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Spray Women with Toilet Water

Forgive my English not good.

Man down in stairs he say we make noise. We not make noise, we make normal. We only make noise on Swieconka when I bless food and guests and church is presenting. Today is Holy Monday, Smigus Dyngus. Everybody in on Smigus Dyngus as it Wet Monday. We spray women with water so they get married. The older women who are married, they get sprayed with toilet water from husband. Perfume toilet water. It is baptism, for wedlocking.

I was priest and so I spray women. Man down in stairs hear this and bang on door for noise. Him come back again! and I ready for him, but he ask my son corkscrew. I find corckscrew and give to son. We hide behind door. I worried that him not give it back. I worried man drunk and bang on door, he scare my wife. My wife because I not priest any more. I like wife more than holy life. I call man downstairs corkscrew, I cannot read him on his door.

We also make noise on Smigus Dyngus as it Polka celebration. Man downstairs bang on floor. We must polka. Back in Krakow we have Emaus which sound like a-mouse! ha ha ha! No, it Church fair. We have jews-in-the-wood on the fete. They sculpt. What? They carved in wood. The Jews.

We also carry on till Tuesaday! Monday is not a stop! But not noise. On Tuesday I make Lazanki like Robert De Niro, in Goodfellas. But we make it with cabbage. So it Sicicy-Polak dish. Lass-ann-ee-YA!

I ask my son, what man downstairs like as him also make noise with sexing. Man noises he make with girlfriend, she sound like a train. I shy for my wife and I ask her to put hands on head. Hands on... hands on ear. Ears. Man downstairs should not ask me these things about any noise. In church these noise very privet. Private. I find prophet lactic in trash bag yesterday. Disgusting.corckscrew

Ellie's Comments So Far

I don't know how many words this is so far, but they are all good, some are brilliant, and as long as they are built around other things (I'll tell you what I mean in a bit), I think you have a very strong start and some excellent writing.

True to your artist self, you're very good at coming up with concepts, some of them are intreaguing for the reader, like the expanding universe and the UCE. This is really good. You have something to say, which is coming accross in the writing and will make a reader continue reading. I absolutely love the bit about the old lady and the final sentence of that document, which I hadn't read before.

My main advice:

Probably because your work seems largely autobiographical, there isn't enough real life in it! Some meaty action or interaction with others, some scenes set solidly in one place, and AT LEAST one sidekick or co-star if you like, in this early section. An obvious choice would be the father, a friend, an enemy, or perhaps just a person this boy encounters and gets to know or is inspired by. Make them up! You're writing fiction! Whoever the character is, they need to be vividly painted into action-based scenes, like with the father in the pub. Some of these scenes should be purely about place, character and creating empathy with the reader. No epiphanies!

You have a main character based on you, but at the moment I don't get a strong idea of what his daily life is like, either in London or in the North. What are you going to call him, what does he look like, who does he live with, does he have any friends, other family, a girlfriend, what is his bedroom like, what clothes does he wear, how old is he? You also don't depict much of a past, just a few references to school. Some memories the reader could share would really work miracles on him.

He has to be on some sort of quest. At the beginning he stuck and frustrated in the N of England, and you need to show the reader why, not just tell the reader. The scene in the pub goes some way to doing this, but rapidly changes into one of surreal intreague rather than being one where the reader shares in your character's frustrations. I think the intreague works brilliantly, but somewhere else the daily life has to also be depicted. Let's SEE and FEEL him make the decision to leave for London, or for art college, even if he's already in London and all this is done in flashback...

My last comment... kind of along the same lines. I love your prologue! I hope later in the novel these lost scriptures could be referred to again, perhaps between the major sections of the novel there will be some other 'excerpt' from them that will hint at the section to come. This one is so funny, and sets up what the novel will be about in broad terms...meeting one of these "ambitious yet sensitive type men who dream of Southern migration". Great.....

but....

I think the very next sentence of your next chapter should be in with the main character...BOOM. It's almost like a syntax I think, and the reader will be searching straight away to SEE the man they are lead to expect in the prologue.

so....

"What is BigWorkTM" IS a good chapter to follow, but you need to write it into a vivid picture of a boy. At the moment it's in someone's mind and there's no picture of that person in the real world. Stick him in a pub, or walking on a beach, or waiting for a train, or driving, or anywhere, but SHOW him musing and SHOW him doing something. If he is going on a train or driving, where's he going, why? Is he leaving the North at that exact moment? Is he returning home for Christmas? The summer holidays? Is it a mystery?

Later on this kind of grounding is not so crucial in every scene, but here GIVE ME MEAT, I beg you!

It's great writing. It's about art, but it also appears in my mind in a very unusual visual way - almost like hallucinating. If you can create a framework and keep that effect then you're onto something....I'm sure. But unless you're doing surrealism in the "style francais - a la Cocteau"... then my opinion is you can't hang a painting without a frame....

...being a smart arty bugger, you'll probably tell me "of course you can!"... and I know it's a matter of taste. I just still have nightmares about my French Surrealist Literature module at uni.

So there it is....to spit on and throw in the bin, or to pin on the wall. Don't be downhearted. That's an order! You've given me some of the best and most original writing I've seen, and that's saying something for someone who did my course. Writing a book is a huge task, and taking little steps every week are the only way to do it. So read this once, let it sink in, and then don't think too much about these "bigger picture" comments.

Start typing.....

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

And by the way, I'm soooo excited about next week!!!!!!!!!
x



Eleanor Thom

The California Club

I was watching huge chunks of breaking ice to the left.
I was watching huge slabs of splitting ice to the right.
I was watching huge shards of cracking ice to the left again.

The week I went to The California Club in Eston, I had two really odd dreams. On the Monday, I dreamed of white horses and sheep. Ewes to be exact. A sea of ewes. I was leaving England for Antarctica and my vessel was one of those huge bright red Nordic icebreakers. I was on my knees staring over the front of the bow as we annihilated metre-thick sheets of ice and slush.

This white noise was profoundly absorbing.

No crest of waves or white horses here. All were capped by icy slabs and sheets. I hoped the horses were safe. Perhaps we were liberating them. Maybe that’s the true purpose of an icebreaker.

Anyroad,
I was more involved with huge chunks of broken ice to the left.
Again, I was watching huge slabs of fractured ice to the right.
Once more, overseering splinters of torn ice to the left again.

Then I was watching huge blocks of broken ice to the right now with the odd bobbing sheep. It was happily bleating in this Antarctic ocean as if it was it's natural habitat. It’s second nature. I spied a few standing on icebergs. Baa! Baaaaa!

We parted schools of sheep to the left.
We parted shoals of sheep to the right.
All ocean was becoming sheep.
All water receded, revealing this waxy woollen wonder.

With our ship, we were parting the sea. We were parting the ewe-sea.

Tuesday’s dream. No sheep.

It was very Jimi Hendrix, it was very Briget Riley op-art, all shimmering lines, pulsing zig zags and off-centre spinning circles.

The next thing I know, within such a spinning spiral circle, I am seeing a vision of Holy Mother Mary. She looks like a Leonardo rendering, or a maybe a Titian. She is as pure as those black and white lines and rotating spirals. She is cradling the baby Jesus in her arms. I am slightly jealous as he is suckling on her holy teat, the best teat in the world. Baby Jesus notices this and takes his podgy baby arm and touches my forehead with his index finger. Oh man alive!

I am instantly calmed. I could die on the spot. Concentric circles of light eminate from 'tween my brows, giving me an eybrow ecstacies. Then it subsides and he speaks! - he pointed to my third eye, announcing "this is your you-see."

Why am I mentioning this? I am mentioning this because it came true.

On Wednesday, Dad gave me a lift back from Art College in Middlesbrough. We never make it back to Marske without a pint or two somewhere on the way. It was fairly late, but we pull into Eston. Dad's a member of The California Club, so called, I believe, because of some relationship between Iron Ore on Eston Hills and steel being exported to the West of America.

No such California dreaming in this working man’s Teesside tavern. It's all formica and peeling wallpaper and copper tables with bobbles hammered into them. I wonder if they are worth a bit for scrap. I could use them in an installation along with the week-old beermats. Very Tracey Emin. Day-glo stars adorn the bar displaying felt tip scrawls such as "pensioner special - nip and a half £1.50" and "Karryokay every 2nd Wednesday."

Sure enough, it's Karaoke night. I roll my eyes, because that means I'll have to drive home, It means I am the taxi. After four pints, Dad sings "Halfway to Paradise" by Billy Fury (who would indeed be furious) but not before he gives a little preamble about the song being a prick-tease metaphor. He's barking mad. No wonder I ran away to art’s rich teats.

While I leave him to his theatrics, I notice a guy slumped over the bar. He is wearing a sheriff's badge. I ask barman Arthur for his story. Arthur says "that's the Sheriff. Everyone knows the Sheriff, except through the day when everyone knows the Gordon."

I shake the Sheriff - "Are you alright mate?" and the Sheriff grumps. Normally I wouldn't bother again, but I notice he wears one of those medical bracelets. Maybe he's diabetic. "Do you want me to get a taxi?"

Arthur, who looks pretty wasted himself, says he's always like that after nightfall. Apparently, I should see him in during daylight. He's a very dapper gent is Gordon, always well turned out. Folded hankerchief in the top pocket and everything. But when he throws on that sheepskin with that badge, he transforms into the Sheriff he's the worst kind of drunk. Maudlin. Grizzly. An anti-hero.

The Sheriff seems to be groaning "whass a usey?" or "whass theuse?" and then he reiterates it with a real sadness, I mean full-on sorrow! It's difficult to hear as I am being blasted with dad's dulcet ditty, but I ask him what he's trying to say.

A tiny echo from my dreams parks itself in the x-files department of my mind as he repeats the same gob full of dribbling slurry. The Ewe-Sea? The You See? This is captivates me. I feel personally involved.

Anyroad, I decide someone needs to take care of him so I open his diabetic bracelet which is a bit like a locket - I've seen one before where medical notes are written on a long bus-ticket piece of paper folded up. As I unravel the concertina it indeed contains a message, written in felt pen like the day-glo stars. It says, in capital letters "WHAT IS THE U.C.E. ?"

He spies me doing this and for a nano-second appears completely sober "Yes! YES! WHAT IS THE U.C.E.?" I look into his blood-red eyes as I hold onto him with both shoulders. What? The U.C.E.? The Ewe-Sea? The You-See?

Then suddenly it dawns on me - "Do you mean the University of Central England? I think it's in Birmingham - do you have a kid there? Are you looking for someone? Have you lost someone? - is it a missing person?"

An invisible tsunami of whisky breath nearly floors me but I hold onto his sheepskin jacket till he wriggles from my grasp and falls off the bar stool. From the floor he points at my face, but not like Jesus did.

"The U.C.E... You'll see..."

Lost Scriptures of Mother Shipton Volume 33, Chapter 199

Holy Hemispheres!

The Goddess of the North of England and The God of The South of England were arguing over swapping sides in bed.

They lived near the equator. Maybe the heat made them naggy,

The row began like a mild curry, gentle but with heated ingredients. The South English God didn't like the lumpier northern side of the bed but the Northern Goddess wanted a better night’s sleep on the softer south.

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow” they agreed and went to bed and managed to sleep. At 4am, a meteorite whacked The God of The South of England right in the eye. Well! You can imagine the bawtry* reaction! He grumped and growled and spat and deliberately woke up the Goddess simply because that’s what both men and gods do.

The Goddess groaned, "Jesus, it took me eons to drop off tonight and you selfishly drag me out of hard-won slumber! Well, at least it's not an erection creeping up my back, but please don’t stress me, the volcano-acne on my face will burst and drown us both in hot larva!”

This didn't phase The God of The South of England, he was a Southerner after all. They argued and tussled and caused such a rumpus that they broke away from a continental shelf and floated up into what would become Europe, spinning as they went.

When the continental drift was over, they found they had completely inverted themselves! North was now South and South was now North.

So now we have an interesting situation; The God of The South of England became The New God of The North of England and of course, we now have a New Goddess of The South of England. Still with me?

Both were a bit disorientated to say the least. But now, The New God of The North of England was especially grumpy about married life. Instead of their original matrimonial ying-yang coupling, the situation was now a yang-ying, which as any child knows, is disasterous.

As time went on, northern humans (his subjects) reproduced and built dwellings upon his Pennine-scratched face. They erected mills and taverns infecting his weathered skin. All northern male children inherited the God’s misery laden DNA into their left shoulder and arrogant indignation onto their right. So you basically got a lot of cocky northern men who felt they should inherit the earth.

To make matters worse, the south eventually divorced the north (sometime around 1980 - there were rumours she had it off with France, and some say that the Channel Tunnel is the site of their sexual union!).

Anyway. This is why there is still a north / south divide in the United Kingdom.

Oh, and those northern human males, would always feel drawn to the seductive south. Let’s not forget she encouraged France to grow a Eurotunnel. France liked to do it from behind. Just look at any modern map.

What would befall the fates of those ambitious-yet-sensitive-type men who dream of Southern migration… And not just for winter...

I ask you, dear reader, what of them?

====

Notes

According to Mother Shipton (who I am currently channeling), The God of the North of England also represents Scotland in this scripture. I have no information on Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

*Something a Northern Grandma used to say. It means charging around like a china shop, but with a loud northern voice.

Sorry about the swearing but...

In a forgotten warehouse tucked in an unwashed crease of a Glasgow housing scheme, at around 4pm, bathed by a five thousand watt lighting rig, I fucked in front of a film crew. I don't mean I fucked up, I literally mean I fucked. In front of high speed camera.

No man likes to admit he is Speedy Gonzales between the sheets, but, my precious reader, I was not, I hasten to add, chosen for any sexual prowess. Nor for a particularly nice arse (though some think it's cute).

I'll tell you! just wait! I'm not rushing the jewel in my professional crown!

I can even tell you the title of the film which is still commercially available - if not widely circulated, where you can see, for less that two seconds, my bobbing, pulsating, animated sex-bum, (well, thighs actually) sharing screen time with a bluebottle.

Yes. A bluebottle and the BBC natural history unit with a thrusting twelve inch close-up lens. Wish I could sport the same credentials but never mind dead reader, this really happened.

All those years of being a worried podgy teenager, developing eating disorders, painful shy days and listening to The Smiths all night, here I was, at last, my Boogie-Nights(c) debut. How I'd teach the arses at school to shutthefuckup, because I am a sex double. See, the actors went home and they called in the professional, the stunt double, the hip-thrusting, bed-springs-bustin', little shag-bunny, the

I can tell you the director. He went on to bigger things.

The bluebottle bit is essential to the plot of this tale.

Bluebottles are fast. And by comparison, people are slow. Anyone who has tried to swat a bluebottle will testify to this.

This poses a problem does it not, if one were to cast both a bluebottle

The UCE prophecy

In The California Club, in Eston I find a drunk man slumped over the bar. He keeps repeating "what's the use, what's the use?" I ask him what he means. He's just done some kareoke number and they've had a line dancing special. He's white as a sheet and tears are streaming down his face.

I ask him again what he means and he says "What's the you-see, What's the you-see?" and I ask him what he means.

He says "What's the ewe-sea? you must have heard of the ewe-sea?" I say it sounds very beautiful but I have no idea where the "ewe-sea" is... Ewe as in sheep? or you as in me?

It turns out he is trying to say an acronym - "What is the U.C.E.?" and he eventually enlightens me by grabbing my lapels and shaking me saying "The U.C.E. - The Uncommon Compassionate Event Goddammit!" and he sounds like he has a bad American accent.

He says it was prophesised to us, promised unto us. Nothing grand, just a day when someone does something really nice and kind.

war and peace

In 1996, the peace studies department at Bradford University played the war studies department of King's College, London, at football. Peace beat war 15-0.

Adam Baird, a PhD student and the player-manager of the Bradford team, decided it was time for another fixture. "After their drubbing in 1996, we're sure the war boys will be out to set the record straight," he told the Yorkshire Post before the first leg was played.
4:55 PM"Derby games don't get any bigger than war versus peace. The game promises to be competitive, with no love lost on the field."

The first leg was played in the deep south - peace beat war 1-0, with the only goal coming ten minutes from the end. The goalscorer was reported as saying that his team had been "shellshocked" by how good the war studies players had been in the first half.

The California Club

In The California Club, in Eston I find a drunk man slumped over the bar. He keeps repeating "what's the use, what's the use?" I ask him what he means. He's just done some kareoke number and they've had a line dancing special. He's white as a sheet and tears are streaming down his face.

I ask him again what he means and he says "What's the you-see, What's the you-see?" and I ask him what he means.

He says "What's the ewe-sea? you must have heard of the ewe-sea?" I say it sounds very beautiful but I have no idea where the "ewe-sea" is... Ewe as in sheep? or you as in me?

It turns out he is trying to say an acronym - "What is the U.C.E.?" and he eventually enlightens me by grabbing my lapels and shaking me saying "The U.C.E. - The Uncommon Compassionate Event Goddammit!" and he sounds like he has a bad American accent.

He says it was prophesised to us, promised unto us. Nothing grand, just a day when someone does something really nice and kind.

WWf

The Wild West folks think I am their sheriff. Sheriff Dooks.
The WIld West folks think I am their preacher. Preacher Dooks.
The Wild West folks think I am their White Tongue. White Tongue Dooks.

The Artist thinks he will bring his destiny full circle in America and he does, but it certainly isn't fame and fortune, it is about becoming authentic and about growing up...

Dead Man DVD Notes

cut from a different cloth to the others
Some parallel between Cleveland England and Cleveland Ohio
the california club is in cleveland
what is cleveland? What does it mean? indians in cleveland differ - indian restauraunt
Town of machine
georgia o keefe skulls
machine "is the end of the line" like to die;
the character arrives holding a pice of paper as if he has been asked to come to die
what i like: the native american figure is a bit of a dimwit albeit a spritual one
occupations : flower seller
robert mitchum addresses the bear not the men
his name is william blake (sometimes they say black) and he is a poet AND a painter - william blake was a polymath...
they ask me what my name is?
I say chris, keeper of ducks etc
It's playful with dialogue and fullof double meanings "Nobody Will Observe"
literacy was real low
the soundtrack is electric guitar. make it essential there is a playlist in my story.
"i feel very weak. i am hungry" - quest for vision requires nothing to eat - the whole point of being ill is to bring visions.
it doesn't matter if there is no one around, in the wild, it is man's instinct to piss against a tree. It's the desire to connect with another phallus, and the greater the tree the more powerful the connection.
indians get white mans diseases.
a trading post - what does my character have to trade?

Soho Amended with Ellie's Suggestions

Some Kind of Phany

Soho. Sharp winter morning. Clear, direct sunlight, little ultra violet haze. The moon, present and opaque, resting in a field of baby blue sky, discreetly lit.

This morning I am the lone rush hour salmon, pondering gravity. Strong counter-currents of a cold and grumpy workforce today are trying to throw me off my BigWork™ as is the intense arctic weather. But this fish has a mish. Mm-mission.

Steadfast, I plod. BigWork™ is only for the headstrong.

Passing peep show shops I see a little man pour boiling water and disinfectant – scalding the sex shop step. The water evapourates immediately. In this cold, the tower of steam is reminiscent of Old Faithfull Geyser at Yellowstone. I guess it must be midnight there. I think of Faithfull’s sulphur ejaculate, the geyser chucking it’s muck into the night sky before it’s acid rain fizzes back to earth on a racoon’s head.

Back to Soho wildlife and my role in it.

The gravity of thinking about gravity aids swimming against these dense schools of commuter-fish. Bi-ped traffic swims up against me in waves from warm and wombed underground guts. I won’t be distracted. I have bigger fish to fry in my mind.

I briefly inspect the tube station oral cavity spewing out city geezers, waves of media geezers and emissions of service industry geezers as I.T. drone-bee and media stealther alike are sicked up to street level.

Wildlife observation: Many cling to enormous latte cups. These milky coffees are clogging city arteries with gallons of hot cow cream. The huge beakers also serve as hand warmers inducing a little hibernating blood closer to grateful palm skin.

I think of warm hands and milky tongues and it makes me feel kind. London lips supping steamy transmuted grass from waxy paper containers are not so different from baby calves suckling teats in a cold North Yorkshire field. When I think of London lips like this it makes me hate them less. I think it might be called empathy!

Sleep depravation donates to my gloopy consciousness atypical muses and trains of thought. I am multitasking by (1) walking and (2) thinking and (3) listening to The Symphony of Sorrowful songs by Gorecki (the latter making me feel really sophisticated.) Even I am drinking a latte for solidarity.

My brain virtually combusts processing multiple input, straining to put one foot in front of the other. It's as if walking and thinking are fighting to occupy the same bit of grey matter geography. There will be only one victor! By the power of Greyskull™, something's gonna give!

As I think more and more about the universe and evaluate the likelihood that we are simply clinging to a planet in the middle of a slow-mo expanding explosion, it occurs to me I have actually stopped walking in the middle of a cold-snap Soho. I think I might be in an existential meditation!

I am now framed by a blacked-out transgender bar window. It is now just prior to nine a.m.

I am like a photograph. It's all very zen!

My tongue is pointing out of the left side of my mouth, touching my top lip. I think I might be having an epiphany! Some kind of phany anyway. If we are in the middle of an explosion, I must be part of an explosion too. I am moon dust and meteoric elements. I am an exploding geyser.

I scan the rush hour faces. All London eyes point to the ground at this time of day, like sinners. It is glacial. The temperature is nature’s cocaine. Bright eyed and latte-d up I muse…. If I am derived from an explosion maybe I can access warmth? We are supposed to have an internal pharmacy, right? What about an internal boiler house? We might be able to access our own big bang?!

And just as I was thinking that I was onto something profound, as part of my magnum opus, as part of my bigwork (tm) the ugliest transvestite I have ever seen in my life opens the door of the transgender bar and asks:

"Which one of you queer cunts is first?"

I flick my eyes 180 and unpop Gorecki from my lugholes. Reality roots me stiff to the spot. I’ve crashlanded in a queue of about ten men. Men. I think men. Some very anodyne, some pansexual types, polysexual types, even some polyparrot types (I made that up). I look extremely straight (straight men always think that) and am therefore noticable.

Next thing I know, I am working behind the bar in The Truffle Club. Same day. I'm their little Northern plaything, flirting with she-males in the toilets.

Precious reader, at no stage in my ten year plan did I see myself examining a cock and balls on the same body as aesthetically perfect breasts. But here I am. I think that might be profound. What is more profound is that the cock that is becoming hard is my own. The expanding universe indeed.

Some Kind of Phany – Part Two

By the end of the week I have been sacked. Admitedly, my Martinis where very poorly presented, but it wasn't because of that, nor for inspecting silicon boy-girls in the loo.

I fell asleep in a toilet cubicle whilst having a poo. Sleep is my grim reaper - anytime, any place, anywhere...

t

It's easy to have a messiah complex when your name is Chris. You're halfway there already. If only I could find that mystery consonant 't' then my mission will be complete. This, dear reader is the story of that 't' - which sometimes gets lost in America because t's become d's...

Page 3 Stunnas and Milky Teats synchronicity

Must remember dad's lapdancing sorjourn of the twins and my cafe watching milky lattes at the same time...

Somnia

Insomnia Part One.

4.22am and I've shaved my pubic hair. My nads feel like I am 12 again. I look at the detritus resting on an open copy of the independant on sunday. I go about my day and when I come home, it's gone.

Two days later I see it again and am amazed that it now resembles a miniature ball of tumbleweed rolling over the floorboards. A fibrous ball of my own hairy DNA.

I was just sitting here musing about it. If it was real tumbleweed I would have to be about six inches high, supposedly the same size as the average schlong.

Insomnia Part Two.

No-one ever died from lack of sleep but someone did become a half-life. Me. John Smith. No, the name is sadly real. It might be my saving grace. Maybe you prefer this intro: No-one ever died from lack of sleep but someone did become a half-life. Me. Jeff Panache. Jeff Panache? I did use my alter-ego a few times. I was just too damn Northern, too proud for a name that sounded purple.

No. I am sadly John Smith. Go to bed John. Just go to bed. It's OK to close your eyes. You've taken your beta blocker, drank your heart-ease tea, stroked your girlfriends cat, yet the minutes tick on... is there something you are wanting to say?

It's about the planet isn't it!? You want to really take stock, to make being up (now at 6.32am) worth the effort, to plumb the existential depths. You wish you could see the stars like you could in Skye that time, when Pete and Jez were incoherent on magic mushrooms and you could only get radio3 on long wave and you couldn't tell if the bleeps and hiss were part of the composition or if they were delinerate. How you'd laugh at the earlier you because these days you spend hours getting those bleeps and hiss just right in your own static-y electronica.

Poetic Junction Flora and Fauna

Chukar
Mourning dove
Sage grouse
Swainson's hawk
American badger
Black-tailed jackrabbit
Bobcat
Coyote
Gray fox
Mountain cottontail
Mountain lion
Mule deer
Raccoon

big sagebrush
cheatgrass
cardaria (Maybe this is his surname)
snowbrush ceanothus
mountain-mahogany
antelope bitterbrush

Old Sonic G Spot

2000 Words On Why Songs Are Like Duck Eggs

A Sonic Hormone

I haven’t always liked songs, but I have always been strongly affected by music; both nourished or diseased by it. Sonic constructions have always either aroused or repulsed me at extremes. I’ve never been one for grey areas. And this is good and this is also bad.

During puberty, I had a developed a curious awareness of the affect music could have on me and I think I was around fourteen when I discovered I owned “a sonic g-spot.”

I frequently “used” music to alter my brain chemistry as only an addict would understand. Surfing on the aesthetics of raspy acid house with my limbs flailing like I had some advance motor-neurone disorder, I would flood my brain with electronically pure and concentrated endorphins, born mainly from acid house, administered at least on a weekly basis.

But I over-indulged on this new “bliss button” over and over, till eventually it broke and then I grudgingly hung around in restless silence until I could administer another hit (but only when I had done enough research on what other tunes would push the button. Don’t forget, this was the 1980s, way before the internet, when research was actually rewarding because it took true effort that weeded out the serious culture vultures from the modestly interested)…

Wave Culture

My public displays of sonic devotion were rare, as there were limited opportunities and outlets for my tastes in Cleveland. Raves were happening hundreds of miles away, so the tv news suggested. None of my friends understood or cared. To make matters worse, I was growing up as a very shy but secretly passionate teenager. And if I could have only gotten rid of my podgy belly…

As a result, sonic ingestions became very personal out of necessity. They were very, very private and as a result they felt like quite an unconsciously spiritual part of my artistic development. Generally they involved lots of beach ambling with the walkman drip-feeding me. A smell of saline on the sea air perhaps amplified this metaphor.

Usually, a two mile stretch of sea and sand between Redcar and Saltburn, with the unclipping of the dog on and off the leash became of pilgrimage-like significance as did the ritual of inserting 2 x AA batteries and the joy of a bespoke compilation cassette.

By the way, I always carried spare batteries. To run out of batteries in the throws of a favourite piece of music was a cruel lesson in death.

Five mile-rs

A kind of fitness developed. My dad would ask if I was taking the dog on “another five mile-r” and indeed the dog and I would get fit, and walks of five and ten miles were not uncommon when I had only intended to get as far as the lamp post. Something happened when I put the beats on, my feet began to co-operate only at 120 beats per minute. The belly slimmed a little… I felt very powerful.

And when I decided that I would actually try and get even fitter, I found myself suffering from sonic withdrawal symptoms because when I took up running* the music distorted when I pounded the pavement (this was before the days of an “anti-roll mechanism) and I couldn’t bear not being able to run and hear music at the same time.

But even now, even on a Buddhist retreat, in fact, especially on a Buddhist retreat I find it hard not to have a walkman on whilst going for a walk. But at the same time I realise that this is a bit sad. I really do. If I have a walkman on, I feel like I have cut part of my consciousness away. Withdrawal from music into silence is initially terrifying. But this is what I have become. It really is a kind of addiction. I preferred it to conversation, people, it was my own private thing.

Eargasm

The music I used in my teens (and beyond) enabled me to charter an as-the-crow-flies course to a more or less guaranteed “eargasm” to borrow current digital darling Andre3000’s metaphor. The faster it got me there and the longer it held me there, the better.

But I particularly liked remixes, because the remixer tried to extend the pleasure of an already effective track. Girl, we couldn’t get much higher. But we did! 808 State’s “Cobra Bora,” A Guy called Gerald’s “Voodoo Ray” and, oh! Stakker Humanoid’s “Humanoid” plus the twelve inch ten minute remix of the Stone Roses “Fool’s Gold” (see, not everything was electronic!) were particularly pleasurable choice cuts. And they’ve generally stood the test of time.

But the price for this rhythmic indulgence was an inability to listen to anything that didn’t re-set my brain waves to 120 beats per minute. In listening to much music made by programming and sequencing, I had accidentally programmed myself to listen to a very small but specific pothole of music. And that’s OK sometimes, because even when the pothole is small, it can still be quite deep, but also I could disappear down it for months, years even.

Dido. No, I really mean Dildo this time.

This reminds me of an episode of Sex and the City where one of those loathsome women had overdone it with a dildo and had to be de-programmed out of using a machine that could reliably hit her g-spot. She had to become human again.

My remedy was usually very severe. When I’d overdone the endorphins, I would cruelly cut off the source and try and rebuild my life back together again. If I’d ever become a Herion addict, no doubt the kind of detox I would have found myself involved in would have been the absolute removal of the source. The cruel but faster option.

But I would try and find a silver lining. I would search for the antidote, which was often choral minimalism, Gregorian chants and the like and requiems. Plus I had flirted with the cello and sang in a choir a few times.

But over the next twenty years I would oscillate between hardcore but minimal electronics and when they stopped working at plus ten, try and find the minus ten to equalise it all out.

At Last! Emotional Engagement!

If I paint a picture of my teens as being somewhat narrow with my tastes, I would prefer to say “selective” – but then, especially when I was on a “downer” from these highs, I discovered the joy of melancholy. The emotions got involved.

Now even my downs had their own soundtrack. I discovered The Smiths. I didn’t buy the whole miserable thing per se. I hated the Goths. I found them all a bit obvious and literal. I didn’t even get into Joy Division, Nick Cave or any other movement for miserable angsty boys (I was never really truely miserable, existential, yes, but I think I had always been unconsciously attracted to the subtle optimism in Morrissey’s songs).

I had intense experiences on Smiths tracks like “The Death of a Disco Dancer” which was an interesting track because it had some of the sonic repetition and drone that my acid-y tracks had, but it also had a kind of requiem-like emotional engagement that the beats lacked. And it was also really funny! It had a lot going for it.

The beats transcended my surroundings and filled my head with pleasure, but with the addition of words, it all became a bit more whole, holistic even. I know this sounds obvious to people who listen to songs, but I hated most of the songs I found within the North of England 1980s zeitgeist.

My audio acid tendancies never went away, in fact, by listening to Morrissey (and also Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel) I accidentally gave the dance music time to rebuild it’s efficacy for the next time I desired an endorphin rush.

Packed with Meaty Goodness

In writing songs, I have tried to make sure that each song has enough “data” in it. Partly inspired by “singing science” records that have resurfaced online, I am intrigued an excited by a song’s potential to educate with the chief student in the short term, being myself. It was exciting to be able to include the words “copus luteum, graafian follicle” in “28 Days in Lace.”

* and developed an eating disorder but that’s another story.

Soho Amended

The Expanding Universe

Soho. Sharp winter morning. Clear and direct sunlight, little ultra violet haze. The moon, present and opaque, resting in a field of blue sky, discreetly lit.

Me, wandering down Tottenham Court Road pondering gravity. I am the rare rush hour salmon. Bi-ped traffic against me fleeing warm and wombed underground orifices in violent spasms.

I’ve had no sleep for nearly thirty four hours but I’m not complaining! I've sold an installation to a Harley Street skin clinic for a nauseating figure.

A tube station oral cavity spews out city geezers, waves of media geezers and emmissions of service industry geezers as I.T. drone-bee and media stealther alike are vomited up to street level.

Maybe at the same time, in the dark, in Yellowstone Park Wyoming, Old Faithful geyser ejaculates. No one around to see mind you.

Here, all are orientating toward work clinging to latte cups with the same volume as that steamy Yellowstone park ejaculate, clogging trendy city arteries with millions of gallons of hot cow cream. London Lips supping waxy paper containers full of steamy transmuted grass are not so different from baby calves suckling teats in a cold North Yorkshire field. When I think of London types like this it makes me hate them less. I think it might be called empathy!

Sleep depravation donates to my gloopy consciousness atypical muses and trains of thought. I am multitasking by (1) walking and (2) thinking and (3) listening to The Symphony of Sorrowful songs by Gorecki (the latter making me feel really sophisticated.) I am also drinking a latte for solidarity.

My brain virtually combusts processing multiple input, straing to put one foot in front of the other. It's as if walking and thinking are fighting to occupy the same bit of grey matter geography. There will be only one victor! By the power of greyskull, something's gonna give!

As I think more and more about the universe evaluating the likelihood that we are simply clinging to a planet in the middle of a slow-mo expanding explosion, it occurs to me I have actually stopped walking in the middle of a cold-snap Soho. I think I might be in an existential meditation!

I am now framed by a blacked-out transgender bar window. It is now just prior to nine a.m.

I am like a photograph. It's all very zen!

My tongue is pointing out of the left side of my mouth, touching my top lip. I think I might be having an epiphany! Some kind of phany anyway. If we are in the middle of an explosion, I must be part of an explosion too. I am moon dust and meteoric elements.

I scan the rush hour faces. All London eyes point to the ground at this time of day, like sinners. It is freezing. But... if I am derived from an explosion maybe I can access warmth? We are supposed to have an internal pharmacy, right? What about an internal boiler house? We might be able to access our own big bang?!

And just as I was thinking that I was onto something profound, as part of my magnum opus, as part of my bigwork (tm) the ugliest transvestite I have ever seen in my life opens the door of the transgender bar and asks:

"Which one of you queer cunts is first?"

I flick my eyes 180 and unpop Gorecki from my lugholes. Reality roots me stiff to the spot. I’ve crashlanded in a queue of about ten men. Men. I think men. Some very anodyne, some pansexual types, polysexual types, even some polyparrot types (I made that up). I look extremely straight (straight men always think that) and am therefore noticable.

Next thing I know, I am working behind the bar in The Truffle Club. Same day. I'm their little Northern plaything, flirting with she-males in the toilets.

Sanny once said “Chris, your life can change in a day” which doesn’t sound profound, but when I went to bed last night I didn’t imagine I would be examining a cock and balls on the same body as aesthetically perfect breasts. I think that might be profound. What is more profound is that the cock that is becoming hard is my own. The expanding universe indeed.

By the end of the day I have been sacked. Admitedly, my Martinis where very poorly presented but it wasn't because of that, nor for inspecting silicon boy-girls in the loo but because I fell asleep in a toilet cubicle whilst having a poo. Sleep is my grim reaper - anytime, any place, anywhere...

PreCalfCognition

Every time I see masses of Londoners, I get visions of stampeding cattle and sometimes Bison. Cows coming out of the underground. Cow dung at a trendy restaurant. Too much Damien Hirst you might say. The doctor thinks it's stress. My doctor is only my doctor as I managed to barter Harley Street treatment in return for an installation I did with Christine Borland which graces his surgery. It's a video projection of the four stomachs of, you guessed it, a cow. Except it's very very pretty. The soundtrack, produced by Matt Black of Coldcut is based on "alpha frequencies" which seduce the clients, I mean patients, in the waiting room into a kind of soporphoric stupor so they'll agree to anything. Alpha frequencies are sleep inducing. It's not the first time I found my own work boring. I feel ill.

I have just done my tax returns for the year, I go out for lunch with Chris Ofili known for his cow dung imagery as I am badly in need of a drink. I'd done a residency at Ellen Wilkinson High School in Manchester and Chris was once a young buck there. The school had the highest level of truancy in the UK at the time. I am intrigued how Chris went from there to doing psychedelic images of the buddha and virgin mary with blobs of animal poo on them.

(note to self, this foreshadows the wild west).

Some kind of phany

Soho. Cold. A sharp winter morning, clear and direct sunlight, little ultra violet haze. The moon, present and opaque, resting in a field of blue sky, discreetly lit.

Me, wandering down Tottenham Court Road pondering gravity. I am a rush hour salmon, all biped traffic against me fleeing warm and moist underground orifices. City geezers, media geezers and service industry geezers like yellowstone geyser ejaculate, warm from the underground, orientating toward work and latte cups. Hands are cupped round waxy paper containers full of steamy milk, not so different from baby calves suckling a teat in a cold loney field.

When I think of London types as baby calves on a farm it makes me hate them less.

Sleep depravation has given my attention atypical muses and trains of thought. I am both walking and thinking and listening to The Symphony of Sorrowful songs by Gorecki and it makes me feel really sophisticated. I am also drinking a latte for solidarity.

My brain virtually combusts processing motor input, putting one foot in front of the other and before I know it, the thoughts about gravity make me slow down and stop walking. It's as if walking and thinking are fighting to occupy the same bit of grey matter geography. There will be only one victor! Something's gonna give.

As I think more and more about the universe, evaluating the likelihood that we are simply clinging to a planet in the middle of an expanding explosion, it occurs to me I have actually stopped walking in the middle of cold-snap Soho. At rush hour. I stop for an existential meditation, framed by a transgender bar at just prior to nine a.m.

I am like a photograph. It's all very zen!

My tongue is pointing out of the left side of my mouth, touching my top lip. I think I might be having an epiphany. Some kind of phany anyway. If we are in the middle of an explosion, I must be part of an explosion too. I am moon dust and meteoric elements. I am an explosion!

And I look at all the rush hour faces. Like sinners, all London eyes point to the ground at this time of day. It is freezing. But... if I am derived from an explosion maybe I can access warmth? We are supposed to have an internal pharmacy, right? So I guess we must be able to access our own big bang?!

And just as I was thinking that I was onto something profound, as part of my magnum opus, as part of my big work (tm) the ugliest transvestite I have ever seen in my life opens the door of the transgender bar and asks:

"Which one of you queer cunts is first?"

I flick my eyes 180 and unpop Gorecki from my lugholes. It seems I am in a queue of about ten men. I think they are men. Some very anodyne, some pansexual types, polysexual types, even some polyparrot types (I made that up). I look extremely straight (straight men always think that) and am therefore noticable.

Next thing I know, I am working behind the bar in The Truffle Club. Same day. I'm their little Northern plaything, flirting with she-males in the toilets (I made that up too, but I might have to return to that fantasy).

Tracy Emin and The Avocado

I was talking to Tracy Emin about us being working class artists. She started flicking dandruff from my black velvet blazer, and I thought that with my new coal tar shampoo I'd be flake-free! When I ask her what she's doing, she says there were chips on both shoulders and that I was not working class. How DARE you! I says, how not? She says it's cos I eat Avocado. She says that Avocados have been in Britain now for 42 years and only in the last 4 have ASDA stocked them. She compares this to Waitrose's 22 years and Marks and Spencer's 18.

I Am The Reno Christ

Inhumanely hot car interior. Must get out.

I fall on Nevada dust, hoping for a fresh breeze to reverse a surge of gastricky vomit. My composure implodes and I am weak, doggie-style, palms down, pushing roasting desert dust a few millimetres closer to the earth's core. Problem is, the earth's core seems closer to the surface round here.

Mental note to self: sandy dust is actually ginger hues and soft as icing sugar. No cool breeze but dry air does blow fine soil over me. This is the desert beginning to digest me in it's own Cajun seasoning. The desert wants me a baked Englishman, and is coating my dripping palms and forearms. I look like a performance artist.

Ten seconds pass, then I realise that on my dizzy way down to the dizzy dust, I had headbutted a massive cactus and three cactus spikes are now squewered into my forehead, blood streaming all down my face, all Jesus-in-thorns-like.

I really do look like a performance artist now, a good one, too! One who really means it. He'll sweat blood and guts for his art. Well, here's the blood, dripping either side of my nose all red tears, but where's the gu- oh, here it comes. The brown dusty powder-soil and a waterfall of my own sick coalesce to form a revolting soil-y scrambled egg. My vomit. DNA discharge just outside Reno city limits. That'll teach the fucking cactus.

It's cool though, as I've already made my mark on this place. I should really take a picture. A real artist would.

The Tail That Broke Off

The Tail That Broke Off
Chris Dooks

Some ignore salamander prophecies.

A mother puts it down to childish play when her child barks "Mummy, today is when the salamander arrives..."

An Alzheimers patient mutters something about the salamander arriving, but the porter just thinks it's that mad old bitch again.

A guy with learning disabilities will simply say "Amanda" because he cannot say "Sal-amander" and his carer will assume it's the name of someone off the telly or an auntie or something. But these people are prophets.

This is why the notion of the salamander, the patron saint of prostitutes often goes unseen. Signs are ignored. Even naming Leith’s nortorious kerb crawling boulevard Salamander Street did little to highlight the amphibian saviour of whores. But it is no coincidence that prostitutes still use a street with salamander pedigree.

Incidently, the term kerb crawling does not come from the speed of the car slowing down to engage with prostitutes. In dirty streets, salamanders would hang around the drains, ‘crawling the kerb’ so to speak- and these were usually the kind of dangerous streets where prostitutes plied their trade, hence it stuck...

Salamanders. Mind-blowing. Paradigm shifting amphibians, dwelling in water, land or both. Species diversity is so varied it’s hard to tell if they are all the same genus. Google the Mexican albino Axylotl (which a friend claims looks like a dead man’s penis) for the cutest one.

Holy scriptures fail to mention that salamanders have supernatural skills at least as astonishing as Biblical miracles- if not more so. This begs the question why don’t we hold the consummate book ‘Newts and Salamanders of Europe’ by Richard A Griffiths up as scripture?

Pay attention to these top three salamander facts before middle America says I made it all up, reverses evolutionary research for good- and bans amphibian exposés like this.

In at number three. Many salamanders breathe without lungs in both juvenile and adult state. External gills like pink feather boas allow them to receive oxygen. No need to inhale or exhale like other crude wheezy creatures.

Holding steady at two. Other salamanders display ‘autotomy’- the ability to discard part of one’s body when attacked, such as a wriggling tail, distracting a confused predator. Jesus may heal lepers but only a handful of creatures can shrug their shoulders and say “yeh, but see what I can do.” Contact prophet Attenborough for proof.

For the second millenia! Still at number one! Perhaps the Virgin Mary was a Salamander. Perhaps her name was really Sally-Amanda, for some salamanders parthenogenesize- meaning they can reproduce without the sperm coming into contact with the egg. In other words, they can have virgin births. The offspring are clones of their mothers.

Anyway. Leith, Scotland 1794.

Lindsay Seafield, a tough wee hoor, toils with violent despicable clients – especially those of cloth like ex-Reverend Iain Galloway.

Galloway appeared before Leith Parish Council to appeal against his excommunicating from the church after some other scandal with a local woman of ill repute. The Parish rejected his plea.

Displacing personal anger and shame onto prostitutes, he felt whores had already gone to hell anyway- so what’s the harm in a little fun? So, filled with drink and adrenaline after staying awake for days, he staggered down a slimy passage that would one day become Salamander Street, bawling for “whores to end his bores.”

Because Lindsay had a wee bairn, she’d developed essential bottle to cope with the most neandethal of men. Such was her insight of blunt testosterone, there was almost a thin streak of compassion in the air when she serviced clients. Almost.

Galloway paid well, but he expected total cooperation for acts that left women worse than dead. Acts the church shrouded. Lindsay both challenged Galloway’s tastes and allowed him to indulge them- within ‘reason.’ He would, for example, make Lindsay weep over his feet and then dry the tears with her hair.

“Ah wan nun o yer mischeif the nee’ Galloway, Ah’ve hud a hard day an nought tae show. Ach, could ye huv no had a wash at least? Jesus, what’llit be?”

He scowled at her- “A kiss from they lips” (Galloway had a habit of asphixiating women by kissing them full on the mouth and holding the nose).

“You ken ah dinnae kiss Galloway. You ken dae whit yer will bit nae lips”

“Ah’ll pay mair ferra kiss and thit’s it. Ahm rich.” (It was rumored that the kirk had given him money to keep quiet about his indescritions)

“Nae kiss”

“Gisssa kiss wee bitch.” Galloway pinned her arms to the wall preventing her from reaching a knife stuffed beneath her bodice.

“Aye, aye, aye git affa me soas I kin dae it right”

Usually this tactic worked. Show no fear and hint that it would be more pleasurable if he followed suit, but Galloway sussed cod-psychology.

“You’ll nae run fae me the neet”- he shook her against the wall. An earring fell out, dropped in the gutter and floated down the street.

“Ah’m nae kissing ye if ye dinnae let go I cannae”

He relished causing her steely bravado to slip, tearing through her blouse- but she competently booted him in the bollocks. As he recoilled, she was able to let out a whelp and grabbed a bottle from the gutter, crushing it on his skull.

She freed the dagger from her bodice. She wasn’t going to kill him, more... maim him perhaps- maybe emancipate his stinking manhood from the loins and toss it in the gutter?

Now.

Take your mind to gutter level. Imagine a small amphibian covered in a thin film of mucus. Imagine going about your amphibious day in your own amphibious way. Imagine licking the side of the gutter where moss attracts flies. Imagine flicking your long tongue to eat the fly. Imagine being very grateful to have satiated a little hunger. Imagine relief as you survive another day avoiding the huge local rat.

And imagine seeing a prostitute’s earring float past your nose. Imagine it reminding you that you are no ordinary amphibian. It reminds you that there is a story behind the earring and that you must investigate further. It reminds you of your role. You obtain the earring with a flick of your sticky tongue. When the cheap alloy touches your tongue you are able to connect with it’s source. You feel anger at the plight of the prostitute. Such anger and sadness causes a momentary blip in the metaphysical structure of the universe- (at least the bit around Leith) and the ground starts to shake. You run as fast as your slimy body allows, earring in mouth and you arrive at the scene of the crime. You are a supernatural metaphysical salamander. You have special powers. Humans will soon ken you for your tail-regrowing prowess, virgin birthing and lungless powers, but tonight you have even more to offer...

You see a drunken man slumped on the ground regaining consciousness. You see a woman standing over him with a knife. You drop the earring!

“Don’t do it!” you shout at her.

Lindsay turns around and drops the dagger. It clanks to the ground. No one around.

I’ll spare you the Stuart Little moment where a human being comes to terms with a talking creature. All you need to know now that Lindsay is having a conversation with the Salamander.

The Salamander speaks (on his hind legs and with his sticky palms together as if to pray).

“This is Proteus, old man of the sea who tends the seals of Posiedon. I can shape shift to any shape I choose, and I thank the gods for the salamander option, full as it is of miracles, but tonight I call on Lord Posiedon to shape shift not I, but this man before me! Make him rattus by your power, so I may deal with him agreeably.”

And it was so. Galloway became a rat. A dazed drunk rat. We’ll skip the bit about Lindsay being stunned at this, it was becoming just another day of miracles.

The Salamander (lets call him Proteus now) continued his prayer.

“I now call on the Salamander who goes by the name Waterdog, and the Salamander who goes by the name Mudpuppy to manifest themselves here to eat Galloway the rat and have him sin no longer and to have Leith’s whores sleep easier at night.”

A surge of compassion entered Lindsay’s heart causing her to blea “Dinnae kill him Proteus!!!”

Proteus looked stunned “But that’s what you were going to do! I am just doing the deed so it’s not on your conscience”

But as they were arguing, Galloway the rat woke from his daze and realised he was now a rodent, still full of drink and hungry now. He would eat that slimy thing in front of him. Just then, he lunged into Proteus’s tail, who kicked in his supernatural skill of autotomy- dislocated it, and began to scarper.

Waterdog and Mudpuppy arrived and the three of them cowered behind a stone.

Proteus was stressed. “Now what are we going to do? Posiedon is going to be pissed off if we don’t carry out the deed. He hates having his power misused.”

“I have an idea,” grinned Waterdog. “If we can get the whore to hold Galloway the rat on his back, we could just maim him a little so it will put him off troubling these street lasses again.”

“Lindsay! Grab the rat, put him on his back!!!” She did as told. “Hold him down!” screamed proteus, and she managed to do so.

As she held him down, Galloway’s tail lashing around, Waterdog instructed the other two salamanders.

“Mudpuppy, you take the right testicle, I’ll take the left. Proteus, only you can take the penis. We bite off his organs and get Posiedon to make him human again to suffer out his punishment.”

“OK Salamanders, lets do it!” and they all did a high-five in a precursor to what became known as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the 1980s. I might have gone too far at this point. I mean no disrespect.

Galloway the rat screamed, howled and bawled and screamed some more as the amphibians tore at his groin. And then it was over.

The Salamanders ate and digested the anger, transmuted it, absorbed it, contained it. Lindsay let go. Galloway the rat was wincing.

Proteus then stood on his hind quarters once more, sticky palms pressed together.

“Lord Posiedon, by your power Galloway has been emasculated. We now ask to have him turned back into a man and banished from these parts forever.”

And it was so.

Galloway was no longer a rat but was now a man- without genitals. And from that day on he repented his sins and was accepted into the priesthood where he lived close to Rosslyn chapel before they bollocksed the whole thing up in the Da Vinci Code. Meanwhile, Lindsay’s bairn grew up to look after mum and become something called a naturalist or a new word- biologist and learned about natural miracles.

Today, some will not know why the image of a salamander comes to them. Why it enters one’s life.

When dogs in Leith bark longer and louder- and Lothian and Borders police get reports of alarms going off in factories and warehouses and they'll put it down to a tremor because we get earthquakes all the time in the uk, we just don't know it. But it is because the Salamander is working for good, and is enraged, this causes the ground to shake.

If you spend time with a prostitute from Leith, you may find a tattoo on her body of a flat oval face and six external gills. Women- and Men- of the street, wear these marks as protectors now. You can find the image on chains round the neck, on the skin,- even on the inside of a cheek. I have no idea if it is effective.

The Manatee's Orgasm

The Manatee's Orgasm
Chris Dooks

Oh Dear. A six-hundred and seventy-seven pound female manatee* lodged itself in a swimming pool flume in Sea World, Florida.

This particular flume (a fun twisty tube with running water!) had been nicknamed "ski jump" because it projectile vomited children from it's opening at a sharp angle like a winter olympic sport.

The manatee had swum from it’s compound through a malfunctioning gate to a holding pool. From here, she vaulted over to the children's pool complex, surviving both chlorine and clouds of child pee.

Marine Biologist Dr Edward Piphany claimed the situation arose because this particular manatee had an extremely rare genetic gift- or curse! He claimed our manatee, or "Sea Cow," suffered from "aquaticus perpetuus voluptarius," which roughly means "perpetual orgasm by water."

Sea Cows have advanced sexual organs that can be stimulated by sea kelp forests in warm coastal waters. With the right currents, a manatee's orgasm can easily last up to seventy-two hours. But in some manatees, a rare gene mutation means they risk becoming "locked" in orgasm, spending much of their life burdened by bliss.

Leading biologists have risked personal reputations by stating a thesis- that some manatees actually commit suicide because the pleasure centres of their brains are overloaded by constant sexual ecstasy. Apparently, our manatee intended to throw herself from the 100 ft high flume platform. Dr Piphany claimed that the flume-blockage-by-manatee was in fact a botched suicide attempt.

There was, however, a counter-claim that famously blew up into an argument on US show 60 minutes. Dr Piphany's nemesis, Dr Emma C’Pation stated “the manatee had actually ceased to orgasm, immediately going into cold turkey. Like an addict, the creature had severe cravings, located the nearby flume’s rushing water, and hence made a Herculean break for it.”

Either way, once out of it’s compound, the creature shunted up the fifty eight steps to the ski jump flume- no mean feat for a ball of blubber and flipper- and flopped** into the flume opening to the slack-jawed amazement of children and advancing security staff.

Sea World staff decided they wouldn't saw the flume tube as the vibration and noise would stress the poor creature to death. Instead, at 3.45pm (when manatee sexual hormones are at their lowest), they decided to flush her out by diverting the water supply from all other flumes to the blocked one. Like a champagne cork, the pressure eventually shifted the huge beast, popping her out of the ski jump at an amazing speed, so much so that she crash landed onto the beach, just short of the water, and sadly perished.

There are 19 reported accounts of the flying manatee. Martina Lopez who runs the hot dog stand on the sea front said our manatee groaned “a super-sigh” as she arced over the Florida skyline, smiling her way to a glorious little death on the pebbles and sand.

The body is now preserved by Sea World and is on show in the museum. If you are in the area and fancy a giggle, just listen to how parents explain to children this story, describing "a perpetual aquatic orgasm!" to enquiring minds.

* A manatee is bit like a walrus but with a more aesthetically poignant shape and a veggie diet.

** No Running, No Heavy Petting, No Bellyflops

This is a true story.

This is a true story.

Never believe those who tell you "true stories."

title

the physics of starting a kind fire

How to get your own back on existence

the kind fascist. x

The Signet Ring

The loanshark's signet ring is kind of a lord of the rings satire in miniature - you can't take your wealth with you and this is the most pointless of all wealth. Maybe the whole story centres around this element. In a metaphysical swimming pool. Maybe he can be born again in the swimming pool. Surrounded by jeering kids at first and then by Buddhist monks or something.

Not all loan sharks can swim

Not all loan sharks can swim.

They might give the impression they do, what with being hard bastards and all, but when it’s their turn to be in at the deep end and out of their depth, they just flap their water-wings, sploshing around like drowning puppies.

“Your signet ring is weighing you down!” I shout, “you know, the signet ring you bought with my mum’s tears – it’s weighing you down!”

Then I add “That fat gold chain is dragging you under! – the one you bought when you doubled her interest rate just because you felt like it, with a credit agreement written on the back of an envelope!”

“Can I what? – I can’t hear you, you are splashing too violently! It must be the bullion in your back pocket, if you jettison it, you might float back to the surface…oops! too late” I add quietly…

The Bluebottle and The Tunnel of Love

Before I worked as a loan shark (I prefer the term debt investor) I had no stomach problems at all. Women liked me but when I started the job it was difficult to be honest about what I did, so, to fend off loneliness, I tried a bizarre speed dating launch in the grounds of a castle just outside Glasgow.

The organisers had constructed a roof round the castle moat and covered it over with fairy lights making a kitsch Tunnel of Love. It was fancy dress, which I normally hate, and not appropriate for a hard bastard like me, but I thought I had chosen a good angry costume, which was that of a blue bottle.

We were all paired up as couples, and I ended up with a sexy Spider Woman, who lived up to her reputation, but let me tell you why it didn't come to fruition. I initially thought this was going to go spectacularly well! She was very forward. We must have looked hilarious. so, on our little rowing boat Spider Woman and Bluebottle were on a date.

But when she asked me what I did for a living, this was the beginning of my gastric problems, for I started to feel very nauseous. This was amplified by the fact I couldn't swim. So I told her I was in investment banking which wasn't a lie, but I felt my lunch bubble in my guts. As we charted our craft around the moat, she was attentive and wonderful as you'd expect, but I was gonna be sick.

And sure enough, I threw up all over the side of the boat. But that's not all. I fell in. And the weight of my costume was dragging me underwater, surrounded by my own vomit. Add to this, this loan shark couldn't swim.

Quote from Top Gear

The interior of the vehicle is full of all sorts of material from the far end of the periodic table.