The Chortling Roll Down the Glassy Knoll; or The Evening Redness Under My Nails

The Irish are said never to forgive and never to forget. I forgive no one. May the road roll up to crush you, may the wind blow your coffins downhill, may the sun set your excrement aflame, the rains flood your bleeding eyes, and until we meet again, may God hold you down with the palm of his hand against the burning ice and infinite fire of Hell.

Exterminate all rational thought. This is the conclusion I have come to. If a method presents itself, I’ll be sure to adopt it.

There was a boy who toyed with knives, who learned his lessons well. He shuffled people from their lives and sent their souls to hell. One day, one day, his daddy thought to ask him what he’d do. ‘I’ll play all day and not get caught by the likes of cunts like you.’

If what they say is true my words will be wrong. This is extremely unlikely as I doubt their soulless tongues can form honest sounds; also I’d be the first to know if I’d let out false words when I’d intended truths. Any skilled exegete can see these on even the most cursory examinations, and I’d expect that even these fools will eventually tumble to it as they perform their nauseating dance. Every breath is charged with the bile of the world they’ve made, and I don’t expect to draw a breath that doesn’t gag on their puke.

A story I know goes as follows: a man told his family to stick together, using the following metaphor: he grabbed a bunch of sticks together, and told his family to try to break any stick individually. Each member did. Then he bunched them together, and asked his family to try and break the bundle. They could not. The man claimed that this was a proof that sticking together made one unbreakable by giving up the one-ness for a stronger unity. His son grabbed an axe and cut the sticks in half. Like Diogenes, he didn’t say anything but got his point across. I’m fairly certain that none of this ever happened

The other day, to pass the time, I began to tell myself the story of some chickens. They form, of course, the traditional nuclear family of father (rooster), mother (hen), and son (chick). Chickens, you will recall, do not eat their young, and the story quickly became mundane. The rooster crowed three times and Peter recognized Jesus. The rooster jumped around with its head cut off. The hen laid eggs that were turned into a Denver omelet. The chick grew up and followed one of those paths. There are limited options when dealing with chickens, and very little time was passed.

I am fairly sure that my words (not these) are true. They do not strike me as untrue. Oblique. The pigfuckers of taste haven’t learned yet to read truth’s slant rhyme, and by the time they can it will have become a lie by their having gained access to it. ‘Fuck shit cunt ass’ is the refrain of the day: Fuck shit cunt ass fuck shit cunt ass fuckshit cuntass fuck shitcunt ass fuckshitcunt ass fuck shit cuntass fuckshit cuntass fuckshitcunt ass fuck shitcuntass fuckshitcuntass fuckshitcuntass fuckshitcuntass fuckshitcuntass fuck shit cunt ass.

There is some concern that I have chosen the wrong color, but I informed them that red is traditionally the ink used for corrections.

Liars form their own reality, of course, but it usually falls apart when confronted by the bigger one if they’re not capable of making others believe it. The same happens to those who speak the truth, if they are no more convincing. Storytelling is a means of survival for those who want to shape reality. This is a shame, as oftentimes the best storytellers bleach out everything worthwhile, and our world is shaped into something less in the minds of millions. Fortunately for the poor storyteller, there are many ways to skin this world without having to convince anyone of anything. The force of words can change its shape, but so can other forces.

Bang bang, Maxwell’s silver came down upon her head. Bang bang, Maxwell’s silver hammer made sure that she was dead. I must not be so-o-o-o

A man once resolved to walk over every inch of his room, without walking over any inch twice. This first required removal of all furniture, an easy enough task with others, but somewhat difficult to be managed on one’s own. Having completed this task, the man then sat on the floor to determine his strategy. The first idea to strike him was of walking in concentric circles around the room, starting from the perimeter and working his way in until he’d reached the center. The other obvious option was to walk along one wall, turn sharply, and walk back slightly out from the wall, on and on, up and down, until the room had been covered. In either case he was troubled by the thought of somehow miscalculating and missing an inch at some important juncture (and all were important). This man is still deciding which method to adopt today, assuming he exists. Meanwhile the floor rots.

Trailing centipede stalks down kaleidoscope back alleys, their hateful lie-brands searing my reeling brain whenever it slips past the guard of my skull-plate, those scuttling nabobs ejaculating a mire of slime that floods the labyrinthine, wool-clogged sewers, seeding nightmare flowers with pulled back petals that sprout glass hand grenades at two meters above the ground, I jump the swaying fence and roll down the glassy knoll. They make their moves, slow as turtle sex, and blink from being non-alley to being alley, gone as last year’s cigs, this sea change leaving me in the rainbow of shadows cast by the umber-marsh canopy to make my way alone in this world. The red sun in my hand explodes in reverse and the yellow sun on my head rushes to catch up. Life is not a dream and neither is any of this; your thinking must be in your shoes or underwear to go in that direction.

The bombing of Dresden occurred primarily because there was a surplus of bombs in the US Army. Sometimes material demands our actions.

Argument makes me tired, especially as I seem to be losing. My story is being falsified before I can spread it, by that insipid scoundrel and his flying monkeys and back-flipping dogs. I suck the blood scraped under my fingertips and fling my chortle to the fleeing moon.

A meandering melee

Is this a good time to start this? Well, I can't see why not. The meaningless hours of the night are the traditional time for evil meanderings, and as far as I am from my home at Logic Beach the strands of thought and process still slot into place as though I stood in those timeless wastes. I, the only variable, the reading head that slides down the tape of time, that beholds the passage and the patterns. My free will may be an illusion, but time is utterly real. That which happens has happened - it falls to me to chronicle it. I am the talking man. I may not be the best of men, nor an arrow to the far shore, but I am one of you and I speak.

Shall I tell you the tale of your life? It is probably similar enough to mine in theme if not in substance. I give you the man, more beset with questions than answers, surrounded by the sweating, gaping beasts who bustle in the market place and exchange parasites and diseases with the same hand they clutch and dispense the coin that sings the song of their existence. Favoured of the metropolis, of the class neither rich nor poor enough in the coin of the realm to need to desire what it can bring nor be constrained by what it does. A creeping dissatisfaction, a malaise is the curse of these people as they witness the growing strength, numbers and banality of the rich, the desolation of the poor and the mean, miserable shortsightedness of their peers. But wedged in a comfortable existence between the rottenness carried out in the name of Mammon both above and below them, clinging to a luxurious existence just below the sun-baked surface of the machine, who can blame them? They change jobs sixteen times in a life, their freedom is a curse as they race against the gun to stay skilled and worth something to somebody, everybody, and all this time horrific things are done in their name by a government they elect to preserve this nameless terror of a life. In the name of a mindless security we term peace, and a miserable ease for the slight majority, the boot comes down hard on all kinds of necks, wavering just on the horizon, a moral quagmire for those with eyes that see. Shortsightedness is their only defense - they cling to their home loans and stock options and think not of what is committed in their names and with their consent. Somebody once said that in a democracy the people get the government they deserve. This is wrong. We have a government of the Grek, for the Grek. What we deserve is a government that will harvest us for our meat.

But we have heard all this before. Our theme is the growing dissatisfaction with this way of life, an alienation born of strange questions broached in the late hours of the morning. This is a common enough theme. It boarded my bus in huge numbers every time I pulled up near a university campus. But perhaps there is something different about us? Perhaps a scarring, or an unusual efficacy of the kidneys? Or perhaps I delude myself. Perhaps the Grek will welcome us with gummy smiles and open arms. They have with me, I have done no wrong in any eyes but my own, for they do not see through the bone surrounding my brain. I am utterly part of the machine I fear, and though I have moved far from the metropolis and the roar and shriek of the cash registers, I am still bound tight to Mammon, just as we all are. The machine is in us, and at best we may choose self sacrifice, to turn our backs on what we are and walk alone into the desert. But the song of the freight train is in my heart. The largest instrument man has ever constructed, the thousand-part chorus of tortured metal played on strings three thousand kilometres long, the quintessential sound of progress and the bones of Western civilisation itself. It is a song sung to the heavens night after night, and the song is me. If I do not participate in civilisation, I must pick at its edges and swarm down its alleyways and eat out of its bins. No matter how far I stray from it, I feed on its fundamental, inhuman song. As such my fate is tied inextricably to that of the Greks. Is this true of you as well? I ask because I don’t know and want to understand.

Failing to value the comforts of the middle but lacking the means of the upper and the desperation and fatality of the poor, we are bereft of meaning. Most of what we are is fed to us from birth, a formula of tinned music sung by disembodied voices from a far away land, similar but terribly alien to who we are. We flock to one another and take solace in company of those that are similar to us in some way. We define ourselves by our similarities to our flock and change ourselves to emphasise this condition. Did something go wrong somewhere along the way? The tale of my youth was one of uncoordination. Something was wrong with my ear and my brain. I couldn't fit in, so I read a lot of books instead and sank into my own skull. I became isolated, forgot my name and was lost. I learned to pity the man who is found first by anyone other than himself. Who knows what kind of mindless fiend I could be. Could I be my bastard older brother, a worthless killer who changed armies because there wasn't enough killing going on in this one?

But this is all a song that has been sung before by people with a better ear for meter and pitch. My mind is better attuned to the dark places, and casting no light myself I suppose I illuminate no new truths and merely stumble on ones unearthed by earlier explorers on the same trail. My senses are attuned to the darkness, and therefore I see little of what passes in the light. Another theme that twists and yawns across my spans and chasms – a constant feeling of isolation. As the eternal pilot of this unruly meat, I wonder what I am missing in not sharing in the commonly understood and shared forces that appear to drive others. But what drives me is deep and unnamable, and although I seek to master it I do not seek to understand it or have it understood. But I echo. If I have depth, am I not thereby hollow?

Do we share this song? The lonely echo, the roar of the metal god, the yawning silence of the dark and empty places? When the sun is shining on the bustling market place, we stand there motionless, eclipsed, uncertain and fundamentally alone.

Are we all locked in our own skulls? Are we bound up in the same recurring themes, endlessly repeated and reiterated? Or is it just me?

Either way, the walls of Rome fell a long time ago. I still remember the moment when I realised that we weren't the descendants of the ancients - we were the vicious hairy bastards who pushed them over. Vile barbarians playing at civilisation, pathetic monsters donning the ill-fitting trappings of a far older people. The history of Western Europe isn't that of the Romans, as the various lies dug up during the Renaissance would have us believe. It is merely the history of the Germans, a long and repetitive tale of murder and outrageous feats of drinking. And after only fifteen hundred years, look how serenely we wear the trappings of peace and civilisation! Behold our mighty structures and the plumbing therein. But stare not too long lest the murderous heart of the German be spotted. It is this that has allowed us to strive for excellence in the art of killing over the centuries. Lurk not too long in the dark alleyways either. We are conflicted - trapped in our furs and fineries, telling ourselves that we are civilised because we can now kill by remote control at such a distance that the blood no longer splatters our tunics. Nor does it despoil our marketplace. But we are a people that knows nothing more than killing, that aches to wring the life from his neighbour, to take what he owns - to kill and kill and kill and kill and when it is no longer feasible to kill any more to turn on our own selves with the same murderous glee. See how we scourge ourselves of our murderous past with the guilt that we allow to filter through in carefully measured doses through the dirty glass of the TV screen! See the darkies suffering, convince yourself of your humanity by allowing yourself a moment of self indulgent guilt, then commence to kill - automatic, unseen, but killing none the less. A civilisation that floats on the blood of slaves is no less terrible because the slaves and the blood are kept well out of sight.

This is not something I feel particularly outraged by. I, after all, am a product of this way of life, and I am comfortable as I sit close by the edge of the tracks, letting hundreds of tonnes of steel rip past inches from my face, singing my song to me in words I cannot even form. But should this civilisation begin to teeter, as all civilisations do eventually, and begin its headlong topple, I shall not expend myself on a mad quest to prop it up. I will fall with it and with a song on my lips join the peoples of the dust.

TOPIC, due 31/10 - "Tangential Bilious Meander"

You heard me.

Write something that is:

a) nonlinear in structure and does not pursue a chronological story line
b) partially inchoate and deliberately open to interpretation
c) vile

No less than 750. No more than 1500. No mercy.

31/10 will see it done.

In Which the Hammer Comes Down Around the Mark With Some Melodramatic Bullshit

Having considered the situation and weighed the options, and knowing the value of the words that will follow to the various organizations outraged by or involved in the by now all too famous scandal, I have consented to allow the publishing of my father’s suicide notes. I write ‘notes’ because, although my father was not such a monster that even death would not welcome his matriculation unless he proved he meant it through repetition, the changes of mood, tone, and state of mind suggest that he kept the following as a running commentary of the last weeks or months of his life (those familiar with his story will have little difficulty guessing which episodes correspond to which points in his confessions), jotting down what he could when he could. I leave this to you in the hopes that my father will be remembered for what he was: an upstanding businessman and contributing member of society, not a Dracula in modern dress preying on the elderly.

Arthur J. Munny III

* * * * * * * * * * *

The miniature proles act out parts written for them by Ayn Rand in some shitty novel of hers, slow circles round the terrifying giant at rest, shaking gas cans and juggling matches. I survey them, wondering how they dare be so bold as to do this with my eyes open, secure as Lilliputians in the wan thread they’ve made to bind me. I am not amused.

The whining of the elderly is rainwater in a gravedigger’s unfinished ditch.

Work went well today; inventory suggests our supply will keep up with demand. Rather surprised by the height of the demand this quarter, but we’re agile enough to handle it. There’s a wonderful feeling to running a company put together well enough to adjust to a changing market smoothly, every element specified to my needs. A shame so few have ever felt it.

Any fool with money can mount Everest if the sherpas are good enough, but send a top-notch climber up with some saccharine York housewife or Stephen Hawking as a guide and what do you get? Frozen corpses.

It is surprising the lengths somebody will go to achieve something he has no interest in beyond having been denied it. I would have thought that those years of experience would have removed so childish a whim.

A press conference is a conversation with a Hydra. A dumb Hydra, as far as Hydras go.

Courts are silly things in this country, grown men in wigs and formal dresses talking things over when they should be engaged in laughing themselves dry at one another’s costumes. Two lawyers to do one’s job. Has a theatrical air, which calls its results into question, a boring play I was duped into attending by some jackanapes idiotic enough to believe newspaper reviews. It is a joke that I must care about the play’s denouement, a long and convoluted joke that even the teller no longer finds amusing by the time he’s finished with it. Better to have stayed in the Midwest.

I have been a bad boy. I spoke out of turn. I should be made to sit facing the corner.

Fuck that old cross-dressing cunt in each one of his ass-wrinkles. I wish him an atrocious life and then the fires and ice of hell and in the execrable generations to come an honored name.

I am sometimes oddly comforted when I recall that the plot of Othello revolves around a silly bit of sewing.

Odd turn of events: the new accountant’s eyesight not being what the old one’s was, a decimal point was misplaced, and this malingering dot of ink has ensured that roughly one fifth of the orders already in will not be filled. There are more coming in every day, but these will be returned with polite words and sad smiles explaining the truancy of this small mark. I remember when bad math existed in grade schools and cloying films about John Nash, but never in my books.

The shadows you cast while walking at night are some of the most fascinating, three or four of them dancing around you, converging, blending into one another, all with the skill of Chinese acrobats. Cast a strong enough light and the many become one. A shame when long walks at night are the only time one can witness this phenomenon.

If all men are created equal, they do not remain so into their great old age. Ugly but self-evident. More accounts dissipate like a reflection punctured by a dropped brick.

My office has begun to smell unpleasant. My showroom has not.

I wonder if I might be able to hire children to manual labor. Stone-breaking, perhaps. I see no reason why they should be denied the opportunity.

Hundreds of cars stopped on the freeway to watch EMTs prance in synchronization around sculptures in steel, plastic, and flesh, simultaneously the world’s newest form of performance art and its oldest. I, of course, take my seat in the theater with the rest, not yet ready to assay the stage. I wonder how one prepares for such a role.

How does one?

The meek inherit the earth, the putrescent my fiduciary independence. Cheers, all, the view from here is breathtaking. Wish you could see it.

Another Day in the Old Bailey

-*CURTAINS UP*-

SCENE:
Stereotypical English court. People with bad teeth in wigs on the bench. People with bad teeth in somber faces on the floor. People with bad teeth and perpetual boredom in the gallery. Pinstripes and an a orthodontist's nightmare. You get the picture.

LORD HONOURABLE RIGHTEOUS JUSTICE FOTHERINGTON-SMITH-SMYTHE-SMITH (fat, windy, pleuritic, bad teeth) :
Miserable little corporate person, you stand accused of two counts of discriminating in the first degree against people of age. How do you plead?

GRINDLING FLINKINGTON-TWAT, QC (short, dynamic, good teeth):
M'lud, we plead no contest on the basis of the fact that everyone is in fact a 'person of age'.

SMITH:
Shut up and plead properly, you unspeakable little turd.

TWAT:
In that case, you fat bastard, not guilty. Not even a little bit, boy howdy.

SMITH (gavelling):
There will be no Transatlanticisms in my court!

TWAT:
Sorry, M'lud. *sotto voce* You windy old whore.

SMITH:
Mr. Cribble, present your case.

MR. GILPOT CRIBBLE, LLB (short, dumpy, scraped through law school, bad teeth):
Mr. Cribble for the Crown, my Lord. The case before us today is open and shut. The defendant, Mr. Reginald Breadbasket, has clearly been defying the new age discrimination legislation with a breathtaking impertinence. The Crown will assert that on several occasions, we received information that Mr. Breadbasket refused to meet with potential job applicants purely on the basis of their personal information.

COURT:
Shame! Cake! Violets! Shame again! etc.

CRIBBLE:
The Crown then took up the opportunity to test rang Mr. Breadbasket. He was contacted several times from a number of sources, which varied very little information between job applications except for the age range. What was taking place was perfectly clear.

SMITH:
Mr. Twat, the opening presentation for the prosecution.

TWAT:
M,lud, I think this whole problem could be cleared up with a word from Mr. Breadbasket himself.

SMITH:
Hmm. This is highly irregular. I'm going to allow it.

BREADBASKET (young, bald, dynamic, possibly Australian, definitely good-looking):
My Lord, ladies and gentlemen of the court.

This is all a colossal waste of time.

Legislating things such as this make us feel good, because we are doing something about discrimination which is in principle A Bad Thing. However, we also inscribe these laws as if they will somehow enforce themselves. If this discrimination is a crime, it is not one which will easily bring itself to the courts. Have you ever considered merely how easy it is to hide behind euphemism? How many alternative excuses can be given for simply rejecting a candidate for a job, in amongst something which is done with other noticable (and perfectly legal) biases involved?

I can include arbitrary qualities in the job application which certain demographics may be unable to fulfill. For example, young people make bad stenographers and old people make bad computer programmers.

I can for ask references which people simply can't possess. A young person might not have a professional track record of 5 years. An old person might not have evidence of having worked in a 'recent industry role' for some time.

I can provide an annual physical which disadvantages or disenfranchises the old. I can provide a contract whose schedule could not possibly be kept to.

Best of all, I can accept the application then reject it after interview or 'consultation' because the 'character of the person in question does not seem suited for this organisation'. People are rejected on the basis of character all the time. A shabby, disorganised or uncharismatic person is already at a distinct disadvantage in any situation where they need to present themselves attractively. Will we ever legislate against my blatant non-hiring of ugly people to work on front desks, or midgets to work in the file and copy room when they can't reach the fax machine?

COURT:
Woo! Bowlderise my ferret! etc.

BREADBASKET:
Unless I actually use the phrase 'fuck off, you stupid old person' and you actually catch me doing it rather than merely alleging it as hearsay, I will charge that you have bollocks-all chance of convicting me. There are any number of ways that I can run my business and not be affected one sodding bit by this powderpuff piece of legislation.

Lastly, if you don't trust me to make the ultimate decision of what's best for my own business, based on all the available information and research, then you can shove your legislation right up your fat gerbil-lubed cornhole.

SMITH (apoplexy):
ORDER!

BREADBASKET:
Or the lack of it. Why is the country so concerned with the free market when it comes to competition and so hostile to it when it comes to recruitment? Do you think for a second if I got a young, old, pregnant or ethnic job applicant who was better than everyone else that I wouldn't take them? You've got one foot in the free market and the other in socialism and your balls in no-man's-land. You're fucking fooling yourself, mate.

SMITH (the colour of a Liverpudlian drunk's first dump of the day):
YOU, SIR, ARE MAKING A MOCKERY OF THIS COURT! I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT. UP WITH THIS I WILL NOT STAND! STAND UP, I THIS THE WITH WILL! BWARGH AND OTHER RAGEFUL NOISES!

BREADBASKET:
Well said, fatty. Now, good luck trying to convict me.

-*CURTAINS DOWN FOR ACT ONE. THEY GIVE ME THE PULTIZER ALREADY EVEN THOUGH THERE IS SEVERAL MORE ACTS OF STEREOTYPICAL BRI'ISH HOGWASH TO GO.*-

TOPIC - Due 14/9 - Anti-discrimination Measures in the Workplace

This week, new age discrimination legislation was brought into force across the UK. It means that, employer's can now not advertise for staff of a certain age or refuse an interview to an applicant purely based on age amongst other things.

This is the latest in anti-discrimination measures that have been introduced in recent times, adding to the gender and race laws that have made it "fairer" in the work place in terms of getting a job and then receiving the pay that one deserves.

I'm presuming that the nations represented here have similar legislation in place.

Whatever happened to selecting the best man for the job?

Discuss.

No more than 1,000 words, falling due on 14 October 2006.