MALE NAIL VARNISH (# 74,927)
I’ve been wearing it all week, courtesy of my daughter. It’s only the left hand, the hand with which I now type slowly and dizzyingly. By resting my head upon my right hand it helps the left hand to focus. The distance covered by my gliding left hand is so much greater, like a manic fly in its lasts throws of life having been locked in a room with stale air polluted by unwashed socks worn by a farm labourer for 6 days solid graft in a field of cabbages. Ahhh, the release. Labouriousness gets a bad name. It could easily have been christened ‘patience’ but its mother suffered a c-section breach and they had to break her hip to get it out. This is not a cheap quip about labour, it is a true story to be found in the register of births, deaths and marriages.
A DOG WRITES (# 74,928)
ddfcxz`rrfdfcb b dvb vcdcesv xszq2dc
The text above was written by a Jack Russell in between the cleansing of her thighs, with a tongue that stank of dehydrated dog breath. Its paw typed with the skill of Shaun Wright Phillips, and at a glance, they could be twins. If you own a terrier and it is howling at the moon as you read, this may mean that the canine motto translates as ‘fox’. That, or ‘leave my fucking leg alone, idiot man’.
THE SUBSTANCE OF CENTRED TEXT (# 74,929)
STORE IN A COOL,
DRY PLACE
AWAY FROM DIRECT LIGHT
WALLS HAVE MOUTHS (# 74,930)
The whereabouts of the nearest wall affects what and how we write. Many of us sit at a desk with our face to the wall as we shunt our desk up against a wall so things don’t fall off. Facing a wall creates a visual focus but leaves our back open to surprise unless we are writing in a super narrow room such as a water closet in which case we write novels which we assume are works of genius, but are, in a word, shit. Now flip round 180 degrees. With our backs to the wall, we are suddenly secure but distracted. All that shit is now going on in front of us. We write emotionally but irrationally, the opposite of before. If we write in the open air, miles from the nearest wall, the only boundaries that will hem in our writing are hedges. If we write in a car, the confinement is offset by the movement. If we write in a stationary car, you’re right, it’s akin to writing bollocks in a toilet. To conclude, walls do not have ears as much as mouths. To unconclude, writing on walls is a separate discussion with its own laws of influence.
In case you’re wondering, this post was written on a toilet in my last day of solitary confinement, but tomorrow I get parole.
ABOUT THE WORD ABOUT (# 74,931)
Stop writing about something.
Write something that is something.
LUNCHEON MEAT (# 74,932)
Just a sad thought about spam.
As punishment I shall now eat a tin with a spoon.
While I choke on the gristle, the subsequent posts will cause the search engines to bump into each another to such an extent that they sue and counter-sue until all are bankrupt and return to their former jobs at Rymans.
NOBEL PRIZE FOR LISTENING (# 74,933)
Prize-winning authors are two a penny.
Prize-giving authors are a rarer breed. Imagine, for a second, Salman Rushdie handing out awards to everyone who made it through Midnight’s Children. Or Madonna presenting rosettes to every child who didn’t demand their money back. These are two over-documented easy targets and for that I apologize. In fact, I just punched myself in the face. Criticism is the cancer of literature. It eats away at the bone marrow of storytelling. Yet when it’s favourable, us readers lap it up like crystal meth, or Nesquik, depending on your palate.
Prize-winning listeners are the ones that hold the world, and all its composite little worlds, together. To listen and be able to edit out the diamond from the quartz is a skill that isn’t taught as all the teachers are too busy yakking.
Like me.
I stop and listen.
Birds are going bananas outside.
Bloody hell, they sound lovely.
NOSE POST (# 74,934)
my fingers are on strike and my nose is the next best pointy key pusher but fuck it makes the head ache.
TOOTHBRUSH POLITICS (# 74,935)
This post will take the two minutes to write one-handed (the time it takes to brush my teeth), about the same depth of thought that has gone into the co-ifesto drawn up tonight.
EUNOIA (# 74,936)
Tonight I fell in love with a word.
It uses all the vowels.
It is beautifully spelt.
It means beautiful thinking.
Just as I was getting all doey-brained about it, my ugly mind said:
‘hey, it sure sounds like urea’.
You just can’t rely on yourself these days.