Instructions for digging a grave for a cat

Fold your best friend up on the armchair in a restful position. All is at peace. There is still heat in his body. He may as well be sleeping.

Ten steps takes you through the kitchen. Pass the crying women and the ones who have no right to bear witness. Five more steps. Turn right. Three steps. Open the door. Enter the blazing day.

Take up that shovel and break the Earth open. Dig the blade deep in, turn it, soften it up and let the hard baked ground crumble and pull out the shovel with a load of earth atop it. Dump the earth to one side.

Do it again, and again, and again. Sweat takes your mind off the corpse that formerly belonged to something that meant a everything to you. Feel the sweat pouring down your face and your back as you rip up the ground. Dig the hole wider and deeper. Dig and dig and sweat and sweat.

Push that shovel into the hard earth until it won’t go any further. Then keep pushing. Feel the skin on your hands rip away as you pummel the rock. Hit the rock over and over and over again. Feel it break before your onslaught. Bleed and do it again.

Hammer the earth with your fury. Smash at the foundations of the house with the shovel, feel it become dust as your skin tears and your bones jar against one another and your sweat mingles with the blood and dust. Kill that earth, destroy it as it has destroyed your friend. Dig it wide and deep and sweat and bleed. Throw the shovel aside.

Turn around, walk back in through the door, leaving it ajar behind you. Three steps. Turn left. Five steps, past the ones who have no right to bear witness. Ten more to the body of your friend.

Part him from the weeping woman. Remove his collar and place it to one side. Take up a blue blanket and sling it over your shoulder. Pick up your friend and turn around.

Ten steps, five, a right turn and three more into the day. Lay the blanket on the hot ground next to the grave. All warmth has gone out of your friend – therefore let the wounded earth spare some for him. Lay him upon the blanket in a restful pose. Lay his items about him so he may have them in whatever afterlife there may be. Fold the blanket over that face you loved. Fold the blanket under him, covering him completely. Wrap him one more time.

Lay him in the hole. Take up the shovel and cover him with the hateful earth. Pile the ground high over him in a mound so that none will step on or over him. Throw the shovel aside once more.

To the left is a large rock that has lain in the ground for some time. Go to it and tear it up, brushing up the scum on the underside. The hard part is over – lay this rock upright at the head of the grave. Write his name on the rock. His part is done.

Gather unworthy flowers and place them on his grave. Do this again whenever the flowers shrivel. This is a meaningless and empty gesture that means more to you than the cat. His part is done, was done long before these flowers first bloomed.

The Unnamed But Awesome Genital Manoeuvre

Let me be completely explicit about this: the following is going to be completely explicit. I did not get this nom de plume on a whim while shopping around for a better one. The following text describes an act of wanton carnality, and I bet that's exactly what you were expecting from me.

The enclosed is one of my Favourite Things. It may seem silly or vague to have a category of ‘Favourite Things’ because of the simply infinite amount of actions that one can perform. But since its discovery, this particular action has resulted in many, many interesting times, and shit will get you sunshine that this situation will continue indefinitely. So I think I’ll keep it in its pleasant entirety, more or less exactly as described. Why it’s so favourite-y will be revealed shortly.

Everyone with half a brain and a pelvic anatomy diagram knows what a G-spot is. It’s a capricious bastard of a thing, sometimes hiding, sometimes subtle, but played properly always a trigger switch to a woman’s sexual consciousness. There are other triggers, but after extensive testing I can honestly say this one is the best and most reliable between subjects. It was named after a doctor called Grafenberg, a German fellow who liked to get his head into places that no German had gone before (or probably since).

(Believe it or not, in this age of infinite knowledge, there are still serious and thoroughly contentious debates about what the hell this G-spot thing is, and what it does, and how it works. Nowhere is the gender divide more obvious than in the hardcore research into sexuality. Another spot of super orgasmic potential which lies deep in the nervous tissue just above the cervix was properly documented for the first time in no earlier than 1998. It’s a scandalous, sexist shame. But I digress.)

For the unenlightened, the G-spot is one to three inches behind the pubic bone, at the top of the vaginal wall. That's an anatomical fact, so it's quite easy to find with a little practice. The problem is this: its responsiveness is dependent on specific levels of arousal. In other words, unlike a clitoris, if you touch it on a woman who isn’t aroused, probably not much will happen. You have to start the engine first before you stomp on the pedal, if you catch my drift.

Anyway, at the right time an errant finger will confirm the following – there is a certain nub of tissue in there, and when you find exactly where it is (which isn’t hard, run your finger right over the whole area) it will start to swell and change shape.

Then we’re cooking with gas. Get in there after it, until you notice two things:

1) The breathing pattern of the woman will change, become shorter and choppier.

2) Her back will start to arch backwards – pelvis up, hips down, head down.

(In an animal species, this position is lordosis – from the Greek lordos, bent backwards. It’s a universal mammalian sign of heavy-duty arousal. I’ve read research which states quite clinically that it does not happen in people. Of course, this is bullshit on a stick. It happens fine, although I’m pretty sure I couldn’t demonstrate it without wildly uncontrolled experimental conditions.)

In any case, we have our lordotic woman. Now, here’s the fun part. From the outside you can see your finger on the inside – it’ll raise a little bump in the skin near the top of her pubis mons. The tissue there isn’t very thick. Place your other hand over the bump, so the G-spot is between your finger inside and your palm outside.

Now, sink your palm slightly into the pelvis wall (i.e. push your palm heel down and forward), and pull your finger (on the inside) back at the same time you move your hand. The G-spot tissue is now right between your finger and your other hand.

Ignore the screams and the clawing and MASSAGE. FIRMLY. between your hands.

How firmly is up to you, and entirely dependent on how rough your consort likes it. Either way, when done with finesse you should witness something few men get to see up close: a big, powerful, genuine, sheet-ripping female orgasm. You may have your hand drenched. You may have sheets of your wallpaper ripped off. You may get sick of listening to the screams. You may be accidentally kicked in the face. You may wake up people in nearby apartments. Either way, everyone wins.

Enjoy.

New Topic - The Blog of Acts

The assignment this time around is simple: describe in suitable prose a physical action. Do not dissect it. Do not submit it to an exhaustive analysis, meant to suss out all the implications of said actions. Simply describe something done physically and let the action stand for itself.

This may sound like a writing exercise, and it is in all aspects but the most important: make certain that the physical act, and the description in germane language, is appropriate to our site, with its illustrious history and vertiginous standards. So, while it is an exercise, it's an exercise intended to draw blood.

Due April 1st, not to exceed 750 words. Have at it, gentlemen.

The Lonely Sculptor, being a Modern Pygmalion with Obvious Elements Borrowed from such sources as Frankenstein and Narcissus

Once upon a time, and a fairly mediocre time it was, there lived a sculptor named Pygmalion. He was an old-fashioned sculptor, carving human figures out of large pieces of rock, and a distaste for the amorphous or monolithic structures passing as modern sculpture drove him to work as far removed from the art world as he could. Since people in le monde used various gallery openings as an excuse to suck down cocktails and sleep with one another in whatever combination came to mind, Pygmalion chose to live an abstemious, hermetic lifestyle, locked alone in his large studio with blocks of marble and a bed.

This living arrangement proved satisfactory enough, as Pygmalion could order groceries over the internet, cook and clean for himself, masturbate when necessary, and wasn’t the especially talkative anyway, preferring to express himself through visual means. So Pygmalion amused himself as well as he could and got by. But he did not work, and after a few months he remembered that he was supposed to be an artist and that his lack of production would have to stop.

So he tried sculpting things, but as he was dedicated to the idea of sculpting the human figure his decision to seal himself off from all human contact left him completely bereft of anything to sculpt. He wasn’t particularly imaginative, but for argument’s sake let’s pretend that he was: even if he could imagine something with incredible precision and turn that mind’s-eye vision into a sculpture that portrayed, say, a very successful 90% of what he saw in his head (and let’s see you do better!), well, there’s a reason that even the greatest artists needed a model. His sculptures would have turned out rather like the modern art he detested, and that would be no good. So it’s better that his imagination was as underdeveloped as a pike’s feet, isn’t it?

Though this one method of turning in on himself was denied to Pygmalion, he had others, and the one most developed by his months spent in isolation was an obsessive focus on his thoughts – which, we have already agreed, he could not sculpt even if he had had some – and appearance. He had, you see, not been exercising regularly and had added quite a bit of weight onto his originally not-particularly-slim frame, had let his hair grow into a tangle, his beard into a brambles, and his eyes resembled a toddler’s first foray, with a fresh red crayon, over the lovely eggshell walls of his father’s new girlfriend’s living room when left alone to color in the hopes that he wouldn’t notice the affair. And he didn’t. So Pygmalion was somewhat self-conscious at this point, and while he wanted to improve his looks, he was under no stress to do so because his lifestyle kept him from the prying eyes of judgmental pricks.

The idea, when it came, seemed so simple: he would sculpt himself! And he would not simply sculpt himself as he was, but rather as he would like to be – he would put the energy he neglected to use for himself in fashioning a statue over his idea of what he should be. With the help of fitness magazines, movie magazines, old photographs, and not a single mirror, he began his task. He finished rather quickly, because I would prefer not to describe in detail his work, so let’s say that within a few weeks (he was quite a talented sculptor in a technical sense) he had achieved his perfect Pygmalion: a lovely Adonis with proportions Jim would envy, shown in the act of sculpting a piece of granite into the form of a more cartoony-looking idealization of Pygmalion.

Pygmalion looked upon his creation in wonder, falling to his knees before it and trying desperately to hide (but from whom?) his growing erection. Immediately he gave up, in offering to the statue, the following items: a half-loaf of rather stale ‘French’ bread, a hunk of Cracker Barrel cheese, a half-bag of Oberto brand jerky, a six-pack of 7-Up, and a tortoise-shell comb. The statue received these items gracefully, though declining to use any of them.

Pygmalion, still awed by his creation, began to plan his re-entrance into the world: he would send out this idealized version of himself and let it interact with the people around him as though it were actually he himself, and he would thereby win over the art world and generally rule at life. But an alternative plan presented itself to him: if he could animate this statue, could he not cause it to fall in love with him? He prayed to the gods to act for him, deciding between the two options he was too weak to choose between. In the meantime, he set to work on an idealized-Pygmalion suit to walk around in, so he could once more go out into the world.

He quickly finished this suit and began wandering around, interacting with people whom he impressed with his beauty and physique and with the various stories he made up about himself to cover the year or so he’d lived, holed up in his studio. However, whenever a person would get closer to him the artifice would show, and Pygmalion lost all his friends if he let them penetrate through the artificial relationship afforded by his suit. Moreover, the existence of other people with these suits made people wary of this kind of stunt, and Pygmalion, in his superficial joy, found himself as unhappy as ever. So he continued praying, even though his life had been getting progressively worse since he started.

Finally one of the gods, the one writing this story, took pity on him and made the statue a real person. It was, however, disgusted with Pygmalion’s repulsive appearance, and soon struck off on its own, leaving Pygmalion desperate and alone to plan a final revenge on the world. In the meantime, the statue found that its possibilities in the world had all been dried up by Pygmalion’s impersonation while it was imprisoned in stone, and it bought a pistol and went to face its maker. Both sculptor and sculpture planned to commit a murder/suicide, but as fate would have it the real Pygmalion slipped on a banana peel in his studio, falling against a hunk of granite that then fell upon him. The statue Pygmalion was riding the bus home and was stabbed by a mugger.

The End

Six Blind Men and the Elephant in the Geopolitical Living Room

Six blind men of geopolitics clustered around the elephant in their living room. How they got him in without breaking the coffee table is anyone's guess. But, there he stood, idly chewing on the settee in the middle of their outstretched hands.

Of course, to blind men, everything is invisible. I suppose that’s why they had such strong opinions. Something that you can’t see invites a huge amount of speculation, especially if you can feel it.

The first grasped around, felt a tail. "The elephant feels like a whip," he said "It's been divinely revealed to me. Also, I got this book written by some drunk hippy fisherman. It’s immortal truth too. Anyone who disagrees with me is a godless Catholic bastard."

”Pish!” The second felt his ear. "An elephant is like a sheet," he said "And you can't tell me otherwise. I know what I know... and what I know is that an elephant is flat. I can feel this elephant is flat. To say otherwise makes you a dumb Prod whore."

The third snorted at both of them. "Look at the two of you, practically identical and fighting with each other. Anyway, you're both ridiculously narrow minded. The truth is far simpler. What I feel here is more like a tree than anything else." His blind hands scrabbled up the elephant's leg. "In the pantheon of elephants, there are so many, many elephants. No one single elephant should ever be singled out for special treatment."

The fourth said nothing, but muttered obscenities in Arabic. "Elephant Akbar!" he suddenly exclaimed. "An elephant is like a snake." His hands fluttered over the trunk. "There is no point listening to any of you. You are all ignorant infidels, and you are beneath me. I have this on good authority from the Chief Elephant himself. You and your hippy fisherman stories!"

"Fuck you all!" whined the fifth. The other four moaned. "You all oppress the Sons of Moses, and you oppress the true and glorious knowledge that an elephant is like pussy. My people have undergone great suffering, and you would still oppress our truth?" His Jew-hand was wrist-deep in the elephant's mouth, the other one waving like a tattered flag in the direction of the other voices. “You owe me money now,” he declared. “This voice isn’t for free, you know.”

The last blind man felt the elephant's shoulder. "As far as I can tell," he said "An elephant is like a wall. But that is just my experience. What I do know is that this is first and foremost an animal. It's warm, it smells, I can feel it move and hear it chewing on the furniture. I know thousands of smaller animals that I can touch in their entirety. So, it would seem this elephant is a mass of biases and heuristics, more feeling than thought, capable of acts of cruelty and stupidity through no manner of evil, but instead merely because it loses its perspective. An elephant is a big dumb beast, like others are small dumb beasts."

"What's more, if it's a real elephant, it knows all this. It knows it is a rogue, and when in must it is not itself. It needs careful management and understanding."

His words, like all the others, fell on deaf ears as the other five were busy stabbing and raping each other, and pinching each other's share of the living room carpet.

The only one with ears to hear was the elephant, and he had moved on to eating the sofa.

The Stallion, The Mare, The Farmer, The Thief, and The Flies.

“Of Myth and Men”

We live in horrible times – all the fables of the past relate to strong, hard peoples who ate from the sweat of their brow and spent half their lives marching around stabbing Persians to death. What, therefore, have they to do with us? Kick over any rock and what scuttles out from underneath will be no more pale, no whiter and display no softer a belly than our disgusting civilisation. We have been made soft by convenience, and the old fables and parables no longer apply. Not only are most people unable to interpret them correctly, we have pretty successfully established a way of life that would make many of the teachings of Aesop, Confucius, Hesiod, and their ilk fairly detrimental.

A new fable for a new age? Very well. One will be needed to direct the raging and shallow seas of a youthful soul and to guide the placid and shallow seas of the elderly soul. But only one. Only one thing drives them onwards.

THE FABLE OF THE STALLION, THE MARE, THE FARMER, THE THIEF, AND THE FLIES.

Stallion stood before a pond, proudly gazing at his reflection. He was in the height of his youth, strong and proud in his bearing. Was not the whole of creation his to roam in? Could he not at his whim carry himself throughout creation, and today be in Greece and tomorrow Libya and the day after be among the Ethiopians? Or alternately roam the lands of the frozen North and turn to visit the Emperor of China? Thereby was he happy and content. Often the Farmer would come out to his field, hoping to catch him unawares and bear him away to labour on the nearby farm, but Stallion was far too quick to be captured and led the Farmer on many merry chases. The Stallion would let Farmer almost catch up to him and be away with effortless speed, leaving Farmer puffing, red faced and cursing in his wake.

In the course of one of these chases, Stallion encountered Mare, and they fell in love. They left the meadow and Farmer behind – gone were the days of merry chases and pond gazing. Stallion had something far greater to look into – Mare’s eyes, which seemed to reflect his very soul. What use now did Stallion have for Greece, Libya, Ethiopia, the North and China? So he set these places aside also and sired a family. Thereby was he happy and content.

Farmer observed that Stallion had found a mate, and lit upon a plan that was far easier than chasing the family down. Instead, he simply constructed a stables on his farm and went inside to wait for his scheme to bear fruit.

Mare saw that the stables were constructed and very fine, and day after day she came down to look upon them and saw them unoccupied. There was fresh, warm hay and clean water and a roof to keep the rain off of her young ones’ heads. She thought it was a terrible shame that such a dwelling should go unoccupied, and went unto Stallion and spake to that effect. Stallion was fully aware that this was some plot by Farmer, but he could not argue with Mare, who simply took the foals with her into the stables. What choice did Stallion have to follow? And he was not surprised when he heard the lock on the gate click behind him, and he beheld Farmer’s gloating face.

“See how I have made this fine dwelling for you! But now you must work for your keep!”. Thus spake Farmer. And Stallion was harnessed to the mill days, and at night he was paid with a full belly, a roof over his head, and the contentment of Mare and his foals. Thereby was he content.

And so it went on for many years, and Farmer grew rich from the work of Stallion, who himself became wealthy in the fashion of horses, as he was fed well enough and his children grew strong. But came one day to the farm a merchant, who wanted to buy the foals. Stallion reared up and inspired dread in the heart of the merchant, who was worried that the foals would be of bad temperament also. Therefore the merchant did not take away the foals, but Farmer flogged Stallion mercilessly for his efforts.

From this day forth, Stallion was unruly and would not work for Farmer. He was beaten all day long and barely fed at night. He was despondent and haggard, far from the proud Stallion that Mare had wed. She was becoming unhappy herself. Stallion begged Farmer to let him leave, but Farmer would not, having gone to all the trouble to have caught him in the first instance.

One night, a Thief entered the farm. Stallion was fast asleep after a hard day’s whipping but Mare spied the fellow and beckoned him over and asked him to let them out. In return the Mare and foals would serve Thief. Thief did as he was bid and took the Mare and foals, but seeing no worth in Stallion left him behind.

The next day Stallion arose to find his life gone. Wracked with grief and unable to work, the shock that almost killed him was followed with a beating that did. The Flies laid maggots in his corpse.