The Ongoing Reality Show Fiction

2007-09-20T02:14:00.000+01:00

Anyway, I was in Sainsburys, with Moyers, Moyers is my buddy, he used to be a Phobius cartel hitman until I managed to deprogram him using some unorthodox techniques I learnt from a decommissioned AI in Calcutta. We were at the pharmacy counter, I needed more Dramamine. The girl behind the counter was regarding me with suspicion. I was saying:

"No, look, I need sleeping pills, but not herbal sleeping pills."

She was saying:

"We can't sell sleeping pills to anyone under sixteen."

"I'm like, twenty one man, I showed you my ID, I'm twenty one and I can't sleep unless I have non herbal sleeping pills."

"I can't sell sleeping pills if I think they're going to be used recreationally."

"Well I'm telling you they're not going to be used recreationally."

She stared at me, intelligence indicated that pharmacists had become a neutral party as of two weeks ago, only a few isolated cells were continuing operations. So why wouldn't this woman sell me any Dramamine?

"Look, alright, forget it, never mind. Which of your products has the largest amount of Dextromethorphan, cost wise?"

"What?"

"Like what product is the most Dextromethorphan dense? Like what's the best value for money?"

"I'm not going to answer that."

"But you're a pharmacist, this is your area, this is what you know."

"I'll call security."

"Intelligence indicates that security-pharma negotiations broke down four weeks ago when ambassadors from both sides went missing along with the city of Copenhagen. You wouldn't call one over here."

"I will."

She reached for the phone.

"He won't come, you're bluffing, this is a bluff, what about Diphenhydramine? Do any of your sleeping pills contain Diphenhydramine? I can't sleep and I need these chemicals."

Moyers started pulling me away by the collar but I shrugged out of his grip and lunged back towards the counter. The girl began to dial.

"No, listen, come on, I can't sleep and I have a cough, you're holding out on me, you fucking pharmacists, do you know what you're doing? You want to stay neutral? You won't be able to stay neutral with an attitude like this."

"Pharmacists have been hostile since this morning." Moyers said as he pushed me away from the snarling girl behind the counter. I tried to turn to face him but he had me in an arm lock.

"What? What are you talking about?"

"They've been hostile towards our faction since this morning, they were neutral long enough to finish work on their Japanese ad campaign."

"What? What the fuck?" I allowed myself to be pushed away from the counter, Moyers is a pretty big guy. "Why did no-one tell me? What ad campaign?"

"The Japanese had no word for depression, pharma had to create one to market their anti depressives."

We walked past an array of hi-tech toothbrushes. They looked like caterpillars from Mars.

"Man, that's horrible."-

"Apparently they're still struggling, there's a pretty big social stigma around mental illness over there."

"Man yeah, I heard that. It must be hard. Oh wait, wait dude," I broke out of Moyers' arm lock and walked over to one of the shelves. "I need toothpaste."

Moyers shrugged. "Alright, but we're in pharma territory, this entire aisle is dangerous."

I held up two boxes.

"Which toothpaste should I be buying? This one says tartar control, but this one says it has cavity protection."

"Dunno mate."

Moyers and I say "mate" ironically because we think it's hilarious.

"Serious dude, this cavity protection one is slightly more expensive, but only like twenty pence. I mean how much is that per tooth brushing session?"

"Uh."

I check the box.

"It doesn't say. Doesn't tartar cause cavities? Maybe I should get tartar control, then it's cavity control as well."

"I thought plaque caused cavities."

"Doesn't plaque make tartar which makes cavities? So I should get plaque control?"

"There isn't any plaque control."

The girl at the pharmacy counter was scowling at me as she spoke on the phone. I ignored her.

"Oh, hey, this one says it's twenty four hour protection."

As I went to grab the twenty four hour protection box I dropped the tartar control box, and as I went to pick it up I accidentally stood on it. The cap exploded off the tube of toothpaste with a sharp bang. The pharmacist pulled an uzi out of her jacket and sprayed it vaguely at me and Moyers. We ducked behind some floss.

"Look what you did." Moyers said as he looked through his backpack. There was a security guard writhing on the floor in front of me. He was clutching a dark blue patch on the stomach of his security guard jumper. I realised the toothpaste lid had gone straight through his gut.

"Fuck, fuck! We gotta get out of here, we gotta get our shit to the fucking checkout." I gestured to our trolley as Moyers pulled a Glock out of his bag. He tucked an oversized clip into it and turned on its ultrasonic aiming module.

"Alright," he said, waving the Glock over the top of the floss display, the aiming module made a radar like clicking which increased and decreased in frequency with the distance of objects. He fired absent mindedly a couple of times.

I ran for the trolley as the pharmacist unloaded another couple of rounds at me. They hit some novelty bubblebaths which began to foam. I grabbed the trolley, shoved it around the corner and followed it in a low crouch. Moyers followed, barking another couple of bullets at the pharmacist.

"PRICKS." She screamed.

"We better get to the checkout before security gets here." Moyers said, ramming a new clip into the Glock. We began to run, me pushing the trolley.

"Hey Moyers, what's the range on your ultrasonics?"

"About six meters, I think. I think reliably six meters."

"That's really good,"

"Yeah, heavy power requirements though, pulls two amps during transmit."

"At what voltage?"

"Six."

"Shit, seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Shit."

I could see the checkout now and man, the checkout girl was hot. I'm not kidding. I mean, this chick had pale green eyes that basically picked me up and thew me into the frozen produce. No joke, I had to pop my shoulder back into the socket and pull an ice cold baby carrot out of my hair after she looked at me.

"Hey," I said. "We'd like to checkout these items?" I gestured at the trolley in a way I hoped was expansive. She didn't say anything. I started talking loudly to Moyers.

"So anyway, I've been having some problems writing my books in Emacs."

"Probably aren't meant to write books in Emacs."

Emacs is a text editor that is over twenty years old. It is not designed for writing books.

"It's this word wrap wrap thing," I looked over, the girl was running my tomato juice through the barcode scanner, she didn't look up. "The word wrap, it's just not that suited to writing a book," still not looking at me, "It either hard wraps, which adds line breaks so the file is awkward to read on a display with a different width, or it does nothing, there's no option to soft wrap."

Soft wrap has been an option available in every text editor released within the past ten years.

"Maybe don't write it in Emacs then?"

"I mean I got this patch that was meant to fix it, but there's some problem somewhere now, it just hard wraps everything to eighty columns wide, regardless of window size."

"Sounds tough."

"It really is."

The girl finally looked at me.

"Do you want a receipt?"

"Yeah, yeah sure, hit me up."

She handed me the receipt and went on scanning the next guy's stuff. We went to leave the store as the chirps of the scanning machines were drowned out by the heavy footfalls of the armed response team that was locking the place down. I slapped my forehead, I mean I literally slapped my forehead and said:

"Dude, I forgot the toothpaste."

Problems with writer's block

2007-06-30T00:45:00.001+01:00

It's Thursday and I'm the Purple Crab, destroying my third strawberry milkshake of the evening. I'm talking to the bartender.

"I'm trying to write a story about a man who stands on his hands all the time. And he thinks everyone else is crazy for walking on their feet. He says they're all upside down. I'm having some problems though."

The bartender doesn't look up, polishes a glass.

"I'm just, I have the main scene all planned out, with the man who walks on his hands like, attacking the narrator. But I can't. I don't know, it's not working out. I mean why would the protagonist meet a man who walks on his hands? He can't just meet him in the street."

I take another sip of my strawberry milkshake.

"I mean, I've worked out that the man can have some sort of problem with his inner ear, and that's why he thinks everything should be upside down. That's all sorted, but I can't work out a way for the protagonist to meet him. I can't make a story that incorporates this character. Does that count as writers block?"

The bartender holds a glass up to the light, squints at it and then goes back to polishing it. It's like he's a girl, I'm fucking invisible.

"So I mean I've been working on it for like, two or three nights, I've got all these .txt files on my computer, upsidedownman1.txt, upsidedownman2.txt. All attempts I've made to write a story with this guy who walks on his hands. Some of them I get over ambitious and work in too many plot points. I had one where I was talking to a werewolf who loves pineapple juice. I don't even know how I was going to bring that round. Some of them I never manage to work any plot points in, it just spirals off into some dumb conversation."

No-one's listening to me, it's Thursday and I've been having a terrible week, keeping myself awake at weird times trying to catch some inspiration. Hours lying on the floor in my room, trying to start the internal combustion monologue of my prose. The bartender has a shaved head and like, a dozen piercings. He goes into the back room, leaves me alone with my milkshake and the sound of cars humming beyond plate glass. I down the dregs of ice-cream, leave enough money to cover my tab and tip. Walk out onto the street level where it's not as cold as winter used to be. Maybe kids won't have snow days anymore.

I walk home through the warm wind, which smothers me like ether.

***

The next day my knees stop working. I don't know what it is but I get out of bed and collapse forward from shock and pain. Lying on the floor, still half asleep I assume it's some temporary problem, cramp or an equivalent but when I try and get up I'm met by the same agony. What the hell. I lie there some more, bending my knees and feeling nothing. But as soon as I apply weight to them the joints scream and I have to pull myself back into bed, using my hands, crawling.

***

I'm looking at the magazine wall in a WHSMITHS when this guy wearing a massive trenchcoat stands next to me. And I'm thinking that he wants me to move out of the way, like he's trying to look at a newspaper that but I'm stopping him, so I sidestep away, but he sidles up to me and says.

"There are daisies in Moscow."

I'm staring at a copy of Gardeners World thinking what the hell do I do. He repeats himself.

"I heard there are daisies in Moscow."

I dare to look over at him and he's smiling straight at me. He's got to be crazy, he's a crazy person and he thinks he's a Russian spy and that this is some sort of passphrase. I sidestep again so that I'm in front of the lifestyle magazines. Kate Moss is on the front of this month's GQ.

The guy carries on talking, he's wearing nice clothes for a crazy person. Maybe he only went crazy today.

"Because of..the temperatures. Because it's so warm."

What the hell does GQ stand for? Guy...quotient?

"Global warming. It's, because of global warming."

Gay - no it can't be anything to do with gay. Garrison? Gauteng? The guy is silent for a moment, waiting for me to reply.

"There's not normally daisies in Moscow at this time of year."

Gorilla Quarrel. Goat Queries. Why so animal themed all of a sudden?

"They say maybe kids around here won't have snow days anymore."

Gentleman's quarterly. That's it. Bingo. I've got to get away from this crazy guy. But before I can escape to the jigsaw section or look at greeting cards he says:

"Sorry to have bothered you."

and dissapears.

I stand, staring at Kate Moss' cleavage and think about how hard it is to write conversations. Every time I try to write a story with conversations I get ruined. And I always think that next time I'm reading a book I'm going to pay really close attention to what they do when there's a conversation. But I always forget.

***

My agent calls whilst I'm trying to play Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter.

"Riaz? Wolfson here, how's it going?"

I say it's alright whilst I order Brown to put supressing fire down the street so that I can get Allen across the road and into a position to snipe the machine gun nest that's pinning me and Kirkland.

"What happened to that story?"

What story

"The one with the man who walks on his hands. You said you were going to write it weeks ago."

"Write a story? About a man who walks on his hands?"

"Yeah, Riaz, remember? You write stories?" Wolfson's getting sarcastic.

"I think you've got me confused with someone else, I just play Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter all day."

"Very funny kid, but I seriously think you should focus on that story, I thought it had potential."

"I thought it had potential." I'm copying what Wolfson is saying because that takes the least effort. Kirkland yells that he's taking enemy fire and as I check the tactical map I see that two rebels have managed to flank our position. Kirkland bites it covering my retreat. I dive behind what I think is meant to resemble a Mercedes S Class.

"Well you should work on it then, what's the problem? Writer's block?"

"Maybe,"

"Well snap out of it, whatever it takes." Wolfson's still talking whilst I cower behind the Merc which is shuddering under gunfire. Brown's M60 jams whilst Allen is out in the open and a sniper, now unsupressed, drops him as he sprints across the road.

"--a road trip, maybe go to a club."

I neutralise one of the flanking rebels from the cover of my luxury sedan but I can't see the second one because he's worked his way behind Brown who's still trying to unjam his machine gun. I can't hear him scream over the noise of the Merc's alarm which has bizzarely only gone off now.

" --ake some drugs or have a girl break your heart, those two are GUARANTEED to work kid."

I give up, reload the game.

***

Life continues, though some nights I sit at my chair with my forehead resting against the screen which is black except for the blinking damned cursor. And some nights I wake up on the floor. And some nights I forget the lights. And some days I forget the curtains.

Eventually I get sick and lie in my bed with a fever at night and feel sick with time and it's passing. No watch and no sunlight means there's 8 hours a day where I'm forced to investigate my place in time. It's revolting, I'm hopeless. Every time there's a noise outside I think it's the end of the world, I think the Koreans have nuked me, the terrorists have crop dusted the country with Sarin and the fascists are outside my door, ethnic cleansing boots on. It happens all night. Vivid, repeating nightmares that travel in stale spirals.

I go into my housemates room and look at his fish. Camera from behind the tank, distorted view of me and Joe looking into it.

He points at one of his angelfish "This guy keeps swimming upside down, it's freaking me out."

"I bet he thinks all the other fish are crazy."

"I think he's sick."

I bet he thinks all the other fish are insane and he's screaming at them:

"WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU FUCKING IDIOTS? You're UPSIDE DOWN, DUBMASSES."

Rotate the camera upside down and track the upside down fish for a while.

***

I took a load of photographs once and showed them to a photographer friend of mine who's never really liked my work so I've always figured she was a good person to show my photographs to. She said the photographs were depressing. So I said:

"That's what I was going for, like, a bleakness, I wanted them to feel bleak."

And English isn't her first language, so she didn't know what bleakness was, so I explained it to her. And she said "But why make something just to make people feel that?"

***

I'm telling Bill about my idea for the man who walks on his hands.

He says "It sounds like a good idea actually, not the kind of thing I'd write but it could still be cool."

"Y'know where I got the idea?" I'm holding my half full strawberry milkshake and limp wristedly waving it around. "I got the idea from my housemate, he's got these fish, and one of them started swimming upside down."

Bill's nodding.

"And I thought, I thought I bet that guy thinks all the other fish are insane for swimming that way round. I bet that fish thinks that he's right swimming that way round."

Bill looks thoughtful for a second, munches on the celery in his bloody mary. Then he starts talking: "I bet fish have a really complicated idea of up. I bet it's not that simple in the fish world. And I bet they don't say 'Things are looking up,' or 'I'm feeling down.'"

"Well obviously they don't Bill. Why would they."

***

Problems with the letter W

2007-06-18T22:12:00.000+01:00

I was at the Purple Crab, finishing a strawberry milkshake when the idea came to me. A story about a man who's convinced the letter W is out to get him. I always wanted to write a story where the narrator goes crazy. I was pretty sure I could work in that the letter W was somehow created by a sect of chthonic alien creatures. That'd be great. No wait, the chthonic alien creatures could be shaped like Ws. Or they could have W shaped pupils or something. And the whole thing could be full of like, tense switches, and it could switch from first person to third person. The whole thing could be a mindfuck. I told the barman about my idea immediately without making any eye contact.

"So I had this idea for a story, it's about like, it's about this guy who thinks the letter W is out to get him." I swirled at the ice cream at the bottom of my shake. "It's going to be like, a total mindfuck."

He didn't say anything.

I decided the whole thing could take place in a coffee shop. No that was stupid, the whole thing would take place in an all night diner, it'd be a conversation between the main guy and his crazy friend who was convinced W monsters were out to get him. And at first the guy thought it was stupid, but then he starts to lose it too. Wait then it all couldn't take place in a diner. Some of it could take place in a diner. The first scene. Then there would be another scene. Maybe there'd be two more scenes. I drummed my finger on the bar, my milkshake was finished and if I had another I'd feel sick so I went home. On the train I had a million more ideas but when I got back I didn't write any of them down.

***

I left my W story idea in my subconscious for a while. I did some research (Wikipedia, WWW) on the letter W, it's the 23rd letter, two plus three is five. According to the Pythagorean numerological system W represented five. Coincidence, but whatever, Five is the number of instability and imbalance. Fine. I checked the time. The reciprocal SI prefix of five is Femto, according to the Pythagorean numerological system Femto is six plus five plus four plus two plus six which comes to twenty three, W is the twenty third letter in the alphabet. I went to bed.

***

I managed to write part of the first scene. I put it in a 24 hour McDonalds because I don't think there are any all night diners in this country. Maybe truck stops, but I don't want to write a story about a trucker. I named the main character's friend Bill, but I couldn't think of anything for the main character himself. If you flip the golden arches upside down they look like a W but I didn't know if I wanted to put that in. I decided not to mention it in the story but I'd let the readers work it out. Write, writer, wrote all start with the letter W and I thought about making the main character a writer but decided against it. Who wants to read a story about a writer?

I arranged to go to the Purple Crab with my friend Will but he wanted to catch the 5.55 train. I agreed but I made us catch a different train.

***

So I'm sitting in the Purple Crab and I say to the bartender where do you live and he says "Walsall" and he stares at me. The letter W is like, two Vs, maybe the chthonic aliens can have V shaped eyes, but two of them so it's a double V. I order a strawberry milkshake. The character can go crazy and the doctor can prescribe him Wellbutrin. Wellbutrin was created in the eighties but caused seizures so they halved the dosage and created a slow release version, Wellbutrin XL. A seizure can be a sensation of fear. They trained dogs that can get help and stop you walking into the middle of the road when you have a seizure. Jeffrey Dahmer was convinced demons were communicating with him through dogs. When they caught him his fridge contained a human head and a jar of mustard. I'm a little relieved when I run the numbers on Wellbutrin and find out they're not five. My phone number has five fives in it. I should put that in the story.

***

At the Purple crab I got myself a strawberry milkshake and Will got a rum and coke. We sat in a corner booth and talked. He'd just got some sort of System Analyst job at some computing company and we made jokes about the abbreviation being "Sysanal.". I never noticed how much the bartender at the Purple Crab blinks. He blinks a hell of a lot. People who blink too much and people who don't blink at all are really weird. Maybe I should make Bill never blink. Or the chthonic aliens can never blink. Small traits like this are important in creating memorable characters. Maybe.

Will told me he likes some girl at work, I said he should make a move or something but he told me that

"Everyone says workplace romances are totally a bad idea,"

I said I don't know about that and he said

"Yeah, well you wouldn't."

And I didn't like the way he said you.

On the train home I tried to think of important people from history who had W in their name. They could be part of the W-people's conspiracy. Famous inventors maybe, they could have been given their ideas from the W-people. No-one really obvious occurred to me though. Apart from Wario. Or George W. Bush. He's too obvious though. If I could find a president from the 80s or something I could make it a period piece. I wanted to do one of those since I saw Donnie Darko. George Bush Sr has a W in his name. Maybe I could set it in the 90s.

***

At home I went over the part I'd already written, added some commas, removed a couple of adjectives. The only worthwhile thing that has ever happened to me whilst stoned was that I realised that you should barely ever use adjectives. I tried to add a couple paragraphs but they just dragged because I couldn't work out where to set the second scene.

***

I found out there's such a thing as Lambert's W function, named after Johann Lambert but I couldn't really understand the Wikipedia article about it and I don't want to write about things I don't understand. I also found out that W is the symbol for an amino acid called Tryptophan which can cause hallucinations and delusions if improperly metabolised. I decided that next part of the story should be fractured as the main character (still no name) gets crazier. Definitely not one long rolling chapter, it should be broken up, disjointed. Maybe Bill can have difficulty metabolising Tryptophan

***

I put my elbows on the bar and knock over my milkshake glass which is already empty. I lean towards the bartender who narrows his eyes at me.

"Look man, all I'm saying is that the letter W is wierd, I'm not saying that there IS some race of chthonic creator aliens that implanted it in our language artificially as a means to glorify themselves. Or-" I swirl my arm around in the air, fishing for words "-or like..that it somehow..like it's somehow a chant, like a mantra to summon them into being. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying it's weird, it's got three syllables and it's pronounced "Double-you" even though it's shaped like two Vs."

***
Maybe put some religious imagery in the story. Can't think of any religions that feature the letter W to any extent though, plus they're mostly written in Hebrew or Aramaic or whatever.

***

I found a wikiHow on creating a credible villain in fiction which made me think of putting a villain into the story. Maybe the leader of some sort of cult that worships the W people. It's a bit Lovecraftian though, and I've not actually read many Lovecraft stories. I did see the trailer for the new Chthulu film though. It seemed pretty good. I started following links from the wikiHow and ended up on the NanoWriMo page which depressed me because I told everyone I was going to do it last year but I totally failed. I haven't even opened that text file since last November. I think about doing it every so often, maybe cracking the first couple paragraphs out and sending them to some soulless online art mag but I feel that would be like admitting defeat, like admitting I'm never going to finish that story.

***

Sunshine, you are my sunshine I wonder if girls call Daisy get sick of guys singing that tell me your answer true song. Anyway, I set the second part of the story in the guy's apartment and at his job, I started calling him W, at first just as a substitute until I could make a real name but now I'm beginning to like it. Maybe that's the kind of twist I deliver at the end though. That his name is W. At his job he just starts thinking the W key on his keyboard is a different font. I checked my W key and it's normal.

W is the symbol for tungsten because tungsten used to be called wolfram, Tungsten is used in light bulbs because it has the highest melting point of any metal. Advances that would have led to longer lasting light bulbs have been suppressed by the Phoebus cartel which was set up in 1924. They've been less powerful in recent years, allowing compact fluorescent light bulbs which can fit into standard light sockets to reach the market. I thought about naming someone in the story Wolfram, it sounded good for some sort of shadowy agent figure. Maybe the Phoebus cartel could be in the story and their leader is called Wolfram. I ditched the idea after my agent said that the Phoebus cartel were in Gravity's Rainbow.

My agent said I should get a haircut. My agent's name is Wolfram, wolfram is an archaic name for tungsten, tungsten is used in light bulbs, light bulb technology is controlled by the Phoebus cartel which was set up in 1924 and persists to this day, their leader is named Wolfram like my agent. My agent phoned me.

"Hey, this is W. " I said.

"W, listen, we need to get you out of the country, forces are in motion, we suspect Wolfram is behind it."

"Isn't your name Wolfram?"

"No Wolfram, my name is Will, dammit man don't flake on me now, look - I don't have much time, just stay ready ok?"

"Sure man, cool.. - Oh - you want to go to the Purple Crab this evening? You made a move on that girl yet?"

"People say workplace romances are a bad idea, you should know that."

I didn't like the way he said you

***

At the Purple Crab that night Bill wasn't drinking his usual rum and coke and we were talking about the Omega Constant. The Omega Constant is the value of W(1) where W is lambert's W function. The value of Omega is approximately point-five-six-seven-one-four-three-two-nine-zero-four-zero-nine-seven-eight-three-eight-seven-two-nine-nine-nine-nine-six-eight-six-six-two. Bill's telling me about light bulbs.

"You ever measured a light bulb I mean a standard, a standard incandescent light bulb? Around the widest part, and around the narrowest part? The ratio of the two? Point-five-six-seven, I tried seven different brands and they're all point-five-six-seven. You ever ah, measure the ellipses on the base that connect to a standard double contact bayonet fitting? You ever measure their length and their width? Divided them? Point-five-six-seven. Is this not enough for you? Is this not enough information? That light is flickering" He ducks down.

"What?"

Bill waves his arms, tries to pull me down to the table level.

"That. Light. Is. Flickering, I've got to go, forces are in motion, that's their signal, that's their signal you just I've got to go, I need extraction." He gets up, starts picking up his jacket, loosens his tie, his neck snaps left to right like an anxious driver coming up to a junction.

"Hey, did you make a move on that girl Bill?" I ask him as he leaves, he has to turn around and take two steps back to my table, he puts his face very close to mine.

"What girl? You think this is the time? I don't have a clue what girl you're talking about. I. Have. To. Go" and he scurries, half crouched behind the bar and through the service entrance.

www

Later at home I thought more about the W story. The pacing was bothering me. The gradient of his insanity seemed at times too steep. Then again I wasn't writing a novel, I couldn't afford the luxuries of time afforded by a longer form. Great artists work within the limitations of the current medium or pick a new medium. I just made that up but it could be true.

I tried copying and pasting a couple of the paragraphs to mess with how crazy the main guy was getting but it meant there was a couple of errors. I sort of liked it that way though, I thought it made it more jarring so I saved the .txt as a separate file.

I use Notepad SX for all my writing by the way, it's a great program and if you spend any time writing anything I suggest you use it. It's tabbed and you can put it into full screen mode. It's not too good at writing program code though, so you might want to bear that in mind. I had to change the letter spacing on my version because otherwise everything I write just seems to be full of Ws.

***

I'm in the Purple Crab drinking a straberry milkshake. The bartender is cleaning a glass. The sun is setting and I think about measuring some parts of the bartender's hands to make sure they're not in the ratio point-six-seven. That's one of the ways of finding a cult member, they cut don the tip of the ring finger on the left hand until it's at a point-five-six-seven ratio to the second segment of the finger. The light that Bill was talking about last eek is still blinking but I've had fresh intelligence from my agent that the cartel is no longer using bulbs to communicate. I detect no possible threats aside from the barman ho, in all my time at the Purple Crab has not declared allegiance to any party. All he does it stand at the bar, clean glasses, dispense straberry milkshakes and blink. He still blinks a hell of a lot. Like there's something rong ith his eyes.

***

My agent called me whilst I was finishing of the W story. In the end I'd decided that the second and third scenes would blend together into a montage of insanity. I picked up the phone mid sentence.

"Hey Riaz, have you heard anything from Will lately?"

"Nah, last time I saw him he was ditching me up in the Purple Crab"

"Oh yeah, I read about that in his blog."

"I didn't know Will had a blog."

"Yeah, yeah it's like paranoidescapes.blogspot.com. He invents paranoid delusional fantasies and uses them as reasons to make really big exits from boring social events then he writes about it on the blog. He puts up Youtube videos sometimes. Actually he might have switched to Google Video. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it actually, it's pretty well known. He sells t-shirts and stuff."

"Like, Cafepress t-shirts?"

"Nah, American Apparel, it's pretty pro, anyway I wanted to know if you finished that W story you kept on going on about."

"Nearly, it's nearly done, the first draft is."

"Because your mother was reading the newspaper and she found some local short story competition thing. You should probably focus your mind on that."

"What? Why did she tell you about this? Why didn't she tell me? What am I meant to do with the W story? I'm half way though a sentence."

"Eh just leave as it is, sort of a Easton Ellis thing, You know he wrote his first book when he was nineteen? You're behind already."

"Did my mother tell you to say that?"

"Yes."

"Fantastic. I'll stop writing the W story then, you really think that mid sentence thing can work?"

"Definitely

Problems With Crane Fly

2007-05-10T01:12:00.000+01:00

Alright, so the entire space station is covered in crane flies. They're everywhere, they're all over my quarters. One of them flew through my Solar System Hologram map and left this wierd hole in Saturn. One of them flew near my mouth whilst I was brushing my teeth and then I had to brush them again. Every day my space cat managed to murder about two or three hundred by jumping from my couch and swinging wildly at the dense cloud of flies which gathered around my lamp. Eventually the swarm demonstrated a sinister intelligence and collectively picked her up and flew her into the airlock. She managed to override the door controls and escape before they launched her into space but once she told me about the whole episode I realised I needed to up my game. Previously I'd just been applying double insect repellent and using an old Lynx "Africa" deoderant aerosol and a lighter as a crude flame thrower to clear a path to wherever I needed to go but if the crane flies were up to actually harassing a mammal then it was only a matter of time before they came after me, and there was no way I was going down because of some low ass Diptera. Motherfuckers can't even be bothered to evolve lungs.

So I decide to head down to the repair bay because I know Ahmed would be there fixing the aft deflector array. I rig my desk fan to one of my particle batteries and use it to clear a path through the flies as I head down the three floors to the repair bay. When I finnally get there I find Ahmed has turned the main satellite dish into a bowl and is skating it on a nine inch wide pool board.

I turn off the fan.

"Hey AHMED," Ahmed clicks up the coping and stands on the ledge and I yell again, "Hey, HEY AHMED."

"Salaaaaams brother, I'm working on my backside axel stalls."

I'm like "What?"

"I saw this awesome Bones Brigade thing on Google Video, all this kind of old school stuff. Tony Hawk's in it but he's really young."

"Ahmed I'm having a problem with the crane flies."

He takes his helmet off and wipes at his forehead then puts it back on and strokes his beard.

"Crane flies?"

"Yeah Ahmed, the fucking crane flies, they're all over the fucking station. What are we going to do about it? I caught some of them trying to fuck with the RAID array on my machine, this shit has to stop."

"Have you tried praying to Allah almighty?"

"Yeah, sure Ahmed, I prayed like fifty times, he told me to ask you why the fuck we've got so many flies on a fucking space station, are they space flies or something? Because I don't need that kind of problem Ahmed. We need to like, irradiate the entire place and kill them all or something, I don't know."

"These are all Allah's creatures," Ahmed says, holding out his hands like, what can I do? "Maybe their growth has been encouraged due to the recent heat and moisture giving their larvae an ideal environment to thrive in?"

"What?"

"They need moist, leafy debris to feed on and warm weather encourages their reproductive process."

I'm like, flabbergasted. "Ahmed, this is a space station, we don't have any weather or leafy debris. What's the matter with you?"

"Have you considered the hydroponics deck?" Ahmed says as he redoes the strap on his helmet but I'm not listening because I have an idea.

"I got it, I'll just like, replicate some small birds or whatever to EAT all the crane fly, and I can get rid of those with like, hawks or something."

"Have you not heard the story of the woman who swalled the fly?" Ahmed thinks he's so fucking wise, but he's not.

"Ahmed you retard, don't you know that as you climb the food chain you have animals with a larger mass but a lower population density?"

"Of course, Allah Almighty has created everything in balance."

"So eventually there'll only be like, three Centurian Death Worms on board or whatever, and I'll just waste them using my ion blaster." I pat the ion blaster on my hip and smile smugly.

Ahmed looks at me pityingly before he drops back into the satellite dish and pumps around the perimeter a couple of times to build momentum. I turn to leave and behind me, Ahmed flies out of the dish and catches at least 4 foot of air above the main capacitor bank. I hear the sharp click of his landing before the bay doors close and I head through the soft clouds of crane fly towards the replicators.

Problems With Art Students

2007-05-02T02:09:00.000+01:00

So I get contacted by Aliens that can travel through time. I know, ha ha, I'm ripping of Vonnegut. Shut up, he didn't invent aliens. Anyone can use them. The aliens want to know about destinations. They say that they can see everyone on my planet and all we do is walk forward, all at the same speed. We're terrifying, we keep on moving forward through time, en masse. Their philosophers have been theorising. Some of them thought that we were pilgrims. They noticed the way we reproduce so that there's always someone going forward in time. They theorised that we were all travelling somewhere, that we were passing something to our offspring which has to arrive at some destination. They asked me where. They did it through my computer. They said Hi through my computer and they asked where I was going, they were very polite. They did it on MSN, they said WHERE ARE YOU GOING. They pretended they were a 19 year old female art student, they'd noticed my demographic's predeliction for that demographic. They added me on MSN and said

WHERE ARE YOU GOING.

I said I was going to go for a skate, I figured skateboarding would make me seem cool, reckless, youthful. I tried to enlarge their display picture to try and work out if they were hot but I couldn't. They said,

YOU ARE SKATING .79 SOLAR CYCLES AWAY FROM HERE. BUT YOU CONTINUE TO MOVE FORWARD. IF YOU WISH TO SKATE YOU SHOULD RETURN TO .79 SOLAR CYCLES AGO. YOU CONTINUE TO MOVE AWAY FROM THIS POINT.

I was like, woah, this chick worked out that percentage wicked fast. Maybe she's one of those smart art students. I bet she digs programming. So I say. "Nice maths =)" and they say.

WHERE IS YOUR RACE GOING.

They don't use much punctuation because they can't be bothered to get the ASCII codes for it. I'm thinking, she's getting like, philosophical on me, sort of politcal. My subconcious starts giving me advice, don't be a downer dude. No chick has ever been attracted to a dude who depressed her. My subconcious thinks it's a surfer or something. Always saying Dude.

-(R^-1) says:
I dunno,
some days I think it's getting worse,
but most of the time I think it's definitely getting better.

ARTSTUDENT says:
ARE YOU NOT AWARE OF YOUR DESTINATION.

My subconcious says Dude, try and sound deep about how you feel your life doesn't have any sort of direction, but put an emotional disclaimer on there dude, like say that you're sure everyone feels that way, don't sound like you're stuck up or cliche. I say

"No way, I mean, life is random, how could anyone know what's going to happen?"

Try to create a connection with her by sharing a dislike of something dude.

-(R^-1) says:
I mean,
don't you hate those people who are sure what they want to do with their lives?
Like they want to work for this company and live in this place and do these things?

She's an art student, she must hate those people. Everybody hates those people.

ARTSTUDENT says:
IF YOU ARE UNAWARE OF YOUR DESTINATION WHY DO YOU PERSIST.

There was a point in my life when I asked a lot of people why they persist, I was trying to get some good ideas that I could use myself. It was very juvenile, it was very teenage and I don't want to tell her about it. It'll make me sound like an ass. Like a 14 year old with eye liner and a poetry journal. My subconcious agrees. Dude, you've got to bail from this conversation with this art girl. Who can deal with women man? Who can deal with art students?

The aliens say,

WE CANNOT FIND YOUR DESTINATION, IT EXISTS BEYOND THE CURRENT UNIVERSE. HOW DO YOU NAVIGATE TOWARDS IT.

They want to know how we're so sure of the direction through time we're taking, how we know where we're going to be in the future it doesn't exist yet. They think we have a choice. The universe expands physically but it also expands through time and we are permanently on it's raw frontier as it does. We are all on a train and the track is being laid in front of us as it moves forwards. The aliens don't get it. The aliens know we have memories and they understand them as biological analogues to maps. They don't understand why we have these maps of what is happening at what point in time if we cannot navigate through it. They don't understand that we can only squint at these moments of the past through a blurred lens of neurons, watching them grow smaller and more indistinct as we move away from them. Some of the aliens have theorised that these maps are what cause us to move forward relentlessly, maybe we are cartographers of time, constantly exploring it's frontiers.

WHY DO YOU TRAVEL TOWARDS THIS POSITION. WHAT IS YOUR AIM.

I'm not paying attention to the art chick anymore, she's talking like a cross between SmarterChild and Doctor Who. My subconcious is just saying Dude, this chick is crazy wack, you gotta get out whilst you can. Let's eat some cake dude, let's try and eat a load of cake. I don't like my subconcious, I don't like art chicks, I don't like my haircut and I'm not travelling anywhere. I'm in my room. I don't have any aims. I was going to go skating.

-(R^-1) says:
I gotta go

The aliens want to know where, but I sign off and walk outside. As I close the door the aliens watch me from above, but they're afraid to talk to me in person, they try to avoid travelling into the unknown of the future as much as possible. So they leave me to kick myself up to speed, and roll away down the road.

Problems With Food

2006-01-01T00:56:00.000Z

Man, I forgot to say, I was eating this steak that had been browned on both sides at high heat, then put on low heat for five minutes and then sherry and butter were added and it was left for another two minutes.

Anyway, it was SO GOOD and I asked the waiter, who knows me, we're old war buddies, I asked him I said "HEY ABDUL? HEY? HEY ABDUL?" and then when I'd got his attention I said "Dude this fuckin' steak is amazing Alhamdolillah! Why come it's so good Abdul?"

And Abdul, I saved his fuckin' ass in the war man, Abdul says "That steak was taken from the cow that drinks only water that has flown over sacred diamonds and eats only grass that has grown on the graves of the bravest martyrs."

And I say "Seriously? Bravest martyrs? Shiiiit, that fuckin' explains it then, what happened to the rest of it? Like, can I get some super martyr cow ribs or something?"

And Abdul, this one time in the war he shot this guy, Abdul says "All traces of the cow have been destroyed, they have been broken into thier constituent atoms and spread across creation."

So I'm like, woah, deep, and I stare at the fillet on my fork for a second and I say: "So if you were attempting to describe this steak you could say it's pretty rare?" Abdul nodded and I chewed thoughtfully.

"So you could say, you could say, that this steak is like...one in a mignon?"

Abdul nodded again and I let him get back to his waitering.

Fuckin' amazing steak, I shit you not.