Makes Mah Guts Churn

So, I've moved in with my beautiful girlfriend who has less than beautiful interests.  I've been subjected to all manner of vapid reality television shows and the cacophonous bickering of Jeremy Kyle.  Matter of fact, the modern gladiatorial pantomime is the backdrop the key-tapping which is creating this blog.  How enjoyable.

The interest that I find most difficult to deal with is her obsession with horror films.  I've witnessed murders, possessions, stalking, house invasions, mutilation, monsters and more screaming than my days should contain.  When you are inundated with horror it can have a rather profound effect on your mindset.

We had just finished watching a double-header of Ginger Snaps and Playback, the former about a teenage girl turning into a werewolf, the latter about people being possessed through old videos.  We were sat in the living room, facing the tv, with the entirety of the house behind us.  There's nothing that'll induce paranoid twitching glances behind your back than empty space, pregnant with creepy possibilities.  It was time for bed.

I made my way to the bathroom for some pre-sleep ablutions when my journey was halted by a scene most horrendous.  Opposite the bathroom is the door which opens up onto the back garden.  The back door, if you will.  Within the frame of this door is a flap, which small household animals are able to use at their convenience.  At this point, the flap was locked closed.

Dripping through the loose connections were maggots.  Scores of them.  These particles of evil, bloated rice were oozing inside like the gunge of the blob that ate everything.  A click glance to the clock; 2am.  Weary eyelids sinking, we were forced to gee ourselves up, to buoy those exhausted lids and get stuck in to the grim job at hand.  After we finished crying, we fenced the be-maggoted area with towels, boiled the kettle and carpet bombed the area with bleach and boiling water.  This slowed the heinous devils a little, but they continued to writhe in spite of the onslaught.  A minute of research on the internet suggested there was chemicals in house polish and dog shampoo which might put an end to the creatures.  With a gloop and a hiss, Mr Sheen and the pink gloop of dog shampoo joined this concoction; George's Malevolent Medicine.

Under the weight of this all-or-nothing alchemical experiment, still the infernal monsters came.  More and more they broke through the ill-made flap.  It was time to resort to more desperate measures.  Shedding my pajamas, I equipped myself with an old pair of jeans, heavy boots, rainproof coat, gloves and a trusty <spunge> beanie hat.  I was now ready for the mission.  As ready as I was ever going to be.

I left the house by the front door, and in the premature morning darkness I was buffeted by wind and rain.  I circled around the street to the back alley, the longest walk of my life.  I opened the back gate from the outside with worrying ease, and surveyed what little of the back garden I could see in the darkness.  The glow from the kitchen and bathroom windows barely pushed the darkness from the perimeter of the building as I, cloaked in the darkness, crept closer to the house.

Instantly I recognised the horrifying source of all our problems.  Bin bags had built up faster than they should have, due to a housewarming barbeque we'd hosted.  These bags had not yet been picked up, and had therefore been sat in the back garden, fermenting under a blazing summer sun, the maggot equivalent of an episode of Grand Designs.  Escaping the night's cold and rain, these wiggling horrors were making a dash to the safety of my house.

MY HOUSE!

I snapped.  Hoisting the bags to the back alley, I cut them off at the source.  Then it was time to clean up.  With an iron grip I brandished the sweeping brush and made for the back door.  The head of a bottle of bleach appeared at the kitchen window, which I gladly availed myself of.  With a spray and then a whoosh of the brush the maggots were assaulted with a foamy bleach lather and the buffeting of the sweeping brush.  Hundreds, nay millions, fell to my onslaught as I brushed the back step and the actual door itself.  Innocent slugs were caught in the crossfire, sacrifices in the face of dire emergency.  After the berserker brush-rage cooled, the back step was clear of visible horrors.  Red-faced and short of breath, I retraced my way to the front of the house.

Removing my outer-armour as I re-entered, I surveyed the breach by the back door.  Still the internal monsters wriggled.  It was now nearing 4am.  These were desperate times.  We fell to our knees and with gritted teeth and toilet paper in our hands we began to pop maggots.

Some people have difficulty popping spots.  Popping maggots is several orders of magnitude worse.  As you lift them you can feel them wriggle under the paper, and when the squeeze is put upon them not only do you feel the pop, it is terribly loud.  From the bleach fumes and the wriggling, my stomach very bravely held on, but barely.  The maggotcide was an arduous task which felt as though it would never end, and memories can, even now, reduce me to tears.

We defeated the maggots that night, and they have not returned since.  But they are out there, I know it.  The buzzing of a common fly rings ominously in my ears these days, a grim reminder of the night we spent on our knees, popping maggots with our fingers.

The Three Plagues of Moving House

I've recently moved house which in terms of time and energy and also financially is utterly exhausting.  I'm finally at a point now where the process has calmed and I've been able to knead some normalcy back into my life.  But for awhile there I was dealing with all the hassle of moving into a new house as well as what seemed to be low-budget versions of the plagues of Egypt.

Within a week or so of moving in, still living out of boxes and the like, my eyes drifted to my front window, where my dog was sitting on the windowsill, intently gazing out.  What I saw outside was beyond the experience of my stunted man-child mind.  Wasps.  Every-single-where.  There were a few idling, still figures on the outside, but for the most part it was a full tornado of buzzing chaos that had visited itself upon my morning.  Incredulously I watched the postman go about his business, oblivious to the madness around him.  That most popular of story archetypes, the Little Old Lady, strolled calmly through the bestingered, winged melee.  Was I mad?  Was this a crazed hallucination brought on by the stress of moving house?  What in the name of holy Jordi Cruijff should I do about them?

Cloaked in my own cowardice, I crept through the back door, down the back garden path to the alley behind my house and circled, pajamed, to the opposite side of the street where I beheld their infernal construction.

I journeyed to my place of employ, downtrodden, downhearted… down.  In my quarter century's worth of experience there was no solution to this problem.  Arriving at work I flexed my under-exercised raconteurial muscles and regaled my colleagues with my tragic tale of hardship.  Empathy, sympathy, kindness… these things I received verbally.  And heard spoken the greatest advice ever received.  Perhaps the best advice that will ever be received.

"The council will come and deal with that," she said.

Words truer than true!  As I surfed on the great waves of modern digital communication I beached upon the Council's website.  I logged my problem and by the time I returned home the wasps had dispersed.  It is unclear as to whether the Council dealt with this issue or whether the wasps simply caught wind of my betrayal and dispersed accordingly.  Regardless, I arrived home relieved and satisfied.

The next plague which visited me was the plague of one single leaf-cutting bee.  You may well believe this to be stretching the definition of plague to its limits, but coming on the back of the wasp fiasco, I was ready to punch any buzzing creature with my fist until dead.  The death of either me or the insect, I had no care for which.  One bee would not usually stir this ire in me, but for the fact that I had noticed that the thing was building a nest in the wooden surround of my back garden, wheedling his black and yellow way into the underbelly of my fencing.  I had visions of autumnal afternoons in the back garden spent supping serenely, visions of peaceful picnics prevented by a pack of prying pests, passers of tres, undoing my utopia!

He's gone now, though.

The third plague rode into town on the back of two kittens.  It was rather a spur of the moment decision to welcome the two feline creeps into our home.  The decision to add a kitten to our menagerie (prior population: 1 poodle) quickly doubled to two kittens as we decided not to split the last two brothers of a litter.  Far be it for me to compromise my rampant masculinity with use of the word 'cute', but couched in such a hedged sentence as this I shall, and have. How timid they first seemed!  They are now nosey, adventurous bastards.

When we went to pick them up (from a friend who'd already picked them up from their original home), we were met with an apology that these two silent babies "had fleas".  A little frustrating, but these things happen.  It took us mere minutes of the drive home to realise that "had fleas" was a wholly inadequate description of the situation.  They were essentially flea food, perhaps merely the packaging that the fleas we'd bought were being dispatched on.  They spent the majority of their first day with us scratching, the poor buggers.  Luckily, within a day the flea treatment was working and the kittens had died off, leaving us with the 50 healthy fleas we had always dreamed about.  HAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHA.

For the weeks since we've had them the kittens, Sirius and Lupin, have increased their abilities far beyond their meagre 'scratch ourselves' origins.  They can now claw the curtains, bat the dog in the face, attack each other, scream for food and walk on keyboards; nearly a full house of 'adorable' cat techniques.  Braving the plague of fleas has proven well worth the struggle; it has been nothing but shenanigans from them ever since.

Koala Bears and Other Small Creatures Indigenous to Oz

Yet again, the only thing I've written in a month has been the recycled piece from The ACREs group FourThought blog. I really must get on top of my idleness. Having said that, enjoy this bunch of nonsense.

*****

The Modern Alternative Zoological Encyclopaedia Australica (Selected Excerpts (in No Particular Order))

“A Kangaroo!”
- Exclamation of drunken Scotsman who’s fallen bodily and become impossibly entangled therein.

Koala Bears
- Enormous aquatic mammals often seen performing at SeaWorld. Beware splash zone.

Dingo
- Reclusive invitee.

Box Spider
- Thin and stringy pubic hair growth.

Stingray!
- Stingray! Duh-duh le-luh le-luh!

Steve Irwin
- Manchester United left back of the 1990s. Not a fancy player, not a scorer of goals, but a firm hand on the tiller, Irwin earned the respect of the fans for his solid performances and his long tenure at the club. That’s Denis, isn’t it?

Ned Kelly
- Prototype robot, badly designed. Not even as good as C-3PO, who is Shit.

Big Crocodiles
- Seriously big ones. DON’T FUCK WITH THEM. If you put an elastic band over their jaws they won’t be able to open them, but there’ll probably be others nearby who will croc you to death. Not to be confused with a cockodile.

Billabong
- Fairly popular clothing brand. Clothes often strangely damp. It is believed that this is due to the ghosts of angry aborigines haunting the garments with their ghostpiss.

Australian Football
- Ludicrous joke taken to extravagant extremes.

Fosters Lager
- Export only: DO NOT DRINK!  message found on Fosters cans (translated form the Australian).

Julia Gillard
- She seems good, and she is an atheist. Well done Oz.

Desert Frogs
- Eddie Guerrero’s distant relatives, who are better adapted to living in the sand than their Hispanic sibling. They show little intention of following in their kinsman’s pro-wrestling frogsteps.

The Laughing Kookaburra
- Very silly creature. Has little regard for propriety or for the feelings of those nearby. Most often seen around old folks what have done a falling over.

Duck-billed Platypus
- Feline that is frequently charged for the purchase and consumption of mallard meat served on a particular kind of tray.

Oystercatcher
- Bird. Catches oysters.

Cassowary
- Dinosaur-looking turkey-thing.

Moths
- Foul creatures.

Seadragons
- Like seahorses, but several thousand percent more awesome. Seadragons of Oz have been known to have battles on a grand scale with the Skydragons of Zeal. The SeaDs launch themselves from the water, steam coruscating as it hisses around them. They tense their long bodies to points, so as they hit the SkyDs they are utterly skewered, sending hot jets of bahlood all over the ocean. It is a cool thing to watch.

Fairy Penguin
- Benders. Ben-duuuuhs!

Great White Shark
- Evolved form of the Rubbish Beige Shark. Pants.

Sugar Glider
- Little flying squirrel/mouse-looking thing which glides through the air super cool. They are marsupials, which means they like soup from Mars. It is very expensive to ship it in, so they have signed up for Amazon Prime. This is not related to Optimus Prime, who is a Transformer, and not a megalithic online shopping source. Optimus wouldn’t involve himself in such an industry.

Bandicoot
- Popularised by Crash, who was a cartoon one of these. I liked the mask that went “ooga booga!” when you collected it. Ahhhh, those halcyon days; no worries, no concerns. Where did those days go? Now they are lost, forever and irretrievably lost. I am locked in the joyless world of adult life and I cannot escape from my responsibilities. They weigh me down like an albatross around my neck, pain me like a radio in my anus. Why must we live in a world which requires such seriousness? Can we not mess around a little more? Why not dick around? You can’t stop me from dicking around! Who do you think you are, you joyless Jerry Joyce. Heaven above and Tutankamun Almighty! I need to lie down and stop for awhile.

*****

The Morality of Serial Killing through the Ages

This is another of those pieces for the ACRE Forethought blog, this time about serial killing. Here's the stupid shit I wrote.

*****

Suffice to say that the morality of serial killing hasn't changed too drastically through the ages. It is bad. It is a very bad thing to do. However, the scope of what counts as serial killing has certainly changed over the course of many thousands of years, and there continues to be a discrepancy even from place to place geographically in one time frame.

According to Wikipedia:

A serial killer is typically defined as an individual who has murdered three or more people[1][2] over a period of more than a month, with down time (a "cooling off period") between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification.

This definition is, of course, nonsense. If this definition were accurate then you or I might be considered serial killers, which is clearly unworkable, because we are not bad people. I certainly am not.

Now, just over three months ago I killed a ticket inspector on a train, because I didn't have a ticket. Clearly, this was an action based not in psychological gratification, but in simple practicality. Ticket prices nowadays are ludicrously expensive, and I felt utterly justified in killing the man. In fact, I consider his checking me for a ticket an act of suicide.

A few weeks later, I was watching a national-level sporting event in a public house, and was distressed to discover that I had been surrounded by other viewers who were far more demonstratively approaching the game than was I. One fellow shouted at a sportsman in quite an alarming way, and I, not expecting the yell, was quite startled. Well, of course it is quite rude to startle a gentleman who you are watching the game with, and so I was quite forced to mash his fizzog into a mushed pulp of skinflakes, bone fragments and gore. Thankfully, his yelling quickly abated. I can be uncharacteristically merciless in the doling of justice. It is just rude to shout out; be quiet for goodness' sake.

For another fortnight I saw no wrong in the world that needed my direct intervention. Just as I crested the event horizon of that fortnight, I was confronted with what I must consider the nadir of human decorum. Having travelled to the Capital of the fair nation which has the honour of housing me, I entered a restaurant, nothing too fancy, just some common place where the common people may go to partake of their common fare. I sauntered up to the bar, for there is no waiting staff in these types of places, no one comes to take your order, you have to go up and actually order it yourself. It's a clever system. The very fabric of the place is designed to erode your dignity. Hungry as I was, I forced myself to the bar, hence my sauntering, and locked the serving wench with the iron glare of an angry eagle who has spotted something annoying and is trying to stare it out because he is an hard bastard. The wench, a veteran of this workplace, was unfazed, and spat right in my eye. I was impressed, and suddenly I felt all my anxiety melt away. The spittle, sinking in the cleft between my eye and my nose, ploughed by endless years of sleep deprivation, tricked my body into believing I was crying, and as such things always do, this belief cyclically perpetuated itself, and I began to weep. The serving wench, regaining her balance after her colossal spit, knew exactly what I was about. With a cry of "Blood alive, man! To a seat with you!" she swandived over the counter and, driving her head into the very top of my skull with the entire weight of her body behind her, we crumpled to the floor in a fallen mess. I was a little disturbed by this, but not knowing the ways of the peasant folk I kept schtum so as not to conduct any undesirable faux pas.

Groggily regaining my feet, I whipped around to face the also recovering wench, and landed a solid haymaker on her collarbone. Hearing it snap and pop, I smiled, and she led me to a nearby table and promised me that a plate of cod and chips, with mushy peas, would arrive within 10 minutes. It did, and it was piping hot and looked all set to be delicious. I arose from my chair to peruse the condiments, and alongside the vinegar, the salt, mayo and tartare sauce stood an overlarge bowl that was almost sarcastically empty. It might not be normal to have with fish dishes, but I need tomato sauce. I fucking lost it at that point. Leaping onto a nearby table, I lashed my foot out in a vicious 180° arc which caught three diners; one in the nose, another in the ear, and the third was entirely decapitated, spraying viscous red fluid into the empty tomato sauce bowl, the irony of which enraged me further. Rising unsteady on his or her feet, the diner that I'd punted in the ear made a clumsy attempt at my legs, which I'd foolishly left on top of the table; a rather perilous position. Due to my acrobatic background, I was able to avoid such a clumsy attempt with complete ease. Slipping nimbly off the table, I planted myself firmly and pushed against my clueless combatant. The force of my push sent the diner careening limply into the air, where an acquaintance was made with an adjoining window, but was short-lived. With this troublesome individual dispatched, I turned to the fellow I'd kicked in the nose. Looking down upon his crumpled remains, I discovered I'd killed him with the blow. I can be very deadly when I've been wronged.

Bracing myself back a step, I made a quick dash and with an effortless handspring, leapt into a series of cartwheels and somersaults which took me across the length of the room, the last of which raised me high into the air and, sailing over the bar, my legs, acting as fleshy javelins, speared the barmaid, with precision, through the sternum. My fish and chips remained uneaten.

I'm in jail now, because I've been "caught", apparently. What I did wrong I'll never know. One man's anecdote is another man's horrendous crime. The occasion on which I was detained involved self-defence on my part. My flatmate was trying his level best to watch a program I believe is called 'The Goblin People Argue over their Goblin Children', and for the entire half hour of the show I found it necessary to dry my hair using the most powerful setting on my hair drier. Of course, he complained because he couldn't hear the show, which was the entire reason I did it. I hadn't even been in the shower, or moistened my hair even slightly. He came at me with his fists, but using my deft fingers I was able to unzip his jeans, forcibly insert the blow drier where the dry does not blow, which caused him some measure of discomfort, and eventually butchered him thoroughly, due to a power malfunction with the device.

The police have no sense of humour, which is why they end up in fights so often.

*****

Some More Wales Shark

It's been about two months since the last video, so I thought I'd share my newest one here aswell.

The Smell of a Good Book

Here's this month's ACRE FourThought blog. My contribution is below, and you can follow this link to see the original page with the contributions of the other fellows undertaking this magnificent literary/bloggerary effort.

*****

I have a kindle, I like gadgets, and I embrace progressive technology enabling books to be read in a progressive way. As technology improves, books as a medium will evolve. It was noted on Stephen Fry's Planet Word documentary that as handheld e-readers improve we will see books that incorporate video and extensive footnotes, clips of music and similar. There are already books rife with hyperlinks, and it isn't difficult to imagine the benefits of textbooks where the references in the bibliography lead to the actual articles or papers themselves. These improvements would make studying easier and reading more fun.

Already on the kindle it is possible to see sections of text underlined if they have been highlighted by a number of readers. I'm not sure how I feel about that, hopefully it's a feature that can be turned off; I'd like to come to my own conclusions, and how I read a section of text will definitely be affected if I am aware many people felt it noteworthy.

As much as I enjoy e-readers, for me, personally, they are currently missing something. However this is not informed by practicality or sense, rather it is a hipster coolwank pretention. Much like musos who prefer cds to mp3, and the older who prefer cassette to cd, and the older who prefer vinyl to cassette, and the yet older who prefer music boxes to vinyl, I prefer books. I think it's likely a preference which will take longer to shift culturally, for in comparison to these evolving music recording formats which evolved over a comparatively short period the book has existed in a largely unchanged format for a large number of years.

So, in what ways do books differ to e-readers? In every material dimension the variety of books make them artefacts I delight in, and while the all-in-one nature of e-readers is also something that pleases me, books of paper and ink stimulate so many more of my senses. I have a colossal gospel tome of the Lord of the Rings, with tiny print despite its giant size, a long bound bookmark fraying at the edge, bounteous illustrations taking up entire pages. It is a beautiful book. It frustrates me somewhat as its size excludes it from one of my favourite pastimes: reading in the bath, however it makes up for this by sitting unused for months, years, and then upon re-discovery it has amassed a layer of dust, allowing me to blow it off, imagining that this is an ancient text I have discovered in an ancient ruin or storehouse. On the other end of the scale I have books from the Penguin Popular Classics series, which were printed cheaply in order to make them more available. Old plays and novels have in this way been shrunk into tiny, thin volumes that suit my pastime magnificently. In this way old bastions of literature stand pamphlet sized, and are a far more valuable and rewarding than anything committed to a flyer. I'd be more likely to frequent a pizza place or an indian restaurant which posted The Picture of Dorian Gray around the neighbourhood instead of their own tacky lists of food.

As well as their dimensions, the texture of books are also wildly varied. The plastic smoothness of dustsheets, the childish joy of running your hands over raised title text, like finding a shiny Ole Solskjaer in a packet of stickers. The simple pleasure of running your finger down the edge of the body of pages, watching them flick quickly back, enjoying the whirr of the motion and the breeze created. Joy. There is no better way to up the anticipation of a new journey about to begin within the pages.

But of all our senses, the most strangely powerful is smell. The olfactory stimulus can drag us back in time like no other. Perhaps that's slightly exaggerating; a film watched in childhood rewatched much later can warp us as well, and an album or a song repeatedly listened to can warp us back to the time and place when we hear it years later. For example Ghostbusters 2 turns me into a child as I watch it, and Tenacious D's Tribute takes my back to my teenage bedroom, playing Championship Manager 01/02 on an old PC. But from my experience so many more books can achieve this effect.

And regardless of this effect, I fucking love the smell of a good book. Even the smell of a shit one. I was shocked when I smelt a Twilight book, as despite knowing that it was a collection of written parp, I was shocked to discover that it smelt like a real book. Such is the power of smell, it can positively augment a good book, and it can even cover the reek of a poor book and bestow upon it the credibility of paper, glue and ink.

I recently re-read the first R.A. Salvatore book, The Crystal Shard, and as well as being pleased at how well it stood the test of time and very much enjoying it, I was surprised by its smell. 'Oh yes' I thought, 'this is the smell of fantasy'. And I was surprised by how right I was. Perusing the limited stock I have at my disposal, I am right now smelling Weis & Hickman's Dragon Wing (raised golden title text - delicious) and though it is, of course, the smell of paper, ink and glue, it also smells of fantasy. Also at hand I have Raymond E. Feist's Magician, and it smells exactly the same way. Why should this be!? All these books are from different publishers, and yet they smell exactly the same way. It is as though a secret council of fantasy elders convened and decided "this is how we want fantasy to smell", and so it does.

Koushun Takami's Battle Royale has pages which are unusually white. It has a cold smell, slightly sanitise and lacking in personality. Like a hospital ward or a government building. The cover is a deep red, glossy with a dimpled title. It fits the story magnificently. I have a number of Haruki Murakami books, mostly through the Vintage label, and to me the smell of them is the ultimate smell of comfort. It is the nasal equivalent of putting on the comfiest of pyjamas and hibernating deep in bed. Final Fantasy VII is my gaming equivalent of this. Thanks to the portableness of books, and FF7s release on the PSP I can have this sensation whilst actually in comfy pyjamas and in bed, but I daren't risk it lest I slip into an eternal coma of comfort. Or die as it is also known.

The book which has most moved me nasally recently is Richard Dawkins' The Magic of Reality. Ostensibly a book for older children it is, frankly, utterly majestic. Each page is glossy and rich with colour, and smells of recent redecoration. If you like reading and sniffing paint, I would suggest firstly that you stop sniffing paint, but while you're going cold turkey you can work your way intellectually and olfactorily through this tome. With it's dustsheet off it is a pleasing pale yellow, and at the risk of looking like a lunatic I could very easily simply touch it for an entire hour and be pleased. I would argue that e-readers simply aren't a substitute for that.

E-readers are cool and functional, but they simply don't (yet) have the capacity for exciting me fully in the material world. My kindle doesn't smell of anything. Of course, being human beings we are problem solving animals and we, as we have always done, have thought our way around the problem. We have covers for these e-readers. I have three, for reasons which parallel the Goldilocks tale. One came with the device, a cheap black leather case, and was functional but a little loose and it did not please me. The second, which I bought, was a purple latex sheath which attracted dust like a bugger and was therefore unpleasant to the touch. My final purchase, which so far has pleased me, is a brown hemp cover which is delightful to the touch, and also to the nose.

I am sometimes moving with the times, but I hope that it will be awhile yet until the smell of fantasy is eradicated.