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the_buckshot_method
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DannyH
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We fell sideways through the ballon. It wasn’t easy but nothing is. There were too many gerbils on the runway. Somebody spotted the crater we were destined to buy in north carolina and swooped it out from under our feet. The bastards. Nobody went to my birthday party. I didn’t mind. I still had my dog. If you go fishing in a lake of piss you can expect to find alligators snipping at your heels. Do the antelope have antannae? Enough of that. Shipping magnates don’t have the courage of their convictions. They just smoke fat tubes of handrolled ether and co-ordinate the actions of their minions. They need corporate whores to suck their cocks because they are too fat and lazy to do it themselves. Clatter clatter clatter. The rubbish bin is nearly full but if I press my foot on it there’s bound to be room for more of this delicious lasagne. Just because you’re talking doesn’t mean your lips are moving. Don’t forget to save it all to disk. You never know what might happen if the Iraqis ever get that supergun working. Three million tons of concrete fell on my house today. It just shrugged it off and got on with what it does best. Is there ever a truly random thought? I hope not. Stanley Kubrick once told Jack Nicholson that The Shining was essentially an optimistic film because anything which posited the existence of the supernatural was optimistic. There’s a hard head for you.
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011108
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DannyH
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We fell sideways through the ballon. It wasn’t easy but nothing is. There were too many gerbils on the runway. Somebody spotted the crater we were destined to buy in north carolina and swooped it out from under our feet. The bastards. Nobody went to my birthday party. I didn’t mind. I still had my dog. If you go fishing in a lake of piss you can expect to find alligators snipping at your heels. Do the antelope have antannae? Enough of that. Shipping magnates don’t have the courage of their convictions. They just smoke fat tubes of handrolled ether and co-ordinate the actions of their minions. They need corporate whores to suck their cocks because they are too fat and lazy to do it themselves. Clatter clatter clatter. The rubbish bin is nearly full but if I press my foot on it there’s bound to be room for more of this delicious lasagne. Just because you’re talking doesn’t mean your lips are moving. Don’t forget to save it all to disk. You never know what might happen if the Iraqis ever get that supergun working. Three million tons of concrete fell on my house today. It just shrugged it off and got on with what it does best. Is there ever a truly random thought? I hope not. Stanley Kubrick once told Jack Nicholson that The Shining was essentially an optimistic film because anything which posited the existence of the supernatural was optimistic. There’s a hard head for you.
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011108
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DannyH
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Some empty spaces are reserved for the blank meanderings of the wolves of dayshift. They slaver and masticate but can never truly be full in their bellies and contented in their hearts. They lollop on and on through the undergrowth snapping the legs off newborn babies with their bullbars and declaring music to be the highest form of self abuse. It is not by accident that the walls of their homes are painted deep block colours like the ones you find in pots at school. These do not like to mix their hues. So on they run and never find anything except ice-cream and sand to make them happy. The bandleader is after them, he has the speed but not the stamina to keep up. They will never stop, if they do they will fall asleep and be picked apart by the parasites that lurk inside every crevice of their brightly lit caves. Moths, dung-beetles, wasps, pigeons, all would feed on their carcasses if ever they let the lids fall on their eyes for so long as a second. They are exhausted, ravenous, sweaty but they cannot rest and they will not, for desire burns stronger in them than fatigue. Only just.
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011108
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flo
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I just cannot seem to get the stains out! Perhaps a new detergent, but i've still got half a box left of this brand. It makes me want to fucking kill but more likely i'll just buy a new washing powder. I must be clean, if i'm not clean outside then how can i be clean inside. Can i help you? I can see that you are new here, if you lean slight to your left then the faux gravity wont make you nauseous, or not so badly anyway. You are tall, i hope you don't mind me saying. Do your feet go all the way to the end of those shoes. Ha Ha.
My name is Paul, would you like to be my friend? I so rarely get visitors, especially not ones as attractive as you, sit down if you feel dizzy it will pass, masturbate if that will make you more comfortable. I love i love you i love you.
My name is Paul, would you like...
oh you know my name, have we met before, i'm sure that i would have remembered you. Oh that does look nice, do you mind if i touch it, no no i quite understand, perhaps just a little kiss then. No? Well there is no need to be rude, you are after all the one who appeared in my room. Where did you come from anyway, oh no please don't go, stay , i'll make tea and then well see about finishing you off without too much mess and fuss. please don't go i love you i love you i love you.
please...
i love you..
please, im begging, i need somebody to hold tonight, i need somebody to tell me that there will be a tomorrow. please.
talk to me, i can't cope with the silence that will replace you when you've gone, stay.
I said stay, i'm locking the door you fucker, i said i need some warmth, and you are that warmth you are that light you are my sun my moon and my jesus christ you are my my mummy and my daddy and i will kill you if you try to go.
please...
please...
...
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011125
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the_bone_ranger
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i love you
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020108
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DannyH
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Once again septuagisima rolls its eyes lazily across the dancefloor. We are entertained by the slowing heartbeat of the choreography lecturer as he surveys the scene.
"You'll find its easier if you don't tap your feet." He says and coughs productively into his beard. A bell sways silently at the end of a rope, a cockroach hesitates at the threshold of the sink, testing the soapy air with one hyperextendeded tentacle, taking a nanosecond to think "Why am I always so fucking hungry?" The crowd become aware of the inadequacy of the lighting.
"Should be a good show," Says the epileptic grandfather of Angelina Jolie, "they say he's the best in the business."
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020108
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DannyH
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After a year or two it ceased to be an experiment. Everyone gave up their right to dance. Seemed to make sense in this arid climate, what with the circling being done for you and all the flowers smelling better if you just stood still.
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020424
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DannyH
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There were always the numbers to be done. That could keep you busy if you did it fast enough. There was very little you could make out of disappointment after all. No point in raking up the ashes. It only made you feel dirty. Every sentence contains a word you don't understand, once you realise that there doesn't seem much point in asking questions.
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020424
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DannyH
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Not that we were unhappy. There wasn't time. Too much to be done.
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020424
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DannyH
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Work. That was the thing.
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020424
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DannyH
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Best not to
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020424
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DannyH
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think
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020424
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... |
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DannyH
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about
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020424
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DannyH
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anything
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020424
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... |
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DannyH
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else
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020424
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DannyH
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.
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020424
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DannyH
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Shirts button up the front because its easier that way, not because it looks good. If you saw someone wearing a shirt that buttoned up the back you would think they were stupid.
Yes you would, don’t argue with me.
Why offer such ridicule as your response? Its not your problem if they have a nightmare of a time reaching around their backs to get their shirt done up, its theirs. Can’t you just admire the smooth plane of fabric that floats across their upper body, complete, unbisected. Can you not see how your eye now focuses on the contours of their torso, freed from the interference of that ugly strip of fixing warts they call buttons.
How much trouble would it be? You might begin to imagine, to button your own sirt up at the back. Your girlfriend could help. She would be happy to once she had seen how much more attractive you had become since you freed yourself from the tyranny of the frontal split.
Before you know it you would find yourself running after this new fashion guru, complimenting him in the warmest terms and begging him to tell you where he got his fantastic and original shirt from. Armed with the information, you would rush to the cutting edge boutique where the once stranger, now your best friend had made his life changing purchase.
Parting with most of your month’s wages, you would rip the traditional shirt from your back and leave it unwanted on the changing room floor. You would bound out of the shop, (after having the helpful assistant button up your back for you, an experience you will have found pleasingly erotic) to a new you. Rushing home to your girlfriend you would arrange candles on the table and prepare a romantic meal, taking care not to splash the pasta sauce onto your fantastic shirt. How much more will she love me? You will think, how many beautiful mornings will she spend lovingly fastening me up? and how many romantic evenings as she softly untwists the tiny discs from their holes?
But when she returns home, hours later, pissed with a group of her friends from the hen party you forgot she was going to after work, she will not lovingly undress you from behind. No. She and all her friends will laugh in your face. They will ask you to demonstrate how you take off such a ridiculous shirt. They will say that you look like a mental patient.
Try as you might, you will not be able to reach around behind you to free yourself from the offending piece of clothing. The ridicule will go on and on until hours later when your girlfriend finally releases you with rough uncaring hands, calls you a twat and then falls asleep on the sofa. Her friends will give you pitying looks and leave, offering only an ironic wink as comfort.
This is why you fear and hate the different looking man. To look truly cool requires pain and sacrifice. Like writing, it looks a lot easier than it is. Be careful where and how you abandon your prejudices. Some of them may be keeping you safe.
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020502
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DannyH
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I shouldn’t have told them. Should have realised they wouldn’t want it to get out, that they’d lock me away and tell me I’m crazy. Too many vested interests. No money in a cure, not long term money, not big money like they make for their treatments, their creams and pills and machines.
All my drawings, my research, locked away in that big cupboard, if they kept them at all. That catch 22 promise: You can have them back, just as soon as you’ve given up on all this nonsense about a cure for time.
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031104
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DannyH
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Disabled access was very good in the service station. Almost everything was on the ground floor. There was a lift available for people who wanted to get up to the walkway which was the only access to the other side (excepting driving to the next junction, going around the roundabout and coming back down on the other side of the road, a fifteen mile round trip hardly justified by the Wendy’s Kitchen.)
The lift was used about twice a week on average. A member of staff had to be called to operate it. To Jim this facility seemed over generous. There was nothing of note to be gained by going over to the other side except for the view over the motorway. The lift had cost £20000 pounds to install. The yearly service contract alone cost £2000. Would the disabled not have been happier to be presented with fifty pounds in cash rather than have this facility provided for them? He supposed not. Access is worth a lot. Perhaps the view from the walkway was not that interesting but to be paid fifty pounds not to see it would make it suddenly seem like an attractive prospect. How could you compensate for a lost opportunity? You couldn’t.
Jim thought about issues such as these a lot. His work was now second nature to him and had not taken long to become so. Only the most ambient level of awareness was required for him to keep on top of what he was doing. The rest of his brainpower was exercised on more important matters.
He found it easier to think at work than at home. At home his thinking was always confused, muddled. Wrong ideas would stick in his head and repeat themselves over and over again until he found something else to distract himself with. Usually it was television. Television always worked for distraction.
At work his mind was clear and sharp. He often wondered whether it was some associated effect from the nature of his job. As he cleaned the floors his mind would become clean. As he scrubbed away accumulated layers of grime, so his own bad impulses and wrong thoughts would be scrubbed away. They would always return of course, there were always muddy boots tramping the stuff in but at the end of the day, that’s what kept Jim in work. No dirt – no cleaner. no-one was as acutely aware as Jim that his enemy was indispensible.
He likened it to the great superpowers of the world. America needs Al- Qaida like I need the dirt, he thought. And he was proud of that thought.
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031104
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DannyH
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The good stuff is made of cherries. You can keep the mint flavour. It’s for sadists. No, I don’t need the cool fresh feeling of hyperventilation coursing through my nostrils. I want the sweet taste. I want freedom from this feeling of cleanliness. Give me dirty cherries. Allow me the indulgence of sticky juice coagulating on my chin. I’ll pay you enough. You’ll be well rewarded for the good that you have done me, for the release that you have permitted me. I need the flavour. Without that taste I am extinct, a dinosaur, my frame too large and unwieldy for my tiny underevolved brain. Bereft, I am a lumbering beast, dragging my cumbersome tail behind me.
But.
Give me just a sample, just a momentary re-acquaintance with that burst of fruit upon the tongue, that explosion of ripeness, that equilibrium of juice and flesh, and I shall be the nimblest gymnast ever to take the floor. My wings regained, I should be a dinosaur no longer but instead that developmental through road that runs from pterodactyl to archaeopterix to eagle. Give me that wondrous produce and I shall fly through aeons of time in a fraction of a fraction of a second and appear before you as the very choicest example of natural selection. I beg of you. Do not chain me to my prehistoric past, do not abandon me in the jurassic mists. Evolve me. Free me. Let me become me again.
“Sorry mate. Like I said. We’re out of the cherry flavour. I’ve only got mint left.”
Oh allright. Give us three packs of the mint ones. Have you got the time by the way?
“Its almost three thirty.”
Oh bugger. I’ve left my cat for nearly three days. Its bound to have made itself unwelcome. Can’t you look after it? No. I suppose not. You’ve got your shop to take care of and of course that must come first. You can hardly be expected to pet-sit for every one of your customers. No, don’t worry. I don’t expect you to understand. Understanding is not your job. You’ve had no training in counselling. I can tell that by the way you are not mirroring my behaviour. If you had had counselling training you would have crossed your arms when I did and uncrossed them when I put my arms on the counter and leaned forward to make my rather over the top speech about the… but enough of that. What good does it do us, or indeed the cat, no doubt by now both terrified by and mortifying to its involuntary new owners. If I had had the first clue that it would go so far, I would never have begun the whole enterprise in the first place. Although I suppose that was the point, in a way, to see how far it would go. Well. I know now don’t I? Too far. That’s the answer. Farther, or is it further, than I ever thought possible.
“That’s two pounds ten.”
Yes, of course. You don’t want to listen to the ramblings of an incontinent old fool. You want the money. That’s what you’re here for. Not a counsellor, not a petsitter, not an evolutionary biologist for God’s sake. You are a shopkeeper. The shop is all you need to keep, although you also have kept time for me, haven’t you and that’s a skill we’d all like to have. To be able to keep time. I’d like to have it locked up in a box so it couldn’t get out to nibble away at my bones and harden up the pathways in my brain and make me prattle like an idiot to people in shops. Then whenever I got sick of myself I’d let it out of the box for a bit and allow myself to slide a bit further into forgetfulness.
Two pounds ten you say there’s five. And give me a copy of the local as well. Got to keep up on who’s fucking who on the council, eh?
I’m sorry if my manner is distasteful to you. I picked up a certain coarse way in the army and I’ve never felt like shifting it. Too long in the habit now. My children are disgusted by me. Disgusted. They don’t come and see me any more. I’m not considered safe with the grandchildren. They watched a documentary and now they think I’m going to fuck their little Tommy up his tiny little arse. They should see the state of my cock. Then they wouldn’t worry so much. Do I sound bitter? I heard myself then and I thought I sounded bitter. I don’t want to be bitter. Bitterness eats away at you doesn’t it? I’ve never understood why people don’t try to be nicer to each other. There’s such a lot of bastards in the world aren’t there?
“That’s three, four, five pounds. Thanks very much.”
Ah, the old fashioned way. You don’t see that much any more what with electric tills and sulky little bitches on all the counters. Counting it back up, as if you were giving me my money back. Its nice isn’t it, and sensible too. You’re covered, I’m covered. We both know exactly where we stand. No need for one of those unfriendly little printed signs telling me to check my change myself because you’ll just tell me to fuck off if I come back later to complain. No. That is our business concluded like gentlemen and I respect you for that.
“I…um…”
Right. I’ll be on my way. Maybe I’ll see you again. I usually go to the other one round the corner, what they used to call Jones’s. They know me in there. They keep the cherry ones in for me only I’ve missed them today and you’re open later. Sorry if I’ve disturbed you going on. People around here are mostly used to me. They humour me.
“No, no. It’s er…good to hear a man whose got something to say for himself.”
It is isn’t it? It’s a good thing. To talk. You shouldn’t just let yourself fall into the silence they all expect of you. Don’t let them shut you up. Don’t be that smiling dummy in the corner they want to use like a ride at the fair. We’ve all got so much to say but we just can’t say it because we’re scared of what people will think of us well fuck that. I’m too old to care what people think of me any more. I couldn’t give a monkeys. Won’t be long now til I’m off, dead, fucked, finished. Who wants to be lying there, thinking about all the things you could have said with the time getting shorter and shorter until you feel like the only thing you ever said in your whole miserable life that you really really meant was goodbye.
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050715
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Doar
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.
needs a listening post to remember why the lambs have left the manger.
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050715
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