Armitage Shanks

2002-01-27T18:17:00.000-08:00

Hey mister music, you shure sound good to me, I’m watching you sing your song, watching you blastin long. On occasion I would wander toward a beach filled with people of varying descriptions, they’d say “This road is uneven but we’ll be safe just you see ---“
Lions prowled beaches at night and I watched them from a distance. Large lions with big wet tongues stalked the shoreline, looking for animal carcasses.

I went to the countryside with a rifle over my shoulder, went up to the country with a pistol in my holster. Red neon lighted discos with kids shuffling round in semi circles to the rhythm of Kylie Minogue’s Puppy Love. Quiet as the night, two beasts squared up for a fight, to tear t’other limb from limb, somethin’ like you’d see in nature films.

Large monochrome tower blocks with Rastafarians at the door. Rains fall silently and without weight. There are 400 junkies within the stayings of the tower blocks that reach into storm cloud skies when you stare up at them from the street. Tortured junkies line the corridors of grey wet concrete walls with rain staining the walls and even more rain, fresh rain, pouring out from little holes in the white plastered ceiling and running down the walls in a multitude of little streams.
Those junkies with the rooms sit cross-legged on their chipboard tables looking out the window. With chins resting on fist in wonderment they see the rain floating down to the street and only dampening the pavement. It reminds them of the time they saw their grandmother icing a wedding cake.
When night comes around orange streetlights hum an electric meditation. I guess what they want is some peace of mind, but I know it’s very hard to find, you can’t borrow it from a friend, who may say he comes from a promised land.

The signs of destruction were telling of imminent impact. Everybody stood round looking for him. Everybody with telescopes and binoculars looking into the red sky. Some say we should have seen the signs earlier. Now it’s too late.

Penguins emerge from deep cold water. Yes, they see the sun and the sky and especially the snow. Yes I’ve been accused of a crime I never did. They gonna turn me loose.

Maybe driving slowly along some narrow, badly lit road I’ll come upon a creature not of this earth. Maybe he’ll take me up to his spaceship. Will he show me intergalactic diagrams of strange parallel solar systems? “Yes, it’s been good,” he’ll say.

2002-01-25T16:58:00.000-08:00

I remember it was pretty cold that night. I could see my breath in front of me. The bodies lay on the road. The driver was bleeding from the mouth and the nose. I went over to the passenger, driver’s friend. I now looked closely at his arm. Yes, it was broken. His coat was torn up to the shoulder and sodden with blood. I lifted a slice of the material up. It pealed back like cellophane of a new kitchen utensil. Underneath the fella’s bone was poking out. He turned to look at me. I think he was waking from a sleep. He made incomprehensible noises then gently placed his head back onto the road like an old dying man would place his face against his deathbed’s death pillow. I got up and looked about. Then I looked at my watch. It was near midnight. All the lights in this street were out. No one moved round here after midnight. It was like they were reverse vampires, sucking their blood through the day instead of at night.
“What am I going to do with you two?” I thought.
I put the driver over my shoulder and carried him up the driveway of my house to the gate that connects from our neighbour’s wall to the wall of our kitchen. I hung him over one of the gates then unlatched the other one. Picking him up again I slowly walked into the garden and placed him gently on the grass. It was the same routine with the other one, the passenger.
When I had them both in the garden I had a pretty good idea about what I was going to do with them. The little girl next door owned a Tracy House. A little miniature playhouse that only kids or midgets could get any joy from. It was big enough to put these two, and hopefully, when they woke up in the morning, they’d wonder where they were and after much attempts at recollection they’d go on their way.
There was a gap in the hedge where the wee shite next door had repeatedly kicked his football. I fed the pair through there and when they were both in the neighbour’s garden I climbed onto my oil tank and rolled over the hedge. After I’d put them in the Tracy House I went through the gap myself and into my own house. In the kitchen I glanced at the digital watch on the microwave. It read 12:14am.

2002-01-22T15:42:00.000-08:00

I carefully pulled a cigarette out from a new box I’d bought earlier. So far he’d said and done nothing other than slowly run the back of his hand over his forehead. The driver of the BMW was pulling his friend through the passenger side window. The friend was badly damaged. The crash had definitely broken his nose and maybe his arm, but I couldn’t be sure on that.
After five minute of saying nothing he goes, “I am fuckin’ goin’ to break his fuckin’ legs.”
I am still smoking. This saves me from getting involved. If you’re going to smoke you may as well concentrate on it without getting muddled in a fight.
Outside he steps up to the driver and hits him in the face. I know he must have something in his hand like coins or keys because the speed that your man fell couldn’t be achieved with your common punch. I wind down the window and throw the cigarette into a puddle in the road. The passenger is lying in the road near to where my cigarette lands. He’s in a bad fashion. I still can’t see if his arms broken, but it does look that way.
My friend is pounding on the driver with both his fists now. I take a look out the window to see what he’s done to him. His face is drenched with blood. Various streams of it run down his face as my friend props him up against the front of our car.
“Listen, he’s had enough.” I say. “Leave him alone and go home. Somebody’s gonna see us.”
He looks up at me. He’s lit up from the headlights on the car.
“You think he’s had enough?” He asks.
“Yeah.” I say.
He shrugs his shoulders then arches his hands over his eyes so he can get a better look at me. I put my head back in the car and wind up the window.
I’m getting out as he gets in. He’s stretching over onto the passenger side to wind the window down again.
“You better do something about them. I’m going home.”
I watched him turn his car round in the street. It didn’t look easy. He tooted and waved as he drove off. I could definitely see a smile on his face as he went. A definite smile that said, “FUCK YOU!”

2002-01-21T16:14:00.000-08:00

“Everything and nothing. I mean I think there’s something happening, but I don’t know what it is.”
“Right.” I take long deep drags on the cigarette before dropping it into my cup of coffee. This trouble didn’t seem to upset him. Maybe this sort of thing happened to him a lot, but it was new to me.
“Why aren’t you eating?”
“No appetite.”
He finished his fries and rubbed his mouth with a napkin.
“We’d better go, I think they want to close.”
I looked over at the serving staff. A girl was standing with her clenched fist against her hip, drumming the counter and chewing gum. We got up and left.
Outside the rain had died down a little, he’d have less trouble getting home now.
“What time is it?” He asks.
“Near eleven.” I say.
We get into the car and he starts driving. When we reach my house I notice the same BMW from Wednesday sitting across the street.
I say, “That’s the BMW from the other day.”
“You sure?” He says.
“Definitely.”
“OK.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Wait a minute.”
He puts the car into first and slowly moves to the other side of the street. The car comes to rest opposite the BMW. There are two men sitting inside, the same two that I saw on Wednesday. The driver starts up the ignition and so does he. He puts the car into first and waits. The driver opposite me looks tense; he slowly moves the wheel in a clockwise direction and edges out onto the street. He inhales loudly then reverses twenty feet. He stops hammers it into first, accelerates a little more, then into second before hitting the passenger side of the BMW. His car isn’t that badly damaged. The driver of the BMW gets out and comes round to the passenger side. He’s small with a crew cut. He wears dungarees and a beanie hat.

2002-01-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

There was a heavy rain on and one of his headlights had been broken.
He says, “We’ll pull up into B_____ K___. I can’t see anything like this.”
We pulled off the motorway and onto the slip road that took us toward the fast food restaurant. There were three other cars in the car park besides ours. A couple and their two kids rushed out with their jackets pulled over their heads to keep the rain off.
He ordered and I found a booth next to a window. When he had the food he brought it over. I’d ordered a coffee only. I wasn’t feeling hungry. I hadn’t eaten anything in the previous two days.
“What did you want to speak to me about?” He asks.
“The other day, Wednesday, I think there were two fellas watching me. They were in a red BMW.”
“Did you recognise them?”
“No...” I stopped to light a cigarette. He chewed slowly on his burger, thinking.
“Somebody’s been ringing the house, leaving messages on the answering machine.”
Did you do the call back?” I ask.
“Yeah, there was no number stored.”
The coffee was hot and without sugar I couldn’t stomach it. I looked around the other tables for unused sachets. By now the other families had left and it was only him and me left in the place. The rain was still as heavy as when we came in. It beat against the window in irregular bursts, each one seemingly more intense than the last. I began to think the window was going to break.
He was on his fires when he said, “I think something’s happening.”
“What do you mean?”

2002-01-18T17:58:00.000-08:00

A hot wind comes blowing in from across the ocean and I can be found on the raggedy porch of a little woodshack Spanish bar. Before me many young girls gently undressed running soft nylon and lycra over sculpted thighs and buttocks and abdomens. Beyond that there is a glistening sea with little children running to and from the shoreline. On the chipboard table to my left next to me there is a bottle of San Miguel and a tin ashtray with 2 strange Spanish butts in it. The barman slowly rubs a white rag over a jug with an opulent over decorated handle. His eyes are looking to the left constantly. Did he have a bad eye or was he suspicious of something happening? Up the steps and onto the street many African street merchants flog counterfeit Rolexes and blow. They weave and run between unsuspecting tourists slowly walking along taking in crax in the pavement or moss, why, there aren’t that many points of interest in this resort. There are girls and Italians but no Eiffel Tower or Grand Canyon. The merchants will eye up a crowd and pick out the best-dressed ones. It’ll probably be the Americans or the Germans. The merchants’ll run up on them, smile, ask nationality then start on their routine. They’ll pull back the cuffs of their robes and show the tourists’ a shining Rolex, plastic gold. He’ll wind it up and if its electronic he’ll set an alarm and when the alarm goes off he’ll dance round the gathering crowd throwing perfumed rose petals in the air. In the confusion the sweating American will be licking his salty lips and soft beard. Above a small supply plane will sound horribly in the blue sky and for a moment the American will have his attention got by this. He’ll look up and follow its black trail of smoke across the sky and finally out of site behind a nice yellow brick building. The merchant will see his mealticket is preoccupied and he’ll do Heavens knows what in trying to avert his gaze from out of the sky and back staring into his yellow eyes. When the merchant sees he’s won the American over he’ll start rubbing his nose fast and madly. The American will smile for reasons unknown to everyone but himself. And they’ll make the exchange like a headmaster giving a kid his bicycle proficiency. The American will turn to see who’s looking, to see if anyone’s noticed him with his counterfeit watch.

So I was sitting in this bar and when I felt lightheaded from the beer I get up and wander along the beach. There are Italians sitting cross-legged in the sand playing cards. They have fancy chains hanging on their wrists and they flick them in the sun in animations about a rigged game or so forth and on. Up in the lifeguard’s chair he sees someone out about 150 metres getting into a bit of trouble. He wears a blue shower cap and scarlet swimming togs. He rushes into the water sending fat Spanish kids further into the water to get away from him. For a while the lifeguard disappears, but then he’s back with the kid in his arms. He lays him on the ground and starts giving him mouth to mouth. The lifeguard has blue eyes and his are the first eyes the little boy sees when he eventually sends up a little spurt of salt water and wakes up. The lifeguard gets up and walks back up the beach to get back into his lifeguard’s seat near 20 feet in the air.
On the street an Irish couple argue about the man’s alleged affair he had back in Cork. She’s saying he made a student pregnant and that he took money out of their joint account to pay for an abortion in England. The man screams that they’ve talked about the situation before.
He goes “We only did it for one night, and it was good, but you’re forgetin’ she set me up...fuck! that bitch was a fuckin’ headache!”
I’m listening to this with a dopey smirk on my face until I hear a commotion coming from behind me.
“It’s an abomination!”
You couldn’t mistake the Yorkshire accent. He was maybe 75. Bald head with a semi circle of white hair wrapped round the back of his skull. He started kicking damp clouds of thick sand over a sand sculpture of Gentle Jesus. After five minutes Jesus was all kicked and beat to fuck. A man returning from his lunch at the bar saw the crowd of English oldies and ran towards them throwing his empty bottles of beer that he used as candleholders.
Later on I bought the man a beer and he told me he was from Austria. He told me he was in the mafia before they threw him out and that he’d been sleeping on the beach for 6 months.
He said a prayer in Austrian then told me to leave in English.

Three days later I heard there was a good whorehouse on Calle de San Miguel, the strange winding street tentatively strung between two points on the plateau 300 foot up a series of hard orange steps. I set off at 5pm and half way up met two 16-year-old kids who I talked to in Spanish. I ask them if they know of the whorehouse that can be found on subterranean level. They say they know it. Then I tell them about a friend of mine and his dog.

They take me to the top of the steps where down below the whorehouse is separated from the outside world with a thin yellow lace curtain. A big Spanish woman appears halfway down the steps. She points at me and invites me down. The kids disappear. Inside there is a bar with a big black guy pouring a drink. I ask the big mamacita if there’s any nice girls available. She says yes and points me toward the room behind the bar. I go under the hatch of the bar and come up nodding at the big black.
The room is nice. Smells nice. There’s a clattering fan in the corner with colourful ribbons tied to the wire mesh. The mamacita comes in with the black. He’s holding a hanky in his big fists. He’s looking at me and twitching his nose. The mamacita slaps his arse. He comes for me and gets me round the neck, backing me up against the wall.
I wake up with two cotton buds stuck up my nose. I’m in the boot of a car slowing to a stop. The boot opens and staring down at me is the big mamacita smiling. She gets me by the hands and yanks me up out of the boot and onto the hot tarmac. She gets back into the car and the black gets into gear and drives back the way they came. My shoes and money are gone and I’m lost.
Later a Sicilian family give me a lift back to my hotel. I get into bed with a warm whiskey and turn on the television. I watch the news and suck on the mint that the maid has left on the pillow lying soft and clean beside me.

2002-01-16T17:39:00.000-08:00

Rain fell all day and most of the night. Birds nesting in trees lay low and slept and not a chirp or a song was heard from them. All day I sat in my room looking through old photo albums. Most of the scratchy black and white photos were of people whom I didn’t recognise; nevertheless I was certain I was related to them in some distant, uncertain fashion.

Outside the pub down the street old men beaten by age and poverty stand smoking cheap cigars and discussing the racing or the football or the dogs. Between drags on their cigars they exhale misty white breath vapour into the street. Four years ago I would pass them on my way to school at 830am in the morning. They would spare me the odd cigarette, and I would thank them and make small talk with them before walking on. One afternoon two of the men were arrested. I stood watching before a policeman told me to fuck off.

On Wednesdays I would leave school at 130 pm. Games were between 130pm and 330pm and since I wasn’t bothered doing them I went home. In the summer months before we got off for the holidays I would aimlessly wander around the city centre staring at tall monochrome buildings stained by summer showers. Men were in short sleeved shirts. Their shirts were always a sky blue colour and the men took long comfortable strides down the street swinging their freckled hairy arms. Women sat in large groups outside trendy cafes. On Fridays (another games day) they sat to well after 230pm sipping coffee and sucking hard on low filter cigarettes. When I’d nothing better to do I sat on the wall outside the church trying to get a look up some secretary’s skirt.

In the weeks before the summer holidays I would miss school altogether and instead go down to the Salvation Army to sleep in one of their spare beds. The woman on the door was past retirement age. On the odd morning I went in she gave me a worrying smile, sort of saying “There’s something the matter, isn’t there? Go on son tell me what’s the matter.”
Every morning she came to my door at exactly 10am telling me I had to go.
She goes, “You have to go now. There’s an old man comes here every morning looking for a place to rest. Come on now...”
She was fat and she moved slowly across the small room to open the curtains. She was cute in her Salvation Army uniform. Old with a parched face, but I could imagine her taking centre stage in a freak show straight out of a world even Old Father Time would have trouble remembering. Anyway, she left a bag of blue mould oranges at the reception and the girl there with the birthmark on her face handed them to me when I signed out.

The summer came and went in a continual vacuum. My parents went away to Greece or Spain and I lay on the hammock outside sipping Bicardi and Scotch. Old men wearing nothing but football shorts and ‘Liverpool 89’ sweatbands mowed their gardens with red wet faces. Girls went by my house in bikini tops and cut off denim shorts. Boys with impossible quiffs pulled up at the kerb and the girls jumped in the back laughing. This was the summer I had real trouble getting smoke so I started on spirits as a worthy substitute. Taking a carryout of Hennessey and an assortment of rum I headed up through a nearby forest and into the farmer’s fields where I lay looking at the city so minute and surreal from where I was. Soon enough I got smoke and I went on little journeys all over the North Coast and into Donegal. I was on a weed epic. Everywhere I went I attempted to decipher the strange messages being conveyed to me in the shapes and vast forms above me. Tall ferocious clouds rolled in from the east, with bulbous abstract servants paving their way in the sky. Out in some broad and empty road one afternoon here I saw one of these giants in my path. With crimson wounds ruining his good looks he turned grey from the shame, unleashing wave after wave of hard rain, warm and smelling bad on the warm damp tarmac of the road.

On the train back from Dublin I met a lay preacher with a red blustered pantomime face and a large gold earring. He sat opposite me, looking straight at me as the train started off. He had a large leather Bible on the table. He rested his elbows on it as he continued looking at me. He licks his lips and starts talking:
“This world is full of sin. You want a car and some money to burn. Take a wife and treat her well.”
Then he huffs and sighs.
“In your big expensive houses a gold plated door won’t keep out the Lords burning rage.”
“I don’t believe anymore,” I told him.
He took this with ease and rubbed his chin as he rested back into his chair.
I say, “I’m going back to school tomorrow, but I think I’ll quit.”
He nods and goes, “Out on the harbour the leader was in the car park drunk. We rationed out the cyanide pills and I didn’t take mine. I moved into AA and unloaded all of my grievances there. Last month I met my boy for the first time. I took him to the lake in the park. I had him on my shoulders then playfully ruffled his hair. After that I took him to the waterline and constrained him while he struggled for air...”
After that he said nothing, and neither did I.

2002-01-15T13:59:00.000-08:00

Farewell to this lands cheerless faces. I crave to be seen with my pants down. On a warm summer’s night, in a park full of children. People walk glumly along city footpaths and in the grim light of nostalgia many are seen to melt into inkwells of infinity. The lies that make vampires weep, the wars that make the heavens shudder, all come together in unisons of nebula storm clouds, multicoloured and shining.

Upon waking this morning I came upon three men in my room. Two I didn’t know from Adam, the other, the darker most handsome of the three was familiar to me, but from where I do not know. They were clearing my room out. One was hovering while the other two were dusting my shelves. The handsome one was dusting the shelf above my bed. I got up out of my bed and made my way into the bathroom. Here I disrobed and stepped into the cold shower, quickly adjusting the temperature, not getting the one I want.
After I get dressed and my hair combed etcetera I come down to the kitchen where mother has prepared breakfast.
“Oh mother,” I say, “why have you cooked me eggs. I don’t like eggs.”
To which she says, “You’ll eat what I give you!”
She is looking out the window toward her birdhouse. There are a number of crows picking over the stale bread she has thrown into the garden.
She goes, “With your triumphs and your charms, well they’re in each others arms.”
I finish my breakfast and leave the house. It is 734am in the morning. Several large geese fly over all the houses. The sky is purple and the orange streetlights are still on. The rain begins and it flattens my hair. These are the things that kill me.
At work I quit early and go to personnel.
I go, “I want to quit work.”
She is 35 and pretty. She has a cute lisp and wears short nylon skirts. I’ve seen her at socialist rallies outside McDonalds. It is a dreaded sunny day and she goes, “Why. Why do you want to quit work?”
I say, “Because I don’t like it.”
You won’t be able to get the brew if you quit.”
“I know.” I say.

She gives me a resignation sheet. It asks me to date and sign it. It also asks me to sign my name and state my reasons for leaving. There are four lines. Here’s what I say:
“I fear that further employment in this institution will be detrimental to my mental well being.”
It filled two lines. I was left feeling like I could’ve written more. She asked me if I could stay to the end of the day. I told her no, I told her that I wanted to leave now.

I stepped outside. It was nearly three in the afternoon. I had a joint that I’d rolled that morning and I lit it up as I walked from the gates of the building. When I got home I walked round the block a few times until five when I was due home. A man in a Superman T-Shirt walked past. He had blue tights on and red Y-Fronts pulled up over the blue tights. His name was Frank and he lived near me. He had a Superman fixation and he went round the neighbourhood attempting to lift parked cars up by their front wheels. Most times he never manages it. Frank comes over to me. I’m sitting on a swing in the park near my house.
“You got any smoke?” He says.
“A little,” I say.
For a while after he says nothing. Then he says, “Give us some.”
“Five spot?”
“Ten.”
“OK.”
I give him it and he looks at me with wet lips and a runny nose.
“Give us it on strap, mate?”
I nod and say nothing and he skins up. Some of the kids come past on their way from school. They’re all from the estate and they all have skinheads and earrings in.
“There’s Frankie!”
All the kids run over and start spitting on Frankie. He makes a loud moaning noise and starts rocking back and forth. I notice through a window that they’ve released another video of Osama. He’s looking alright.

Later on that night my mother finds out that I quit my job. She comes into my room and starts punching me round the head with her fists. She tells me I’ve to get a job the next day. Her face is red and she’s not making any sense. I mean she’s attempting to communicate but all she can manage are a few coherent words. The rest is a bunch of screams. She is unable to stop the spittle run from her mouth. She rubs it with the cuff of her dressing gown like a savage lunatic.

When she came in I was smoking a joint at the time. She either ignored this or just paid it no attention. I was listening to The Smiths at the time. Morrissey sings Life is very Long when you’re Lonely. I couldn’t possibly comment.

2002-01-05T09:55:00.000-08:00

Staring at a white stonewall the other day, I am momentarily caught out. I am wondering how did I get here and when I did I am wondering how long have I stayed here? And in infinite unexplored regions of the brainmind I am at a loss, I am unaware in frontal perceptive lobes that the basin above which I am standing is filling up with cold water and that my arm is emerged in said cold water – my poor arm is numb with cold and I regain reality consciousness where upon I realise where I am etcetera, and that my arm is numb and wet.

The other day a lot of snow fell everywhere; everyone took cherished little steps out of doors and onto the footpaths where they found themselves slipping into the paths of oncoming Sainsbury’s lorries gunning down hard icy roads. I am reminded of the incident 3 years ago when a little mongoloid boy ran out onto his specially facilitated boat no haha! not boat, bus...running to the rear of the bus where his other little mongoloid girlfriends were waiting for him, he slipped on black invisible ice onto his hole. Unable to move out of the way of a large articulated lorry he was mashed half in half, the big heavy wheels of the lorry flattening his swollen belly. Large swirls of milk and porridge splashed all over the road. Later on these pools of white froze over causing a minor car accident two days later.

His name was Wee Davy, a diminutive hood from the south side of the neighbouring estate. One day me and a friend (Chris Kerr) had to look after Wee Davy for a “Special Kids” council sports day. Kerr was on community service for killing an old man’s Alsatian and I accompanied him to the council playing fields. The grass was soggy and tore up from kid’s quad bikes and bored househusbands hitting hollow plastic golf balls between the crook’d soccer posts. Wee Davy was in an Italy World Cup shell suit. He proudly marched across the half acre of yellow grass toward his girl Jemima. Jemima was a ballet dancer. She pranced around in the council sports halls with her hair pulled back into a little bun. Her face is always held in stern concentration, even when she sings God Only Knows to Davy.
20 stone of Chris Kerr shuddered when he saw wee Davy and Jemima canoodling in the back of their piss yellow bus. He wheezed and coughed and dragged on his B&H and laughed. He didn’t like Wee Davy much. Chris was a strict Catholic who played the organ at mass every Sunday. He said that in Davy there was the soul of a demon.
But in the meantime anyway Chris and I had to take lengths in the long jump. There were little dog shit mines hidden under mounds of sand. Some unfortunate woman not only had a Mongol kid to deal with but also a blind albino girl who wondered into the sand pit and had a shit mine shoot up all over her blood red dress. (Shit mines were things the hoods made by doing something with a German banger bought in the Paki shop.) the women started yapping at the wee girl who had specks of brown all over pure white eyes and who was screaming in general disgust. The sports day was a general catastrophe. After half an hour the hoods who’d planted the mines came out of the trees with petrol bombs and air rifles. Some of the portly councilmen ran over to the hoods with their hands up and with white flags blowing in the wind. This was their moment of definition. But the hoods were callous in their nature. The fat bastards from the council got shot in the face and in their fat swollen bellies. Hundreds of little Mongols darted everywhere screaming. Mothers collected up their toddlers - who to them were more important as able-bodied little potentials – and ran to their cars with angry twisted faces. Me and Chris ran into his car and watched from a distance. Chris put on his straw hat and pulled the sunroof back. The hoods screamed things like “Feel the burn ya fuckin dirty spashtiks.”
Chris laughed and lit up another cigarette. Then from out of the mêlée came wee Davy. Already the big banner which was strung over the entrance was a singed mess of white plastic sizzling like egg yoke. The red letters were twisted and misshapen like a glorified Dali painting. The misspelt writing “SPECEL KIDS SPORD DAY” was sad and defeated. The hoods stood over the smoking plastic pissing on the flames. A couple of the mongoloids stood in bowed pensive mood. I saw one even touch the others finger and smile at him. They stood in silent mystification with nervous twitches pulling at their ill-defined features. Davy was again proudly moving over the grass toward the laughing hoods. He stood in front of them and they turned, some recognising him. One who I knew as Ricky stopped laughing and spat at Davy’s World Cup shellsuit. At this he turned and walked toward the gathering mongoloids standing ten foot from the hoods. He quickly stripped to his Y-Fronts, with Jemima pleading with him to turn the other cheek. (Jemima was a ballet dancing Christian, too)
Davy brushed her pleading aside and turned to kiss her before he moved into battle. With his bare feet walking through dog shit up to his ankles he confronted the hoods once again. They sensed Davy’s challenge. From out of the gang appeared a large 15 stone boy named Frank. Frank, although not a mongoloid, was educationally subnormal. He had an IQ of 24 and he was unable to either write his name or clean his arse. There was not a word spoken between Davy and Frank. They knew in simple-minded primal instinct that they were to grapple and that one was to be the victor. Frank had a good three-foot on Davy and if Davy was a middleweight then Frank was superweight. Davy seemed to be aware of these things. He stood punching his chest as Frank stripped off. He went, “Davy can do it. Davy can do it.”
His pudgy little face turned red with anger. Frank rose after removing his last shoe and immediately launched hisslef at Davy taking him to the ground. After much rolling and biting Frank was up straddling Davy, pounding his face to hell. Then it was over. Twilight was coming round. 5 O’ Clock orange fires made oblong shapes in the sky, and Davy was left covered in spit and bruises. The other mongoloids had also given Davy a kicking hoping to curry favour with the hoods. But now they had gone home and the hoods had disappeared into the trees with gluebags. Jemima kneeled over Davy’s unconscious body singing God Only Knows.
Chris put in his rap and he goes, “Aint nobody dope as me I’m just so fresh and so cleanclean.”
Then it finally got dark and near home I fired up a half spent joint I’d left from earlier.

2001-12-02T15:16:00.000-08:00

...”You will find this job boring, excruciating in fact. At the end of each day your neck will ache, your back will ache, you will be fatigued...but let me reassure you, this is nothing compared to military service. I myself spent 4 years in the army. It did me a lot of good.
“Know that I am not your friend...see me as a drill sergeant...I am here to be feared...I am here to see you do the job right and that I meet my deadline.”
Then a silence. She scans the room, looking to see it’s all sunk in. The man stands in the corner of the room watching us. He is small with ginger hair. His face is covered with rather large freckles. He wears a shirt, a tie and trousers. He looks at me. I have been looking at him for the past five minutes. When our eyes meet I look away quickly.

Then another woman comes in. Decked out in a sickly purple trouser suit she looks like a man I once knew...the 80’s still linger like a bad smell that would keep flies of dogshit.
“You will now be allocated your numbers. I will call a number and then I will call out a list of names. If I call your name after a number it means that this number is your position on the team. Now...Number 1 markers are as follows...”
1...2...3...4...5...6...it was D.Jenkins, P.Robbins, G.Davis, but no R.Barr. Where was I? As she finished listing the number 6 markers I felt a nicotine craving come on. My palms moistened. I started getting a dry mouth. Finally I was called. Number 8. Bottom of the rung. Didn’t bother me much, the lower you are the easier you got it, - if you knew the game and knew how to play it that is.
“Now I will call out these numbers again. If this number is your number I would ask you to step into the conference room at the bottom of the hall where you will be tutored in the marking procedures. This will take around 20 minutes for each group.”
OGODINHEAVEN when was there a smoke break? I got up and went over to one of the assistants.
“Hello. Would it be possible for me to go out for a smoke? You see I’m number 8 and they’ve only started on the number 1’s and, well, its going to take an awfully long time for them to get round to me, and I really am dying for a cigarette!”
After all this she goes,” I’ll see what I can do.”
This one had a nice arse. Maybe around 30, brunette, big tits...everything else. I noticed her earlier talking with Gertrud the Great. On asking for a smoke break I looked for her and on getting closer I realise she’s got some sort of large wart/facial anomaly growing from her temple. I find this awfully disappointing. Anyway.
I get outside and I’ve been told by the security man that I have to smoke at the rear of the building. Why is this, are they embarrassed of their smokers? God knows, probably something to do with insurance cover, or lack of it. I look out over the dock. There is Harland and Wolf the ship builders, or at least they used to be anyway. There are supply crates piled up on their loading bay, seagulls hover above the crates, watching out for movement and food. The water slides by quickly, helped along by the hard wind. If I look at this long enough I begin to think I am on a floating platform moving toward the horizon.

I get back inside and seat myself at the back of the room. Everybody has introduced themselves to one another. There is a peculiar group at the other side of the room who whisper into one another’s ear. They are all quite jittery and are of varying age groups. Elsewhere the young stick with the young and so on. There are few loners.
“Would the number 8’s accompany me to the Conference Room, please.”
I collect up my coat and bottle and follow the 10 or so people out into the hall. Some idiot rubs his hands together and goes, “I can’t wait for this I tell yah I can’t wait for this one.”
He turns to a man behind him. “I’m tellin’ yah sir this is mah big break, the big one, oh Jesus bahjesus!”
I begin to get nervous. What sort of people are these? Where have they come from?
In the Conference Room I try to get myself as far as possible from the others. The woman with the numbers sits at the head of a very large table. The others gather round her. I reluctantly position myself at the rear of the group. She starts, and not only does she look like a man, she sounds like one also.
“Now number 8’s this is all pretty self explanatory. Your part of the paper will cover mathematics, which, as I’m sure many of you will know, does not lend itself to controversy. One and one always equal two.
“Look over your answers (long silence). Any questions?
The excitable idiot raises his bony paw.
“Fleetwood Mac: Heroes or Zeroes?”
The woman dismisses him. She’d seen his type before. As I’ve said, it shows they didn’t interview this lot before hand. I mean there’s one of two reasons you failed in your application for this job:

1. You’re an illegal alien. Even then you probably got a chance.

2. You’re in the morgue; stiff and cold with a tag round your big toe.

Afterwards we were allowed to go home on a half day. I left the place never wanting to go back. But, for better or worse, I’ve been there the previous 3 weeks and it hasn’t been pretty - so stick around...

2001-12-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

But inside it’s nice and warm. A blast of hot air shoots down my back and as I jump onto the elevator the chattering teeth has stopped and I have all but forgotten about the shivering that up until a moment ago had me looking like a fit throwing nutjob. I am taken up to the first floor and am directed toward the hall in which I will be marking the papers. So far I have had to swipe my security card on two occasions. The security here is pretty stringent. When I enter the hall I see that I am one of the late arrivals, and that the induction has already started. The man at the front stops momentarily. I look for a seat. I can’t see one. I stand at the back. The man has resumed his talk but he stops again.
“Excuse me, would you find a seat. Your standing there is quite distracting.”
I say nothing. Again I look around for a seat. By now people have turned to look in my direction. The people here look pretty grim. Now I know why they didn’t require an interview. It seems they have got any old bollox of the street. One woman puts her hand up. She goes, “Here’s a seat for you here, son.”
I walk over and carefully manoeuvre down the row of seated people. My seat is stuck in the middle of one of these rows. The men don’t move their legs from out of my way. I look at them and they keep their eyes on the front. Everybody looks at the man. Finally I am seated. This is the beginning of the end.
“What’s your name? My name’s Brenda.” She holds her chubby hand out. Her fingers are yellow with nicotine and her nails are quite long and unkempt. She smells like oranges. Where am I? Strange days.
“Richard.”
She says nothing else. The man has resumed his talk.
“Now our policy here is IF IN DOUBT LEAVE IT OUT. Sectarian slaggin’ will not be tolerated. If you find yourself on the end of a sectarian jibe then I would ask you to report it immediately.”
It seemed as if he’d finished his spiel. This was the token discrimination policy. Behind him was an out of focus PowerPoint presentation. There was an idiotic drawing showing a dozen football hooligans beating a Rastafarian to death. The Rasta was seated at a desk and he bloody body was slumped over an 11+ paper. The people in the audience took all this very seriously. After the induction the man introduced us to the boss.
“Now this woman has been here in the CCEA for the past 15 years, and has overlooked the transfer test for 13 of those years. So, without further ado I’ll pass you on to Gertrud.”
Gertrud was a big woman around 45 with jet-black hair that looked like it had been sprayed on that morning. She was dressed in a grey sweater with a grey dress and grey tights. She looked like one of those lesbian wardens from Prisoner Cell Block: H. she approached the stand with a stiff mechanical walk. There was a silence. This was like one of those Nuremberg Rallies, when Hitler stood in silence, building up the anticipation. Then a ferocious scowl slowly crept across her face. A dark brown mole under her eye stuck out like an incongruous Malteaser. I cringed as she let rip...

2001-12-01T13:57:00.000-08:00

It was around 715am when I awoke. It was not yet daylight. Vast orange clouds enveloped smaller greyer ones. I hadn’t woken at this time for nigh on five years. There was a silence in the house. The folks were still asleep, as was brother. No radios, no television, just large supermarket supply lorries thundering down the road outside. When two went by at the same time the house shook. This was all that I had missed in the previous five years - the silence, the rumblings. This was the first day on the job, and, as expected, I was feeling quite ill. You see, the earlier I get up the sicker I am. Either a dry mouth or thick elastic spittle ensures that I am unable to breathe right. My joints ache, I have painful headaches and I feel like vomiting. Who said a man should awake at this time of the day? Who said a man should be forced to work if he doesn’t feel like it? The answer escapes me, but it was probably some big hairy eejit like Jesus or Castro.

As I told you a little while ago I got a job marking 11+ exam papers. So I arrive on the first day, walk up to the building with those four big letters emblazoned onto the glass fronted buildings. CCEA. I forget what it stands for. A little to the left of the main doors is an intercom, which, when pressed, allows you to talk to the security man at the front desk. I do the thing and tell him what my business is: “How you doin, I’m here to start marking the papers...”
There is a gentle electronic buzzer sound. I fail to hear it in the loud blustery wind. I look to the security man. He mouths the words “COME IN”. I enter in out of the cold. The building lies just on the edge of a dock where all the passenger ships come in. The wind comes straight off the Irish Sea, so cold you can see it swirl up and around you. The teeth start to chatter, it’ll take all your energy to utter a few words, so choose them wisely.

2001-11-07T09:46:00.000-08:00

So today I went to check on the location of this building I’m working in. On reaching the train station I ask the quickest possible way to the docks, which is where the place is. I receive a map from a man in the ticket kiosk who circles the place where I am now. After emphasising this to me, after really pushing the point that I am in central station (which I know sure, anyway!) he circles the place where I want to go. I pop on the train and end up outside this shopping centre, which is near to where the docks are. The place is an industrial wasteland. Where am I to find my place of work round here? I stumble about in a circle looking into the sky and pushing my glasses closer to my face in need of a better look at things. My back was particularly bad today, and wandering in this concrete wilderness I am like a wounded Taliban soldier aimlessly searching for a mobile paramedic unit.

Finally I see a fire station in the distance. Quickening my step I hobble toward the place to find it’s empty. Two old rusted fire engines sit in the parking area. There is a tattered piss yellow hose hung over a wall. It is shiny and wet. From a large hole in the side of the thing there is a thin stream of water trickling down a ramp toward the parade ground. The stream breaks of into even smaller streams, which come down over my feet and encircle me.
I am now bewildered. Across the road there is the entrance to the docks, but when I look closely I see there is no one there either.

It is at this stage that I am beginning to remember the period during the summer when the examining board rang to ask if I wanted a job. I told them no, I didn’t. Now I realise that I was simply prolonging the inevitable, which is that I was always destined to get a job there. O Woe is me! Like the immortal Morrissey once said:

“...and if you must go to work tomorrow/ well if I were you I wouldn’t bother/ for there are brighter sides to life and I should know because I’ve seen them/ but not very often”

It was nearing dark when I finally found the place. It was stuck right in the middle of an inconspicuous industrial estate near to a bar called the Rotterdam where, last year some time, loyalists with crowbars beat a Russian sailor to death. Lovely. The building itself was a redbrick affair with a glass front. Emblazoned into the glass at the entrance were the letters ‘CCEA’ in 3-foot high lettering. The glass wrapped itself round the side of the building and when I walked to the south exit of the estate I peered in through the large windows at all the people by their desks, toiling away fastidiously. Their heads tilted downward, their eyes carefully studying all the memos and all the invoices from A4 lined paper to printer ink. And here’s what I’ll be doing a couple of days from now...with as much passion as someone eating dry sick.

Finding my way out of the place I see a man coming toward me. He has a green fleece and overalls on. His beard is trimmed neatly and he has a half done cigarette between his fingers. I stop and ask him for a light. He obliges then asks if I’m just off the boat.
“No,” I say. “Though I wish I was getting on it!”
He laughs and asks me where I’m working. I point over to the CCEA. I tell him its impossible to get to. He nods and walks off. I look over toward the ship. There are boys no older than 17 painting the side. Others are scrubbing the windows on the bow. Never mind, I say, I get seasick anyway.

2001-11-06T15:52:00.000-08:00

They say “take me back to dear old blighty”, well, they can say that if they want, I’m not very concerned, but I hope they don’t plan on taking me!

But really, if I were to end up on the rain drenched cobbles of Oxford or, God forbid, London, I would no doubt be miserable beyond belief. Traipsing along at a cumbersome pace I would take in the sights and file them away in some subconscious memory bank never to revisited.

“The pub that’ll sap your body, and the church all they want is your money...the Queen is dead boys, and it’s so lonely on a limb.

“Life is very long when you’re lonely.”

It’s only a few days now till I start my new job. I can’t say I’m best pleased, but these are torturous duties that must be followed through, no doubt. I remember being told by this nerd motherfucker (who I was in the acquaintance of) that to get ahead in this life, one needed to “become part of a fully functioning society. You giving to it and it giving back to you.”
True enough I suppose, but what a sad little boy-bitch, honest to god! My good friend R_______ was working in the place last year, and through this year’s summer period. It involves filing duties in N.Ireland’s premier examining board. Along with this one must also, I hear, tot up 11+ exam scores. Imagine, the lives of all those little shite’s within my grasp. Their fate decided by my capricious whims. Will it be yea or nea...one will be seated in one’s throne with wheels and, like Nero, deciding on whether the thumb will tilt upward or downward. But really, I hear from other sources that last year there were a number of bribery letters coming in from rich parents with children – now how would one phrase this – that were lacking in the brain department. Apparently the letters contained incentives for the examiners, such as a weekend in the Cotswolds. Some even went as far as to offer a ½ mil ££!

The day before the results come through BBC camera crews approach the parents of a child who is expected to get the exam. They pitch up their cameras in the front hall, a couple of feet from the letterbox. With the results fluttering toward the welcome mat of the (no doubt) middle class home the child will receive his cue to run toward the letter still zigzagging its way toward the floor. He will leap on the thing, ripping at the seal with his sharp little milk teeth. Snarling like a rabid animal and pulling the result from within the envelope he quickly scans the guff scrawled all over the letter; looking for his passage into a good grammar school. Seeing he’s got the result he wanted, an ‘A’ probably, the director dressed in cords and a turtleneck sweater will wave the parents in. Mammy and Daddy will shove past the crew and throw their arms round the golden boy (Later the techies will add a special effect...maybe a golden aura round the boy or a silver angel halo). And all will be good. He’ll go to his grammar school, grow up there, get his exams, get laid with some snotty nosed cunt after the formal whilst drunk on WKD, - she’ll like the big dick in her and submit wilfully. While the rest of us will stand around spitting at the mirror or waiting outside a bookmaker’s on a November morning, - breathing white breath vapour into the street where passing me will be that same nerd motherfucker wagging his finger at me saying: “Part of a society benefiting you and you it, like a tiny cog in an old man’s watch that hasn’t failed yet.”

But...I’ve always liked losers more than winners. They’re less phoney. I think Bukowski said that at one time, didn’t he?

2001-11-05T08:08:00.000-08:00

When I was a little younger, younger than I am now, father took both my little brother and myself up to the north coast for an Easter break. Back then father couldn’t afford a holiday house like he can now so we stayed in a guesthouse whose landlady demanded we pay rent every day up front. This was back when father had an unkempt beard and both of us were dressed like child urchins. The landlady was called Mrs Gilday. She was nearly 80, but she looked like a 15-year-old porcelain doll. Every morning at breakfast her face had this unreal shine to it. Father told us it was because she’d had too many facelifts. He said people like her didn’t want to get old too soon, even though many ladies her age are dead or dying.

As I recall the rent wasn’t too bad. Father awoke every day at 8am and paid without fail. After the third day Mrs Gilday eyed us with less suspicion, but father kept on whispering about her during breakfast. After breakfast Mrs Gilday collected up the plates and set the knives and forks for supper. This was the sign that she wanted us out for the afternoon so she could clean the rooms and do her dusting in the reception.

One morning father took us by the hand and led us on the pathway down to the beach. He stood in the middle and in one hand he had me and in the other he had brother. It was very frosty that day. Some of the puddles had frozen over, but in the puddles that were still full of water little starlings flapped and jumped about giving themselves a bath. When we reached the steps to the beach there was a large grey animal on the shoreline. Around the thing there were a number of men in bright orange jackets. In their hands they had buckets and sponges. They gently rubbed the water into the skin of the thing, patting it on the head and whispering into its ear. Other men stood around in grey suits with green Wellington boots on. There were around three of them. Every so often one of their number went over to the men in the orange jackets, talked to them awhile, then went back to his friends in the grey suits to tell them what he’d just been told. Father said the animal was a whale and that it had gotten too far near the shoreline and got stuck on the beach. Brother asked if it was going to die. Father said he didn’t know, but, he said, it probably would.

It was a long time before the men in orange stopped rubbing the whale with water. After consulting with the men in the grey suits they got round to the tail end of the whale and pushed it like you see men pushing cars on winter mornings. They couldn’t budge the thing at all. Eventually the men in the grey suits helped, but one of them slipped in the wet sand. He got up and shouted at the whale. His suit was covered in dark splodges of sand. He took his jacket off and beat it against the whale’s tough skin, trying to get the sand off, but it made the mess worse. By this stage even passers by helped but none of them could move the whale more than a couple of inches.
There was this little hole on the whale’s head. On occasion the hole shot out a little cloud of water. As the morning went on there was less and less water coming out of the hole, and when it did it was just a little misty spurt of vapour. Its jaws slowly moved up and down, like it was chewing some wee fish that had swam into its mouth. Then its jaws stopped moving. The men all stepped back. One of the men in orange threw his sponge and bucket onto the ground and walked up into the dunes to cry. The men in their grey suits got into a car and drove off. The man with the sand all over him was told that he’d have to walk.

A couple of days later when we left the guest house father took us down to the beach again to see if they’d shifted the whale. Over the two days its skin had turned from grey to a ghostly white. Around the place where it lay there was a rope laced through half a dozen wooden posts. The rope fed off into this long passage where a good few children stood queuing in their swimming togs. There was a colourful sign up. It said: “SAMMY DUFF’S TERROR FROM THE DEEP.”
A man wearing a tweed cap and a wet suit sang a song about the sea monster. He had an old battered acoustic guitar that was missing a string. A man stood in a kiosk at the head of the queue taking money and raising the rope so kids could run and jump onto the whale. Father said that he was Sammy Duff, and what he was doing was a sin. But the kids were enjoying themselves. The girls climbed onto the whale’s back and slid down its face. Some of the boys jumped on its fin while others poked it in the eyes with their penknives.

A couple of weeks later father told us that a little girl had got her head trapped in the whale’s mouth. He said that she had to get her ear cut off, and that Sammy Duff had gone to prison for 6 months. To me and my brother, that seemed like a very long time.

2001-10-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

.....but the faces here were very cunning. the women especially. i saw this as some sort of matriarchal thing going on, the men maybe having been beaten down long ago in some dark alley by their women. sure enough the youngsters came on, most of them were girls (17-25) but a good few were boys also. they seemed to appear from nowhere. i mean i saw them approach the front, but where did they come from? was it maybe some sort of secret lair under the pews? who knows! anyway, they get to the front, shuffle into position; a girl approaches the mic -- we're going to sing a few hymns from "the source" feel free to join us! -- now i dont use exclamation marks that often, but here it is necessary. all were smiling, all about the same age as myself and brother, and as they sang they did this kind of gentle sway side to side, shoulders all touching one another. when the song built up to a crescendo they really started on the shoulders...and the head, but these were white people trying to be black disco motherfuckers. also, before i forget, they were smiling . there was one chap standing at the back though, he looked a little out of place. he didnt sway with the rest, knowing, like me probably, that this happyclappy mantle was as cheap as a 20 stone whore. he had a patchy beard, weird smirk, dirty shirt and snow combats. these were tight trousers. concentrating on this piece of god attire brought to me the reason for his attendance. it was here i saw quite a large penis twisted up toward the ceiling. it was quite a large one. not only was it large but it moved like a strange sort of limbless ferret. was his willy on pussy detection mode? certainly when i looked back up at his face the smirk was still there and his eyes were lazily staring at the arse of a gorgeous blonde in the front row. i took a liking to the guy. what a desperate one. taking himself to the choir meetings, the church; sitting listening to the shit every sunday morning and night, too. ah! just for a piece of ass.....the other fellas were all stern faced and bothered looking, all singing magnify our god in zion, or something to that effect, but my friend just kept on manoeuvring his dick and scratching his ragged beard smiling, imagining the blonde bathing in springs him taking her up that cute little rump, too.

when i got out of the place i was pretty down-in-the-mouth. going back home through badly lit narrow roads mother turned to us sitting in the back -- did you see that lovely wee blonde standing at the front? that was T_____ D______'s daughter. you know those church people arent all old fashioned, she was in knee high boots and a leather jacket....very modern.-- then a sigh -- all those young ones are doing something, too. they're all either into sports or paly an instrument, T_______ D_______'s daughter plays with the ulster orchastra..... she was lovely tonight in her boot's. -- i usually cant take mother at the best of times, but she has a knack of sticking it too you when youre pissed off. watching the distant lights of the city appear and disappear behind knolls and so forth i mumbled to myself so that noone would here -- fuckin' cunt for jesus's all she is -- mother, and i dont know how, maybe god sensitive hearing or something, picked up on it -- what'd you say -- i jumped -- nothing. next time im at any harvest it'll be in granny b's (da's ma) church -- and da goes -- sure you're ma's lot burnt us out. we cant have any harvests. -- ThE eNd

2001-10-23T16:40:00.000-07:00

and while all this is happening there is the low drone eminating from the organ. also a boy plays a very basic beat on a drum. this is the calm before anything. this is when all the orange culties discuss sashes and wills and graves. mother says nothing to us, instead points people out to father who looks round and periodically glances at his watch. -- this ballax was meant to start at 630 its fuckin near 1/4 to 7 now -- brother was becoming a little aggressive. he raised his voice at the curse alerting one of the ladies infront of us who was counting her dues. she turned and looked and brother sniffed, saying nothing. i looked about at all the faces. they were beaming...the old, the young all happy to be interacting with one another in praise of jesus. other's said nothing. their morose sad faces betrayed a sense of loss and hardship. brother turned to whisper -- well, the depressed've something to believe in and the rich've somewhere to spend their money. -- then it began. all rose when the moderator walked in followed by hugh the preacher. maybe i should describe hugh here. he is a man of around 50, 5 foot, greying hair - receding a little. he is almost manic in his manner. he speaks slowly but animatedly, thrusting his hands heavenwards thanking the lord in this case for -- saving us from the scurge of foot and mouth -- he's very quiet in his sermon at first, but when he gets infected by the madness the face is reddened the eyeballs stickout in wild crazy conviction. -- dont be addicted to drugs -- he says -- be addicted to JESUS -- then it was the turn of the moderator. bald head shining in the bright god light eminating from somewhere unseen behind the pulpit he gets to his feet and cracks a joke. the long loud laughs come from the men. the women like this too, (cant remember the thing) makes a change from coronation street. like wilde says in p.o.d.g, the rural lot have neither culture or corruption so they stagnate or fall asleep after dinner. -- i would like you to turn to mark (something or other) -- brother huffs -- where's that -- then -- what's for dinner? --mother gives the 8ball eyeball look to him and he frowns. after the reading the moderator goes -- we've nothing to worry about (blahblah) -- some time later -- some people call themselves christians on a sunday.........-- very long pause, letting it sink in -- to them i say: CATCH YERSELVES ON...YOU COMMIT WICKED DEEDS MONDAY TO SATURDAY AND YOU EXPECT JESUS OUR SAVIOUR WAITING WITH A BLANK CHEQUE -- i have to admit this was like a kick in the face. the speakers packed in after this. there were loud echoey whines that seemed to eminate from the piping. behind me somewhere a poor soul was fidling with the dials on his casio mixing table crica. 1986. i couldnt look at the man anymore. instead i stared at the dour faces of the choir people looking straight at me with either vacant contempt or love filled compassion. i really couldnt tell. i was looking out for a 40 year old type; horny as fuck....there was this one her face shrouded in a veil. visable were her lips and a tongue licking said lips. i wondered. i said to brother in the moderator's adlib silence -- look at her in the blue with the veil over her face -- -- fuck off, oul granny -- i looked closer. she was about 50. i forgot about it......

2001-10-23T06:39:00.000-07:00

then on sunday, when i can eat better, mother says -- boys come up to the church harvest with me and your father, id really like you to come and i dont ask you to do anything very often -- so me and brother sit there and he turns to me rubbing both sets of pussy finger and thumb indicating we'll get binned before hand. so the folks go out to do lots of sunday god things and brother collects all his spent butts from under his wardrobe hoping there'll be enough dope/grass here to make what he calls a "megamix" or something to that effect. sitting on the sofa in the living room he disects all the joints he's kept (about 300) and from out of two dozen j's, dark little bits of resin (and the rest yellowy weed shit) fall into a new skin and we have a good amount of mix, enough to make the church shit interesting anyway. so he goes out, saying he'll be back at 530, and i spend the time watching eastenders reruns and playing with myself. he gets in through the back door at 559 with the recycled joint already sparked and in its infancy. we go outside and sit on the porch, blasting hard on 3dps and by the time we've burnt even the roach i see things more clearly and am content with everything. now the church is in a place called drumbo way up in the country hills, and the winding roads taking us there at dusk in father's silly car are surrounded on all sides by empty fields and a big amber sun disappearing quick beyond the valley. -- now you're only going here tonight, boys, because hugh (the preacher) needs his numbers up for the moderator coming -- mother's in her best clothes a little gaudy to be right, but when we pull up to park i watch even the older ladies going past in regal blue suits with matching hat and stilletos. theyve been waiting all week for this to come around, the harvest, where i think all they do is eat and am not too sure in my own head what the real reason for all this is. slowly moving into the front hall of the place brother and i are rapping when we are met with a man dressed in the clerical garb. he is small and in his beard are the remnants of last nights dinner -- lovely to see you here boys, havent seen you here in a long time... im so...so glad you could make it -- which is lovely but what you have to realise is that these creepy preachers really think they know who you are, or would have you believe they do. inside the temple mother sees her pew and shoves us toward it before any other god fearin lizzie can grab her place right at the front. here we are directly infront of the aging choir and right below the pulpit. hugh the preacher comes round to shake our hands. this time he ignores the folks and moves to brother and myself, not offering his hand but taking mine and shaking it and saying over and over again in a cultchie accent as blunt as any old farm scythe -- glad to see you came (big pause while he sorts the memory out) richard and m______ i hope now finally with all this terrible war that you're going to maybe come and join the congregation and witness with us gods splendour -- with these final few words he raised his left hand and swept it across the place. my eyes followed it slowly and in dope perception i see all the old women with their half dead husbands waiting for death and nothing else. brother is left to answer him -- umm -- with a laugh -- no! -- then he makes those monster noises and laughs a deep slow throaty laugh and hugh the preacher says -- ok, groovy fellas, god'll have you yet, he'll have you yet in his fold. saved. --

2001-10-19T20:12:00.000-07:00

in times like this i get what women would call period cramp like ive run a three mile race nonstop and now lying in the grass i have really bad stitch pains in my stomach. whilst wallowing in this bout of dangerous fantasy blur i can not eat.a thing. when i do manage something hot (maybe half a dozen beans soaked in ketchup) i immediately boke, or shit red and brown water; most of the time its a mixture of both. this sort of thing doesnt happen often, but when it does its hard to get away from or even imagine an end to these delusions. today mother left the house at 930am and when she arrived home again at 1100am she came up into my bedroom, shook me awake, then asked if id left the back door open. i said no and she said well, if you didnt, and i locked it from the outside, so that noone could get in, then how did it get open...? i didnt reply to this one. i didnt even ponder it, i went beyond that into paranoid fear shakes. first i was convinced a sex maniac, with sophisticated lock picking equipment, had broken in and gotten off on being in the kitchen of a house that wasnt theirs. then i thought, no, there was nothing wrong with the lock. then i went mad... i was utterly convinced reptilian beings of some description had materialised in my kitchen and planted listening devices in the cottage cheese we kept in the fridge. with eating the cheese and ingesting the devices my family would be subject to internal thought surveilence, recording our every thought and strange urge. only now at 10 to 4 in the morning do i think this is madness...yet just to a lesser degree, that is i think its possible but unlikely. but this fit of depression or insanity or paranoia or whatever you want is lessening slightly. just there i saw a picture of a movie star on one of those websites that reminded me of a girl i once wanted to fuck but didnt on account of her beating me round the head with both her fists. the movie star was prettier and with that i imagined what it wouldve been like fucking the deranged girl with all the anger (i mean she looked better now). no different i suppose than fucking a deranged girl who's similar looking but just a little more gorgeous (like the movie star). there's only two things can happen to me: that is i'm gonna go on some mass murder machine gun spraying spree through a kid's playground; or i'm gonna raise a few laughs with these delusional theories of mine. there we'll be sitting round a table in a cafeteria, me telling civil servants my ideas and stories and them laughing and thinking nothing of it and when our 20 minutes is up we'll all slowly shuffle back to our desks, doing what we always do for 45 weeks of the year...just for the common good, of course. fucking and jokes and shitting will be that moment between what we've just done and what we dread to do again.

"what are they doing in the hyacinth house/ to please the lions this day/i see the bathroom is clear/ i think that somebody's near/ im sure that somebody's following me..."

2001-10-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

the minute hand left the hour hand sitting on the 12 where it was and with that saturday nights beer whiskers became sunday mornings vodka lashes. it was me and my pal ernest mcswarley sitting on my orange tiled proch with our own quarts of vodkie looking out into the sky with our attention bein got by two granite gray tower blocks on the periphery of the neighbouring estate, slightly illuminated by red and normal yellow lightbulbs shining alone in the whole place. this was the left block and soon enough when she'd finished doin whatever she'd bein doing red light girl darkened her place up and went to her slumber. but the chap in the other palce - left one apartment and up 3 storeys from red light girl - was still up playing with his self or whatever and after five minutes of silent staring at this lone light mr chap was up on the floor and standing in the window staring way down through the night and right at us. now, tis a pity, cos i woulda liked to have seen his face, but he was standing in silouette with the bulb on the ceiling slightly to his right and 2 foot above him. i know this cos standing in the centre of the window the light showed a mere sliver of flashy white felsh and that was all we saw of this sinister jimmy stewart or was it kundera's tomas looking out for his girl with the big book and the big eyes....after much time looking we gave up and ernest goes with his finger to his top lip 'tween his septum and his finger i imagine a little maeebee greenfly crawling around there giving him grief and him proding at the thing, and he goes -- let's go for a walk!! -- and i say -- ok, where to...dave's? -- and he nods and finishes his vodkie and so do i.
now between my place and dave's ernest and i broke into a scrap car yard seeing if the phantom automobile i saw one night with dave was still casting oblong shadows on the wall.no. so we go a little furthur up the avenue taking us onto daves street and i, resting, lie straight on my back in the middle of the street staring at a fluorescent street light composing a little soliloquy out loud to ernest lying on his front beside me who, for my looking at later, took down everything i said.

so we get up again after a lady with a dog at near 1 o clock in the morning asks us to get off a public road. making daves at about 105am we see that he is asleep and his friend ricky is away out back to his house with a ming girl with no chin, who looks like god ended her face at the jawline. seeing dave is asleep i converse with alan, his brother, blastin away at some liquid gold amyls. he goes -- my mate jhanny's comin round here for a wee smokin session -- i say -- here? -- and he says -- no he's pickin us up in his car and we're headin to his place...you're welcome to come, mate -- to which i turn to ernest and say -- well...? -- and he replys with his finger to his lip again -- well.... ok? -- we blast on the amyls and in the little high it gives i hear the car outside followed by the door slamming followed by jhanny coming in through the living room door just in his boxers and a tshirt. his bare feet up to his ankles are covered in murky puddle water. he too has no chin, but what he lacks here he makes up for in a big nose, the tip of which reaches an inch from his face. matching this already ugly mug is big tombstone teeth and ridiculous ears leading myself to calling him ratboy in my head, and here, in the car that's just what he's called (or rather ratty, to be right) at the wheel, asked by not just me but also a girl of around 17 (with her boy) who's house it actually is, to go faster and really burn the engine right out from the bonnet cavity. ratty performs one manoeuvre after another in a carpark then turns round and goes -- i fuckin stroked this from out the back of sainsbury's -- and ernest says to me very quietly -- what's stroke mean? -- and i say -- means he stole it -- with this ernest, who's awfully posh and gentle, quivers and bulks and says things scat like, not making much sense, till we get to the couple's house. inside the boy has already a basin and bottle prepared for a waterfall and ratty, who i've been telling stories to during the latter preperations, demands that i be the first to bob my head on the waterfall. i ask before hand if i can have a bucket waiting as i am sure to boke after all the drink taken. sure enough when that burn hits my throat i was gagging and spitting and demanding in my big eyed moaning that i needed the bucket, and when i get it i splurt green pea boke into the sunflower yellow plastic bucket, making for some sort of rudimentary pastoral landscape of pallid vomit colours. i even thought that at the time but locked in these rolling hills of pea paint i hear ratty say -- give the big man another fuckin shat -- to which i reply -- nawphlah nawphlah, i feel sick i dont wphant it -- in angry tone he says -- your fuckin takin one you big dick -- in humble words i say -- ok if you say so, fair enough --. leading to the boy/ who's girl/ its house/ it is/ in which im standing/ gagging and recoiling from the smell of the blo/ and the need to go/ back hoe'/ but the boy/ he raises/ the bottle to my lips/ says it feels good/ goes down smooth/ straight down to my hips/and i kiss the bottle....AND AGAIN i feel the stuff comin up but from lower down in my belly. i got good place on the basin now and it hits a thick layer of green already there with a slap. now im gettin ready to say im goin and ratty wrinkles his big nose and says through big yellow tombstone teeth bared with intent -- youre not goin fuckin anywhere big man we're gonna fuckin bin ya -- this kills my spirit and i whine hoping he'll take pity, but he doesnt; instead going to put lock and latch on all the exit doors round the house. between this time and later on when i was sick in the yard i cant remember much other than sitting in the couch in the same seat as rat boy cotinually gagging in 4 minute intervals with the girl sayin -- oh fuck he's makin me sick. scatt i cant look at him -- then she laughs a wee peasant wench's laugh -- he's fuckin stinkin --. now, i dont remember running through the house but i do remember being in the yard looking at the paint stained tarmac whilst my innards were pulling bloody bile from my small intestine. one sort of tableau i do recall on my way through the kitchen is tripping over a bike and getting a little boke on the linolium of the kitchen. but ratty took real notice of this and said -- you're givin me 100 pounds the marrah (tomarrow) or im gonna smash youre fuckinfacein --. all this time ernest stood in the background immersed in faint shadows thinking of a way to escape from the place. convinced id got the entire lot outta me i went back inside with the gang following me. with the coast clear ernest scarpered out the back door and up onto the wheelie bin pulling himself over the wall from where he would jump down into the entry. a good 15 minutes later ernest was recaptured and told to stand in the corner of the living room with his face to the wall. after convering in the other room the gang came in to tell us that we were to clean up the mess in the yard and that on sunday morning ratty would come round for 100 £££ to clean up the kitchen. we agreed and outside in the yard i said to ernest -- ernie you gotta get me outta here, im gonna die ernie, im gonna die -- . ernest said nothing. he pushed the boke into the drain with diligent slow brush strokes. everything was a doubled up blur of tableaus now. then something momentarily caught my attention. a little rusted bolt through which a latch was thrust preventing our escape. all i had to do was really focus (the force style) making a grab at the latch, pulling it back and running like fuck till we were safe from ratty and the girl (the boy was cool, and alan sat in silence the whole night). --ernest -- i whispered -- lets go --. he only gave a tentative little glance, but when he saw i had the latch halfway across he yelped like a tiny piglet and run up the back of me before i got out the door to eventual freedom. the entry we found ourselves in was dark and wet underfeet. as we ran its length to the end of the street we felt as though it was unending. dark wooden doors flashed past every 2 seconds but we could not see the warm fire of street lights or the icey white glow from the recently tarmaced road. so then, it was no surprise then when i slammed my person into the entry's end. to my right there was freedom. me and ernie would take a time in getting home but at least we were free!!! out on the street we heard rat boy yelling. -- get back here ya fuckin queer cunts --. then there was a flash. sort of a 1/2 dozen amber sparks ricocheting of the street and disappearing into the frosty atmosphere. i thought for a moment ratty was throwing tnt bangers at us. i turned round. he had a pistol and was firing in our direction. i couldnt walk. l mean i could stand and move an inch at a time, but the act of putting one leg in front of the other and falling the short space to the ground before the next step was an alien concept to me at that moment in time. in all i think ratty shot of six caps before going back inside. on the 1/2 mile back home ernest held my hand to prevent me from falling over. i was in a bad way. the busy carriageway was like some sort of insidious flytrap pulling me toward the edge of the curb and into the path of a car approaching from the rear. we were halfway from home when ernest stopped a couple to ask the quickest way to the cregagh road. -- just keep on walking straight -- said the well groomed boy: hair tight to his head with neat corkscrew curls all over his skull. with green knitted jumper and good leather shoes. in between good blue trousers of a denim variety. the girl with him was a snob who lived near me. when i was a youngster she tried to get me to go with her to a christian youth club. i told her christians were thick whores and faggots. she didnt speak to me after that. but on the saturday night of 13:10 i decided to make amends with her. in boke soaked tshirt and trousers i stumbled toward her with arms held wide. i spoke with gurgling salutations and apologies. her face folded in disgust and fright. she moved back toward the rusted gate leading to the soccer fields. i continued to move forward, sure she wanted to make friends. when there was only a foot or so between me and her the trendy boyfriend moved between us. by this point the snob had developed a contorted, hate filled face that sent me into a pityful fit of the dt's.

on reaching home i asked ernest to get me a basin from under the sink. i slowly moved myself onto the sofa where i fell into a peaceful sleep which was abruptly contaminated by a vivid nightmare where i found myself standing in the foyer of some grand hotel watching a gipsy woman collect a little miniature erneat from a cage. gently carrying him toward a circular ring of wire mesh, she placed him opposite a ravenous cockeral with its neck twisted in a demented, blood curdling cuckcall.

the next morning we discussed the adventure of 4 hours previously with much hesitancy. and that's it. just left for me to say that my da just told me that alex ferguson was gonna kick cole's "black bollocks in!" risque!

2001-10-08T15:12:00.000-07:00

well as yet neither i or my brother have made headway in our criminal endevours but he came in stoned today with a china white face and red blazing eyes. mother picks up on this immediately and questions me as to whether or not i knew he was back on the blessed weed and i say -- of course i dont know a thing about it mother, why im as shocked as you are....-- and she breaks off and goes into a tangent concerning other matters such as the success bestowed upon those that are truly blessed. she sits and stares at brother and he becomes angry through the laughter now unlike the last time when she scooped him: there are no bibles to scoot from the coffee table onto the floor so instead he attacks her (verbally) -- you... are fuckin crazy fuckin crazy you need psychiatric help fuckin mad bat -- and she laughs at this because unknown to her better nature she is quite mad, but she doesnt know this as yet. when father comes in and she informs her of brother's lethargic nature and slurred speech he comes in and sits down interigates brother and then turns his attention on to me with mother now present -- you have to get a job richard -- and mother intervenes here -- aye because i dont want you round here anymore...i dont want to have to sit and look at you smoke your brains out -- and i say -- im not gettin a fuckin job because i shoulda been in university this year and yous didnt let me go -- which is what mother's been waiting for -- you didnt go to university because you cant do anything for yourself -- here she holds her hand in the air, well stretched with each finger wide apart -- you cant cook, you cant clean your bum right (!) you weewee the bed and you cant make friends...i know if you were to go over to that place youd ignore all the young students to go and sit in some oul granny bar instead -- now the latter i would have no argument with but for the other two well...as i said the woman is a little warped. anyway with each point she made, and she made many others, she would take each finger and twist it in her fist until she'd quit with one falacy and moved onto the next. when all ten fingers had run out she punched her forefinger into the arm of the chair in which she was seated with much passion and red faced determination. as this was happening brother was sitting with a wrinkled frown that always looked like folding into the most charming smile. father, as is always the case when mother malfunctions, gave up on asking her to shutup and instead buried his face in his hands, repeating a muffled oh dear dear dear dear dear.....oh dear dear dear dear dear....... when mother stopped for a breath or to conjure another accusation she would turn to him and say -- stop being such a friggin wimp, that's what's wrong with these two -- now when she was finished picking over our personal failings she started up on our friends, or mine as there are more of them and they all are in some shape or form unconventional in their expressions and manner -- ...and all your friends are cracked, which means youre cracked too. i mean you just have to look at two weeks ago when you accused sylvia of being a witch and me and your father of being divil lovers -- in which she was correct, making me laugh to which she replied -- you think the world owes you a living, you think there's noone like you -- to which father chimed in after his earlier emotional turmoil -- that's what you have to worry about. kudos. i knew a man jimmy furlong he was a solicitor. he bought a hotel and it made a mint, a mint, he said he had his lock of pounds(?) comin in and he bought up more places and then one day the provos burnt the hotel down and you know what he's doin now? he's a lollypopman. -- and mother says, to get it straight in her head -- imagine a lollypopman. from a solicitor to a lollypopman. that just shows you. -- after which there is a dry silence which is broken by brother who walks out and slams the door while i sit and wait for a curtain to descend from the ceiling, or at least for these statesmen to blow up all earthlings..........

2001-10-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

well the last thing i thought i'd be doing is frittering on the edges of criminality, but this is where i find myself today. the story goes thusly:..... a postman recently employed to work the circuits in my 'hood has the unfortunate knack of delivering letters to the wrong house, as in, he delivers our letters to a dwelling 5 streets parallel to our place of residence and on occasion we recieve letters from wyoming. why, just the other day mother was mortified when she found, lying in our front porch, a brochure from a company called zindon advertising penis enlargements. now my father is frank in his appraisal of the man, saying --- "the poor soul must be educationally sub-normal." now most in their own heads would agree with him but would have too much tact to say so but the sad fact is that with his slight mongoloid face and undefined physique davy the postman is a man who would near burst with riotous laughter if and when someone was to reveal to him that 11 comes after 10 and that not all men with big white beards and ill fitting red suits were santa's little helpers. but i'm straying of the subject here. on the 3rd of october i awoke and clambered down the stairs to check the mail. it has been my unfortunate habit to leave the post lying in the porch for close to a fortnight, but last week i was awaiting news on a short script i submitted to a production company. alas, on this day this particular letter failed to materialise. instead i found a letter from visa and in the letter was the very definite presence of a credit card. i waited to my scoundral of a brother arrived home from college and together we opened the letter. much to our delight expectations were met with the unmistakable aroma of fresh plastic. each number engrained into the infinite money ticket with immaculate pride and precision --- the little visa graphic in the top right hand corner gleamed with a varying sheen depending on how the light fell on it. so we hatched a plan, me and my brother doobra boy. we would disguise ourselves and head out of town; as far as derry perhaps. adopting aliases, me being gary gall and doobra being frank butcher we would employ the services of two of derry's most corrupted youths and send them to a shop with a list of things to buy on credit. after we've obtained all we desire we'll leave the two urchins with the remainder of some poor soul's account and we'll go home criminal masterminds. now this is the plan, and in the weeks to come i will tell you if we had any success. it is only left for me to say........davy the mongol postman, we salute you in your ignorant services to potential criminal's such as myself and others...

2001-10-02T12:54:00.000-07:00

im troublesome...... today on the advice of jens the chiropractor i visited the rheumatology department in musgrave park hospital which back in the day was an airraid shelter, and today has a raw red colour about it, leading me into a strange sort of wonderment, as in, how could such a thing provide shelter being red and all close together and quite conspicuous in its general layout. anyway we'll leave that unanswered and instead talk about my day arriving in the place at 8 30 am waking at 730am with my room criscrossed in orange morning light creeping in through my dirty blinds ---- unable to eat much like unfortunate junk sickness i toke then drink on aro flavoured water and set off up into the palce with my mother at the wheel, unable to drive my mother, not to say she's an incompetent driver rather she tailgates the slowcoaches and causes unhappiness in the hearts of the old and partially blind. coming in through those peculiar rubber doors they still have in some old fashioned hospitals i am led by a nurse on the bad side of 15 stone to my bed. mother leaves me with 5 £££ for breakfast and on reaching the canteen surrounded by those awful uniforms they got the nurses wearing now, you know the royal blue things knee length and frumpy, well there they are anyway dour faces slowly sliding round my person collecting up their soda bread and bacon on the cheap and i too will find my breakfast comes to 2.45 £££ for what i had which was plentiful and left me happy and full ---- by 10 i had not seen a nurse not to say i hadnt seen one; seen many floating past and shooting a boner in the air i hoped they wouldnt come near me, but the one the finn woman who took the blood pressure etc. anyway she says the consultant will be around after 2 pm and i am wondering why im lounging here at 10 am unable to move from my bed and then it starts 1/2 a dozen old wimmin awful ----- all either rocking back and forth talking to temselves or each other and in talking to each other they know nothing about what they are talking about, that is to say one could be talking about their dead infant grandchild (and one was) while the other would talk of a dead sparrow she found the other morning, each thinking theyre talking about the same thing and they went on like this for a long while. anyway the doc comes round asks whats wrong i said i dont know jens the chiropractor sent me here, he didnt know who he was checks the register sees hes not there, says both he and myself are wasting time, i say jens exsists and has a glass eye which slowly floats around his skull like a car compass when you talk to him. anyway bad day 8 hours sitting on a bed doing nothing, only highlight was the junior lady doctor who looked only 18 years of age and who got very close in her inspections of my knees, very pretty, big tits slightly out of proportion with the rest of her, very neat bun on her black haired head, bun was also black very pretty glasses; caught me looking at her on a number of ocassions and probably knew i had the biggest boner in her close inspections of my poor bony knees.

2001-09-29T10:28:00.000-07:00

for the past two weeks and a bit now i have been visiting a chiropractor who in his confident swagger and sure knowing of all things to do with my back and concerning my back seems to know what he is doing. he is dutch or belgiun, im not sure but i know that he was educated in australia and that masking a definite continental twist of the tongue is a very distinct antipodeon accent. his face is unlike others i have seen before, very rounded and undefined, with a large forehead meeting with a continual receding hairline, blond at one time but with the touches of grey follicle appearing, and continuing to appear in the months to follow. now my real gripe with the man is not his leather couch (or torture rack, taking great delight in raising the thing in the middle (X2 inches and dropping it with force)) which extends to fit my length, nor is it his patronising talk with me, punctuating each sentence with "do you understand?" ---- rather it is his other vocation, all at the simultaneous time talking about my uncle who also visits, and incidently thought his balls had suffered a hernia in the scrotum under the hands of jens the chiropractor --- yes he talks, and talks and talks and talks, he knows i dont like him and so instead of talking about my uncle tony talks instead about william windsor (what a name for the handsome heir to the ornamental throne) he used to ask about his numbers of wimmin (tony's) about his work and about porches and mercs. now my uninterest in what he was saying in our first meeting was not hostility, it was just i know fuck all about cars other than they got four wheels and get you from the house to whereever you find yourself at. but now knowing that, he talks about his kids, and his wife, and i have no interest, i mean im paying this motherfucker 18 £££ and for what? a good back? ive been wrecked in that region since father had me lift a bag of coal from the shed one winter's afternoon and ive done alright ever since - the thing only flaring up on ocassion, maybe during a fervent whacking masturbation session, and he knows this too, knows that when he asks me about my hobbies im liable to say eating babies such as yours ---- the crux is he talks so much because when you cut out all the ballax you'll see he's charging 18 £££ for about 5 minutes work on my back fullstop which i could get done in a massage parlour for the same price and with just the same result -------------- but with ominous moral implications....tomarrow or the next day i'll talk about his secretary and the day i nearly died as a result of jens the chiropractor.

2001-09-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

will you be able to give me one of those cigarettes? she said, why, i said, i thought you'd given up...i have, she said, this is for my mother she's very sick. whats wrong with her? i said. she's having a heart attack, she said. oh right, i said. this was the girl from the off license across the street and true enough her mother was in the passenger seat of a grey hatchback with a purple face and her hand held firmly to her chest. so i gave up one of my two remaining feags and in doing so this girl from the off license kissed me and ran off. she was wearing a short pulka dot skirt that ran up her thighs and in flashes i could see her nice ruffled panties and a snatch of pussy. now when her mother got the cigarette she made a remarkable recovery, taking long hot drags fom the thing she really appeared much better, and that was alright for the time being. but of course, this was only a dream i was having, just recalled to me there, then i woke up and there were over 40 pups in my room, all looking like they had birth defects. was i still dreaming said me to myself.

2001-09-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

there were 42 brain damaged puppies running round my room this morning all asking each other the way, and none of them knew the way but this was OK. i was recalled this afternoon to retake a blood test which is to determine weather or not i have blue flowers disease, which in essence is a disease where you're brain recedes back into your infant memories and called up from those plastic subconscious days are imaginary friends or monsters abiding under the bed. of course the blood test was no good the doctors found too much dope and alochol in my blood, so it was a defunct test. i do hate blood tests though, or any type of needle going near me. there was one bad experience i had, a student nurse who hadnt practised enough on the poor oranges stuck the thing too far into my arm and twisted the fucker as well, oh god it was agony, and she sucks the blood up too quickly, i can feel the blood really emptying from me ---- and when the dumb bitch is finished and i go home heres my arm just at the joint between my upper and lower arm swollen to the size of a golf ball. outside my bedroom window this morning there were around 16 sun flowers swaying in a gentle breeze, gentler still when you consider that autumn is upon us and theres not much heat left in the world much longer. i was plunged into a very chilly ocean yesterday where i discovered that not all ufo bases are what they would have you believe, that is to say, it is here where micky and minnie mouse are painstakingly going through divorce proceedings, its a sad sad situation. according to the briefs acting for micky, minnie was banging pluto which led to her pregnancy and premature birth of a dog with the head of a mouse and the smell of a donkey. the thing had 1000 eyes and could leap tall buildings in a single bound. but richard and judy, judy and richard, do you know that judy appeared one morning on tv and she had a black eye, your man rick said to her, "tell the audience what happened to you dear..." and she said, "i ran into a rampaging elephant." and all was alright again and rick took calls coming in from wimmin suffering severe period crapms and rick goes "i know how you feel darling, i suffer from them all the time, actually i got one coming on now ahhhhhhhhh!!!!" and this would cause him to roll around on the floor in extreme agony as a man dressed in a gimp mask weeps in a doorway, as the sparrows fall like forgotten raindrops, as all the world composes salutaitions to the forgotten heroes of atlantis, as someone has the unenviable task of cleaning the queens arse after the royal anus has expelled its own excrement.

2001-09-16T17:37:00.000-07:00

and as the generals gather around their table eating their bowls of a-bombs i find life utterly meaningless until i stare into the eyes of a dying child flung through the front window of a speeding car and am happy to know that he is going to heaven and i am not. yesterday there were three snowflakes tentatively falling toward earth at no great speed, just falling falling falling and then one of them stopped falling and instead hung there in utter stillness. after the other two had landed on my lawn and melted i went into my house and into my mothers closet where i found her hairdryer. returning to the garden i turned the hairdryer on and pointed it at the one remaining snowflake. and as it melted it bled, bled like a murderous rainbow --- and all the people gathered to watch it die, and some even lent close to listen to its tiny screams as it slowly perished. yesterday i hired two dozen monkeys to do my bidding, but they were very disobedient and ran away..........now i am left alone again, on ocassion i walk into the off licence to stare at the girl at the checkout - and that is all.

2001-09-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

hello, well we are gathered here today to talk about fucking, and eating, and eating each other... birds of the black persuation were gathered round my dead feet this morning---and i arose to the sun streaming through my tattered net curtain, the whale jonas never attempted to catch lay beached on portstewart's coastline while salmon swam very gently in the lake, while rain fell in bengladesh while a child attemted to walk for the first time. i walked a solemn step to the butchers where i found the bloody carcass of a pig roting in the sawdust the butcher came out rubbing his hands and asking what i was after, i said nothing instead pointed at the beast lying dead on the floor. he sighed and smiled and walked out from behind the counter and cried. the pig during the butchers wailing somehow someway got onto its trotters and hopped with me out into the street. for days me and pig walked back toward home again, through fields and over dales under rivers and beside cows grazing in a field. at home i found my parents hanging from the rafters in the boiler room. my dog was lying dead with his body stuffed in the oven...my brother had cut his own head of with a hatchet. pig and i seeing there was nothing there for us anymore set of for the mountains in search of wisdom and plenty of great lays. every shade of light shone on as we climbed the hills, piggy died and i broke an arm, but when i reached the summit i lept into the atmosphere, here i heard jean de florette singing her heart out to all the angels wallowing on a cloud or ethereal stream of light, and they all nodded the head to the concertos and the diva solo numbers. and i smiled a knowing smile and the lightness of being was not so unbearable, i glided heavenward toward the greater knowing universe, and when i reached heaven there was noone there other than a crippled nymphomaniac and her sugardaddy. i sat down and attempted to masturbate.......and im still there, in heaven, trying to shoot one off.

2001-09-11T16:12:00.000-07:00

Well i was gonna talk about portstewart and reel off another anecdote, instead lets talk about the "tragedy" in the NYC. you might say its a tragedy, and to be frank i doubt there's that high a death toll. i mean, sure, people have lost their lives, a shame, but think about palestinian deaths in israel over the past couple of years, think about the countless children dying needlessly in iraq because of UN embargos - most of all think about civilian deaths in hiroshima and the american use of napalm - a hideous weapon - during the vietnam war. all of the above have strong US underpinnings in one way or another. the israeli military have their arms supplied - among them apache helecoptors - by the US. because of the their need for a consistent oil supply from the middle east the west have a stringent policy concerning medical aide coming into iraq. there's no need to talk about hiroshima or vietnam. in my opinion the states had this coming. since the end of WW2 they've been seeking out new enemies in the east. first it was the cold war when even their own citizens were suspected of being communist infiltrators. in recent years its been iraq and libya both tiny regions with tinpot dictatorships. these "rogue states" as they're called are wheeled in at one time or another to act as the pantomime villain --- scary at first glance, but ultimately harmless. larger, deadlier nations such as china and russia are tenderly pawed by diplomats and idiot leaders such as blair and the ridiculous bush. why? the risk they pose to democracy. some american anchormen have called the perpetrators of today's attack cowards. no doubt they are. but is a vastly supperior nation, cowering behind a fearsome military machine and vast political influence not also just as cowardly? the media's take on events today have also intrigued me. i mean, the way they handle these things...the editing on sky news, cutting from the second jets impact to a couple of women crouching behind a car cutting to the courageous firemen risking life and limb --- i could go on but i would be in a way plagerising www.nomorefakenews.com --- according to them it all comes down to the public relinquishing their human rights. you know, people are willing to give up their freedom for their own peace of mind. if more counter surveilance is needed to prevent further terrorist attacks then so be it. but to end on a high note, the world's goin down the shitter, for all you know this could somehow precipitate a global recession - appocalypse around the corner..........well if so there's no need to worry about work or school on a chilly monday morning.

2001-09-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

Well, i promised some time back that i would talk about Portstewart. if you head out of belfast north west along the M2 then turn off at the Coleraine Road you will eventually come across one of the many weather beaten signs that point in the direction of this truly god forsaken place. during the winter, which in n.Ireland starts in august and ends in july of the next year, it is the most desolate depressing place in the western world. my house is on the top of the hill (which is what they call the street i live on..."the hill"), the highest point above sea level in the town, and from here i can see the decorative festive lights lining the prominade. at night, after a long day's rain, these sorry neons will illuminate the face of some lonely old begger stumbling from one misfortune to another. after the holiday makers have finished with the place and disembarked back home, after the tide of "civilised" humanity has receded back into its own peculiar conventions all i am left to look at are the lonesome alcos scurrying from one bar to another, and recognise, there are more bars in this place than pubic toilets leaving the transients to piss right in the street. across the street from the line of shops some call a prominade there is a narrow footpath that drops down a good 10 foot onto a walkway below. the walkway is lined with wooden benches coloured with blue protective paint to keep the elements at bay. one can hear, if he's very quiet, the vague dribbling of beer piss hitting the tarmac and on occasion even the benches of the walkway. during the summer months (all one of them) the country folk (cultchies) sit in their landrovers or hatchbacks surveying the city folk walking along the street in the sun. this is their idea of fun. even the younger cultchies sit in their novas and their VWs looking around them, staring in wonderment, REALLY enjoying the whole observation kick. during the day the city folk saunter down to the funfair which is found on a miniature beach for kids. here they will throw pingpong balls at cardboard targets, all the children and all their fat assed mothers, all vying for the coveted goldfish in a bag. one time i partook in the ball and target game. lo and behold i won my own little goldfish. i took it home and filled a biscuit tin with water. taking much care i tipped my little pet out if its pitiful sandwich bag and into its new bronze coloured home. when i took a good look at the thing i saw that it was closer to the ethereal goldfish bowl than i had first assumed. it moved with a wanton lethargy; its tiny grey eyes were fixed on one place.......this was one depressed little goldfish, though i doubt it would've had the energy to throw itself from its new home onto the linolium on our kitchen floor. so, wanting the best for my new friend, i plied it with vodka with the intention of livening it up. before long it was nothing more than an orange blur in the water. it went fuckin crazy! of course, knowing that a biscuit container stuck in the corner of my kitchen without direct sunlight was not the palce for my firend i decided to release him into the ocean. one week after i nursed it back to health i walked down to the jetty used by the local fishermen and threw him into the harbour. the day was windier than most. as goldy fell toward the surface of the water he was caught by the crest of a tiny wave and slammed into the rocks just below the jetty. and that was it. i sat with my legs dangling over the edge, watching this poor thing flipping and tossing and finally giving up, taking its last few gasps before the sea caught him again, --- pulling him into the murky infinite waters.......gone forever. tomarrow i'll talk more of portstewart...the seaside town with no soul.

2001-09-09T07:28:00.000-07:00

Last night my brother had got for me some premium weed, not the brown resin shit, but what he calls green haze and it fuckin' blew my mind! The taste is unlike blow, it tastes a little like oxo. We put on some of that Indian Seetar (I think that's the correct spelling...) music, fired up a couple of blue lava lamps and just reclined, chillun like Bob Dylan. And that was last night, and this is now, and so far absolutely nothing has happened today. But talking about last night, I passed out on the couch, and this humming from what sounded like monks in a very large echoey temple was just flitting over my head and I closed my eyes - suddenly I was drifting through the universe, drifting through huge nebula storm clouds running a circut round the rings of Saturn, poisoned by the gases of Pluto, and all this happened I imagined myself lying asleep in a perspex capsule. Oh the weed was good! I ran an errand for my father yesterday down to the supermarket at the bottom of my street and I meet up with a friend of mine, he is coming out of the gambling arcade. I point out two elderly women who are looking at the flowers growing from between the weeds just round the edge of the school, and I ask him who they are. He says they're a mother and daughter and the daughter (who is plump and unattractive now) used to be Miss N.Ireland, and because of the adulation she received she went loopy. But in her day, he said, she used to be very beautiful and apparantly in the house where they live she has a huge poster stuck in the front window, showing her in 1969, with a little tiarra on. Well that's how it goes I said, and in seeing her, and knowing that we're all heading in the same direction, around my neighbourhood anyway, I forgot my father's errands and went to the park. Later on, being stoned immaculate, I sat for a good fifteen minutes staring at a red beacon, at 1am, it rose 200 feet into the night, its there to warn aircrafts from getting too close, stuck on top of some radio mast rising from the army base behind my house. It was mesmerizing, altogether, and then I went on my cosmic journey.

2001-09-08T09:56:00.000-07:00

I feel a little sick today, I'm not entirely sure why, I feel the nausea growing, I most deffinitely feel like boking into the handiest bucket, let it be provided by my loyal serf Omfufu. Recieved a phone call this afternoon from a homosexual chap named Ralph, that is not his real name, but its what I'm calling him today. Ralph and I went out last week and as the drinks kept coming he got progressivley gayer until he reached out to grab my arm. He rubbed his little finger along my forearm and as he did he kept on repeating the line: "You're such a juicy primate. I want you to make me feel like a woman." Continuing in this manner he declared that he wanted my children. I told him that if he was to look down between his legs he would find that this was impossible. After all, what sort of man would want to piss something the size of a healthy bowling ball from his old chap? I'm not entirely sure myself. Anyway he called me today and apologised about all that went before. He told me that he wanted to go out again, and I said I'd call him. Like hell!
Reading through The Psychedelic Expierience today, Timothy Leary's take on the Tibetan Book of The Dead. I am reminded of the time I dropped a little tab on the beach on the North Coast. The sea was transformed into a sentinent being of some description, it was quite a site, the soapy foam rushed up to my feet, I was layed down amongst tall dunes and up the ocean came, over mahself. Acid's good, like the immortal Leary said, one should "turn on, tune in and drop out!"

2001-09-07T16:23:00.000-07:00

Today I am awoken at 8.00am at that time I believe although the clock is not to be seen from where I lie. The seasons have changed over night now it is Autumn, winter time is around the corner and it brings me down ice cold wind and snow on the ground sooner feel the summer breezes watch them as they carefully sieze the pieces of my soul in all its splintered slumber torn asunder by sadness and 40 cigarettes a day. We (my family) have bought yet another abode, that is I mean we have bought an apartment in Portstewart, which I will no doubt mention in my later entries. We rented a van out, a transit van seated 3 people, my father my mother and myself, I was seated next to my mother who would on ocassion grasp the dashboard as father manouvered round some tight corner, and she'd liked to recite a parable listened to atentively at church, Jesus killed kids you know, well as some mystic said after doing what he did and what he dreaded to do again....you learn something new every day. I do not believe in God or Jesus, maybe Jesus as some kind of aboriginal witch doctor, but in God, ahem well no, I don't believe I do, but in not believing I do believe I could muster enough of my visual imagination to picture maybe a black man with cross eyes and a stutter. 'And God said onto Moses "Thy Thy Thy Thiiiiiieeeeee....Fuck thiiiissss for a game offfff Soldiersssss"' I can imagine God struggling for the word. Anyway I must regress; awoken this morning at 8.00am by mothers rampent screaming, in my room she was, thought that maybe a dog had got in the house, as for when she screams she barks and wails. I move out of my bedroom, I shower, shit and shave, look out the window at the front of the hosue and see the girl working at the off license across the road, I am nearly moved to tears, she throws a cigarette butt onto the footpath, had I been walking behind her I would have picked that butt up and eaten it, and swallowed it (like John Fante)....and infatuated as I am with her, I would've sewed my own asshole up so as that I have a peice of her that is forever mine. Ah! Will continue on about Portstewart and the North Coast of Ireland tomarrow, and about my journey with my parents. Lord, had there been a rusty razor and a convenient vein I would of considered a quick slice.

2001-09-06T16:01:00.000-07:00

So this is it then, my own personal diary entry, random stream of consciousness...call it what you will. Well, I'll start as I mean to go on...and that is the way - of the way I mean this is how its gonna go: Watched the television news today and saw many little girls being ferried up toward thier school, with a rerun of yesterdays festivities, that is to say, a dog had its poor (didnt do anything to anyone) leg blown off. I imagine (then laugh) tomarrow's edition of the Belfast Telegraph (Belfast's primary newspaper) selotaping a pair of 3D viewing glasses onto their front page. I imagine also families sitting round their 24 inch televisions with their glasses precariously perched onto the bridge of their noses', ahem! ah yes...and the children all reaching out to touch said hind leg and failing, like the time I was in Disney's Epcot Centre and Michael Jackson was in one of their promotional films, I tried to reach out for Michael, but Michael wasn't there; and I cried. Anyway that's my account of what has gone before, nothing very memorable, but I need some weed, Goddamn the rest of you to hell!!