often attributed to a deliberate repression of scruples. However, as he approached his fiftieth year, he began to notice that along with a gradual diminution of reproductive urges he had begun to ponder questions regarding conduct unto others, and mused as to the decisions he had made throughout his eventful life.

When he was a young boy, he would often sneak into his mother and father's bedroom of an evening and secrete beneath their bed. When he eventually emerged from this hiding place, his parents were in such bother as to his whereabouts that they would lavish upon him hugs and adoration. Wilfred, a child of undisciplined mental faculties, gave up this ruse when his hiding place was finally discovered after he failed to take into account a recent pubertal spurt and Mr. Pickle spotted his son's size nine plimsolls poking out from under their four-poster bed.

As a teenager, Wilfred was cripplingly shy. His first contact with a member of the opposite sex occurred when Molly Updike, the daughter of one of his father's second cousins, caressed his taint as the two sat babysitting the immediate family's children who were too young to appreciate the sophisticated cuisine their parents obtained at various carveries.

By the age of nineteen, Wilfred had honed his complete lack of sympathy for anyone besides himself and was famed with such prestige as to be entered into the pantheon of modern economics, making a breakthrough in rational choice modelling with influential criticism of current theories. Wilfred's thesis Rapacious Need for Trinkets: Homo-Sapiens, Neo-Burdens, and Rational Choice Modelling in an Increasingly Simplifying World was not only a panoptic academic achievement but also highly influential among the nascent political elites.

After this bombastic success, he decided to ride the wave of adoration he was receiving from the intelligentsia by procuring himself extremely well-respected employment with an unknown conglomerate. Wilfred was spat out by the public relations industry at the age of forty-five, with little memory of the twenty-six year interim and chronic melancholia.

In an attempt to find answers, Wilfred Pickle went to a psychiatrist:

DR. SCONCE: And when did you first start feeling this way?

WILFRED PICKLE: I guess I first had the thought when I was still a child. I remember a friend of mine, Clevin Gorge, had a brand new Man of Action doll that I desperately coveted. I reasoned that he could not possibly want to toy as much as me for I was incapable of experiencing his feelings myself, and stole the figure. When Clevin reported the thief to the school authorities, I disposed of my spoils in the locker of a fellow classmate. Martin Uppins was subsequently expelled for the charge he was innocent of—as Clevin's father was an influential figure within the school, he being the only member of staff that knew how to successfully bleed the radiators. And I escaped unpunished, having learnt a valuable lesson.

DR. SCONCE: Which was?

WILFRED PICKLE: How to bleed a radiator, of course! Have you heard nothing?

The doctor had not.

After a series of fevered dreams that had revealed the cause of his debilitating sadness, Wilfred Pickle reconnected with religion and confessed his sickened sins to Father Ridiculous who in his new release, Beneath the Robe, offers his insights:

'The man was an obvious wretch—clearly unabsolvable. But I listened out of a mixture of curiosity and schadenfreude. What the man could remember was terribly muddled, and he spoke slowly, frightened and childlike. As the stranger told me his story, I was shocked not by their details but the way in which they were divulged. He spoke as if he were someone other than himself...'
THE DREAM JOURNAL OF HUMBERT BICKER

Replete after excessive consumption of an assortment of continental soft cheeses—which I had ruefully gormandized whilst sprawled insensible watching the television regurgitate entertainment, the outcome of which I was already privy to—I encountered a soporific also understood as a Ten o'clock news story concerning some inconsequential third world tyrant's inordinate violation of human rights, that pulled me unwillingly into the recesses of my subconscious.

What followed was a series of stupefying apparitions, interconnected but non-linear in nature, that when awoken some hours later weeping and choking on the nasal build-up accumulated thence, made me know guilt that of the like I had never experienced prior to or since.

My first conscious understanding of the dream involved a man not dissimilar in appearance to that of American actor J. Anderson. As we discussed the appropriate levels of enjoyment that one should strive for in life, I was taken with how similar our outlooks were, and I felt an amazing affinity with the dwarf. The conversation took a turn for the worst; however, when I made a comment that he deemed politically incorrect and so his mouth fell off his face and began crawling towards me from across the room, as he stood smiling at me with his eyes. But before the mouth had chance to attack, the sloppy sound emanating forth had transported me into a new situation entirely.

Globules of gravy now puddled a pool from a wooden bus-shelter overhang. I was waiting for a bus to an unknown location with an old woman muttering cryptic phrasings to no one at my side.

'Terrible weather we're having; But on the upside, everyone is looking very tasty.' She said, dribbling.

My reply was of accord, but I did not share the strange woman's ways and thought it best to continue to the unknown destination by mammalian methods, and made my way on trusted gams. At first, the insipid torrent irked me something fierce, but I continued onward towards a wooded clearing where the sky hung evening. As I walked through the wood groups of people began appearing, first in small collectives, then, the deeper I ventured, in larger groups of familiar faces.

Everyone was drinking from goblets and laughing in merriment. It was a very peaceful experience walking through their enjoyment. People asked me to stay and drink with them and recall memories past. I was eager to reach my destination, but the temptation was growing stronger. I spotted a gloriously enchanting female, and I became distracted by conversation. Her voice was low, and she spoke in elongated syllables.

'I'm so glad everyone is here together again. It's just like old times.' Spoke the enchantress. 'It's bliss.'

As she spoke everything began to dim, her sibilance bridging the gap between locations. It hung on the air now, as the breath-like sigh of the tidal pull. The beach was desolate, and it was early morning. There was a single solitary figure on the distant shore, staring out toward the mechanical movements of the sea.

I walked toward the figure and became increasingly anxious that he would divulge so abhorrent a secret that my heart would explode in my chest. I began to weep, slowly sulking towards the figure staring out to sea. He did not speak, merely pointing in the direction he had been gazing, to the winged creature suspended above the folding wave bellowing:

'Humbert Bicker: who stands accused by mankind of being a dawdler, an unctuous dawdler, an unctuous pusillanimous dawdler, an unctuous pusillanimous slovenly dawdler, an unctuous pusillanimous slovenly jejune dawdling cad ...'

This tirade of accusation continued ad infinitum, words being entered regardless of sequence, and being unable to take such indictment I fainted to prostrate at the weight of the creature's skilled recollection of synonyms.

When I awoke from the dream it was early in the morning, and it took me a moment to remember who I was. And although cheese has never repeated on me in quite the same way as it had that evening, I will forever have to live with the gnawing feeling that there was a whole section of the dream that I could not recollect, and from the details of which I could have fashioned a script for an independently financed surrealist film of minimum merit.
A LIBIDINOUS PUBESCENT

The cars accumulated weight had been such that in conjunction with a series of grievous errors in direction, Maeve and Tony had neared the end of their journey about the same time as Tony had been scheduled to give a speech. The toast would have been a jovial salute to the latecomers of the gathering, which had been in full swing since the previous evening, suggesting, through the delicate charm he was noted for, that they should have gotten their shit together in a more roundabout way.

But given that he did not arrive as planned on the previous evening and had not yet attained the sufficient amount of exuberance needed for such oration, which he had hoped to accumulate through the powers of festivity and copious amounts of inappropriately located copulation, he was in no mood to give a speech and doubted as to whether anyone would have cared to listen.

'I told you,' Maeve smugly repeated as the car rounded the street corner and clumsily mounted the curb.

'You've told me,' barked Tony, 'now shut up!'.

The two bundled out of their respective doors, a thin sheet of snow softening their falls.

'C'mon; we're nearly there!' Maeve shuffled industriously towards the beautifully decorated house that pulsated with sound and was awash with deep coloured movement in its many windows.

'Wait! It's too icy! I'm wearing lifts!' Tony balanced precariously, holding a neighbouring lamppost decorated with a pointless wreath. Having had no response to his plea, he decided upon a few tentative steps, but soon the wreath gave way and in a momentary balance panic brought on by inveterate cowardice the lifts went from under him, and he was whipped against his own car boot causing the alarm to sound. Tony lay stunned on the pavement as a passing shower of hail-stones pelted his face.

Later, warm enough to feel guilt, Maeve went back to fetch her frozen husband, dragging him to the house on a snow shovel as he moaned about the car and his soggy pockets.

The house was an ostentatious celebration of the wonder and economic necessity of the season, scintillating in such a way that one might experience similar visual sensation if housed in a champagne flute for the season's interval.

'We missed you last night, buddy. We were playing the festive game, and I remember saying at one point to—I think it was Neil.' 'Joan, who was on our team last night? Was it Neil?' 'It must have been Neil because I remember making a joke about his ex-wife's weight loss, and it not going down at all well.' 'Brian? Who's Brian?' 'Do you know who Brian is? 'I could have sworn it was Neil. I don't think I even know a Brian.'

Harold Buick was a loquacious dullard who upon speaking made one aware of every thought that went through his shrunken head. As a result, he had managed to alienate nearly everyone he had ever met, which his wife Joan took to be one of his better qualities.

'It was definitely Brian. Because when that question about Brian Ferry came up, I remember thinking that's Brian's name, and when I told Brian about it, he smiled, and I remember thinking what a lovely smile and I told you about it too, do you not remember?' 'He's getting awfully forgetful in his ... later seasons, Maeve. I bet you're finding that with your one here.'

But Maeve had grown tired of the couples whittling and had already absconded to flirt with a man eating a dense log and Tony was insulted by the assumption.

'My memory is perfectly fine thank you very much, Joan,' Tony said. 'I actually feel my memory is more astute the older I get.'

'—That's probably because you do less, so you don't have to remember as much.'

Tony felt an immediate and overwhelming attraction to the nubile. She entered coiled around a nearby wall with big green eyes that stared out beyond tightly cut bobs. He was never made aware of the age of the nymphet but reasoned her to be at least fifteen years old, which in this age of civilized debasement is not so loathsome a concept, surely?

'Ah, there she is;' Harold said. 'Tony, this is our niece, Suet.'

'Say hello to Uncle Tony, Suet.'

'I'm not your uncle, darling.' Tony hastened, 'I'm just an acquaintance of the family.' He fought back a bashful rouge and thereafter displayed the unwavering grin of a pervert.

Due to their late arrival, Maeve and Tony found themselves surviving the majority of the partygoers—who due to an early start, and competitive nature had drunk themselves into various stupors. And by the small hours of the morning, given Maeve's failed attempt to revitalize the occasion by starting a party-train never made it beyond one carriage before being derailed by a ubiquitous Christmas tree, Tony found himself surreptitiously crumbling block he had found in an upstairs draw and assumed was complimentary on an outside stoop. When quite out of nowhere, a tipsy Suet snuck up and frightened him into almost scuffing the cone.

Tony smoked handsomely, listening on as Suet divulged the secrets of her adolescent life. She disliked boys of her own age as she was more cerebral than they were and had taken a keen interest in erotic audio books. She spoke of her young hearts flutterings whilst deftly walking a small wall back and forth gripping brick with soft dainty paws in a manner befitting a gymnast. Tony was transfixed by her movements and began to wrestle with impure thoughts related to the child.

'Are we to bed?' she coyly asked as Tony took a final drag, flicking the dog-end at a neighbour's scrounging cat. 'Only, I am not sleepy.'

Having finished the joint, Tony couldn't really think of anything besides sleep and decided against his seduction of the nymphet as he could just have a solid sleep and knock a quick one out before breakfast.

'Good night, Suet.' He said, walking to the door with the deliberate control of a drunk.

'Wait Uncle Tony,' she pleaded shivering boldly atop the wall, 'My feet are really cold, could you carry me inside?'

Reluctantly, and after a great deal of persuasion, Tony allowed Suet to cling to him long enough for her to be knocked unconscious by a misapprehended doorway.

When Maeve awoke from her semi-self-induced slumber next to the collapsed Christmas tree, she ventured into the kitchen to feast on the scrapings of the day. But what was left of the food had been rendered inedible by a couple who were at it on the table so Maeve went back to the Christmas tree and fell asleep.
THE CONFESSIONS OF THORPE POGROM

Next to being beaten senseless by an ex alcoholic uncle, still very much an alcoholic but no longer an uncle—my mother's sister having divorced the brute shortly after the incident—Una breaking my heart was the most painful thing I had hitherto experienced. And for the two university terms that followed—along with a terribly melancholic Christmas period that saw me walking about a half emptied campus baying, whipping seasonal latte foam at infuriately happy Asian couples—I had been held up in my digs in frenzied contemplation as to what action precipitated this wonderful person leaving me alone with my wretched self.

I reposed the entire period away, my legs a set of sinewy staves that I often forgot were in my possession. And I spent a great deal of time weeping over my lost love whilst simultaneously trying to masturbate myself to death—a task I believed I could accomplish if only I had the sufficient energy to do so. Having watched a documentary around the same time, I was convinced the problem related to a possible undiagnosed bipolarity disorder.

My isolation was interrupted on the occasions that my affable dealer, Herman, would have a delivery for me. Herman, a fellow student at the University, supplemented his income by selling class b and c substances to respectable students—I myself had a standing order with him under the title 'services rendered'. He was awfully good company, of good stock and often so doped up that one could divulge all manner of intimate personal details and forgo the nuisance of having him remember them.

It was the final term of my third year at University. I had just received a letter from the dean elucidating that due to constant neglect on my part with regards my study, if I did not successfully pass my summer examinations, I would be unable to retake failed modules and be kicked out on my own arse. It was the third letter of the sort pertaining to such threats.

But I wasn't fazed. My mother was a University professor herself, and I was fully aware of how desperate the Universities were to pass students regardless of how dangerously incompetent they happened to be in their specific subjects. Nevertheless, it was always nice to infer as to what the elements were up to without having to condescend to the hassle of looking out the window or heaven forbid engaging them.

Herman had just returned from the break and mayhap due to the watchful scrutiny of an ex-corporal father looked far less unhealthy than usual. Although he did assure me that whilst his vacation period had mainly consisted of fishing on a dull lake with his laconic relative, he had been completely off his tits on a fantastic concoction of Canadian psychotropics, and at one point of the expedition swore blind to hearing the word of god emanating from the oily lips of a bass.

When I asked him what exactly the aquatic deity had proclaimed he became lost in reverie for a disconcerting amount of time, and I, an ardent disciple of the Twainian aphorism, tried pressing him on the matter.

'Well?!' I ask, gumming the paper that held the tranced vendor's product.

'Well what?' He returned lazily, having become stupidly absorbed in whether or not the fat lady would deal or not. I passed him the peace in a vain attempt to jog his memory.

'What did he say to you?'

'Who?' Herman asked as the fat lady dealt on £5,000.

'The God in the corporeal form of a fish?!' I replied curtly. Herman began to laugh at the fat lady onscreen.

'Why is she crying?', He said returning the peace, 'You'd take a loss of £245,000 to get £5,000, right?!'

'What did the fucking fish say, Herman!'

'Oh shit, sorry.' He paused. Then having relocated his mind began beaming in a childishly simplistic way that made me remember that at the bottom of it all, I despised him.

'Well, he spoke with more eloquence than I can, at least at this precise moment in time, replicate. But the gist of it was that I shouldn't worry about things so much. And that I should just be happy, you know; happy with my lot. The Bass was pretty profound. I was especially impressed that he managed to espouse these words of wisdom whilst out of his natural habitat—with a hook in his beak to boot.'

I took a moment's silent contemplation. For I wanted to be certain about how I was to deliver this devilishly cutting snark.

'So,' I said, 'You were high; Caught a bass. And the bass told you not to worry, and to be happy?'

'Pretty far out, yeah?'

'It said don't worry; be happy.'

'Yep.'

'Herman,' I uttered delicately. 'I'm going to say some words now, and, much like word association—you've done a bit of psychology, right?'

'Enough.'

'Good. So, I'm going to say some words. And I want you to let me know what these words conjure up in your mind, okay?'

'Okay.'

'Big ... Mouth ... Billy ...' But I didn't get around to the last utterance. As by the time I got the fourth word, the sight of a hysterical fat disappointed lady ripping tufts of facial hair from the sobbing face of a television presenter had rendered me speechless.
CUPID'S SHAFT THROUGH THE SKULL OF BEN GUFFIN

Ben pulled up to street of Scurt Lapalco's so prematurely that she had not yet the chance to arrive home. He had shirked his largely inconsequential Tuesday afternoon responsibilities so that he might have sufficient time to spruce his corpulent frame for the rendezvous that the two agreed-upon: when wandering the fifth floor of his office building in search of a vending machine still dispensing the sparse granary bars agreeable to his delicate innards, Ben had noticed a sobbing sound coming from a disabled toilet opposite the machine—that had by that point gluttonously devoured the majority of his small change having failed to dispense a single item.

When Ben investigated the source of the whimpering, he found Scurt: a delicate, willowy colleen who worked in the office opposite his own, who—when the small amount of work he was required to do so to remain unnoticed in the office had been finished, and his fantasy football team had been successfully amended for the next scheduled gameweek—he had constructed elaborate fantasies about.

'Are you ok, Miss Lapalco?'

He had been standing unnoticed for some time as the girl continued to weep. She sat on the disabled toilet, her ruined make-up leaking onto blouse and pinny, tears unsuccessfully absorbed by the single sheet of toilet paper that remained in the unfrequented and therefore unmaintained disabled facility.

'Oh,' she said, somewhat surprised and breaking into a small fit of laughter. 'I'm fine, er ... '

'Ben. Ben Guffin. I work in the office opposite.'

'Ben—of course. I am fine, Ben, just, being silly really.'

Perhaps she did know him after all.

'Would you like to talk about it?'

He moved from the door's entrance and awkwardly sat on the sink until he could maintain the stance no longer and returned to the doorway.

'Not really.'

A silence fell upon the conversation. In an attempt to alleviate the awkwardness of such a silence, Ben asked if Scurt had any plans for the evening being that it was Valentine's Day and all and then watched on helplessly as she erupted into hysterical sobs and incoherent high-pitched laments.

Once Ben had calmed her by rushing the vending machine and comforting her with a Twix and a Vimto, he took another lull in the conversation to ask her out.

After a few moments and a walnut whip, she conceded to his request.

When Scurt eventually arrived home, she was escorted by a burly tattooed mod who parked his Ford in the middle of the road and stuck his tongue down her throat for a number of minutes. Then as she hopped out of the car, he struck a blow to her gluteus of such intensity that the sound emanating echoed above the thumping chart music that blared out of the vehicle's sonorous bass system, and Scurt limped to her door smiling.

Having reasoned the gent to be a friend, Ben approached the house and rung the doorbell. After a few moments with no answer, he took the doorbell to be broken and began knocking upon the door incessantly. Eventually, a figure approached and he swept the parting of his hair which through exertion had become dishevelled.

Scurt opened the door looking most divine, her crimped hair totally befitting the elegant dress that clung to her lascivious form. The only aspect of her appearance that seemed contradictory was her completely sunken face.

'Oh,' She muttered, 'It's you.' She looked like she was going to be sick.

'It is me. Sorry, I am a bit early. But I have been waiting for a while, and my legs began to fall asleep.' He revealed the bouquet of roses that he had concealed in his blazer losing a button in the movement.

'Sorry, they're a bit squashed. I leant on them in the car trying to find an A to Z map in the glove compartment, but I think they were a bad bunch to begin with.'

'Oh, Ben, ' sighed Scurt desperately, 'did you not get my email?'

'What email?' His guts churned familiarly.

'I sent you an email this afternoon; Do you not read your emails?'

'I left work early this afternoon; I wanted to look the part.'

'Oh, Ben.'

'What's the problem? Do you need more time to get ready? Because I can wait in the car for a little longer, if you'd like. I have an A to Z I could peruse. I-'

But his plea was interrupted by the loud sound of the Ford pulling up to the house, honking incessantly.

'Lapalco, you dozy mare, stop fucking about and hurry along! If we miss this fucking booking, I'm out on the lash with Pitti, and you can fucking trot home!'

And with that, Scurt's face re-aligned with the rest of her delightful appearance and she rushed out of the door and headfirst into the already moving Ford as it sped off down the road, leaving Ben standing at the open door to the house holding the unrequited bouquet. And as he slowly made his way back to his mother's car, he heard Scurt's delicate word's trailer from the Ford.

'See you at work!'

And Ben smiled and said to himself 'I think she likes me.'
IT WASN'T THE PHONE IT WAS HIM

'Okay. I'm going into the next room now. If you'd like to wait a few moments and then dial the extension at the top of the sheet. Once I answer you can begin reading from the script. I will be in character. What we are looking for is energy, enthusiasm, and, above all, a confident telephone manner.'

The interviewer had told me his name, but I hadn't bothered to remember it, which was good as he would be in character when next we spoke and the idea of having to remember two names for the same person was a dreadfully daunting prospect, especially considering I failed at the comparatively simple task of remembering the one.

The name I would refer to the interviewer by was written upon a sheet of paper that laid on the table the size of a school desk, next to a telephone unit so dull and commonplace in the offices I'd frequented in recent weeks that I am almost stultified in recollecting it.

I counted to ten, then lifting the prosaic receiver and punching the numbers five, seven, three, eight into the phone and my eyes readying themselves on the script sheet's first line.

'Hello?' The voice said, the greetings initial being unarticulated by the interviewer seemingly chomping on a toffee of some sort—I had noted the breast pocket of his shirt being disfigured by a goodly amount of the confectionary at the first stage of the interview and thought it most unprofessional.

'Hi.' I said, reading from the script, 'May I speak to Mr. Baines, please?'

'Can,' the interviewer replied.

'Excuse me?' I said confused.

'The line is can I speak to Mr./Mrs. Baines, please'.

'Oh, I didn't realize; I just, I always choose to say may I over can.'

'Just start again and stick to the script.'

The phone went dead. I counted to ten, and I dialled again.

'Hello?'

'Hi, can I speak to Mr. or Mrs. Baines, please.'

'Either or', he said.

'Excuse me?'

'Either Mr. or Mrs. It depends on who answers.'.

I could hear him opening another toffee.

'But I thought you told me to follow the script exactly.'

'Yes. But you have to pick when it comes to words divided by a slash or else the calling will know you're reading from a script.'

He hung up. I counted to five, and I dialled the extension a third time.

''Hello?' 'Hi, can I speak to Mr. Baines.'

'Mrs. Baines '

'Excuse me?'

'I was a Miss that time; you should be more perceptive; my character's voice was slightly raised.'

'With all due respect, Mr. Baines,' I was rather annoyed now.

'Miss.'

'With all due respect, Baines; the reason I couldn't tell that you were a Miss is because you don't sound like a Miss. You sound like a Mr. chewing toffees.' Silence.

'Please try not to break character,' he replied.

'You broke character first!'

'If I broke character, why continue to call me Baines?'

I had no answer to this and hung up.
CLARENCE: L'ÂME QUI PORTE

I

Clarence slides into the club as the bouncer is dealing with a man missing all but a few of his shirt buttons who is being sick into a friend's coat.

He sees a redhead who stands without a chaperone at the end of the bar and approaches her.

'What's a young thing like you doing out this late?' He asks to the redhead.

'I see no reason to leave,' She responds.

'You've just seen one.'

II

The redhead is called Molly but Clarence calls her Red.

Red is an actress who works as an administrator—she is extremely depressed.

After a time, they leave the bar.

III

Clarence lives alone and is well prepared to receive guests.

'What do you do?' Red asks, as Clarence dims the lights and spins a smooth jazz record.

'I motivate people to achieve their full potential' He says, kissing her firmly on the mouth as they fall upon the bed.

IV

The intercourse is tremendous.

Afterwards, they lay entwined discussing their respective lives.

'I'm just so very bored,' He says.

'I know.'

He gets up.

'I've got to go.'

'Why?'

'I can't get attached. It will hurt too much when you leave'.

'But you're leaving me,' she says.

'Then you'll understand.'

V

Red sits alone in Clarence's apartment pondering his depth.

Fin
A SMALL THING THAT IS A BIGGER THING

Something happened to me on the way to a friend's house, and I can't stop thinking about it. We had made plans to watch Wimbledon as she was a sports freak, and so we'd decided to hold up in her flat getting pissed on sparkling rosé. I bought a couple of bottles from the depressing metro across the street from my house and crammed them into my fashionable bag of unread books and a little pocket dictionary that I carry everywhere because I'd rather look up words than watch sports.

I was waiting in an overground train carriage at Palace and there was a black Rasta on a mobile firing off verbiage in thick Jamaican slang. I think he was talking about his girlfriend. He sat further down the carriage and seem alright. There was a middle-aged white woman opposite me who kept scowling at him. I hated her immediately. She kept tutting loudly to herself, trying to catch my eye in a desperate attempt to validate her disapproval. I folded back the book's page and calmly asked her to stop clucking because some of us were trying to read. All she could do was wince. It was hilarious.

I crossed a bridge at Brockley and narrowly avoided some vomit—this was to be a portent of things to come. About halfway up a long stretch of road, I approached a little roundabout where a woman stood trying her best to flag down passing cars. One slowed but didn't stop. She turned toward me, and I saw that she was sobbing.

I carried on, nervous that she might try to interact with me. She was an obvious crack addict. She came at me crying, apologizing if she had seen me before which she believed she had, and held her hand which had in the palm a single pound coin and some pathetic shrapnel. She said she needed money for gas and electric because she had a baby at home, and the baby had turned blue.

To prove that she wasn't making the whole thing up to score crack, she took out a lactating breast and showed it to me whilst sobbed thick spittle out of the side of her mouth. She said she'd lost a child a few weeks ago and was having suicidal thoughts and asked again for money. She asked if I could pay for the gas by card and invited me back to her house to confirm the story.

I thought it was a scam. That there'd be a crack addict waiting to boff me on the head and steal my stuff. I thought she would use my good nature to take advantage of me. I didn't want to be raped in a dilapidated council house. I apologized and dipped into my bag's loose change compartment. She glanced inside and spotted the black book. When I pulled out the small amount of pitiful change and offer it to her, she was indignant.

'And you call yourself a Christian—you, with your bible.'

She ran down the road crying.

The only thing I could think to say was that it wasn't a bible, it was a dictionary.
THE GAY DOG

I have until very recently suffered from an intense bout of depression that only differed from the usual ebb and flow of the bipolar chemical imbalance of the chic modern artist in that I could no longer afford the sufficient inebriants needed to make each moment of such resolute sadness spellbinding. As a result, I found myself merely a tad more productive within the workplace and less inclined to attempting eye contact with colleagues, which no one seemed to mind least of all my superiors who took me to be simply getting my head down.

This introverted spell lasted for no more than a week, but did unfortunately eat into a weekend in which I failed an attempt to watch Chan Wook Park's Thirst being that he has a tendency to make wonderful but overlong and essentially flawed pictures. Instead opting to screen Charles Ferguson's Inside Job for the second time, causing a state of one would assume subconsciously desired apoplectic rage whilst dossing on the sofa in my family home in what I now believe to be an act of misguided, petulant and somewhat anachronistic teenage rebellion being that I am nearing thirty.

My eventual change in temperament occurred, as is often the case, when I successfully created something that made me once again feel I had at least some control in a facet of my life—namely the artistic control that only failures possess. Or else artists in possession of what I believe to be or what I would define as true genius, that is to say, the control of undiluted vision.

(I do not want to dwell too much on this point here as the idea has only this moment began to ferment within my mind, and I would not do it justice if indeed there is any truth to be justified.)

Basically, I wrote a song and thought it pleasant. It was written for a friend in lieu of a gift—being at I am perpetually poor and growing fairly accustomed to it, to spin an Auden line. And it is listening to this song with this friend—as I stroked her hair and gazed out the window on an August evening that's beauty crept in throughout the day— that I began to feel the maniacal energy which often succeeds an episode of depression relent, and a tranquil peace come over me. I was, incidentally, one my second beer of the evening which one could concede had helped matters somewhat. But that is simple conjecture.

So we meandered up to the park with a cool bag full of ice and cider to sit and watch the freaks. We were not disappointed.

The park in which we sat stood upon a hill that overlooked a view of London that I was told was Elephant and Castle. Although, to be honest, it could have been any area of London, couldn't it? Since wherever one looks, agnate monolithic monstrosities seem to erupt from the ground like a plethora of new world phalli, all alike in their modernistic hedonism.

I don't like the city. Everything moves too fast, and people are less reflective than is warranted. I miss the country and nature and long for the sound of birds chirping in unison with my own hearty song, and instead am forced to hear intellectually impoverished children express their acrimony by dully thudding their heads against the brick wall of my council building causing my unsealed window to rattle, disturbing me in my attempt to lead an atomized existence.

Anyway, I was happy enough in the park as we drank cider and discussed in a slightly blissed fatigue the possibility of going away to the country and engaging in all manner of bucolic splendour, when the picnic bench to which we sat was suddenly infested with a pack of heterogeneous and somewhat mangy dogs, followed by two quite similarly shabby owners.

One of the owners, an old man who story seemed far too sad to begin elaborating upon, seemed to be responsible for all but one of the dogs in question. He sat on the bench opposite listening to compressed jazz music on a portable radio. The other owner was an elderly looking woman clad in pink, seemingly an aged punk with shaven bulb. She saddled up our own bench placing one of her doc martins on the seat whilst resting her elbow on her knee, making my friend immediately anxious, and I, immediately alert. She then muttered something to no one in particular, and I discerned from her inflection that of a bastardized Irish accent. It was a pikey.

The pikey's dog was a sight to behold. If Mike Leigh was seeking a grubby mutt for months of improvised rehearsal, then his eyes would have lit up at the sight of this bastard. Whilst the other dogs fanned out about the vicinity of their owner, who sat dangled legged listening to his portable radio, I spotted the mutt attempt to mount one of the larger dogs of the pack who quickly brushed off this advance. The recipient of the mount I at first assumed to be female and as such there seemed nothing particularly unusual about the action—I have grown up around dogs and am not unfamiliar with a Mr.'s lipstick.

However, what happened next was most unconventional at least from my experience. The pikey mutt having had his advances spurned attempted a manoeuvre whereby he did giddily band into the coy dog whilst cheekily lapping at the tip of what I could now see was the male member, banding back before the bemused dog had a chance to recoil. The pikey dog then turned in circles in what seems a state of pure euphoria whilst a liquid discharged out of his own member like a revolving sprinkler system you might see moistening an American lawn.

After a short time, the sad old jazz man rounded up his filial pups, and not long after that the pink pikey and her own horny hound ventured further afield, leaving my friend and I alone once more to ponder what we had just witnessed.

After much meditation on the matter, I come to the below conclusion:

The phenomena that my friend and I witnessed in the park that day can be explained in one of two ways. Firstly, the dog's actions can be understood in terms of evolutionary biology's theory of reciprocity. Whereby cooperative or altruistic behaviour may be favoured by the probability of future interactions. That is to say, the pikey mutt was simply performing an act that he wished to receive.

Secondly, the dog's actions could be understood in simpler atavistic terms of pleasure maximization. Whereby, he strived to achieve the maximum amount of pleasure at that given time, simply taking into account the means in which to achieve such pleasure. In this instance, the pleasure to be received was, incidentally, from a member of the same-sex—in much the same way Michael Fassbender did in the movie Shame.

I do not believe the character Fassbender portrayed in that movie to be gay. Nor do I believe the pikey mutt was gay just because he sucked another dog off.

I guess both are just horny Irish mutts.
ANHEDONIA: A PLACE IN INDONESIA?

My soul is sick. Or at least, it would be if I believed in the concept.

I

I was at my desk this morning. I was eating coco pops at my desk whilst a colleague insisted that TOWIE had affected the consciousness of a generation, when I suddenly lost the will to masticate. Everything just sort of slipped out of my face. It has happened before.

Jonathan took me into the goldfish bowl, away from all the outraged pregnant people and sardonic parentheticals. He said that I needed to take a leave of absence in the New Year as the office was in the midst of a rather busy period before the migration that I was still very much an important part of.

I asked if I could maybe not do that, but he was adamant, and I thought best not to press. I would broach the topic again in the New Year, after I had given him his Christmas present. I would have to raid his draw and see what kind of stuff he liked.

I've been feeling ... actually I haven't been feeling at all; that's the problem. I have been failing to feel. I have feel failure. I think I'm broken. I think that I've incidentally grown out of step with my entire generation. I think I've never really related to other people. I think I'm an oddity. I think everyone is talking about me behind my back. I think and think and think and just keep thinking. I am tired. Tired of being so very wide awake. Of thinking. Of being with myself.

Everyone at the office says to me, 'Horman,' they say—Hormon is my name. 'Horman, you're a real hoot. You are always on. You always bring the badinage.' And they're right. I am. I am always entertaining. I am the most entertaining person that I know. I can't help it. I was just programmed that way. Like the way a worker-ant is programmed to ant around the ground with all this ant friend, I am programmed to appeal to the delectable humour gland of the human species.

Bettie wants nothing to do with me now, which is fine. I never really liked spending time with her and only hung around for as long as I did because she knew someone with an Xbox that I thought I could borrow. She was pretty average as a human. She never really got the hang of it, walking and talking and all that. I think she was a bit wrong in the head to tell the truth. Her mum always told me to hold her hand when crossing roads. I thought she was just being cute but now think there was actually cause for concern.

She thought I was a snob. Everyone thinks I'm a snob, but I just like good stuff, unlike everyone else. Don't get me wrong, it's not their (your) fault. Their (your) parents grew up worshiping Jim'll Fix It, who atrocities aside, was an insipid entertainer. They (you) never had a chance. And we (I) never had a chance. And our (your) kids will never have a chance to have kids because by then the earth would have started coughing up bloody metaphorical mucus, and they will have to fly to Kepler 22 B.

No one in my life understands me, and I don't know if I mind. Betty says that I have this condition called bipedalism. I looked it up. I think everyone has it so that can't be it. I don't know what else it could be.

I'm thinking of talking to my mother. She's one of those. One of those brainers—Thinks about you whilst you're talking at a cushion. She used to listen to me all the time, drive me up-the-wall with her thinking. How does this make you feel?' What do you think about this, what do you think about that? I spend so much time thinking about what I was thinking about that I stopped thinking about anything but thinking about things. It is an affliction that burdens me to this day. An affliction that is now causing me to receive a three on my yearly appraisal as opposed to what I believe to be a much earned two.

I will have to hasten the raid on Jonathan's draws.

II

I am in the fish bowl again. I found drugs in Jonathan's draws and asked Drew if he could get me some to give Jonathan as a present for Christmas to prevent having to take mental leave in the New Year. And Drew told Ed and Ed told Steven Procter, who walks around the office humming golden oldies and who has a wife with one boob who to let me hide up her shirt at Christmas parties because I got so embarrassed by the karaoke. And Steve fired Jonathan for malfeasance. I have now taken charge of the Migration project and have booked a well-earned holiday in the New Year giving that the Migration is a success, checks have been carried out, etc. They have given me a promotion, and as I was receiving it, I finally began to understand the reason I was unable to feel anything.

Before the promotion, I had no money nor the prospect of any money in the foreseeable future, only endless debt. And now that I have been given this fantastical promotion—with the prospect of more promotions in the future—along with a ladder of some kind, everything is gravy meaning good.

Money was what I was looking for all along. I just took a little longer to get there then the rest of the generation. A generation bred to consume—potbellied plebs I've heard them called. I felt a vivacity that I hadn't experienced before. I spoke candidly about the experience with my mother who said something along the line of:

'The modern world teaches from a very young age that money makes you happy. No matter how smart or unwilling to be manipulated by this ceaseless inculcation one is, it is such a deeply entrenched idea that all it takes is a little weakness, and you are caught up in its trappings. You have held out for as long as you can. Now just succumb to it. Let it take hold for a few decades in which you will be afforded the luxury of building a little castle for yourself to hide away in.

'Dismiss the outside world and its grim and burdensome realities and enjoy yourself. Feel the completeness of selfish joy. When you wake up for your somnambulism, when your body begins to tear your back to reality, you will have many memories to cherish. Perhaps you will have a family of your own. Perhaps you too would have brought life into this world—'

Then she starting crying and feeling sorry for herself, so I left her to brood.

I don't know what my mother's deal is, but I have been thinking about money since my promotion. I think money is good. Money allows you to buy things that you want and prevents you from being bored and also from being boring, as no one is boring if they have money that they are willing to spend on you. I was never bored when my girlfriend wanted to spend money on me. I was never bored when I had money to spend. Money is not boring, money is interesting!

If it wasn't for money, there would be no economy and no-one would be able to eat and people in less-prosperous countries would starve to death, and it would be like you were killing them if you don't like money because money makes the word go around and there has been money in one form or another since the beginning of the species so why don't you go back to communist Russia if you don't like money and see if you last your first brutal winter. I bet you don't!

I'm going to Indonesia in the New Year. I feel that I have earned it with all the hard work I've been putting in, and the new job is quite stressful, and I don't really know what I'm doing, and I feel that everyone is talking about me behind my back and have started following people home after work to see if they are going to clandestine and seditious meetings.

Indonesia will be fine. I bet if it's illegal in Indonesia it's really wrong and good. I bet I can feel something in Indonesia.
EPIPHANY

Death had never really concerned him, and by that I mean he had never thought to be concerned by it. If being honest, his thoughts hadn't deviated beyond basic BoP low-end physiological needs as defined by Haslow's hierarchy. I mean, he tried not to meddle too much in the homeostasis aspects which he didn't really feel he was consciously contributing to anyway. And was essentially preoccupied with the uncomfortable interim between the cause and effects of eating and excreting various forms of waste. That pretty much filled all of his time.

That was before 'Steve the Hottie,' as he and a number of office harpies liked to call him, had taken him into his office to discuss implementing the sharing of workload between the ever increasing members of a department in the midst of an economic recession—more specifically, with him.

'But why should I need to do your work for you, Steve? You're always here. I think you might live here.'

'Don't be ridiculous, I live in a house, on a street. And you're not getting out of taking some of this work off my hands through sophistry—that's right; I looked it up. You said I wouldn't, but I did!'

'I never said you wouldn't look it up, I said you weren't using the word to communicate correctly.'

'See, sophistry! This office is about transparency, Ken. How are we supposed to see through you if you keep not being see-through, understand?!'?

'You want me to be more see-through?'

'Yes.''

'...' 'I don't see how me being more see-through has anything to do with you unburdening yourselves of burden by burdening me. I don't even get paid to skive!'

'The point is to be see-through enough to take the initiative. And to know when people around you have work. And to help them by doing their work for them.'

'But I didn't come here to work!'

'No-one comes here to work! That is the whole point!'

'But why should I do your work?'

'Because you have no work of your own.'

'It's not my fault that I don't have any work.'

'You don't have any work because you refuse the work that is offered to you, Ken!'

'Because it's not my work!'

'That's because you refuse to accept it!'

'Because it isn't mine!'

'That's!...that's neither here nor there!!'

'...'

'...'

'Listen, Ken. The fact is—I'm going to be honest and open and transparent with you for a moment, enough of the bull hog, right. Facts are facts. Fact is, you're right; I do enjoy my job. I like the power that it brings. I like the fear that I can install at will. I smell the fear coming from you, and yes; I admit it; it revs my engine. It arises in me quite carnal—'

'I ate a clove of garlic on break; that's probably what you smell.'

'No, the smell is more metaphorical—why did you eat a clove of garlic? Do you have an ailment?'

'I'm trying to get Little B's corner desk before she goes on maternity leave, and I think the baby is rejecting species of onion genus... the Alluim ... The Alluim Sati—'

'Shut up, Ken! Now! You're doing it!'

'Doing what?'

'You're sophist... rizing!'

'That word doesn't exist.'

'No! You don't exist!'

'Steve, I think you're damaged. I think you're cracking under the pressure.'

'Then help me!'

'It's not my pressure.'

'Ken do you realize that at any point, god forbid, I could get hit by the big bus. Then what would you do?!'

'What are you talking about?!'

'A bus, a big bus could clip me, knocking me to the ground—my skull crushed by the impact of the concrete. Then what would this department do, huh? You'd be screwed. Then I'd be laughing!'

'What are you on about?!'

'Well, without my knowledge of the systems that we're using, there would be mayhem. What are you going to do, phone Gemma? She can barely operate her purse.'

'No, what do you mean: at any point, you could get clipped by a bus?'

'I mean just that. I could get killed by a bus or a cab, or any manner of vehicle—maybe I could even get hit by a Porsche.'

'Why would you say that?'

'Because it's true. You could get killed going to get a drink from the vending machine.'

'How could you?'

'You could fall prey to a colleague in the midst of an office killing spree; or to myocardial infarction, or diabetes. '

'...'

'Why have you gone all white? You didn't eat that cake did you? Because you know she wants to poison Martha, and I'm inclined to let her have at it.'

'...'

'Ken'

'...'

'Ken, if you're not going to engage me, then you might as well sod off. I have a meeting in five minutes with Brian, and he hates subordinates. I mean, viscerally abhors them, so TBC. Good talk.'

He didn't really speak for the rest of the day. He just kept thinking the thought: at any point, it could all be over.

How had he not seen it before? Where had his head been? I mean, Jesus, he was nearing thirty: he was already nearly dead. How had it taking him so long to figure out that he had been dying? Why hadn't anyone told him?

He blamed his mother. Or he would have, had she been alive to receive blame; he didn't think he could blame a copse, didn't think the blame would stick. Probably bounce right back. Bitch!

She raised him too well; he reckoned. One of TV's stock Aesop's is that 'suffering is good for the soul', and if this is true, then it can be said that he lived an utterly soulless childhood.

All he remembered was greenery, horrible countryside, disgusting nature. Happiness. What a little twat he had been

Maybe if they told him the truth, contrary to what he now saw as the outright lying to a child. They told him that whiskers had gone to live on Mr. Hellep's farm with the cows and chickens and sheep and reindeer. Whiskers most probably got run over by a provisional driver.

Maybe if he found out about the grim realities of death early on he could be more prepared to deal with it when it came. Now it was too late. He was going to die, having only just realized that he was supposed to live it up whilst he had the chance because it was by no stretch of the imagination an open-ended ticket. It had a destination. No return. No refund. And now that he realized he was actually going somewhere; he couldn't help but think that maybe he should have picked a different route getting there.
F.A.O:—POSTERITY RE: ENTERTAINMENT

A scrolling display displays various movies and television shows recommended to me based on correlative database type things that the website stores on my account. The Boosh; Californication; Indie Games: The Movie; Scrubs; Saturday Night Live: the 2010s; Green Wing; 50/50; A Bit of Fry and Laurie; Chappelle's Show scroll in a loop towards the right of the screen. These are the things they recommend I watch on an okay sized monitor, in my room when I am not at work, that sits on a desk cluttered with remnants of a life I choose to forget when I watch the things on the screen they recommend, that are scrolling towards the right.

The service of the scrolling is provided by an Internet. An Internet is something probably still about, but you might call it a different name depending on when you are reading this. And our Internet is good because we pay the money we earn when not sitting in our rooms looking at our monitors that scroll loops towards the right of our screens, to make it good. The things we watch on this website are I believe brought into the virtual place by the same means that allow us to view it. There are lots of intricate mechanisms at work in the machines that we have in our rooms. No doubt yours are similar though aesthetically very different or perhaps not so much, but we need to do very little ourselves.

Things happen in the machine, and we remain largely ignorant of them. And it's pretty easy to sit there watching it pan out, converge and together, and out comes this film or music atop visual imagery of an infinite variety. And just the pleasure of diminished self-awareness is somewhat addictive. And it's not really even that bad, I mean not as bad as some other addictions that actually affect the people around them. I'm not saying that the passivity of the life I'm leading isn't bad, it most definitely is bad, what I'm saying is that it's not as bad; not as bad as some other stuff that people are doing. I'm not actively doing bad stuff in the world; I'm just letting it go on all around me.

Which I know sounds bad, but it's a complex situation. And I think you might be quick to judge but put in my shoes might just think phew fuck. Get me out of that horrible world of murder and death and endless miscommunication and suffering. And insufferable highs because in the back of your mind your thinking how this amazing feeling is only that. And when you stop feeling it your back to the familiar feeling of empty fearful I'm sure I was supposed to do something only I can't really remember what it is, but I know it was important. And the more you lay there thinking about what it was you were supposed to do but had as usual forgotten to remember to do; you become fearful that at any point, you are going to remember what it was, and it will be too important. And you will be horrified to have forgotten such an important thing. And now it is too late, and you just lay there all night unable to sleep. And you just want it to be the morning so you can go about rectifying this monumental mistake that you have made, and you just lay there, and nothing happens, forever.

And you just are stuck in silence with only your own brutal and crushing self-loathing. Thoughts you try best to keep from letting bring you down or change your mood. Because who wants to be with someone who is sad all the time? That requires attention and thought, and who has complex emotional needs when there is so much fun stuff that you can do with all the technological advancements and the gadgets and the cool mind-numbing complexity and depth and richness? Fantasy games and three-dimensional movies, that come out of the screen at you, and immerse you in an entire experience that is completely new. And everyone is excited about it, and you can talk about it with your friends at work. And even if you don't like it, you can laugh with all the other cool people who don't like it also. And that itself turns into like a thing.

And you watch now because you need fresh new sources for your vitriol. And it becomes like a game in your head. And you give over hours of your days and weeks and years dissecting these things that you don't like in the most elaborate and engaging and esoteric ways. And you become the ultimate connoisseur of weak entertainment. Because by the time you get to view it with an intelligent adult brain, the people who are piping it into your home have lowered the standards so low. Because if you get the kiddies on the good stuff early enough they will form a relationship with it in much the same way that people do to cats and dogs and other such animals. And you can pretty much show them anything. And even if they don't like it, they will still constantly engage with it. And it becomes this form of communication or conversational thought thing that affects the way that you view the world, completely shaping your desires. Because how could being bombarded with this much imagery not fuck up the way you view the world?

And when you're not watching this stuff, you take a look at the people that this thing or these things or the whole thing is producing. And they seem to you at odds with everything that is human about interaction. And there's just nothing there. Everyone is watching the screen.

I hope it is not like that where you are.
A NOTE FROM THE OVERGROUND (DATE UNKNOWN)

I sit backwards facing on a train from A to B, calling at fatigued and irascible, contemplating a single question:

Why is it that I invariably find myself within hearing dialogue of the more garrulous of the two people engage in telephone conversations?

I notice the phenomena daily. Wherever dialogue is exchanged between two people—group conversations do not follow this pattern and must be examined separately—there is invariably a leader of the conversation and a follower.

The conversation's leader is often the more charismatic. Though charisma is maybe the wrong word, as those who say the most often offer such piddle as to become television static, whilst the follower simply comforts the lead with gestures of affirmation*.

*This is of course a gross oversimplification, but you must be forgiving. A day of drudgery has left my mind in a lackadaisical state of... [I cannot think of the term].

—It is true; I am a talker.

And since I allow others their sophistry and slipshod reasoning on matters of far greater importance, I am unconcerned if an observation that I make is a tad unformulated. It has been a long day, and I have not ejaculated in twenty-seven hours and stifle an erection as I sit writing this. And my animal instinct may be starting to overpower my abstract logical reasoning.

Maybe if the woman I am forced to listen to had an erotic timbre, this observation may not have even occurred; I could have rested my head on the clear glass of the moving locomotive, listened to her erotic dilly-dallying and gently rocked my pelvic bone against the tight fit of my wage slave polyester, slowly lengthening myself to consolation.
VEDA, CHEESE, AND THE SMALL DOG GOING BY THE CHOCOLATE SHOP

What began as a dilatory review of David Lynch's Inland Empire meandered into a slapdash critique of modern cinema in its entirety.

[Veda: Pertaining to total knowledge]

I don't scare easily. I mean when I was a kid, sure. When I was a kid, things used to frighten me. I had a fear, some would say a phobia, I would say rational aversion, of being snatched by men and taken to the woods and buggered. I was scared of that—and spiders. But I subsequently confronted and overcame that fear too. Just like the general fears that kids have, I in time overcame. Now, being a mature adult, I don't scare that easily, especially when it comes to pictures on a screen.

When people talk to me and tell me that so-and-so is terrifying and such-and-such 'I just have to see, because, seriously, it is like the scariest thing that you will ever see, I mean seriously,' I suppress the natural and overwhelming urge to scoff and called them morons. Because more often than not, when I do take their largely erroneous recommendations, I find myself watching hammy actors piss about in expensive studios, covered in fake blood, shirtless and bedraggled, whilst other actors engage in ineffable acts of mutilation ubiquitous to a studio system that seems to churn this shit-spray out like a malfunctioning Mr. Whippy machine in the hands of a hapless polish pubescent.

And amongst the blood and guts and tits and limbs that explode out of the screen, and amongst the piercing screams of the more often than not female victims, who yelp like mangy dogs in long-stay kennels, being too stupid to realize the complete futility of their plangent, since the viewer will not permit such a release. And why should they? Would the victims really enjoy the same perfect existence? Would they really want to go back to their lives disposed of spleens and eye-balls? After a maniacal mastectomy performed to make the mentally retarded villain his own personal lady dress, to be donned and paraded for an oedipal progenitor who would rather a daughter.

See, when all of this is happening at me, I cannot help but just feel extremely bored. Bored with the hokeyness of it all; the staleness of the genre, in general. Because it simply does not affect me, beyond the easy, annoying, foreground left to right quick movement exploited by post-Sixth Sense film-makers too ignorant to realize that it was not a novel technique. Or what I've heard referred to as the 'quiet, quiet, quiet, LOUD!' techniques adopted by the found footage brigade. And it is all so dull and predictable and diluted.

And plays on the comfortable fears and neuroses of ordinary pricks. Puerile and childish fears of abduction and torture—the ultimate fear for the idiot westerner. The fear that they will somehow, out of nowhere and for no discernible reason—maybe on a fishing trip into backwards rural pastures; or on a joyous exploration of the American landscape in the interim between high-school and college; Perhaps just walking home from cheerleading or soccer practice, or day-care or scouts or blah, blah, blah. Yes, they will be plucked from their cushy lives and submitted to mindless and unexplained captivity and torture, as they weep and lament: 'Why me? Why me? I didn't do anything!'

Yes, these are the fears of the modern horror fan. And so what they do is, in a masochistic act of harm against their own wondrous souls, they take these fears, carry them into a multi-screen cinema, and pay extortionate amounts of money to have someone on the screen go through it in their stead. And watch on with sickening schadenfreude as the actors they idolize are submitted to such fears. So that by the end of it all, the credits can roll and the lights can come up. And they can turn to the stupid person next to them, and ask: 'How scary was that?!', and 'Aren't you glad that didn't happen to you?'

And these are some of the reasons that I like David Lynch so very much.

Just look at him! His idiosyncratic coiffure: part Henry Spencer, part Samuel Beckett; his kitsch fifties fashion and lexicographical manner; His sincere use of anachronistic terms like: 'Thanks a million', 'Okey-do key', 'Gee', and 'Marvy'. People say he's an eccentric, and maybe he is—who fucking cares?!

Artists are meant to be weird. We've all had friends who we've wanted to be more than friends with, right. And these friends introduce you to the person they're dating, and we say 'What are you dating a weird twat like that? Date me!' And our friends say 'He's not weird; he's an artist. And I love him!'

I'd take an eccentric like Lynch over some insipid normal any day. For one, they're simply more interesting. There is simply more going on behind the eyes of an eccentric than behind the eyes of your ordinary film-maker. Most normal film-makers learn technical film-making at college or University. Then get a job and go through the motion until, if they're successful, they kill themselves with excess. Or if they are not, maybe still kill themselves with excess but maybe not as much. Or else they just wade through the muggy waters of compromise until they croak, leaving no discernible trace that they were ever even here, besides a body of work so swollen that it is no longer recognizable. And those who weep do so over the tragedy that is potential (what could be) over outcome (what is) since it is never nil.

What I find so fascinating about Lynch is his ability to frighten me. As soon as I begin watching one of his films, I am instantly disquieted. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I am very susceptible to sound, and sound is such a conspicuous part his films. His use of sound to invoke emotion is no doubt because Lynch himself is a musician. Watching an interview with Angelo Badalamenti, this composer, concerning how the two came to creating the theme for Twin Peaks organically, proves that Lynch's own imagination seemed to use music to propel itself. And perhaps this is why his films seem to have an ephemeral melodic quality to them. Because they are so influenced, as to almost arise from sound.

Then there is the visual aspect. All his films possess a dreamlike narrative, which makes one immediately fearful. Because, like dreams, there is a potential for anything to happen; an infinite array of possible outcomes that we are led through. What's worse is that they aren't even our dreams, which you would feel we would have some familiarity with. The way that Lynch writes, from a very low level of consciousness, you imagine it just pours out of him unfiltered. Who knows what horrors slip through this automatic writing? He spews his unconscious mind onto a page, films it, and then makes us sit through the horrifying mystery, bemused and enthralled. For anyone interested in human psychology, it is a fascinating mental exercise in amateur psychoanalysis.

His films are not bound to the usual tropes of modern cinema. It has become so easy to predict the outcome of certain types of films. And you feel that it is for this very reason that people enjoy watching them, at some level. Or judging them, as it were. Along with an exponential increase in the amount of films being both produced and consumed, comes the feeling that with this constant consumption, people have started to believe they have a right to judge them. Pope spoke of the role of the critic as a guide to the artist. Of course, he was speaking in a different time, but I feel that it should be the role of any critic.

And the problem is that people have taken their excessive consumption of films as a reason to promote what they subjectively find appealing, whether aesthetically or otherwise; and to lash with tongues of vitriol at what they dislike. And under the guise of subjectivity, everyone is a critic, and it's all just Opinion. This seems to me bullshit. It props up a system that churns out inconsequential guff to placate western capitalist after a day of healthy plunder. Guff that they can rate out of ten or five or two thumbs up; to judge as to how enjoyable they were to digest.

'Mmm. We watched a film with Lee De-Cap last night. It was awfully good. We purchased it with our pay-on-demand subscription with E-2 DIGEST; It lets you rent a new top release, with a choice of five on-demand meal opinions, delivered straight to your door, within minutes! The meal arrived just as Leo was facing a moral dilemma, and by the time he had resolved it, we were sated. THANK YOU, E-2 DIGEST!'

Read this quote, it is from another marvellous Auteur, Michael Haneke (Amour, The White Ribbon, Cache, etc.):

'Truthfully, reality is not transportable or explicable. In literature, it's something that has been accepted by everyone, but in movies, we are always four steps back. It's not surprising that we are in this position, because it is a reassuring point of view for the public and with it, one can make a lot of money. But if you consider cinema as an art, then you have to be a little bit more concrete and realistic.'

See here's another one, another kook: laughing at tragedy in a Vienna Opera-house. Before a screening of one of his more controversial films Benny's Video, he wishes the audience 'a technically good but mentally irritating projection.' Isn't that just fucking brilliant?! I feel that there are very few filmmakers currently doing anything of the sort. Even the most highly lauded of Hollywood—I won't name them because they are obvious. They make films that do not challenge the viewer to interact with it; It's all one-way traffic. The film is consumed by the view. And then judged as to how successfully it was consumed.

You sit there, letting the experience happen. Hopefully, you aren't too bored. Or forced to think about things outside of what's going on onscreen. The film ends, and you go to get ice cream or coffee, or a bite to eat. You discuss what you thought could have been done better, and about how awful the actress looked, and the affair, and how crap it was. And it was all just an excuse to sit in a darkened room and escape the burdens of the mundane lives that you find ourselves leading.

This seems a complete waste of time. It is too easy. It requires nothing of the spectator. It amounts to nothing but voyeurism; the diminution of self into a fantasy world. Which is fine—do what you want. But don't pretend that you are watching amazing pieces of art. You delude yourself because you do well to do so.

In Mulholland Drive's Club Silencio, the two protagonists watch a woman perform an Italian version of Roy Orbison's 'Crying', only she is not actually singing. The compare says:

'It is all a recorded; It is all a tape; It is all an illusion.'

In the wings, presiding over audience and stage is the lady with blue hair. She is crying.

At the end of the film, we return to Club Silencio. And the final line of the film is delivered by the blue lady: 'Silencio.'

You could argue that this pivotal scene is a microcosm of the entire film, and his work, in general, along with all good films made by auteurs of merit. It is hard to do anything other than speculate since all Lynch's films are so open to interpretation. It could also be argued that by the very method by which Lynch creates his films, that even he would have nothing but an opinion on the matter. And this I think is the key to it all. All you can do is but offer your interpretation—here is mine:

Throughout Lynch work, there is a current of spirituality; a feeling that all things are unified. He practices transcendental meditation. And when asked questions about his films, is known to quote Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: 'We are like spiders. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dream that dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true of the entire universe.'

He seems to free his mind to allow what will come out to do so, whilst structurally tying his films together with an overall view of the unknowable oneness of the universe. The scene in Club Silencio typifies this: The illusion, the deception, the allegorical recording, the symbolic tape—all alluding to the all unfolding outwards of infinity. And any meaning we derive is but a hopelessly simplicity glimpse of a wondrously incomprehensible universe. And we are left with nothing but the comprehension of our own confusion. And above us all, the blue lady silently presides.

Lynch's films scare me because they confound me. I do not know what they mean; or even if they have any merit. But the fact I keep thinking about their meaning even after watching them makes me feel they do. The fact they engage me in a way, that few others do, make me feel it is the effect they have on the participant that is of importance. Unlike most films, they do not give any particular answers. They raise questions certainly, innumerable questions. But they leave it up to the viewer to suggest answers to such questions. Or at least, the good ones do. And this is the same with Michael Haneke or Mike Leigh. Or any auteur who recognizes that cinema can be an art-form. But in order for it to be so, it must possess a quality that affects the subject.

And in order for it to do that, it must engage. It must make the spectator aware it knows it is being viewed; that it is being consumed. And, like any good, affective piece of art, this should not be a comfortable consumption.
BOSTON TEA PARTY

'It's just all so barbaric.'

Catherine had intended to serve braised lamb shawarma with the accompanying wine being either a Chateau Bonnet or Chateau Bordeaux as the light tannic bite of either would have very much complimented the dish. But the supermarket had only meagre tahini, and when she had asked the inept assistant the direction of the pomegranate molasses, he had frozen and the disfluency that followed made her doubt whether he had even understood the question.

She had thought of serving roasted butternut squash salad with pears and Stilton. The Anjou's were in season, and she had seen some Colston Bassett that would have been most apt. But then remembered that she wanted to save the recipe until Christmas, where she would 'flip the script' on the dish. Putting the roasted squash, prosciutto and Stilton/Colston Bassett into a puff pastry and serving it on a bed of escarole with vinaigrette; making the meal more substantial.

So she had finally decided upon Vietnamese noodle salad with pork patties, Bun Cha, with a fruity and always welcomed Principesco Brunello di Montalcino. The climate had finally bowed to the season, and it was too hot an afternoon for anything but a tasty light refreshing brunch. She had set aside the vermicelli to cool for a modest hour and was in the process of preparing the patties before grilling. It was at this point that Edie walked into the sun-filled kitchen, wearing a delicate dress bought at the beginning of the year and only now been able to be worn, denouncing that it's just all so barbaric.

She (Edie) had already begun to slur, her voice rising in defiance of the conversation she had staggered to get away from. Flour-handed Catherine twitched her nose in an attempt to alleviate an itch. Having failed in this attempt, she tried using her shoulder. Edie, seeing her friend's futile attempts, tottered over to and happy scratched the itch. And, pulling a bottle from the casier à vin above and placing it atop the counter, stood spellbound by her friend's deftness at preparing haute cuisine.

'You're so talented' Edie slurred in unctuous earnest.

'You're so lovely,' Catherine said, as she continued pressing patties, 'Are they still embroiled in debate?' She lifted her head in the direction of the muffled television set.

Edie grimaced and scoffed in the same direction.

'They keep ignoring me? Whenever they talk about stuff likes this, they always ignore me. It's like I'm not there.'

Catherine had noted that whenever Edie took a drink, she tended to get rather petulant. She wondered if she was always this way, and was simply better at masking it when sober. She wondered whether this characteristic made her more appealing to men, or less. Edie was prettier than Catherine. Catherine thought it, even James said it once, accidentally. But Edie idealized her, and she knew it. And she had the confidence of intellect on her side. The two were good friends.

Flour-handed Catherine ushered tipsy Edie into the living room to refill empty glasses and repatriate her into the heated conversation that she had fled, so's to continue unabated with her preparation. The two entered to a mewling cacophony of acrimony:

'What are you babbling on about? It is a matter of definition. WMDs are legal defined as—'

'Don't whip out that legal nonsense and completely disgrace yourself. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have to concede that—'

'Oh! I'm disgracing myself?! See this is why you can't have an honest argument with an English teacher. Because they get all up-in-arms and emotional and end up spluttering nonsense. Tell me, how are we meant to reach any sort of conclusion if you end up barking like a beast, eh?'

'I am seething! I'm not even, I'm; I'm actually seething—

'Oh! Come now, your being hyperbolic!'

'Boys! ' Catherine cried, silencing the room.

James looked to his wife with a wry smile that marked his flushed face. He was drunk and being contrary for kicks and Catherine knew as much. Roger took the reprieve to fold his arms and looked sullen. Edie moved across the room towards him, sitting on the rest of his armchair and stroking his floppy hair in an attempt to appease his mood. This proved largely successfully, and Edie walked back across the room toward the floor handed Catherine, whose arms were fixed in the position of a surgeon awaiting surgical gloves—no doubt in fear of flouring the pristine décor of the living room—and clumsily attempted to open the merlot. Leaving to two men to continue their argument in a more civilised tone:

'All I am trying to get at,' Roger continued calmly, 'Is that one must concede, regardless of how the term is legally defined, that it is almost a moot point.'

James began to shuffle uncomfortably in his chair.

'Because of the fear that this term will provoke in the American public, and the fervour that it will stir within the society amounts to a death sentence to a child—'

'Child?' James scoffed at the term. 'That child killed three people—including, less we forget, an actually child of eight—and injured hundreds more. Before killing a policeman, hi-jacking a car, robbing a civilian at gunpoint, driving that civilian to an ATM—'

'He was a kid following his brother for Christ's sake! You'd pin this all on him after the fact—'

'He was complicit in an act of terrorism! Regardless of motive, he is a terrorist.'

'What, so he deserves to be murdered by the state, does he?!'

'I didn't say that. But you are simply eschewing the fact that he is a criminal because it benefits your politics.'

'Nonsense—'

'Oh, Really?! Whenever any act of terrorism happens, you seem always to side with the perpetrators. Your sympathies lie with the criminals. It's another obvious trait of your idealistic world view.'

'Oh, Rubbish! I refuse to apologize for sympathizing with the one over the many!'

'See this is what I mean. What does that even mean? Cath, what does that mean? What is he talking about?'

But Catherine was engrossed in the television and hadn't been listening. There was a worker's protest in Dhaka over factory death. 200 people had died after a factory had imploded. The protesters were calling for action over the factory owner's violation of construction codes.

James stared blinking for a time before turning to Edie.

'Edie, perhaps you can help. Any idea as to what your simpering husband is on about?'

Edie looked up from the wine bottle, the two men staring back longingly. She offered a single giggle and returned her attention to the bottle's obstinate cork.

'This is getting us nowhere.'

'I agree.'

The two sat in silence for a time as the TV commented on Spain's unemployment rate, which had jumped to 27%, before turning back to one another.

'Well you have to admit that the 'Shelter in Place' issue was a mistake.'

'Oh! Definitely, I mean they didn't even find him until the curfew was lifted. It did nothing but scared an already frightened populous?

'Probably the point.'

'I was reading an article in Haaretz—Chemi Salev, good writer. He stated that in terms of a cost-benefit analysis, from the terrorists' point of view, the operation would have been a success; maximum exp—'

The bang caused a moment of shocked rigidity, and for a second or so no one in the room thought of anything. Catherine was the first to compose herself. She turned towards Edie, who crouched beside the spilt merlot, hand to mouth. The contents glugged towards Catherine's feet, occasionally swelling specks of flour that peppered the floor.

'The Moulinet?' James asked portentously.

Edie nodded her head gravely.

'I'll get a cloth.'

Catherine returned and began to exsiccate the carpet, diluting the stain with Perrier and blotting with a Williams-Sonoma kitchen towl. Everyone else was still in shock.
THE ROBBERY

When I awoke this morning, Kelsey Grammer's ghost was sitting on my chest raving about bloody crisps. I told him that he wasn't even dead yet and to get off, but he just said that spirits transcended time and space and kept on about how he did love a good crisp. Ghosts don't weigh that much, but he looked sweaty, and I didn't want him near my bottom. He kept complimenting me on my dashing pyjamas.

I said I'd get him his crisps if he paid me the money in advance. He said that I shouldn't be so suspicious. I told him it was nothing to do with suspicion; I simply hadn't the money to pay. My parents had left me some when they left, but I frittered that away on tins. Having heard this, Kelsey's Gammer's ghost disappeared for a bit, and returned with a wallet he had stolen off a producer.

When I looked inside the wallet, it was all the wrong currency. I told his ghost this, but he just said to talk in an American accent and that if I did, the shop lady wouldn't know any different. He told me that if I didn't get him the crisps by the time he got back that he would haunt me forever. He then exclaimed his name before disappearing.

I wore a dress to the shop because I felt it made me look more American. On the way, I flashed the postman that wore very tight shorts. He was holding a package that I knew contained a dense scroll of adjectives that could be used to insult cold-callers. He told me to get a bigger letter box. I responded that if I did get a bigger letter box, he would have to deliver it, and it wouldn't fit. He thought about this for a moment before telling me to get a smaller letter box. I narrowly avoided being run over by a Sue Barker on a push bike. She called out that she was jealous of my figure, and I blushed.

I entered the shop and thought best to peruse and alleviate any suspicion. The shop is owned by a lady called Edith, who I once tried to kiss because she reminded me of Lady Di upside down in a fish tank. Her hair always looks surprised, and she had lost one of her fingers in the shop-until. She thinks I'm black.

I picked up a magazine that had a picture of a Prime Minster on it. He was pouring a bag of shoes onto a beggar and berating him whilst Carol McGiffin was stealing his dog. Everyone was grinning. I leafed through the magazine but the print was too big, and I couldn't make out any word other than 'BELIEVE'. I rolled the magazine up and crammed it away from me.

I went to the crisp section and picked up several packets. To prevent a Kelsey Grammer ghost strop, I choose a variety. I don't know much about Crisps besides the sound they make when you crush them, so I decided that I'd buy the ones that crushed best, which were mostly red ones. So I picked them off the floor and took them to the counter.

Edith had just finished serving a customer who was complaining about scratch cards. The man said that he had kept winning, and that it was defeating the purpose of buying them. Edith stood confused. The man went on, saying he no longer needed the money, which was the initial appeal of the scratch card and wanted compensation for loss of happiness. Edith asked if more money wouldn't make him less happy. He shook his head, muttering something about it all going to the dogs.

I greeted Edith with my affected American accent, and she began to scan the crushed packs of red crisps. I started making small talk, and I could tell she was growing suspicious. She stopped scanning the crisps and looked at me. She asked me to lower my bonnet. I began to sweat.

Suddenly, a man in a Phil Mitchell as a pirate mask rushed into the shop brandishing a plastic fly swatter and began swatting both me and Edith around the face. It was deeply irritating, and I told him to stop. He said for me to shut my gob and told Edith to empty the cash register into the crumpled popcorn packet he produced from his giraffe onesie. She was shrieking that the till was broken and that if it wasn't, then why was she missing a digit. But the man in the Phil Mitchell as a pirate mask prodded her obnoxiously with the swatter and told her that she was spouting guff.

He turned to me and began to leer. He said he was a country gent, and that we should both go on a picnic. I spluttered that I wasn't that kind of girl, but in my panic had forgotten to put on the American accent. Edith turned to me and asked where it had gone. I couldn't think fast enough and ended up telling her that it was at the doctors.

The masked man in the giraffe onesie began swatting Edith viciously until she placated him with two hundred B&H, some lucky dips, and a draw of tic-tracks. He cackled greedily, pronouncing that he was on to a winner before rollerbladed away leaving Edith and I standing stunned. In all the excitement, I had wet myself.

Edith sighed and opened a pack of the Kelsey Grammer ghost's crisps and poured them into her gaping mouth as we waited for her husband to come and clean up my mess.

He was still cowering behind the counter.
TELFORD HAYES READS 'BUMBLEBEE'

I had a dream last night that I was a bumblebee. I flew around the place pollinating everything—flowers mainly. I thought myself my own knees and this overconfidence caused resentment amongst the other bee people. Harry was especially jealous. Harry was an old hand at being a bee and knew all the tricks. But he was getting older and sometimes his wings stop working or just worked really slowly, like how hand-fans get sometimes.

He always knew where the best flowers were, though. And when he'd finished his business everyone was most impressed. So I'd taken to tailing Harry to whichever flower he was instinctually drawn to and at the last minute, using my impressive wing speeds, would overtake and pollinate.

Now, it wasn't long before the swarm started getting jealous of my supreme abilities. They would often go out pollinating whilst I was still asleep, or admiring myself in the bark-sap.

Eventually, one day, Harry began chasing me shouting: 'You're not a bee! You're cheating!' Of course, I found this dreadfully funny but when I tried to giggle, I could not, for I was a bumblebee and lacked the capacity. So I just flew away very, very fast.

When I awoke from my dream, I was most depressed. I realized that I could never be a bumblebee in the real world and instead had to work licking envelopes at the Inland Revenue. The next day I heard the sound of a nearby beehive, was overcome with jealousy, picked up a large stick and attacked.
LONDON EXPLODED

There was a town in England called London. It was sometimes called Londinium by wankers or the perpetually ironic who were wankers also. I'm sure it had a rich history but cannot be bothered to look it up because I don't care.

Every time I had been to London, I came back drunk and reeking of piss. Everyone there was a tourist except a few homeless people and the odd food vendor that was always foreign. It was the sort of place where you'd be hit by a cab, and all people could think about was how inconvenienced they were by your death. This was because the city had been unsuccessful in educating its citizens, and they'd all grown up bitter and thick as pig shit.

I'm glad the country decided to explode it.

When I first heard news of the decree, I was sceptical. It didn't seem the smartest move. Aside from the people and the smell, I'd been told it was rather central to the economy. Lots of fat sweaty people in fancy fabric would walk around eating sushi and gossiping. This was known in macroeconomics as The Wasp Factor and was needed somehow.

But the explosion was pretty well promoted, and everyone seems fully supportive—except the mayor who was mainly concerned about the bicycles.

The best thing about London exploding was that the majority of my friends and family still lived there. I even came out ahead. Of course, the property bequeathed to me was obliterated but that was okay. I could live without an old chest of draws that I'd only have had to shift myself anyway. Especially if it meant everyone that I owed money would be dead.

There were futile attempts at migration, which only succeeding in making TV good again. It was like when reality TV first came around—but with turrets. The House of Lord decided that it would be inhuman to kill the migrants until they were to be exploded. So the soldiers just fired heavy-duty dummy bullets instead of live rounds. And only once they got too near to the fences. It was all very well organized. Only a handful of people actually made it out and are pretty-much celebrities now.

There were of course people trying to rally against exploding the city—mostly do-gooder's and those who lived there with their families. The rest of the country was either too busy watching Channel Four's Inner-City Carnage or preparing the Pre-Explosion Spectacular to worry about picketing Whitehall. Especially after Whitehall was abandoned. Cabinet ministers mostly operate out of cars now.

On the day of the explosion, everyone was given the day off and most people had explosion parties in gardens. The Pre-Explosion Spectacular was built up too much for it to be anything other than predictably disappointing. A particularly low point was when a boisterous comedian called all remaining within the radius of the explosion zone a 'bunch of exploding cunts'. Everyone agreed the joke was in poor taste.

The Queen gave a rather earnest speech whilst openly weeping. And Kate and William stepped forward holding little Georgie, who pushed the gilded detonator giggling.

The sound was surprisingly susurrant.
LOVE ON A SOFA BED (ONE DIRECTION EROTIC FAN FICTION)

Hey guys, this is my first attempt at writing erotic fan fiction so be gentle.

Your brother has been best friends with the boys in One Direction his whole life. He knew them before they were famous, and they always used to come round for tea. They used to treat you just like one of the boys because you were a couple of years younger and yet to develop. Then they went and got famous on The X Factor and you and your brother didn't see them very much because they were touring.

Whilst they were away you developed from a tomboy into a fully-fledged woman. All the boys want you, but you find them too immature and childish and are waiting until the right man comes along. You live with your brother in a semi-detached house now. He is a plumber, and you work part-time at Topshop whilst studying for your NVQ.

One day, your brother gets a phone call from the lads saying they are back in town and did he want to catch up. He says sure and asks them what they want to do. They say they are tired of the spotlight and just fancy a bit of normality for a change. He says of course and invites them around to your house to relax.

When he tells you the news, you get a tingle. One Direction? Here? You are all old friends but so much has changed. They are no longer just the lads; you no longer just one of the boys. You have developed physically as well as mentally. You wonder how it will be: especially with Harry. You and Harry were always closer than the rest; you shared a connection, always unspoken, ever present.

When the boys arrive at the house, it isn't long before everything feels comfortable. Everyone is joking and laughing about the old times. Everyone mentions how fit you've gotten; you blush. Occasionally you spot Harry glancing in your direction. Your eyes meet for an instant. Then he goes into the kitchen to get another bottle of Becks.

You all drink a fair amount as it is the weekend. After a while, everyone is pretty relaxed and watching the telly. Then Louis asks if anyone want to get high. Zayn says of course. Niall says he would if your brother was okay with it, and your brother says no probs. They all laugh except Harry, who is sheepish. Your brother asks Harry if he's game, but he says that it isn't his bag. They all laugh at him and call him names. They ask you if you want to try some drugs, but you say no. They all leave to smoke drugs in the garden. You and Harry are left alone.

At first, it is awkward. You don't know what to say to each other. There is definitely a sexy vibe in the room but neither of you mentions it. Eventually, you ask why he doesn't like smoking. He shrugs and looks embarrassed. He is adorable. You decide to take control. You move closer to him on the sofa. He begins to get flustered. You tell him that you have missed hanging out with him. He agrees. He says that it is lonely on the road and that sometimes he needs someone to talk to. You brush the hair away from his face. 'You can always talk to me,' you say. He looks at you for the first time. 'Maybe talk isn't what I need.'

You stare into each other eyes for what seems an eternity. Then you kiss. Time stands still.

Before you know what is happening you lead Harry up the stairs. Your heart is beating fast, and his palm is sweaty in your hand. You pull him into the spare bedroom and close the door. He throws you onto the sofa bed. Both your bodies are rubbing together hard now. You tell him to take your clothes off. Harry tears at your Topshop dress and you moan sexily. Harry touches your boobs. You feel his heavy breath on your neck as he kisses your throat.

'I want you', Harry says. 'Have me.'

Harry takes off his skinny jeans and designer underwear and tee. His body is sexy and glistens in the light of the spare bedroom. You look at Harry's naked body and feel your sex throb with excitement. He lies on top of you, parts your knickers and enters. You groan with pleasure. It doesn't even hurt. 'This is the best feeling in the world,' you tell him. He says that he loves it, that you are the fittest girl he has ever seen. You tell him he's the coolest; he makes a loud groaning sound and thrust his sexy hips into your pelvic bone.

It is over. He takes a moment to catch his breath. He is flustered and looking cute. You kiss his forehead and tell him he so. You both laugh.

After a moment, you both get dressed and go downstairs and sit on the sofa. As you do, the rest of the boys come back in from the garden giggling and re-join you and Harry Styles.

You both act like nothing has happened but every so often you glance at each other and wink.

This is the best night of both your lives, and neither of you will ever forget it.
25 QUID JOB (IN THE CITY)

I got a £25 a week internship at a company that described itself as the 'Silicon Valley of Clapham'. It's above a chip shop. I found it whilst searching for a media job on Gumtree. My sister told me I had to get a job and start paying my way if I wanted to continue sleeping on her couch—I don't think her husband likes me. It was between the media internship and the high-street modelling of a six-foot cancerous testicle for the charity 'Fright4Life'. I decided on the internship as I am not particularly theatrical.

On my first day, I was greeted by a fellow named T_Bolt. T_Bolt was called T_Bolt on account of his lightning-fast ideas, he said. One of the first things T. told me was never to wear shorts as shorts were his thing. He offered me a mint, and I liked him immediately. As he showed me around, I became very aware of how sticky the floor was. T. assured me that the floor was sticky because of all the ideas and that once I'd gotten settled, he'd sort me out with my own pair of thinking crocs. I had absolutely no idea what anything he said meant but was excited to meet someone who obviously knew how to fashion.

The 'intern's area' was one of the more shabby bean bags in a room littered with bean bags. T. told me that everyone was very laid back and that the bean's bags reflected this. Most of the bean bags were occupied by sleeping people who all seemed very nice. T. told me that they were all geniuses, before showing me his office, which was a toilet. He said that the toilet was the perfect workplace for the modern man. The toilet was peppered with post-it notes of stickmen karate-kicking army tanks. I asked him if I could use his office to make proper, and he declined.

There was a computer in the kitchenette, where a man slept soundly in a bin-bag on the floor. I asked who the sleeping man was and T. told me that he was a 'well-wizard tech-genie.' A computer monitor was in the sink atop an exploded microwave. T. told me that the microwave was exploded in a team-building exercise and that one of my jobs as the intern would be to locate more devices to explode. He then asked me if I knew any good rubbish tips, and I said no.

After T. showed me the office, he took me to a pub called 'The Comely Maiden' to celebrate my internment. It was there I discovered that the company was in the business of developing lucrative phone apps. When I asked him what kind, he showed me a video of a man being sick on a roller-coaster. The man was fat and looked uncomfortable, so I laughed. T. told me that it was his business to stir the technological pot. I asked him where the technological pot was, and he laughed and said I was 'total irony.' He ordered multiple shots of 'Flaming Mess,' and we played several games of 'Guess the Number.'

When we finally left the pub, T. told me that obviously the drinks were coming out of my pay whilst attempting to karate-chop a grounded pigeon. We spent the next hour-and-a-half trying on hats at a place called 'Hats³', where T. used the phrase 'Fedora the Explorer' six times and bought me an intern's beanie that had a propeller on it.

I spent the rest of the afternoon rotating the propeller whilst trying not to vomit externally, as T. was making karate sounds in the bathroom, and I didn't want to make the floor any more sticky.

At about 6 pm the sleeping people on the beanbags began to wake up and check their beanbag tablets. One of them had been sent an animating gif of a rollerblading duck and was laughing uncontrollably. An androgynous man with a faux-hawk asked me who I was and why I was on Eddie's beanbag; I asked who Eddie was, and he said that Eddie was an arsehole. I told him I was the new intern, and that I didn't know what time I was supposed to finish.

Twenty minutes later, I was at the top of a dilapidated stairwell playing lookout for the beanbag man, as he scored hash out of a flat door post-box. He was explaining through the door that soon he would be rich enough to successfully avoid paying tax and that his credit should reflect this. The man behind the door said something back in a language I didn't care to understand.

On the way back from the botched deal, I asked the beanbag man if he happened to know the name of the company that both he and I worked for. He asked why I cared. I told him that if I went back to my sister without even the name of the company that I supposedly worked for, she would most likely kick into homelessness. He said that they had yet to finalize the design but likened it to the Prince symbol.
PUTULA ALLEGRO'S SUNSHINE FACTORY by WES ANDERSON

INT. SUNSHINE FACTORY. DAY

A fanciful magic-factory ensconced within an old dilapidated Italian warehouse where ramshackled and effete meet resplendence busies itself in various stages of production. A feckless line manager by the name of GIUSEPPE BONANNO tosses orders around in a swirl of chaos to various Italian underlings.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO: Faster! Faster! Una buona intenzione lasciato incustodito è alcuna intenzione a tutti! [Translation: A good intention left unattended is no intention at all!] If we no make-a this shipment, the Orphanage of Signorina Lunaria O Moneta will be completely without gioia [Translation: Joy]. And if Signorina Petula gives Giuseppe a molti-ceffone [Translation: A lot of thick ears] then Giuseppe will ritorno dieci volte [Translation: Return ten-fold] the-a ceffone on-a alls a you Jabronis [Translation: Jabronis].

Giuseppe's assistant BONITO AGNELLI enters holding an adorable BABY YAK adorned in a military jacket with The Sunshine Factor emblem emblazoned on the left breast.

BONITO AGNELLI: Horace has the mumps again. I think we should stop milking him for a few days so that he might convalesce.

Giuseppe thrusts his hands towards the sky in a burst of exaggeration.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO: Mamma mia! [Translation: My goodness!]

Giuseppe keenly eyes the Young yak with intense suspicion.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO: And this is bona fide is it? He isn't fabricating this whole mumps thing to avoid ...

He brings Bonito in closer.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO: ... To avoid being milked by the machine ...

BONITO AGNELLI: Feel his glands.

Giuseppe lets out a howl of consternation.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO: Mi tirare come la pasta e cuocere in me una pagnotta! [Translation: roll me like dough and bake me in a loaf]. Fine, he sleeps with you tonight.

Bonito nods and leaves stroking the yak's chin. Suddenly, there is a loud bang. Giuseppe turns swiftly and heads in the direction of the explosion. He approaches a science beaker that is the size of a barn, as a GIDDY WORKER is being helped out after having fallen in. The man is covered in milk and mutters joyous utterances to his fellow workers who crowd around looking concerned.

GIDDY WORKER: Ti amo! [Translation: I love you] Ti voglio bene. [Translation: I love you a lot] Mi piaci molto. [Translation: I really like you] Sei importante per me.[Translation: You are important to me].

Giuseppe looks at the man with disgust and motions for him to be taken away.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO: Take this malato d'amore idiota [Translation: Love sick fool] to the infirmary.

Giuseppe looks toward TINO DRAGO who hangs suspended in mid-air holding a twelve-foot ear-bud.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO: Tino! How many times have I told you about greasing the beaker?!

TINO DRAGO: It can't be helped, boss.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO: Serpenti risiedono nella mia tana! [Translation: Snakes reside in my own den]

A YOUNG TRAMP clothed in rags scampers pass Giuseppe causing him to whirl confused. The tramp runs off giggling.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO: That boy again! Borsellini! Someone get me Borsellini!

BORSELLINI, the proud fascist, enters brandishing a 2 mm Kolibri and immediately empties an entire round.

BORSELLINI: I think I may have clipped him, Il Duce.

Giuseppe looks at him incredulously before giving him a hearty thwack.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO: Fool! Don't call me that.

BORSELLINI: Don't worry, I'll get him. That kid just bought a dead horse without even knowing it.

Borsellini removes a walkie-talkie from his belt and puts it to his mouth whilst walking off.

BORSELLINI: Mio figlio [Translation: My son], arm the SM-70's in the East quadrant. Let's go fishing for some limbs.

Giuseppe heaves an exaggerated sigh. His name is called over the TANNOY.

TANNOY: Signor Bonanno, sir, Signorina Allegro has returned from the board meeting and wishes to see you in her office, post-haste.

Giuseppe is caught for a moment in ponderance.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO: (to the tannoy) What scent is she wearing?

TANNOY: Black mist.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO: Mamma Mia!

Giuseppe hurries off muttering to himself.

The young tramp reappears wearing Borsellini's fascist cap. He bends over and pats his behind in defiance and rushes off. A hatless Borsellini lumbers in flustered. He takes to one knee and empties another clip. He gets to his feet and giving chase once more. 
THE LOST INBETWEENERS SCENE

[WILL V/O]: Simon was my best friend. I mean, let's face it; he was one of my only friends. However, even I was getting bored to tears by the amount of time he spent talking about a girl who, let's face it; he had as much chance of 'bonking' as Neil had at counting to ten without the use of his digiti manus, i.e. his fingers.

INT. JAY'S HOUSE – DAY

The boys walk into the living room discussing Simon's obsession with Carli.

SIMON: No...because, you see, it's not like that: we've got a 'connection.'

JAY: Just because you spent your childhood playing in a sandbox with her doesn't mean you're gonna get into her sandbox, Si; you absolute bell jar.

Will tuts into the air.

WILL: Charming!

JAY: Besides, let's face it; you're not metro enough for her.

NEIL: Ah yeah, that's true.

SIMON: What?! Because I'm not an urban supermarket, I'm never gonna be able to get with Carli. Is that what you're saying?

JAY: What?!

Will puts his finger into the air.

WILL: There appears to be a bit of linguistic confusion afoot.

JAY: What're you chatting, briefcase?

NEIL: I'm well confused!

SIMON: Yeah, Will; what are you chatting?

WILL: (Sarcastically) What I'm chatting, Jay, is that whilst Simon is obviously talking about a supermarket—more specifically a 'Tesco Metro'—you are no doubt referring to modern interpretation of the 'Metrosexual Man'.

JAY: You would know!

Will tuts into the air.

WILL: Charming!

SIMON: Wait, what d'you mean I'm not metro enough.

JAY: Exactly what I say; I mean, look at you. You're about as metrosexual as a spanner.

NEIL: And a spanner ain't metro-sexual, Si.

WILL: Oh what, an intimate object isn't sexual, Neil; is that what you're saying?

NEIL: (Pause) Yeah.

Will tuts into the air.

WILL: Good grief!

JAY: And it ain't just Carli what's the problem ...

NEIL: What do you mean, Jay?

JAY: We could all do with being a bit more metro.

WILL: Oh, well what do you suggest, Jay? A pedicure; shall we all go on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and get ourselves some matching jumpsuits, or whatever voguish garb the homosexuals feel most appropriate?

JAY: No need.

SIMON: Then what, Jay! What's your amazing idea?

JAY:... BJs

Silence.

JAY: BJ's. Real European like.

The four best friend look at one another. A silence permeates the room. A moment passes.

SIMON: Well, I guess we've tried everything else.

NEIL: Yeah I'm game.

JAY: (Excitedly) What really?!

SIMON: Yeah why not—be a laugh won't it.

NEIL: It'll feel well good on my nob.

The three turn to Will, who is silent.

SIMON: Well, Will. What you reckon? Up for it?

JAY: Yeah...What'd you say, briefcase?

NEIL: Ah come on, Will. It'll be a right laugh.

The three friends look pleadingly at Will, who stands in contemplation.

WILL: Let me get this straight. You're asking if I want to partake in an all-phallic gob orgy. A gorgy, with a trio of plebs?!

SIMON: Yeah.

NEIL: Yeah.

JAY: Well, obvs.

Moments passes; The three look on at their friend.

WILL: oh, go on then!

ALL: YAY!

The four friends celebrate with youthful buoyancy—dancing around the living room joyfully. Then they all give each other blowjobs.

WILL V/O: And as I knelt there obliging Jay's modest member with my lovely mouth, I was reminded very much of my time at private school? It was like Proust; but with Plebs.

Jay pounds the Will's mouth. As he begins to thrust harder, BENJI enters and crams his snout in Jay's rectum.

JAY: (Moaning) Oooh, Benji.

WILL: (Inarticulate) Charming!
A VINDICATION OF THE B-MOVIE

[Tennessee Accent]

I heard a noise out back but didn't want to cause a fuss or nothing, so I let it be. If anything was out there it would make another noise; tip over the lawn furniture or something like that; and someone else would hear it and I wouldn't look like a jerk-off.

Kev was rattling on bout the best B-Movie to jack it to. And he was pretty smart when it came to stuff like it so's worth paying attention. His older brother used to collect titty-movies from late-night TV; used to tape them overnight with this ditty two-track recording system that he got working. He used to archive them or some weird shit like that.

Anyways, Kev used to share a room with him so the kind of got to know 'em just 'cause. Because Buford, that's Kev's brother, used to spend every day doing this archived titty-movie project and Kev got all the titles and actresses or whatever engrained in his mind like who that happens sometimes. And so any movie with titties in he now kind of knows just how much nudity it's got by like how long the titty-movie footage for that particular film came in at.

Now like I know with the Interweb, there's no shortage of porno and sick shit to amuse yourself with and sure we do that sometimes why not. But the reason we enjoyed just kicking back, drinking brews, getting stoned off our asses and watching this bad-as-shit B-Movies is 'cause it's like a completely fucking rocking way to chill.

B-Movies are just fucking bad-ass. And you know maybe they are shit but move on! Stop taking everything so fucking seriously, faggot. You're sitting in a fucking house, you know! There's real shit going on in the world; complain about that shit sometimes instead of getting on my case about it, shit!

I'm watching shit to forget about shit you hear what I'm saying. And it might be shit but you see these shitty B-Movies we watch at Kev's; They've got a whole fucking experience attached to them, you know—connecting these brothers or whatever. And we get high as shit and ask Buford what the best B-Movie for Amazon-goddess titties and sure as shit he'd know which movie is best for that. I mean, and he feels like he helped. Who'd begrudge him that?
FUNCTIONING SOCIOPATHS [EXTRACT]

It is hard to collect concrete facts about an object; especially when that object is a person.

1. 'Hi, you look awful. Did you find out anything more? I think he's a dick ... no, he is. He's a selfish fucking lad. He should have told you. He should have. He should have found out. I don't care what he told you he's a fucking liar. I bet he did ... I bet he did know ... he'd to have known, there are symptoms for that shit! Sorry ... yeah, I didn't mean ... all I meant was that he must have known, and is a dick for not telling you. I know ... I know ... yeah. I didn't mean to make you feel bad ... I know he ... I know it's not nice to refer to it ... pejorative I know. I know ... sorry ... it's a disease ... I know. I know, listen, do you wanna come over for a bit; I have nothing to do. I'm bored and no one's home ...How did you leave it with him?'

2.'He told me he loved me and was really sorry and I kinda believed him but I'm still really hurt. And more than anything really pissed off because I've been thinking about it for a bit and I'm starting to feel like I'm more mad than anything. 'Cause when it comes down to it and it's like choosing between love and something that's gonna like physically harm me—I mean that fuck infected me! I feel violated. And I'm not really sure I want to see him ever again. It's fucking creeping me out. I mean and he's like talking to me trying to explain himself. Like, there's this divvy girl, right. And he kinda felt sorry for her. And she was always hanging around him and he started to get really stupidly flattered by it. And he's into those kitschy films and loves nerdy looking girls and those films that I keep fucking telling him aren't real, right. And she keeps hanging on. And one night he comes home after a social, and I'm, like, actually doing work and can't piss around with him like he wants. And he's absolutely wasted and trying to be all sexy, and it's like fucking cringe. So I kick him out and tell him to go sleep it off. And that's the last I see him 'til the next day, where he's hung over but otherwise his usual sweet. And it's all good. And now I find out he sees this slut on the way back home and ends up doing bareback this cunt who, turns out is fucking foaming. And now I have to wait and see if this mistake I've been wasting my time with has infected me with his. And all the time he's apologizing and crying and begging me not to leave him. And telling me he wants to be with me forever. And all I'm thinking is that I hope he fucking dies. And now I have to tell my mum, so she can take me. Because there's no way I'm going on my own. I ain't doing it. And it's all happening to me, and why does it have to happen now, and everything is fucking ruined.'

3.Homeless man and his polystyrene cup wait, train-stations and streets, lots of them. I see them all the time and do not give. They always catch my eye, and pity is there in my eyes and theirs, and something is shared. And it is a sad something. And only lasts for a split and then off past him who still sits there with polystyrene cup with not have enough to sustain life, I don't think.

It is winter, and it is cold. And everyone knows more homeless people die in cold than warm because in television there's lots. And sometimes you see it on the internet, and everyone knows. And lots of people are doing little things to help the homeless but lots of people do not much, and I do not anything, and I feel sad a lot. And think about them when warm-house and cosy. And fire warms things differently than radiator.

And homeless man and polystyrene cup wait, train stations streets lots of them.

4. He has this friend, right, who always has to be looked after, and you know everyone has those types of friends, right. So anyways, this friend gets in trouble, right. Get in trouble with the wrong sort of people to be getting into trouble with, right. And he gets all beat up and goes moaning to this guy about how he was being gotten or whatever by these local kiddies who thought they were tough guys, right. And this guy goes to his friend, who's tired of having to fight this guy's battles for him. Cause why didn't he just be a man and fight for himself, right. And anyway, this guy goes at these kids, you know hard. And really does a number on them, and it's all over and done with. Well. It turns out these kids what this guy messed up for this no-good friend weren't the kind of people you'd be messin' up and getting away with it, right. Connected. So anyway this guy comes to me like he always does and I gotta clean up his mess like I always do.

5.You hum. You have this constant emitting thought going thing in the back of your head, humming away in the background. And so that's going all the while and depending on what your like mood is it's splicing with the constant hum in the back of your head, And this mood takes hold of you. And the bad ones are really bad because your thoughts get all gloom. And they're constantly going, and in the end you just ride them. They become silly. They're hell but when they go is like well no there's this, and if you look at it that, and you think why so dark, and cheer yourself up, and stupid stuff. You hum.

6.'I love you, babe. You know what let's go away ... Yeah, a break. Somewhere nice and relaxing, like Greece, although that's shit now, innit, with the economy, and all that. ... I don't know, somewhere foreign. ... Don't matter bout money ... Don't you worry 'bout the money, Harry ... Don't worry about where I get the money, just think about where you wanna go to get a fucking tan, Jesus, would you stop going on about it?! ... Don't matter bout the new law there's ways around it ... Why are you crying ? ... Oh, c'mon enough of that .... Ah, come here .... Don't be silly .... Stop worrying about everything; it's fine ... It'll be fine ... Is this what you've been getting in a twist about? C'mon don't be silly ... C'mon, look ... look ... Harriet, Look at me ...Where'd you wanna go?

7. Okay, stop me if this sounds pretentious. I'm very aware that this could come off sounding pretentious. Okay. My thought is this. A person has over a number of years developed a conception of reality. And when that person's reality encounters things that do not tie-in with the conception of reality that they have over a number of years developed, the person must reconfigure their own conception of reality to encompass this problem. Now, it seems to me people who suffer from depression do so because they have encountered things that have made them question their concept of reality. And in order to get through this depression they must search for a different conception of social reality—it has become social reality now— that will help them go on living. That's the healthy ones; the ones who don't have physical symptoms like cancer. I don't know what those guys do?

8. What the fuck! There's fucking ketchup fucking everywhere you fucking mongoloids! Yeah, well fuck you, you piece of shit, wait until your mom gets home! Sure! Yeah, fucking right you piece of shit, like she's gonna believe you over me any day... Right ... Fuck you, you piece of shit. Go fuck yourself with you gay ass faggot friend. Why don't you both got fucking suck each other off in your fucking gay ass room with all your fucking gay ass faggot fucking ... Fuck you, faggot! Who's she gonna believe, a gay ass faggot piece of shit over her fucking beefcake husband? Fuck you, faggot. Man, you could do it right here in this here living room that don't prove you a man, boy. You just a no-good gay ass faggot gay ass piece of shit, that soon as he gets some pubs on that gay ass of his, can go get the fuck out of my house, and go fuck himself to gay ass faggot death, and I can get some goddamn peace and quiet and some fucking order up in my here abode.

9. Don't do it don't fall asleep. The films only just started. And if we don't watch it now we never will and I really want to watch it. And I can't watch it if you fall asleep so don't fall asleep, k.
ANNUAL LEAVE

'I just don't like how much fun they're all having.'

'It's just because everything is still really new to them.'

'You mean they're slow learners.'

'Exactly!'

—A conversation that I had with myself, just a minute ago.

Platform

An empty to depot scrolling message impairs my view of a poster on the opposing platform. It reads: his little girl is being murdered—one birthday at a time. This seems to me, when coupled, a very stupid set of statements. It is the new novel from the #1 best-selling author Stuart MacBride. I have never heard of him. The book is called Birthdays for the Dead, and the front cover had a little girl with her back to us as she walks further into the wilderness. I am reminded of Don't Look Now. What would be the point of reading a book like this, I wonder?

A train approaches five minutes later. It is three minutes late, but it doesn't matter. I do not have a connecting train to catch, there is nowhere I am supposed to be. As the train approaches I am reminded that it is a weekday. It is teeming with drudgers.

Train

I stand hunched next to one of the doors. A youth exclaims 'That is mad. It was stupid. He shouldn't have worn it to Lewisham'. It is three minutes to ten. A woman across from me speaks to her doctor, she can do any day other than Thursday. She gets off at Balham. 'We are now approaching Wandsworth Common' is automated across the train's PA system. The sun comes out. I wonder if the window fitter who I left in the house has stolen anything yet? Oh, a seat. There is a shortlist magazine left on the chair next to me. Bruce Willis points a gun at my thigh.

FACE THE FUTURE. FIGHT YOUR PAST. In Cinemas Friday

I agree. If it came down to it, I would face my future and fight my past. As I'm pretty sure that I could beat the shit out of my past, and resign myself to the fact that I would get my ass kicked by the future.

If I was a villain, I would take Battersea Power Station as my fortress. I need tea!

Victoria

THE BRAND-NEW SMEGGING SERIES Starts Thursday 4th October, 9PM, exclusively on DAVE. Red Dwarf X: So very tired — 'Again with the smegma!'

The Bread Box does good tea, but always look inconvenienced when I pay by card—like a bus driver. 'Hard currency is an outdated concept' I'd say. But they're always foreign or don't care. Success! The woman oystered the transaction. Now I don't even have to remember a pin number. 'I'm going underground.'

Underground

A husband mops-up hot chocolate spilt on his wife's burka—he appears apologetic.

Victoria, St. James Park, Westminster, Charing Cross.

The Kiosk at Embankment seems particularly dystopian.

Embankment

I walk out to Embankment place to a conversation that the pink pansy flower lady is having with a customer: 'It was the English that was the worst'. I can only assume she means grammatically.

A Unicef chugger informs me that I could save a child with a phone, I told him that I didn't own a phone. A homeless man scuttles past like the fisher king, selling big issues. I really need a piss. I trouser the peace in case my bag is searched.

The National Gallery

Urinate, left at the stairs.

Correggio; Christ Presented to the People [Ecco Homo] 1525-30; The virgin swoons. I am a massive fan of breasts on canvas. I find them deeply erotic.

A Muslim man with a stylized goatee it languished in a chair in an empty hall. I can imagine the gallery has for him lost all of it novelty. A prosaic telephone sits on a table atop three red binders, reminding me of an old British Telecom advertisement.

Rosso Fiorentino; Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Letter, 1518. He could well be Aaron Taylor-Johnson, or at a pinch, Lennon himself.

There are schoolgirls about, although I am not aroused. I suppose it is because they are missing the prosthetic breasts and vacuous holes of the ones I am used to seeing. I have never seen a porno shot in a museum. Idea for series: Porno Scenes in Paces of Pensivity. Dirty talk to include: 'Quiet down bitch, this is a place of learning!'—Blowjob Library Scene.

Could I become a transsexual just to bag a sugar-daddy? I do find the idea of not working very arousing, but could I convert that energy into gob-jobs? I just don't know.

Meindert Hobbema; 'The usual composition with its emphasis on the receding roads flanked by slender trees...' There is a woman waiting up the road, shouldering a hunting rifle, with a hunting hound at her side. I am reminded of Julie Christie.

An Allegory of Prudence: Three faces, representing past, present and future coupled with a triple-headed wolf, lion dog. Latin inscription reads:

'[Learning] from yesterday, today acts prudently, lest by his actions he spoils tomorrow'.

Looking at the plethora of paintings concerning Your Lord Jesus Christ, I am left with the niggling feeling that something simply does not add up — his beard is never portrayed with any consistency. In some, he has a thickset Grizzly Adams, but in one, he has a ginger Jihad beard—Christ wasn't an Arab, was he?!

National Gallery Gift Shop

Oh, the tat! A giant erasure with a London bus on it: £3.75. I wonder if any of this was made by Hasbro (I read that they took a hit on the stock exchange. Good!)

Steal like an Artist—New York Times Bestseller. Isn't that a contradiction? If it really was that inspirational, it wouldn't have been bought by anyone, they would have just stolen it.

Thornback & Peel—hand printed tea towels. Literally a pigeon on a bowler hat: £12.50. The only thing this place sells that is of any practical use is umbrellas—£20.00.

I exit the National Gallery as sunlight breaks through the clouds and sit on a wall to bask in the tranquility of the congested road—the sound of engines vibrate sonorously, badly maintained break-pads gentle squeak. I realize that I have just sat on the J that I had been trousered, and wonder where to spark up the now pancaked peace.

I head down...

Pall Mall East

Perhaps I should ask the Big Bus tour guide if he knows of a good place to spark a J? I want caffeine!

Theatre Royal Haymarket: One Man, Two Governors ***** 'The funniest show in the Western World' Daily Mail

I wonder what according to the Daily Mail the funniest show in the Eastern World would be.

SPAR OFFER: one Diet Coke £1.65, two Diet Coke £1:50. I am not certain, but I'm pretty sure I'm getting a good deal here.

Alan Ayckbourn's A Chorus Of Disapproval, Directed by Trevor Nunn is playing at the Harold Pinter Theatre. At first, I thought 'A Chorus of Disapproval' was a quote from the review of the play by Trevor Nunn. No doubt the play deals with such themes. Rob Brydon grew a beard for the role; Nigel Harman grew mediocre as well, so...

I am being overall harsh—I don't like plays; I don't particularly like Brydon either.

Leicester Square

There is a ping-pong table in the centre of Leicester Square with a single paddle and no ball. I think it is an installation—it is funded by the national lottery—that represents the modern atomization of the individual.

The Albert Grant Esq. Memorial has its back to the installation. 'There is no darkness only ignorance.' He's dead now; It seems he was ignorant of that darkness. Zing!

People who walk on walls—along with any, and all elevated surfaces—are awesome.

I include myself in this prestigious category.

It is noon. Teddy-bears picnic chimes from the giant novelty clock that is sandwiched between Angus Steak House and M&M world. It really is quite shrill!

There is a guy wearing brown boots, black shredded skinny's, green boxer shorts with black silhouetted sunglasses on them collected in a bunch around his midriff, and what looks like Muppet skin under a sleeveless denim jacket. He smokes a cigarette and wears pink sunglasses and stands listening to the clock drone the tune of 'What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor'. I hope he gets mugged or clipped by a Big-Bus—does that make me a misanthrope?

La Reve—Cabaret Grande Spectacular: A carnival of jazz aged splendour—Grazia.

I feel a sudden overwhelming urge to look at toys.

London Trocadero

Having a penny pressed sounds like an old-school euphemism for a sex act of some kind: 'Press your penny, Govn'r?'

Before Fifty Shades of Grey, there was Story of O by Pauline Reuge. Before Fifty Shades of Grey, there was...only a medical need for forceps.

Garrarufaspa.com—15 minutes £10; 30 minutes £18. The assistant sits talking on her phone. There are no customers. I wonder if her clientele has been made aware of the fact that the removal of dead skin by gnawing fish in a communal forum carries with it an increased risk of infection and disease. Perhaps they are all at work.

The HMV game-station has in it a single person surfing the Internet as the attendant does the same behind her booth. It has the tone and lighting of the Galactic Cantina but lacks the vivacity.

Time to leave, I think. This place has the nostalgic properties of a childhood memory and is as open to interpretation—I don't think it has aged well.

Green-Peace: It reminds me that I have yet to smoke.

All chuggers have the same demeanour—happy feckless idiots, one and all. I want to see a surly chugger yelling apocalyptic charges at people who ignore them:

'YOU THINK I WANT TO STAND HERE TODAY? I DO IT FOR POSTERITY! AND IF YOU KEEP BLOWING SMOKE IN MY FACE, I'LL CHIN YA'. MY BODY'S A TEMPLE, AND YOU'RE TRESPASSING, YOU CUNT!'

A surly apocalyptic chugger. Busby F. Humblebee: Cockney chugger.

I still think Taken 2 should have been called Taken 2: Took.

I wonder how long until we see a heroine riding a Boris bike in an English rom-com?

I wander back up to the National Gallery, passing the Big Bus tour guide and see for the first time his face. A bunch of studded shit—he looks like a German raver. I bet he would know a good place to spark up this J, but I do not want to have the stereotype unconfirmed, so I wander on. I smoke the peace in Trafalgar Square whilst trying to get into the background of other people's photos. As the sun breaks through the clouds, I regret wearing a coat.

A sign reads: DO NOT FEED THE PIDGENS. Hungry tourists wander the square in search of food.

A police officer sits atop a motorcycle, mirroring the pose of a statued admiral.

As the drug kicks in I realize I am still a tourist in this city. I pass a horse. Next to the horse, there is a sign. The sign reads: BEWARE: Horses may kick or bite. The sign thanks me for inferring that the person the horses may be kicking or biting might be my person. I steer clear of the horse. I meander.

You stay there.
A TURING TEST: NAZIS AND HOMOSEXUALS

Streatham Hill to Battersea Park, up Chelsea Bridge Road, left at Chelsea Embankment, right at Oakley Street, passed Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Trust, across Fulham Road, passed South Kensington tube by way of Kings Road—traversing Phat Phuck Vietnamese Noodle Bar. I have taken wrong turns and gone back on myself a number of times but do not care. It is a beautiful autumn day in November, and it is nice to expel energy.

An ice-rink has been erected aside the National History Museum. People attempt precarious movements and manoeuvres on the ice whilst Dancing Queen plays over the public address system. Children and motionally retarded adults are stabilized by plastic penguins. There is very little grace on display. It is disorder.

'And there's a merry-go-round!' a child exclaims.

A father helps his child to her feet, but it does not take; she's all arms and legs balance panic. She expels a plangent of irked frustration, her brother laughs from the sidelines. The scene is familiarly benign.

Science Museum

'It is free to come in, but we are asking for small donations,' says the admission's guy at me.

The toilets of the Science Museum sound like a swimming pool changing room. Children bellow atavistically, with a freedom that comes from sporting very little clothing. I peek into the cloak room and see a cloakroom attendant slouched in a chair, doing nothing. I am constantly reminded that London is populated by people who do not enjoy nor perform the jobs that they are paid for.

If another person tells me that no one likes work, and you just have to get on with it, I am going to erupt:

You are all fucking idiots. The idea that I have to interact with people like you daily makes me want to kill myself in the most grossly offensive way available to me. I hope that when you are on your deathbeds, in your final lucid moments of conscious being, the epiphanic facts that you have been a complete waste of time and space are realized. And that your last breath is a gasp of tragic horror!

I say this in my head and feel better.

Code Breaking: Alan Turing's life and legacy—how one pioneering mathematician helped shape our modern world. (Free admission.)

Visitor Information: Please do not eat or drink in this gallery. And please be aware that there is an exhibit in this gallery with flashing lights.

I use the bulk of Infinite Jest to support the notepad I jot in.

'The second world war was not just fought with bombs and shells. It was a war of electronic whispers and secret radio signals scratched from the ether. At Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, thousands of men & women laboured night & day to crack these coded radio messages which held Germany's most secret plans. One of these codebreakers was Alan Turing: one of Churchill's "geese that laid golden eggs—but never cackled".

'But Turing was not just a code breaker. Born 100 years ago, this British Mathematician was also a philosopher and computer pioneer who grappled with some of the fundamental problems of life itself, yet his own life was cut tragically short. In 1954, he was found dead, poisoned by cyanide. He was 41. Throughout his life, Turing broke the codes of science and society. His ideas helped shape the modern world, but it was a world he did not live to see. This is his story.'

(Fuck the Science Museum!)

'In 1948, Turing moved to Manchester University to work on a ground-breaking stored-program computer. He used subsequent versions,' blah-blah-blah.' 'Four years later, following a relationship with a local man, Arnold Murray, Turing was arrested under anti-homosexuality legislation and convicted of gross indecency. At this time, doctors were experimenting with ways of 'treating' gay people. Given a choice of imprisonment or a one-year course of female hormones (chemical castration), Turing opted for the latter.

'In unexplained circumstances, he was found dead in this bed on Monday 7th June, 1954. The official verdict was suicide. At the time, he had been advising the government on secret code breaking projects, but his security clearance was revoked, and he was later placed under surveillance.'

An attractive woman walks passed pulling her child behind her, saying that they will find something more interesting.

Bottle of Oestrogen Female Hormone Pills, C. 1950

'In 1949 neuroscientist Fredric Golla published the first British results of experiments on the use of the female hormone oestrogen to reduce the libido of sexual offenders. Three years later, Alan Turing was sentenced to Oestrogen treatment as an alternative to imprisonment for 'gross indecency', following a sexual relationship. He had to fight to keep his job at Manchester University.'

Tabloid

'What is needed is a new establishment for them like Broadmoor. It should be a clinic rather than a prison, and these men should be sent there and kept there until they are cured'.

POST MORTEM EXAMINATION REPORT

('Alan Turing was out walking on Monday June 7th and spoke to a neighbour on his walk'.)

Name of Deceased: Alan Matheson Turing. Observers present at examination: Chief Inspector Hudson, Sargent Cottrell, no 128. Date & Time: 8PM, Tuesday 8th June, 1954.

Place where performed: The public mortuary, Wilmslow. Estimated time of death: More than 24 hours previously, in my opinion, on 7th June or during the night of 6th or 7th, June 1954. There was slight residual warmth of the abdomen.

Apparent age: 40. Height: 5ft 10 inches.

External Examination

'Rigor Mortis: Very strong spasm of all the muscles of the body, the left arm was flexed at 90 degrees across the body; the right was extended, the body lying to the left, but also he was on his back. Marks of Violence or identification marks, tattoo marks, etc.: None. But there (Incomprehensible) frothing of the mouth and this froth smelled of almonds.

Internal Examination: Cranial Cavity

Skull: Normal. Brain: Congested, showed acute oedema and red cyanosis which of cutting was very obvious. The brain smelled of bitter almonds. Thoracic Cavity: Mouth, tongue, larynx filled with froth, otherwise normal. The jaw was in powerful spasm. Trachea, Lung & Pleura: showed acute oedema, thin watery fluid-filled the bronchi and the lungs and this smelled strongly of bitter almonds. Pericardium, Heart & Blood Vessels: Normal anatomically, but the blood of the whole body was red, and not blue & de-oxygenated. With the characteristic smell of bitter almonds, this was typical of cyanide poisoning.

Internal Examination: Abdominal Cavity

Oesophagus: Contained froth. Stomach & Contents: contains four ounces of fluid, which smelled very strongly of bitter almonds, as does the solution of cyanide. Peritoneum, Intestines & Mesenteric Glands: Normal. Liver & Gallbladder: Normal, but pale in colour as the blood in it was redder than normal. Pancreas: Normal. Spleen: again was red and smelled of bitter almonds. Kidneys & Ureters: Similar. Bladder & Urine: Normal. Generative Organs: Normal. Are all other organs healthy? Yes, with the exception of the colour of the organs, which were all redder than normal. The cause of death as shown by examination appears to be:

Asphyxia due to cyanide poison; Death appears to be due to violence. I was present at the house of the deceased when a solution of cyanide (identified by characteristic smell) and a bottle of potassium cyanide in solid form was found. The smell of the solid was identified with the smell of the organs, and no other chemical smells the same.

Signature and Qualification:

[Signature] D.R.C.P. M.R. C.S., D. Path'

'On 7 June 1954, Alan Turing died. The pathologist carried out an examination two days later. A pan of solution has been found bubbling on a stove and by Turing's bed was an apple. The pathologist concluded that Turing had died from cyanide poisoning, the apple being used to take way some of the taste. The coroner recorded the death a suicide.'

'Turing's mother never believed her son killed himself. For the rest of her life, she held that his death was an accident'.

Alan Turing left no suicide note; there is no post-mortem examination of his mother in the exhibit.

Alan Turing's War

'In the Second World War armed forces communicated, using encrypted radio messages.

Britain was desperate to understand the German messages, so a code-breaking institution was set up at Bletchley Park to crack them. It was a race against the clock (sigh!).

Alan Turing worked at Bletchley on a type of encryption machine known as 'Enigma' after the machine used to create it. He developed sophisticated decryption processes, and, with colleague Gordon Welchman, devised machines called 'bombes' that could break the code on an industrial scale.

Some 200 bombs were built at a secret facility nearby. They operated around the clock at several sites, including Bletchley Park itself, tended by the Woman's Royal Naval Service.

The intelligence gained from the Enigma messages was vital to Britain's success in the war.

The Nature of Spirit

'In 1950, Alan Turing published a scientific paper which began: Can Machines Think?

In it, he described what has since become known as the 'Turing Test', in which a machine is said to be intelligent, if it can successfully imitate the intellectual capabilities of a human in a guessing game'. 'Alan Turing was fundamental in shaping the practice we now call 'programming'; in his day, there existed just a handful of computers in the world. Today there are billions, embedded into every aspect of our daily lives, and each one needs to be programmed.'

I feel sick and want to leave. All the people I feel an affinity with are either dead or dying. The world is too big; the mind too expansive. Standing looking over the balcony, people walk in all directions in droves. There is disorder, patterns of disorder.
GIFTS FOR SUSANNA (AN ULYSSES)

I awake in the foetal position with thoughts of Susanna, the wonderful pixie who floats around the office and who has enchanted me. I am fascinated by her—Gifts to celebrate her being!

You are what you love is a term that I was originally made aware of through the eponymous Jenny Lewis song; however, I believe the term itself originated in Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation. I can't find it anywhere previous to this but no doubt it is from existentialist literature, as watching a Kaufman film is like having an overly neurotic, petulant Sartre squealing at you in American.

Now, whilst I am certainly not deluded enough to believe the emotion I am experiencing for Susanna to be that of love, I do believe that when you meet someone who you share a connection with, it should be celebrated! And people love stuff, don't they? And I just want to shower her with gifts all the time. Forever.

It is snowing. Tea. 8:35.

Victoria

A scrolling display reads Taken 2: Extended Harder Cut. Due to a process in the brain and swift movement, I read it as: Taken 2: Extended Haircut.

Idea for a band name: Extended Haircut.

Camden Town

There is something sinister about this place.

T-SHIRT: STARBUCKS—buy or coffee or we'll break your legs!

I feel as those places like these is just hawking counter culture conformity. I blame John Lennon.

Fuck off, Morrisey, you misanthrope!

Rouge Art Stall—Camden

The girl is feverishly writing in pad. She is writing a story that has been in her head for a while, and she has finally decided to get it down on the page. She makes T-shirts and commutes to London every so often to sell them at the stall that she passed the audition to sit at. They are wonderfully unique. I want the Bob Dylan one. It costs £10, my budget for the exercise. I shake her hand, and leave to buy gifts for Susanna.

GIFT ONE (£5.00)

A set of delicate wings attached to a little pixie with flexile appendages. It is perfect. It has flowing blond locks and a dress that starts off all Peter Pan acrylic fibre and flows into Rose petals. It is at once utterly beautiful and hideously macabre. I think she will like it.

I barter with the stall's owner. He has already approached me, but I stated it was too expensive, and did a circle of the stalls before returning with the note in my hand telling him how much he was going to accept. I have bartered in India and he is no match for me.

Leicester Square— Escalator

The word datum is painted onto one of the escalator's steps. I remind myself to look it up, so that I know for certain what it means and have not just been deluding myself into thinking I do.

TEXT: £40 transferred, babe. xx

I see outside Wyndham's Theatre a person I believe to be famous:

'Are you famous?'

'Yes!'

'Do you have lots of money?'

'Yes!'

'You should give some of the money you have to that homeless man sitting huddled in the theatre's side alley.'

I do not give the homeless man any money as I have a limited amount and would like to use what little I have to buy gifts for Susanna. It is snowing.

National Portrait Gallery

Tracey Emin's Self-Portrait. Filthy animal: aroused by such debasement. Although perhaps it's not even my base nature that is attracted to it. What a horrible thought. Get away from it; there is nothing here. Go outside and let the pretty snowflakes fall on your face.

National Gallery—Outside

There are two people standing outside the National Gallery with a sign that reads: 'Talk to a Philosopher!'

I try not to but cannot resist, and engage them:

They ask. I tell them that I am a philosopher. They seem elated. 'Come talk to us,' they say. I say I cannot because I have to go and spend my money. We all laugh. We all get it.

The National Gallery is a dead end.

Starbucks

I enter Starbucks—apologies morals—to get a bucket of tea. I remove my headphones in time to hear a generically attractive intellectual pontificate at her foreign exchange student in matters concerning spirituality. I blow my nose. There really is quite a lot of snot.

Embankment Bridge

There is a child posing for her father. She is wearing an adorable blue cotton hooded shawl. I want a baby I can dress up!

A homeless woman quickly empties her cup to make her seem poorer than she is. I think she is probably poor enough without having to contrive to be needier, although I guess she does. It's all very sad.

I get scarred by a pigeon as it takes off toward my face, close my eyes and panic. Tea spills over my hand and coat. A mother exclaims: 'Oooh'

'IT'S GETTING TO THE STAGE WHERE I DON'T REALLY CARE ABOUT YOU, YOU STUPID MAP!' Melody = indiscernible/Freeform Jazz melody. I cram the crumpled map into my bag.

Real Food's Festival – South Bank

GIFT TWO (£0.00)

Cheese samples! Inspired! I wander around the stalls and engage the owners whilst surreptitiously taking samples and wrapping them in the surplus foil from my packed lunch made at home—it costs money to eat, price being inflated in accordance with demand. The Cranberries play over a PA system.

GIFT THREE (£1.00)

Cabécou—Unpasteurised Goat/Aged Fresh: 'The name 'Cabécou' comes from the language of South West of France, and it means small goat. Enjoy it fresh, pliant and creamy or more mature with a taste permeated with the flavour of hazelnut.'

GIFT FOUR (£1.00)

I walk past a homeless who asks if I can spare any change. I say no. I walk on. I feel guilt. I feel that there is an argument in favour of gifting Susanna with the gift of gifting this homeless man. I go back to the man. 'Sorry, that was a flat out fucking lie!' He doesn't know what I am talking about. I put the pound into his outstretched hand.

'God-bless you, sir.'

I feel happy in the thought that Susanna is the reason that this man has a pound to do whatever he pleases with. I do not need it; he seems to need it more. I move on.

£1 left—I have spent £2 on beverages: one tea, one coffee; philanthropy makes for thirsty work. I pass adult children doing Parkour. I ask them if they'd ever done themselves damage?

He is northern: 'A couple of skips and scrapes, nothing major.' Then he jumps away like a stupid superhero. I shout to him that he looks cool—maybe he does.

Southbank

I stop at a bench to re-arrange my bag. The pixie's cute little wing has been damaged. My brain instantly recalls the melody: My love, she's like some raven at my window with a broken wing. I walk down Southbank. I realize that it is no longer snowing. For how long, I wonder. I walk past a woman in the midst of a conversation: 'It's just chaos,' she says

Southbank Blackfriars Bridge

Under the bridge, there is a joyous cacophony of woody Allen's jazz. I walk a wall with the descending melody whistling in my head.

Tate Modern

My hands are so cold that I can no longer write discernibly.

Tate Gift Shop #1

The gift shop is small and crowded, inconveniently designed and arranged. There are alarms at either entrance of the shop. I approach a manned by two appropriate smug modernists.

'You know these things here,' I say.

'...'

'You know; they go off when you walk through them.'

'What? Alarms?' One asks.

'Yes, Alarms. That's the badger. Well, these alarms, they make it dreadfully hard to steal, don't they?'

They stare at me blankly. 'That's why they're there.' 'Sorry,' I say, 'I'm dreadfully cold. I thought humour might warm me up a bit'. I leave the shop to nothing but icy stares. People who profess to love art should have a better sense of humour or work in the sewers.

Tate Gift Shop #2

GIFT SUGGESTION:

Michel de Montaigne's On Friendship is too expensive, and I must kick the habit of buying Montaigne and not completely reading him. There is The Films of Michael Haneke on a box priced at £49.99. On it is a sticker that reads: THIS CASE IS EMPTY, PLEASE ASK FOR ASSISTANCE. I ask the assistant whether it is actually empty or do they just say it is to detract theft? He smiles and tells me that it is empty; he likes the question, though.

I begin shivering, part cold, part caffeine. Caffeine is a marvellous drug. I itch my scrotum. It is not here either. I wish I had a better brain.

Susanna and I discussed favourite paintings, mine being Joseph Wright of Derby's An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. She had shown me her favourite but I cannot remember the name of it to ask. It was not in the National Gallery or nor the portrait. The painting immediately brought to mind the Beatles. I liked it very much and wished that I could find it in postcard form to give to her.

I apologize to a pretty little lady. The sound I make is famine and childlike. There is a man sitting on the floor outside the gift shop. I am tempted to throw him some change, but I only have £1 left, and I would like to use it to buy a gift for Susanna. I look at myself in a mirrored window as I slosh my remaining sandwich. I then go back into the Tate to make use of the facilities and move on.

GIFT 4 (£0.00)

I walk past a fashionable lad handing out winter arts guides.

'Love your headphones, man,' he says. 'Thank you, I like your hat,' I reply.

He hands me a guide.

Bankside—Clint Street

A man takes a photo of a homeless man whilst another man stands photography him. I wish I had a camera. I mention this to a woman who stands watching, she laughs; I laugh. It isn't funny.

Borough Market

Everywhere there is people. This would be a good place to let off a bomb if you were that way inclined. I think this and do not write it down. A husband walks past me, trailed by her wife: 'what's wrong with your hearing,' she says to him.

GIFT 2 (revisited)

I procure more cheese samples.

'I can believe the size of vegetables—' a girl says to her friend, '—they are huge!'

'Some of them ...' The friend replies after a time.

I see a child with multiple sclerosis who fizzes with energy in a wheelchair. A balaclava completely covers his face. I am filled with feeling, equal parts joy and sadness. I do not know which of these two the more appropriate response is. It begins to snow again.

This place is huge. I have come back on myself and am now lost in the vegetable section. There is so much food.

Eureka!

I know where I will spend the last £ 1, and it is not in this place. I venture outside the radius of the market and feel less a member of the collective. The crowd thins. FUCK! An Asian man and I exchange exaggerated glances. I have been almost hit by too many buses.

'Excuse me,' she says, 'do you know where Tally Street is?' She has a child with her. 'Oh, sorry, no sorry, I'm rubbish, just in generally, err; a rubbish person.' She drags the kid away from me. I have not been helpful; I require not courtesy.

Fellon House – London Bridge

A homeless man rummages through a black bin liner outside of a shop. He picks out two batons of bread. He moves on, walking in front of me. He tapers off and emptying the remnants of a bottle of something down his gullet. I cannot tell whether it is alcohol but hope for his sake that it is. Two blonde women in fur coats walk out of the station chatting jovially: 'I've just been really lucky.'

PLATFORM 11 FOR THE 14 15 TO RIGATE

My testicles are so cold that I feel as though I am a eunuch. I should have worn tighter briefs.

'It has not been possible to connect your call, please try again later.'

MESSAGE: Lou-bear. You got Charles' no? My dealer isn't picking up; Probably been killed by Somalians.

The 14:21 via Greenwich; I am staring at a poster that reads: I CAN'T SEE ME GETTING ANYWHERE IN LIFE.

I dislike the idea of being marketed to so that I might care about a blind man. I blame Lennon.

Greenwich Station

A sign reads:

DUE TO VANDALS, SORRY BUT THIS TOILET IS CLOSED.

DUE TO SYNTAX, I BELIEVE THIS TO BE WRITTEN BY A LOW-WAGED MIGRANT.

MESSAGE: Did you try their new no?

Halcyon Books – Greenwich—BOOKS SALE! ALL BOOKS £1

GIFT 5 (£1.00)

Shit! We never talked about books, only the Tao of Pooh, that she has already read. Andre Gide: The Immoralist? I have it and have not read beyond the first page. Ghostbusters II: A Novelization?—Hardly as deep as the original. Jeremy Clarkson's Motorworld? What a cunt! Russell by A.J. Ayer? I really want this book. I will hide it and come back for it later—two shelves in, six shelves up, behind the book of John Travolta that includes more than a hundred pictures!

There is a man listening to Miles Davis insufferably loud. He sounds deaf as he purchases some vinyl. He ushers himself out of the shop; a blare of deafening trumpets trail in his wake, then peace. 'I Just Don't Know What to do with Myself' plays from the store room. There was a pile of books that crowded the floor before, they have cleaned the pile, there is a greater selection than there has ever been. The last gift is here; I will just keep looking. It will present itself.

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass have been likely already devoured. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Gate Keeper Trilogy & Sons of Entropy? Don't make it about you. A Dictionary of Geography? There is a couple picking out books for one another:

GIRL: 'Oh War and Peace? Oh wait; I'm not allowed to read that, right? Oh, Simone De Beauvoir: This is a good book shop.' I realize the importance of company and feel alone for the first-time today.

And ... Eureka! I have found it.

She may not like it; I have not read it; I know not why, but this is the one. Be confident.

'Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it had been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend–the weekend of the Yale game.'

I go to the counter. A man is reserving two books to purchase later, both books are £1 each. I interrupt, offering the cashier double the price. No-one laughs; not even me. I grow tired of myself. I talk incomprehensibly to the cashier about the bookstore and realize that my brain is fried; it is 15:33 and time to go.

I will leave you here—with all this appropriate and inappropriate affection. I must pick up: a far less romantic, perfunctory exercise.
SUBTLE BUT STILL THE SAME

'Tell me something you've never told anyone before.'

The couple laid entwining in fatigued, lackadaisically repose; their countenances flushed with a rouge hue. She rested on his chest, her head rising and falling in unison with his regulated breathing. He kissed the top of her head and waited for her to respond.

After a few moments of tranquility, she rose from his chest and look at up to him coyly.

'You first.' She softly looked up at her lover in timid expectation.

He flashed a grin and became pensive as she continued to look on tenderly.

'Okay.' he said, repositioned himself on the bed, bringing himself down to her level and resting his head on his arched arm.

'I love you.' He uttered it soft and confidently, brushing the few dampened strands of hair that clung to her forehead, which scintillated with beads of perspiration. She blushed and looked away as a smile spread across her delicate, piqued features, and he loved her even more.

'Your turn.' He moved his head, locking her gaze and pulled her magnetically to his own.

'I can't.' she said solemnly, averting her eyes.

'Why not?' He stroking the small of her back lightly, sending a tremor of pleasure down her spine and making her arch forward in reaction.

'I told you,' he playfully mewled, retracing his fingers steps up her spin, curving over her shoulder blades and down her chest, stopping just past her navel.

'That tickles,' she giggled.

'Do you not love me?' he asked, studying her face acutely for signals she would unconsciously divulge.

Her demeanour immediately changed, and she smiled demurely:

'Of course I do.'

He blushed, and they embraced. He kissed her gently on the mouth and caressed her stomach. She let out a tender sigh.

'Then why can't you say it?' he asked, beginning to kiss her neck, tracing the line his fingers etched onto her body with his mouth. She relaxed into the bed, as he ventured towards her navel, incrementally planting kisses on her responsive skin.

'You,' she began—her utterance quelled by the spasmodic pleasure that has seized her body. She let out an unabashed groan.

'You told me to tell you something I had never told anyone before.' Her body gave in fully to the pleasure that was beginning to stir within.

She began to utter sporadic carnal lamentations whilst softly stroking his hair, and he loved her even more.
LET US BE SERIOUS FOR A MOMENT ...

Behind the sardonic absurdity that masks the largely nonsensical mutterings of a mind predisposed to the chimeras embedded by a television upbringing, lies a deeply sincere and unapologetic belief that there must be something of value to be taken from this infuriatingly complex life.

The longer I live in the world, I find that whilst my intelligence in certain areas continually expands in ways I find most satisfactory, I still remain utterly perplexed by the one thing that I believe to be of most importance: human connection.

The older I get, and the longer I spend in the comfortable seclusion of my imagination, the further I find myself drifting from others. And I fear that unless a spectacular stroke-of-luck happens upon my wretched form, I will soon approach an event horizon of sorts, and wind up as another delusionary fool who has made himself believe that the good life is to be understood as nothing more than making sure the body is sufficiently watered and fed for as long as luck would have it exist.

To feel a deep overwhelming affection for someone, not based on projection or fantasy, but slowly gained through companionship—regardless of, or maybe because of specific idiosyncrasies and imperfections—is, in my opinion, a very real goal to aim for. And in a life in which delusions brought about by elevated ideas of what be realistically achieved by a species who vastly overestimates its own intelligence and stature leads to, more often than not, unfathomable amounts of pain and suffering, I feel that it isn't such a ridiculous proposal.

In short, I feel awfully alone this evening, and should like, before I am ended, to try my hand at living for another. I am fortunate enough to know people who do so. This comparatively simple act appears to me a fundamental necessity to human happiness. I find it utterly extraordinary to witness and will remain forever in awe of those who are committed to its practice.
MOONSHINE SKETCHES
THEY ALL MEAN WELL

A POLICEMAN and a FATHER are discussing an abduction case. The father looks dejected.

POLICEMAN: And how old was she?

FATHER: ... Ten. She was almost ten.

POLICEMAN: So she was nine. And her appearance, what exactly did she look like?

FATHER: Red hair.

POLICEMAN: Auburn hair

FATHER: Freckles

POLICEMAN: So, pale complexion, like that of a porcelain doll perhaps?

FATHER: ... No, not really.

POLICEMAN: I'm sorry Mr. Rogers. But, it is often the case, that in order to make your child stand apart from other missing-children cases in the public eye, of which, you may know, there are many; some hyperbole may be required to arouse sympathy and raise awareness. It's the harsh truth, of the modern world.

FATHER: ... Okay.

POLICEMAN: So with that in mind, what, in your opinion, makes your Katie stand apart from other missing children.

FATHER: Erm ...

POLICEMAN: Okay, take, for instance, a recent case of mine, Jack Pebble. You may have seen him on the regional News; It didn't make the national, but you know.

FATHER: I think I remember.

POLICEMAN: As you may know, Jack was a downer. You know, Down Syndrome. And with downers, you get mass appeal. And so what we did see, is we exaggerated just how much of a downer Jack actually was; thereby increasing public interest and sympathy, bringing about our finding of him.

FATHER: You found him then?

POLICEMAN: His body, yes.

FATHER: ... Oh.

POLICEMAN: So do you think you could rattle your brain, and try to muster up your own ISP for your little Katie. I mean, as it stands we're looking for a freckly ging: Not particularly appealing.

FATHER: ... I'd have to ask my wife. I didn't really look at my daughter in that way.

POLICEMAN: Most don't.

FATHER: I mainly remember her smelling of Wotsits.
THE FRIDGE IS FULL OF JARS

CHRIS is on the floor having sex with a corpse.

CHRIS: Oh, give me some of that bloaty-bruisy. .Mmm ... yeah. You're like so sort of sexy fish; all gilly like. What? ... Damn, you knows it, caddy. I likes the mega-corrode of your systems. Mmm, apple-crumble minge. Oh, you flaky beaut. Oh, emery-board my nob. Yeah. Oh, ice-tray lady. Oh, it's all like kicker bag; drawstring kicker bag.

BARRY, the roommate, enters.

BARRY: Fucking hell, Chris.

CHRIS: What?

BARRY: How fucking ... I left for work five hours ago.

CHRIS: Alright just give a minute.

BARRY: You were flapping about in her when I left. I told you to stick her in the fridge.

CHRIS: I know, but —

BARRY: The house in a mess, the banisters all lubby—smells like four-month-infection in here.

CHRIS: ...

BARRY: I told you to stick her in the fridge!

Chris get's off of the corpse in a strop.

CHRIS: She doesn't fit, Barry! She won't fit in a fridge freezer. I told you, but you never listen.

BARRY: Where are you going? Get her legs!

CHRIS: For fuck's sake!

Chris helps Barry move the corpse, lifting one of her legs.

BARRY: Not that one, you fool, it's coming off at the hinge.

CHRIS: She's really fucking heavy.

The two struggle with the corpse. 
EPHEBOPHILIA

'I mean, if you look at the catamites of ancient Rome. Or the pederasts of ancient Greece. Aristotle claim that Cretan law-givers actually encouraged pederasty as means of population control. Even Plato has said 'A lover is the best friend a boy will ever have.' It was understood to be educative by Greek upper-class; a didactic mentorship. Even Aisha was purportedly six or seven when betrothed to Muhammad; their relationship being consummated by the age of nine or ten.

'Throughout history, the vices that you so loathe in my character was treated as a normal way of life. Whether venturing into a house of ill repute to place decorous plastic groom atop four-tiered multi-ethnic arse-cake. Or straddling one's fecundated wife to foam atop engorged mammaries. Whichever peculiar licentious act engage in is no business of mine. And I judge you not.

'Whatever you may believe, I am a Christian man. A good Christian man, with ephebophilia. I do not abuse babies; nor pubescents. I am merely sexually interested in the ages of fifteen to nineteen-year old boys. It is often the case that I commit no offence in the modern legal definition. And it is always the case that I have committed no offence in the ontological sense.

'Add I feel justified knowing that when I perish, in many years to come. That I will be greeted by St. Peter at the pearly gates and ushered into the heaven. Where there will be many like-minded people. Who throughout history have engaged without compunction in acts that are repugnant to modern sensibilities. It is simply a matter of statistics. A numbers game, you see.'
COLLOQUIAL VULGARITY

Two LADS sit in a trendy club, speaking bizarre colloquialisms.

PETE: I remember in Maga, there was this right phwoar who doubleplus Austin gawked my strudel, 'til we is both two pistons friction, all sloppy and sweaty and earth breathy. 'til eventually poultry all wanton, and me king kong cobra; subbuteo-sprayed fuck mist up and about her beak. Triffic!

MICKY: Ah, that ain't no stomach churn; check these partics. Me and old forceps and stirrups reckoned to gam up to afro wigs and seven-inch days gone. So we's digit-bashed the wailing sea chiclet, to tea cosy the homestead. You know, a single who's Velcro-rip tip wouldn't set us double pension aged the like. Nee ways, passed double-dip volume swell of piss-water tipple, and she's all ankle crunch and stiletto swing.

We forward to our dom, and I tracks her couch stack; a mangy prostrate bike-rake derry. And muggings has to go A to B this Galas, who's but a grassless wouldn't say no neither. Nee ways, half-way back to where she's from; before I could say 'Oi,' she dives bombs me zipper-zone, and it's windows-up, and me ladling thick teen into her pre-owned velvet crow, stifling her arks of 'Mr. Mr.'

PETE: Mild, Mild. You ever feckled the inner-pip of a sister sledge; all cruddled with energy drink drip?

MICKY: You ever quaffed neighbours spaff at the behest of officious bread surgeons?

PETE: You ever rude-tubed a curly bot?

MICKY: Ever suckled the nip-drip of valerian eco-cream-puffs?

PETE: You ain't did no valerian eco-cream-puff!

MICKY: It's ticket stubbed.

PETE: You chat goebbels, brohemoth!

MICKY: You wouldn't reckon goebbels if it sacked you in the galilee, son.

THE DARK CHAMBER

REG and TONY are being interview about their independently owned cinema. The scene is interspersed with footage from within.

REG: Well since the rise of the Cineplex we've had to keep the punters coming.

TONY: And now 3-D's all about we've had to think a little outside the box. See, it all started quite by accident, actually.

REG: We were in the middle of a two-week run of one of the Saw movies, I forget which. Anyways, a batch of hot-dog that due to due to overflow-

TONY: See we bulk bought them in the nineties when E.T had increased capital somewhat.

BOTH: Good times!

TONY: Anyway, we'd shoved one of these boxes in an air-vent-

REG: Just cause it was a snug fit-

TONY: Anyway, we forgot about it. And a rat must of gnawed at the box, fed on them, and perished. Nothing to do with the quality, mind

REG: But anyways, the putrid smell of the rodents and the sheep meat started wafting into the cinema when we was showing one of the Saw movies, right.

TONY: People got very sick.

REG: The image coupled with the rotting smell of dead flesh was too much for the audience.

TONY: People started dry heaving and regurgitating semi-digested popcorn.

REG: By the end of the film, the smell encased the auditorium like a dense cloud-must of sick, sweat rodent-corpse.

TONY: People loved it! Said it was almost unendurable.

BOTH: Almost!

TONY: Anyways, that's when we got the idea of using this as to lure the punters in, and that. We now specialize in the four-dimensional horror market.

REG: See, the best thing is that the print for tacky horrors don't really cost that much. So we can show a film like 'Fearful Teenage Chainsaw Boners' for next to nothing.

A woman screams, a teenager apologizes.

TONY: And then what we do is we cater the smells to a particular movie. So say that a dame was getting raped by a lizard monster whose only way of impregnating a human is by boring into the skull. And at that point of the picture, what we do is-

REG: See, we've employed smell-ushers.

TONY: Call them Smushers.

REG: So we get a smusher to release various smells into the cinema at certain salient point of proceeding.

TONY: Fish viscera, litter trays—

REG: But it really started making serious money when we arranged for the mortuary down the road to contribute cadaver woft.

TONY: They fill Pringle pots with vacuumed-packed corpse-rot, and the ushers' sell them down isles for patrons to open up whenever they want. They're a real hit.

REG: Especially with the married men.

The audience cough and be sick.
THE COMFORT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE

And OLD MAN sits by the phone looking sad. The phone begins to ring.

TURNER: Hello?

AGENT: (Consistently chirpy) Hello there; I was wondering if I could speak to Mrs. Turner?

TURNER: No, I'm sorry but she isn't here right now.

AGENT: Okay! Is there a better time I could call back?

TURNER: Well actually, she passed away quite recently.

AGENT: Righty-o! Is that Mr. Turner?

TURNER: It is.

AGENT: Hello, Mr. Turner.

TURNER: Hello.

AGENT: Wonder if I could take a few moments of your time?

TURNER: ... Yes, please.

THE FUTURE IS JUST AS SHIT AS NOW

A group of students walk through a futuristic cinema, and approach a computer console.

COMPUTER: (robotic voice) Hey, welcome to Cinebap, can I take your cellu-nutri order?

STUDENT #1: Hi, can I get a student to Rise of the Cyst, please.

STUDENT #2: It's 'Case'.

STUDENT #1: It's 'Rise'.

STUDENT #2: Yeah, can we pay separately.

The two students collect their tickets and move along. A third MAN approaches the consol. He looks older than the other two.

MAN: Hi, yeah, can I get a student one as well, please.

COMPUTER: Have you got any ID.?

MAN: No.

COMPUTER: Then I can't. I'm afraid I can't let you in as a student.

MAN: But they're all students.

COMPUTER: Yeah but you look about fifty.

MAN: That's a bit insulting.

COMPUTER: Well, I just mean comparatively. Compared to them, you, if they were twenty years old, you're; you look about fifty.

MAN: But I'm not; I'm twenty-seven.

COMPUTER: So you admit you're not a student?

MAN: Don't sass me, bot. I didn't say that I wasn't a student; I'm just twenty-seven.

COMPUTER: Are you a student?

MAN: Yes.

COMPUTER: Have you got a student card?

MAN: I haven't got it with me.

COMPUTER: Then I can't let you in as a student.

MAN: This is ridiculous; I don't see how ... They've all shown their cards, yeah. There're five of us.

COMPUTER: Yeah?

MAN: Okay, I'm like twenty percent of that group; I don't know why you're not letting me in-

COMPUTER: Because it's against the policy.

MAN: But you can see; they've all shown their student cards.

COMPUTER: But you haven't.

MAN: I told you, I'm a student.

COMPUTER: But I don't believe you.

MAN: Alright look, say that you don't believe me, yeah, all I've got is; how much is a student ticket?

COMPUTER: £6.50.

MAN: Right, I've only got £6.50 on me.

COMPUTER: Is that true?

MAN: Yes.

COMPUTER: But I don't believe you.

MAN: Well, it is true. So basically you can either give me the ticket, I don't know you're turning down my business. Because I've only got £6.50 on me. So you can either let me in, and get an extra, get this extra 6.50 which you were never gonna get. Or turn me away and throw this 650 away.

COMPUTER: We're losing money.

MAN: No. Instead of thinking about it as losing money, you have to decide whether to gain 650 for this business, that you profess to love so much. Or losing my 650 when I walk.

COMPUTER: Have you got a student card?

MAN: No!

COMPUTER: Then I can't let you in as a student.

MAN: Oh, fuck off; you spectrum spunk!

COMPUTER: Just go and wait.

MAN: I know what, I know what I'm gonna do. Fuck you, computer!

COMPUTER: Fuck you.
WELLYWHAMMER

The shop bell rings, as a middle-aged CUSTOMER enters the music shop; 'Parisian Walkway 'plays over the stereo system. MARK and DOUG, the shop-assistants, are in mid-discussion. Mark is at the front of the counter re-stocking guitar strings. Doug mans the counter reading a magazine and paying little attention.

MARK: Nah, that's proper Gazz; string-bend el supremo. You'd need an extra bend finger to work those frets, my friend. He wields the axe so proper—Doug!

DOUG: (northern accent) Yeah.

MARK: He wields the axe so proper; they should call him Gilius Thunderhead.

DOUG: Who?

MARK: The axe wielding-dwarf from Golden Axe.

DOUG: I still prefer Clapton, mate.

MARK: Clapton can suck a fart, Doug. He totes cuckolded Harrison; mugged him right up. Where's your sense of loyalty?

DOUG: I dunno.

Mark notices the customer.

MARK: Oh Hello, sir. You eying up or coiled sphincters?

CUSTOMER: Excuse me?

MARK: Care to peruse our berry bells?

CUSTOMER: Sorry. I'm not really; It's all very new to me.

MARK: Oh, mellifluous cherry pop, Doug.

Mark makes a popping sound with his mouth. The customer is very confused.

CUSTOMER: What?

MARK: What instrument are you looking to dabble in and about? You a string fingers or are you brassy brass?

CUSTOMER: I was thinking guitar.

MARK: Oh, you don't want to do that; a man your age. There're people who've been pumping strum electrodes into their tips long since you've been born.

CUSTOMER: Really?

MARK: Yeah, you've got the jump on ya. No, what you want; you wanna get one of those newfangled nascent instruments. You ever heard of a Wellywhammer?

CUSTOMER: A what?

MARK: Wellywhammer. Swedish. Very new. Let me show you.

The two walk through the shop; an uncomplicated instrument catches the customer's eye, and he points to it.

CUSTOMER: How much is that?

MARK: Nevermind that flaming banjo mess, look at this. Eh!

The two look at an indescribable instrument.

CUSTOMER: It's...

MARK: Isn't that something?

CUSTOMER: It's a bit big.

MARK: Bloody right it's big. It's like the swollen engine of a bus. It's like an incubator, for a massive baby. Looks like you could live in it.

CUSTOMER: It looks complicated.

MARK: Blood right it's complicated. Have a look at that: That there, that big red button, actually taken from the Starship Enterprise.

CUSTOMER: That can't be right.

MARK: That's true.

CUSTOMER: Nah, that's—

MARK: There's no need to make up a fact like that. I mean, check the heft.

Mark picks the instrument up and passes it to the customer, who struggles with the weight.

CUSTOMER: It's really quite heavy.

MARK: That's why we recommend the back-strap. Obviously that would be additional cost.

CUSTOMER: (Struggling) How does it work? How do you work it? How do you work it?

MARK: Well that's quite simple, actually. So what you do is, get this, yeah that's it, get that, here we go, jam that, and that goes, jam that in your gob, yep, jam it into your gob, yeah, there we go. Don't worry, it should feel uncomfortable; it's meant to feel that way.

CUSTOMER: It does.

MARK: Okay, now the basic is, right what you want to do, circular breathing. So you get that, get that going. Alright, you've got that. And what you wanna do, is you wanna, okay you see those udder type things, yeah; scorpion-type udders. Okay, what you wanna do is, we're gonna milk the udders.

CUSTOMER: oooh, what?

MARK: Milk the udders; all the while, circular breathing. There you go. Relax and take your time. If you start panicking, you'll likely suffocate on your own fluids.

Alright, well, so you have a little play with that, and if you need me, I'll be over with Doug.

Mark walks off, leaver the customer to struggle alone.

CUSTOMER: Does it look good?

Nobody hears him. 
'EVERYONE IS A PRISONER OF THEIR OWN EXPERIENCE'

Two men sit opposite each other in a prison meeting room, separated by glass. Each holds a receiver to his ear.

RICH: Are you alright?

STEVE: No, I'm scared; I'm so scared.

RICH: Look, don't worry.

STEVE: That's easy for you to say!

RICH: Look, calm down.

STEVE: I didn't kill her.

RICH: I know you didn't kill her. That's why I'm gonna bust you out.

STEVE: There's ... You can't help me.

Rich looks around to see that no-one is listening, speaking quietly.

RICH: Shh, alright, look ... climb in my mouth.

STEVE: What?

RICH: Slither through the cigarette holes and climb in my mouth, right.

STEVE: Rich, I don't think that'll work.

RICH: Don't worry, it's sorted. I've been fasting. I've got, like, twelve-foot room.

STEVE: Rich.

GUARD: TIME!

RICH: Now.

STEVE: Rich, are you alright?

RICH: Do it now!

A GUARD comes behind him.

GUARD: Time's up, mate.

Rich looks to the guard.

RICH: No, it's not done yet. I've got; I've got so much room.

The guard takes him by the arm.

GUARD: C'mon

Rich is dragged away, leaving Steve looking concerned.

STEVE: No. I've got so much room.
THE THERAPIST WORE EXPENSIVE SHOES

A therapist's office: A working-class couple sits opposite the therapist, who takes notes with a pad. They are midway through a discussion.

PAUL: She thinks that I'm ... Well, I don't know exactly what she thinks... but it's different from what she used to think.

THERAPIST: See Paul it doesn't really help when you can't articulate your feelings. I'd like to bring Meredith in now. Meredith, turn to Paul.

Meredith turns to her husband.

THERAPIST: a bit more angular, there we go. Yes, that's very good. Now, tell him what you feel.

MEREDITH: I think he's blaming me because he can't deal with since his mum died.

PAUL: She died ten years ago. That isn't why it is! Tell him why it is! Go on.

MEREDITH: Ah now don't go on about that again, you just being foolish.

THERAPIST: I really feel that it would be beneficial to all of us if you shared your secrets.

PAUL: look! She's not gonna tell you, yeah. And she's gonna hate me when I tell you. But you know what—

THERAPIST: Just let in out, Paul.

MEREDITH: Why don't you just say it? It's obviously all you think about whenever we come to this place. 'Ooh. We mustn't tell him, mustn't tell the therapist eh—.'

PAUL: Alright, she stuck a dildo up my arse! Is that what you want?!

THERAPIST: ... And did you cum?

PAUL: That's not the issue! The issue is that ever since; it's just completely emasculated me. You just can't know what is like, to be—

THERAPIST: Buggered.

PAUL: Yeah, buggered! You buggered me! You buggered your husband!

Paul falls to his knees and clings to his wife's legs.

PAUL: Just let me bugger you one time, babe! Then we'll be back to normal!

MEREDITH: No, it's filthy.

PAUL: What?!

THERAPIST: Good. Excellent. Really good work today.

A COMPLICATED BIRTH

Donnell Turnbase runs into an Emergency room panicked, grabbing passers-by.

DONNELL: I'm looking for my wife. She's just had a baby. I think I'm late. I shouldn't be; I'm sorry; I'm sorry. Can someone help me?

Donnell rounds a corner and sees his Doctor.

DONNELL: Doctor Goater. Sarah's—

DOCTOR: Ah, Mr. Turnbase.

DONNELL: Yes. How is she?

DOCTOR: Your wife is fine. However, she has lost a lot of blood; she had to have a transfusion.

DONNELL: Oh Jesus! And the baby? how's little Patrick?

DOCTOR: Perfectly healthy.

DONNELL: Oh thank god!

DOCTOR: He's with one of our most experienced midwives.

The two men walk into the maternity ward. The Doctor talks to the midwife and Donnell looks inside the cot.

DONNELL: Hello, mate! (To the doctor) Can I hold him?

DOCTOR: You can; he's very delicate.

DONNELL: Come to daddy, mate. Don't cry. Look at him, he's ... Doctor, what are the holes in his chest?

DOCTOR: Technically, they're his nostrils.

DONNELL: Oh.

DOCTOR: See, if you look where his nose should be, you see that there's a sort of, fleshy skin flap there.

DONNELL: His fingers are a bit—

DOCTOR: Oh no; they're toes.

DONNELL: So, where are his fingers?

DOCTOR: We believe, they're inside of him.

DONNELL: That's not good.

DOCTOR: What we'd recommend—when you change him, have a look, and he may have passed them. And also, we should tell you that we have located his anus, below the foot.

DONNELL: Okay, which hole is the anus?

DOCTOR: They both are. We're not exactly sure what that is. We would look into it, but we are very busy.

The baby farts out of its anus hole.

DONNELL: Ah, mate! Put your foot down for your dad. He. He doesn't appear to be blinking, doctor.

DOCTOR: These are actually reptilian.

DONNELL: What?!

DOCTOR: He can see in the dark.

DONNELL: This is, have him back. I don't want that Mr. Potato Head baby.

DOCTOR: This is your child, er, Mr ... Mr ...

DONNELL: What about his ... thing?

DOCTOR: Perfectly fine.

DONNELL: Definitely?

DOCTOR: Perfectly fine. He had one when he came out.

DONNELL: Well, that's a relief. Okay. I can deal with his. This is alright. People do this, have these. Can I ask you a question?

DOCTOR: You can.

DONNELL: Do you think he looks like a Patrick?

DOCTOR: Would you like my honest opinion?

DONNELL: Yeah.

DOCTOR: I believe he does.

DONNELL: C'mon then, Patrick.

Donnell walks off carrying his son.

'HONEY, I'M HOME!'

A cab pulls up to the curb and a MAN enters.

CAB DRIVER: Hello, my friend.

MAN: Four, the birch, please, driver.

CAB DRIVER: Hey, I know you!

MAN: Excuse me?

CAB DRIVER: Four the birch. You come here many time.

MAN: No ... I normally walk.

CAB DRIVER: Yeah, I know you. Four, the birch.

They drive on in silence. The cab pulls up to the house, and the man gets out.

CAB DRIVER: Goodbye, my friend.

The cab drives off. He opens the door of the house and enters. Faint sounds can be heard.

MAN: Honey?

He walks up the stairs and the noise becomes louder. The sound of sex. He opens the door to the bedroom.

MAN: Laura?

LAURA is on the bed with a man named REG. She looks at her husband with distain.

LAURA: Charles got suspended for school.

MAN: Laura, who is that man?

LAURA: Did you hear what I just said? Charles got suspended!

MAN: ... oh.

LAURA: What are you gonna do about it?

MAN: ...

LAURA: What are you gonna do!?

MAN: Well you know he doesn't listen to me.

LAURA: Just go and talk to him.

REG: (Birmingham accent) I really think you should talk to your son.

MAN: I don't think this has anything to do with you.

LAURA: Don't be mean to Reg, and just do your job.

MAN: Did you make any tea?

LAURA: Just fuck off!

The man sighs.

MAN: ... Okay.

He shuts the door and the noise begins again. He walks down the corridor and knock on his son's door.

MAN: Charles. Charles, it's your Dad. Charles it's your Dad—

The door opens.

MAN: D'you want a chat, mate?

D
SPORFF OLOFF

A HAL DOUGLAS type voice over, as the Mishima opening swells.

'The year is 2317, and Mankind wriggles under the boot heels of extra-terrestrial invaders—The Crumbums of Nebulous Six.

Gougers of sixty-four bipartite-intra-galactific treaties; put in place by the now-defunct Concilious Ad Infinitus. Whose Space-Brigands were responsible for trapping the Heroic Fleet Galaxus in a trap-door worm-port; blurting Captain Spectgubulour and the last remaining bastions of local space peace, into the 9675 precinct of alter-demion eight, to be enslaved to distraction by the Marsupial Lizard Queen Marcicupulous, and her army of bilky-bots

Captain Spectgubulour: Shield your eyes and cup your balls, boys!

'With no hope left, Mankind was left spittled into several factions of subspecies: the Koala, the food additive maltodextrin, and various forms of root vegetables; that now fight to subsist on the meagre nutrients that remain on our dying world.

Those who could afford to fled earth to hide from the Crumbums in the recesses of deep space; to await what the deo-neutrino canonical King Henwig codex ventaculus called, the Well-Wizard. A man born of the white-dwarf of the star of Dave Berry; born both earth-man and star-lad. Whose disciples' jet propulsive gaseous ass-dust does lay scorch the sky atop the moons of Gorkgepula in mile-high scribe.

These men await the man; they await the myth; they await the legend that is: Sporff Oloff!'

[SPACE MUSIC]
INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR RE FUNCTIONING SOCIOPATHS

When did you first decide that you had it in you to write a book?

That's a good question. I've always felt that I had something in me that wanted to come out. I don't want to say Providence, but the idea that you're special. I've always had that, to some degree.

Have you been told by others that you're special? Or does this come from yourself?

I suppose, my mum always used to say it.

And has she read the book?

Oh no, she doesn't read.

Who are your influences?

I like Proust. I've always been interested in the idea of memory and recalling incidents. Because I tend to think that the mind has an amazing ability to delude itself. I like the idea that anyone recalling, that it will be biased. Also, I've got lots of Buffy novelizations.

So let's talk about how long you actually spent on the writing process?

Well, the writing took—actually before we start this, I probably should introduce the themes. Wouldn't you think it'd be interesting for the reader?

I was going to ask that. But go ahead.

Yep. Basically, the book is about; the central character, who is loosely based on me, although, I'm much more heroic. I thought I was going to do me; you would end up with a St. Augustine type character, a very moral, lofty person. I thought one ought to give him some flaws otherwise people just would like him. So, it's about this quite flawed chap. He starts off in the country; a woodland fellow, walking around looking at nature, looking at a log, a bug, a beetle.

And he is temped into the city—the smog. And it's about what he sees when he gets there. And because I knew that I wanted to write a book. I was invited by my friends. And I thought fucking hell; this is a good idea. So what I did is, I took a Dictaphone and various cameras. And I just filmed them. And filmed everything. I was there for about a year. And I just filmed everything. I mean everything ..

Was this with or without permission?

One could argue that anything you say, anything anyone expresses—we're talking here—anything I say is out there in the open, for the world. It's sort of the artists' moral obligation to record everything, always. So consensual? Yeah, because they said the words. I don't feel any guilt. I did it without compunction.

How did you make money when you were in London?

I got a job.

Where did you work?

It's in the book. Did you read the book?

We'll let you tell the audience; It's not about how I interpreted or read the book.

The book's called Functioning Sociopaths; You're aware of sociopathy and psychopathy?

I have been. Is it inspired by the Bret Easton Ellis novel?

Bret Ellis Easton came up with the idea of psychopaths. Which are basically just shits. Bastards. And the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths is that, after this [Ellis Easton] book came out; some brain came up with the difference. There's a train of thought that says that psychopaths are bastards because of their brain. But sociopaths are bastards because of the word, and the environment and the society they're in. So it's really just a different way of look at it.

So Like a Nature/Nurture debate?

Yes. If I understand what you are talking about, then yes.

Okay.

So the book is called Functioning Sociopaths. Because I'm one of the brains that think that it's to do with the society. It's not really to do with the pathology of the person, but to do with the environment that's going into them. So I called it that. But it's also called Siti or Shiti Registrars: The Remora Fish of the Finance Industry. Now Siti is obviously a pseudonym for where I actually worked, because it's a very big company. And I didn't want to piss people off. Like I say in the book, there's gonna be money coming in, and that's when people get—

That's when people decide that they want a piece.

They want a piece of the pie, exactly. So I changed the name. I was working at Siti, and that's how I paid my way.

Let's talk about the length of the book? When you began writing did you have any predetermined destination? Or did it just come naturally?

I believe that The Catcher in the Rye is 74,000 words. And I wanted it to be double that.

So, twice as good.

Twice as good, yes.

Let's talk about illustration. The cover is a piece of your own, much like the entire novel.

Yes, well like I say I think it's going to be a hit. And I don't really want to give money to people, ever. It came from my brain, and I deserve all the money that it will make.

So you believe that it would be a 'free pass' to anyone attached.

I have this friend; believe it or not, his name is Gumpert. He came up with a design, and it was just, are you aware of Damien Hirst's circular stuff? Well, it was like that, but it was just a single dot, in the centre of an off-white, background; disgusting colour. And he sent it to me. And I thought if he could do that—he was charging a ridiculous amount of money for this dross. And I thought if he's going to do that, that I'd do something of my own, and I'd charge myself.

Do you ever worry that the artist in you will overtake the writer? Or can one be both?

There is a constant struggle. I am both a writer, a filmmaker, and a musician, and an artist—so four. And there are four parts of my personality, and they jockey for position. And at the moment it's anyone's guess as to what personality is going to come out. So, when I was doing the art, the artist in me was very much, screw the book, let's just make three hundred and fifty drawings—sell them. But then the writer in me was like, no because words are more powerful than drawings. And then the artist was like, No; you don't know what you're talking about, art is more powerful than words.

And where does the musician come in?

He was just off humming.

Baring all this in mind, do you ever think to yourself that you've been gifted in some way?

Blessed?

Blessed.

Yes.

Are you a religious person?

No. I like science. I think science is good.

So blessed by science?

There's a guy called Sir Francis de Galton. Basically, he believed that some people are just better than others, genetically, just better. Like, blacks weren't as good as whites—for obvious reasons. Don't take athletics into it; I think that was the exception that he allowed for. And he was happy to admit the fact that there were anomalies.

One could argue that the reason athletics was given to the coloured people by the whites was partly due to our enslavement of them.

Even the fact that black people can run faster is probably because slave-owners had vehicles, and the slaves had to learn to run faster to get away from them.

Yes

I mean, technically—they owe us a debt.

Do you have any intentions of a follow-up novel?

No. I could write a book. I've got an idea about a man who falls in love with a chiropodist, but I don't know if it's gonna go anywhere. So for the moment I'm just gonna keep to the idea of adaption this book into a film. I mean, some people don't like the book; they don't like the way it's written; they don't like he words I use, and they don't like the punctuation.

The story?

From what I can understand when they tell me all of this stuff. I take it, that they'd basically rather see pictures. And I have ideas for who I want to play leading ladies, actors, stuff like that. It's just about seeing if we can get the mullah.

Do you think a single film would be enough?

Well, it's either gonna be a single film or HBO is looking to do a—

Ten-part.

Well, ten parts initially. But, you could a lot more with it; I think—Even if it didn't take the actual story, even if it just took the name. Just call it Functioning Sociopaths: The TV Show.

A modern-day Mad Man.

Exactly; or maybe set in the future.

Okay. So we've been talking to Michael McKeon. And his book is now available, Functioning Psychopaths*.

Near enough.

Thank you, Michael.

Thank you. That seemed to go well. This chair's a bit small though.

You can't see the chair.

* This book is no longer available.
