Ceramic Cocktail

This cup was accidentically fired prematurely (hence the blank white handle). It took about six or seven hours, believe it or not, to get to this stage (with another 2 or 3 hours anticipated to be left), and the gritty, grainy, patchwork appearance was slightly unexpected. It was meant to be the cup to end all cups, but apparently not. Somebody recommended nail varnish to finish it off. Can anybody advise where a good cheap nail varnish can be purchased? Don't say 'girlie store'.
The most pleasing aspect of the cup so far are the faint white squiggles to the left of the handle there (click to enlarge).
The above is a wall ornament (Sumerian Wheel). The Sumerians were an early civilisation, BC. I don't think they invented the wheel but it was an era when the development of writing was getting into flow. The best thing about this wall ornament is the lovely flash from the camera - not bad for a measly 2.0 megapixel. What I don't like is how faint that shade of olive green paint looks on the wall (Dulux, that, not cheap basic line gunk. Yes, Dulux, who claim to have over 15,000 colours in their range of paints. 15,000? More like 2 - bull, and shit).

One good thing about having useless handmade artifacts clogging up precious living space is being able to photograph them whenever a hint of sunlight threatens to spill over us. There are all sorts of combinations to be strived for. The ultimate goal is to glue everything together into one super structure and sell it for £75 billion outside The Royal Pavillion (transport WILL be a problem, no matter how much bubble wrap you've got). Seriously, what would you prefer, an alignment of ornaments displayed on a shelf/in a cabinet, or a single zany knock-out sculpture dominating a single corner of the room? Answers on a postcard please ladettes and batty men to 77 Skid Row, Belch Avenue, Endsville, no later than the 32 of Neverember, 2012.

The Ceramic Devision
Ornamento-skulp
Wheel of Life

Skull Land

"Webster was much possessed by death and saw the skull beneath the skin; and breastless creatures under ground leaned backward with a lipless grin."
T.S.Elliot

~

What a miserable image and rotten timing to coincide with the recent natural disaster in Japan...

"From the sea is where we came (said a lady on the radio last night) and to the sea is where we go..."

About the only jolly tidbit to reach me from the other side of the world so far in this most recent of cataclysmic events is how a BBC News reporter pronounced the TSUNAMI as a ‘TOON ARMY’. I did allow myself a quarter of a giggle at that, so I did. The thought of a countless herd of Newcastle United hooligans running riot 10km inland is enough to reduce any country to its knees.

I recall Roy Chubby Brown making a joke about the last great wave in 2004. Something about looking for his hotel and then seeing it float past him!

Aside from that, there really is nothing much to say or feel, apart from the usual mixture of awe, pity, and condolences. What is alarmingly obvious is how the cost of the economy and the stock market is rather more crucial than the human loss, which seems only to be addressed as a mere afterthought.

The most radical footage I’ve seen so far is a man calmly standing on top of his truck as the wave threatens to smother the motorway. All he can do is watch. It’s impossible, from the helicopter camera, to determine if he is just about high enough to be safe or not. Therefore, I gather, he has absolutely no clue if he will live or die. It’s close, though. It's too fookin' mighty close to be true. We're talking 50/50. We don't see his fate. How much must you pray and wish and cross your fingers in a fix like that? Talk about nail biting. Talk about hair raising...

another wallop from mother nature leaves us reeling, though there's little time to cue the big picture, because after the loss, and the tears, we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off...there's plenty of work on

My Reading History

I remember reading a creepy illustrated children’s story in juniors. I liked it so much I copied it out word for word in pencil under the stairs because at that time stealing had not entered my small honest brain.

I also remember reading some leather bound adult espionage book, in one of those readers digest type dust jackets. This took my mind somewhere else for the first time.

Later, in English class seniors, Mrs Rogers complimented one of my short story assignments to the whole class and told them I could be a writer. Soon as she said that, the deal was sealed.

I remember reading Stephen King’s Insomnia when I was 20 and working out how many books I would have to write by the time I was forty to be anywhere near as prolific as him.

Reading James Herbert’s Others in my early twenties changed everything. It was and forever will be the best story I have or shall ever read. Dean Koontz’s Fear Nothing is the most atmospheric.

The rape and murder of a woman by a gang in Bag of Bones by Stephen King sticks out as a potently powerful scene. Amazingly, he added humour to it.

Of late, my preferred reading is short story anthologies, because you can briefly breeze in and out of so many different styles. The Mammoth Books of Best New Horror (pictured) are excellent.

Horror is the best because it is the mother genre. It has romance, comedy, the lot.

(I just this minute discovered James Herbert has a new book out called ASH after four years since the last. Get in!)

Blogging Desire

It was the summer of 2007 that I decided I wanted to blog. I was watching Mulder from the X-Files (David Duchovny), star in Californication, a new series about a hip, womanising Los Angeles writer. X-Files was good, but I’d never been much of a fan, so when I looked at Duchovny, I didn’t see Mulder. That’s important, because familiar typecast actors have it all to do.

Take Danny Dyer. You might see him as a TV presenter who fronts those hard knock shows late at night, but I see him strictly as an actor. For a while, he was gold, proper talent, but for me, now, he’s done too many films in too short a space.

Some writers complain when their scripts get optioned and made into movies, because the end result doesn’t match their original vision. I’d be absolutely keen for someone to rework some of my material and do whatever the hell they liked with it – as long as it didn’t involve Ewan McGregor.

The best movies, the real gems, almost always feature unknown actors – faces you haven’t, at the time you watch them, seen before. A movie could come out tomorrow starring Russell Crowe, and it doesn’t matter how good it is, or what it’s called, because it’s just another Russell Crowe movie. You get me?
__________________________________________________________
Mulder’s good in Californication. He lives the life. He blogs. I could do that, I thought, because it’s just rambling with words, expressing yourself like in a diary. Of course, there’s blogging, and there’s blogging, just like there're movies, and there’re movies.

After just over a year doing it, there have been too few personal entries. I’ve been making an effort trying to keep me-time to a minimum, stressing over pictures and colour and presentation of external subject matter, when most people on the web are talking a load of shite. It’s time to start talking shite myself. And if you think I've been talking shite already, then you ain't seen nuthin' but nuthin' yet.

Pish. Tosh. Piffle.
Bollocks.

The Difference Between Maradona & Teddy Sheringham

Based on 100% Factual Truth!!! Re-reported by

The Anonymous Journalist.

‘Working for the press is like being a cop in some ways because you develop a natural instinct for people. You know, hunches and gut feelings and first impressions and all that palaver. Now I don’t know hack about football, I just get given a high profile name and an address and turn up with my Nikon, who plays for who and all the rest of it doesn’t really interest me.

‘Diego Maradona’s residence looked very hush-hush. All the cars in the garage, all the lights off, all the curtains drawn, very quiet. Now I know we paparazzi have a bad reputation, and I’ll be the first to admit that we do hound people, we really do – we intrude upon their private lives and cause all kinds of inconveniences for them and their loved ones, but come on here, that’s not much compromise for the benefits of super stardom, is it? It’s give and take. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, is what I say.

‘Anyhoo, this Maradona guy starts shooting at us with an air rifle from 25 paces. He actually had his gun cocked out the window taking POT SHOTS at us! Drunk, coked up, in front of his family and the world’s cameras, SHOOTING at us!

‘Now Teddy Sheringham, when he opened HIS front door at 7am and saw us gathered there at his garden gate, was in a different league. I was expecting bow and arrows, thinking all these footballers were like Maradona, but know what he did, eh, did you hear about what he did? Bring out a tray of tea and biscuits on his finest china for us is what he did, like he was some kind of waiter in a café and we were paying customers. How much of a lesson is that to all those lens-haters out there? TEA AND BISCUITS ON HIS FINEST CHINA. Meat pie, sausage roll, come on Teddy, give us a goal!’

Diego REALLY did shoot at the press and Teddy REALLY DID offer the press tea and biscuits. I saw it with my own eyes on the news! A.D

Koestler Fiction Visuals

Digital Accompaniments for some of this year's best short fiction

I prefer to devour a short story in a single sitting to take it in properly. Some of them might take you along into the tale from start to finish, so you become familiar with the narrator/writer/characters (Erwin James is this kind of author – it’s like being a kid and sitting on Granddad’s lap as he reels off an engaging saga). Others might lose you in the first paragraph but leave you with a single lasting image or impression come the last.
Prison writing, eh? The bad are very bad, but the good are awesome. I get the feeling that some of the KOESTLER entries were written besides cell bunk beds by individuals screaming out their intent quietly through a pen onto the page, tight lipped, soul burning. They are trapped in a place (mentally and physically) where their best option is to let the ink flow, full steam ahead, with turmoil and/or passion on tap and enough time to channel it into something constructive. Something talented. Something meaningful.
Prisoners and secure patients are forgotten about in society. Lock them up, shut them away, out of sight, out of mind. That’s how we like it. This is them reminding us that they are still there, in a structured, disciplined, creative fashion. They are given an annual opportunity by Koestler to dump their artistic voices out into the airwaves and I have privileged access on the other end of a direct line.
Forget Dickens and Shakespeare. This is the kind of dynamic stuff that I’d much rather be reading. People hurling their voices at you from whatever cycle of oppression or retribution they happen to be in; desperate voices, calm voices, demanding to be heard, coated in adjectives, sprinkled with verbs.

“Writing is all I have, a lament and a boast.”

William Orlando

...so impressed with the top stories...had to arrange these visuals to accompany them...live on a little longer...

Art Till Death

A Stealth's Path

Peak sequence in the movie Skyline (below). It’s very brief but very densely packed. Take people out of the question, or life in general, and it’s hard to see where a emotional response is going to come from within cinema. The next step is so obviously machines, at least in the sci-fi world of tomorrow’s future.

The point here is to identify with the Stealth aircraft in this clip. There’s obviously a pilot inside, but it seems to have a personality all of its own. People talk about supercars being objects of beauty, and belonging in galleries, not on the road; the same goes for this particular kind of propulsion aircraft. It is an absolute marvel of human engineering, craft and design. The thing is slick and sleek and sublime and downright beautiful. It looks mean and ruthless at the same time. Among the ugly alien machines here, it even looks cute.

It’s a character. That’s the nail on the head. It’s a bleedin’ character. You’re on its side. You’re rooting for it. It’s all alone, with the odds stacked against, trying to forge a narrow path through the enemy lines towards the hostile Mothership. If it can just get through, to have one single shot, one single chance. It’s your only hope, your last line of defence against the invaders. Mankind depends on it.

There’s no going back. It has one mission. Like a nose-bombing kamikaze. It’s own life has gone > that’s history. The only thing in question is whether it can hit its target...

Big Muscle Bitches

Article by Nicky Dumbell (click below for more Nicky Dumbell)

http://piebald77.blogspot.com/2010/08/rep-for-rep.html

I was thinking of ten questions about the appeal concerning ‘buff birds’. The first and most predictable question would have been how can you possibly want anything to do with a women who looks like a man. This is the default defensive strategy question. I can understand where that question might originate from (perhaps ignorance and insecurity?), but such a sweeping generalisation makes for a pat argument.

There are no borders or boundaries separating masculinity and femininity, apart from the obvious common denominators. The rest are a series of increments and degrees that vary right across the board. It’s the proper BIG MUSCLE BITCHES who don’t so much as push the envelope but rather stuff the envelope who give everyone else a bad name.

The insults can get a lot nastier than man jokes, but what actually constitutes masculine features on a lass, any amount of muscle mass at all? Short hair? I’ll be the first to admit that one or two, without makeup, in a suit, with a cropped wig, could pass for a bloke. No problema whatsoever. I’m not standing here saying none of them look like men and I want to sleep with them all till dawn. I’m not saying any such thing. It’s my intention to say as little as possible about the matter, actually, and I hope that what I’ve said so far doesn’t seem like I’m getting defensive myself.
.

Basically, it’s highly interesting to see how far some people are prepared to push the limits of human potential – ESPECIALLY WOMEN. A man in knickers, or a woman in knickers? You decide.

The fact is, pictures and images speak for themselves. You either like them or you don’t. Of course, as with anyone, you look at a member of the opposite sex and you judge them physically, maybe subconsciously, most of the time. You measure their attractiveness. You might think phwoar!, or eugh!

There are no subliminal messages with a big muscle bitch. They inevitably evoke a very conscious reaction. They’re like flashy concept sports cars. They’re extreme. That’s why they stand on stage, like rare breeds of exotic animals from forgotten islands. It’s ever so unusual to meet one on the street, in this part of the world.

Different story for men. Gyms, streets, nightclubs – you name it – they’re all teeming with muscle-bound ‘apes’. Why is it that so few females in comparison are obsessed by the shape of their physique? All that time spent on fashion and makeup but no interest in doing skullcrushers or kickbacks or butt blasters? Whenever I’ve been into a modern gym, which is not very often, there have been more women than men doing cardio exercises, using treadmills and cross trainers and the like. In that respect, i.e. inclination for fitness, it may be an even keel; not so true of the weights room, which is a predominantly male dominated arena.

I’m boiling this down to steroids, I’ve decided. That’s the penultimate factor in this. There’s no amount of natural physical toil a man or woman can do, unless they have freaky genetics to start off with, that can result in them looking abnormally huge. The natural way makes you look ‘developed’, whereas only the drug-enhanced way can make you look like a mass monster.

I guess it washes down to the perfect blend. Someone who has aided their favourable genetics with honest natural slog and then enhanced their honest natural slog with modest drug assistance. It’s no secret that genetics is the most important though. There will always be that individual with a God-given, stunning figure who has never set foot in a gym.

.

The flipside is that all this vanity is skin deep. Furthermore, self-obsessive and meaningless.

Writing and Authors

http://piebald77.blogspot.com/2010/06/amichael-on-escaping-hazel.html

Printing is as stressful as recording music and recording music is as stressful as printing. CLEANING UP however isn’t stressful at all but is somehow much worse to do.

Fiction wise, apart from many a multiple copy and free distribution to sort out, things are up to date. It’s looking like ESCAPING HAZEL will definitely be the next novella, co-written with my cousin A.Michael, aka The Horror Apprentice. I’ll be taking care of the ‘escaping’ part while he spends his time contemplating the far-reaching tentacles of ‘Hazel’. See link at top.

The first chapter is done (included in 50% Rude) and the outline for the rest of the story, or most of it anyways, is also done. An outline is new to me and it’s weird knowing how things generally are going to end up. The tale already exists, it’s just a matter of telling it.

I couldn’t do it on my own. It’s too sombre. The mindset is all wrong. I almost don’t want to give it life. That’s why I’ll be writing solo on something else simultaneously. It will be called Mr. Ridiculous. The title was thought of yonks ago, and then the character Ron Todd came along and fit into it later.

Personally, I hate it when authors talk about their characters like they are real people; it can’t be helped referring to them sometimes, but please, don’t go overboard. Dean Koontz said that his franchise character ‘Odd Thomas’ spoke to him. Something like “My name is Odd Thomas, I lead an unusual life.” He dropped what he was doing (another novel) and wrote the first chapter on the spot. Forget Dean though – he needs to get out more. The dude literally pulls titles out of his ass. Not like King, who only writes 3 or 4 hours a day.

Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee is my favourite short story author. What, you don’t have a favourite short story author? Getalife.com! That’s another thing I hate, actually – when authors have a long list of their favourite authors and influences, like they are merely just showing off how many other authors they know of, and how many books they have read.

Tanith Lee is the biz. She’s the first I read in anthologies. Her prose teaches, and I learn. She’s so descriptively gothic she transports you to another time. I hold my hands up in the presence of a higher power within her pages. I know that A.Michael does too. There’s another thing I hate, as well – authors who say they don’t read anyone else’s work while they are working on something because it intrudes into their own work. Pish! These guys are the guys who do twenty rewrites and endless revising, rereading, and redrafting. I’d be sick of myself if I did that. Sick indeed, and very soon!
_________________________________________________________
DB TINKERBELL has loads of lyrics to add to songs but he is forgetting the fact that he can’t sing. Just because the option is available to him now, it’s no good reason to flood every melody with his deadpan monotone voice. If he had female backing vocals, maybe, but he hasn’t. He’s ready to complete the last song of his 3rd album today and then that’s it until a better microphone is purchased. The one he has cost 7 bucks. The guy who work in Dawson’s cost a 1000 bucks. He compared it to a bicycle and a Rolls Royce. DB Tink is taking his tunes to a new level, and that next new level has to involve some serious equipment.

Comeback Legs...and Singing

Dedication to Steel is to Embrace a World of Pain

For whatever reason, I stayed outta da gym for months. For an iron brother, it’s worse than cheating on your wife. That first time back after a layoff is the hardest. You just don’t want to go. You want to call it a day for good. The longer you leave it, the harder it gets. But I dragged myself there eventually with an hour to go b4 closing time and plonked my bony arse down on the seated calf raise machine.

On my way I nipped into Tesco and read FLEX. I didn’t know Tesco stocked FLEX. I was lucky because the mag wasn’t plastic wrapped. It only took me 5 minutes to read. I can’t believe I used to buy that rehash religiously.

Anyway, cutting to the chase, I had an absolute monster leg session. I wasn’t screaming or grunting, or rushing headlong into sets with the hunger and determinedness I had when I was 23 and hell-bent on getting huge, but it was...well, comprehensive. I remember one sesh in particular back in the day when my quads were the best pumped they had ever been before or since – the teardrops were drum tight and hard and taut beneath my trackies. They were humongous.

No, this was different. I took my time, and I didn’t especially push myself, but I COVERED ALL THE BASES. It’s one thing going all out on dumbbell curls for biceps, but there’s hardly any such thing as even taking it easy on squats. Let’s face it, squatting with an empty back is rather uncomfortable. And squat I did, first time in eons, straight after calves, which I always do first. Free weight, smith machine, and hack, front and back. I decided against sissy squats, because I’m not a sissy.

It was the COMPLETE leg workout (the only little thing I left out was a small personal movement for shins I invented myself which you wouldn’t understand). The main reason why is because I was UNINTERRUPTED. No chitchat. No exchanging pleasantries. It’s fine when you are in your pomp, and you are just topping up that almost constantly buff feeling 5 or 6 visits to the gym a week merits, but nattering with your buddy during a Comeback Legs workout doesn’t figure. No way. And people know it. They sense your vibe. Comeback legs is no field trip.

Today, I’m hurting. That’s standard. I get up from a seated position like an old man. Proper gritting my teeth every time. It’s beautiful though, in a morbid way. Tomorrow will be even worse. But that feeling of walking down the gym steps last night, after it was all over...

...FOR EVERYTHING ELSE, THERE’S MASTERCARD.

(shud of warmed up however. the squats shocked my nervous system. my legs were physically shaking)

~

Eat up or Shut up...it's a Gruel World---------------------------MUSIC----------------------------

DB TINKERBELL bought a keyboard about 6 years ago, but only learned how to mix his lyrics with some songs last night. It’s not straightforward – nothing is with a personal PC computer, apart from turning the hunk straight off at the wall* – but it represents a milestone of sorts nonetheless. Ironic that it should be just the beginning of a journey then, because his kind of lyrics involve a female opera singer and a children’s tabernacle choir on backing vocals. No mixed sex backing vocals, no deal. One man singing alone, no matter how good or bad, is not enough. He can’t believe his phone has that geofence tech (whereosphere) but no sound recorder. If it did, he could ask girls in the street for quick voice samples...the blond in TSB has the voice of an angel.

~

*Was waiting half an hour for this 30 second clip to upload, because it' was a Windows Movie, not a Windows Media (TM) movie, like that's important. It would have had me there waiting all night. Half an hour, for a 30 second clip.

Burning the Midnight Oil

The last 3 nights I’ve been up all night. I’d love to say writing, but that doesn’t happen. I was editing. Editing the produce of the last 18 months or so work. My hours have been erratic – talk about unpaid nightshifts – but by goodness they have been put to good use for once.

In three night’s work I've only written one original paragraph of new prose (apart from forewords, indexes and endnotes), which was to finish off a short story which had been canned for over six months. Oh, that’s nothing, it once took me 10 YEARS to finish off the last page of a book. I simply have a hard time doing anything that NEEDS doing. It’s that subconscious leap of getting stuck in that perturbs me.

It could be a phone call, or a chore, or, God help me, changing the bed*, or anything. If I HAVE to do it, I have TROUBLE doing it. Some people are incapable of sitting and doing nothing – I’m not one of them. Give me a kettle, Radio 4, Freeview, and I'm EaZy.

Most of the nocturnal burning of the midnight oil was editing, like I keep saying, and basic presentation formatting. It was tedious. Setting fonts and sizes to headings and so forth. Indents and tabs and all the rest of it. It wouldn’t have been half as bad but my mouse is crud and my mouse pad is crud so the process was jerky and repetitive and it was made twice as hard because the PC has a mind of its own and does certain things that defy sense and logic to peev you off. There's only so many tunes you can listen to on YouTube as well.

All done though. Big print off on Tuesday and a bigger one coming up this afternoon. It’s amazing the difference an artistic front cover makes, as well. Plastic spines for the binding and job's a good'un. Talking about Job, I never really read him in The Bible before. Just heard about it and stuff. It's a cracking chapter, you know. Awesome language. Call The Bible what you like, from a 'pile of crock' to the 'living word', but one thing for sure, parts of it are written with profound poetic power.

Profound poetic power...you see what I did there?

*Fresh linen is a winner.

Archer's Attack

http://www.redbubble.com/people/piebald77/art/6738429-1-archers-stand-off

This is a quick quarter hour variation of a 3 hour piece viewable at the above link. There's nothing really subtle about it i.e. it doesn't 'merit closer inspection', which is always desirable, but some arrangements are simply about position and placement rather than hidden treats and jewels. One has just been completed called SKULL LAND, which had so much potential for concealed landscapes and disguised secrets that it had to be finished off prematurely, rather than suck and drain hour upon hour, idling in an open folder. It's all about the finished effect, about when enough is enough - making patience surely one of the highest virtues. Banging things out, like a prolific machine - and thus moving onwards - is so much more pleasing. Okay, maybe not more pleasing, but easier.

Freedom Sonics

This VIDEO BELOW6 was created from start to finish in 4 hours. That includes finding a melody from scratch, matching it to a beat, practicing it, and recording it. That's pretty quick for the birth, concept and completion. EVOLUTION KEYS, for example, took 2 weeks of practicing it twice daily before it was even worth attempting to record it without making a mistake. That was the trickiest thing ever because one hand was flying over three quadrants of the board just tapping the keys and it was all about hand-to-eye coordination.

FREEDOM SONICS sounds very synthy, but the synthesizer isn't even on. It's the thick Saw Lead voice itself that has the synth sound. In fact, it overpowers most of the beat. There are only 3 more tracks needed to round off the second 11 track album on this machine, the Yamaha DJXII. It feels funny mentioning the word 'album', but whatever else is there to call it? When you speak about bands, many of them that I know of take longer than a year to produce an album, some of them much longer. It's like books or anything else that goes on here at the site - the quicker you reel them off, the worse they are gunna be, in to say the more similar and repetitive they are gunna be. The subconscious needs to cook in between projects. Am I right, or am I right? I'm right, aren't I? I am though, aren't I though? DBT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXDsMJPJPLk 3 Evolution Keys

Pottery Patterns

This piece must be two years old if a day. It was meant to be part of a bird bath tower and is supposed to have a finished look as it is but legend has it that if one were to paint each triangle in an assortment of glazes and different colours it would look ten times better...or perhaps ten times worse?
There's a secret to obtaining such a unique, textured exterior, to get it looking so purposeful and symbolic. It's called pressing the bottom of a MILK CRATE into the wet clay. Yeah, you heard what I said.

The above is a pottery-based A4 collage, or 'mood board', which sounds better.

Prescription Television

“You can either sink or you can fly,” my handsome doctor said to me. “So now then Dear Patient, what’s it gonna be?”

“Fly high-a-way in the sky, natur-ally.”

“If you are absolutely certain? It’s a lot easier to sink. What was it you said about your favourite film, Falling Down? Letting go is easier than–”

“KEEPING HOLD.”

A nod from my married handsome doctor implied he seemed to be able to agree with that. He often shared his mortgage and insurance anxieties with me. Could level with a home boy, when he wanted to, in his svelte suit, suave shoes, and lacquered haircut.

“I prescribe, for YOU,” he said, in his holier-than-thou accent, like some sorta magician revealing his signature trick, “Season One, of Everwood.”

Everwood? I knew of a restaurant called Evenwood, but no television series called Everwood.

Good ‘ole married handsome wedding-ring-wearing ‘doc scribbled the details on a note, then leaned across to push it towards the edge of a desk worth more than my first two cars. “Everyday, on Freeview Channel E4. It’s repeated, so unless you wake up after one pm, you’ll never miss it.”

I was curious. ”Is it like Smallville?” I asked. “Or Dirty Sexy Money?” Those were the only two Yankee TV dramas I knew about. And West Wing.

“Have you ever seen One Tree Hill, or Eli Stone, or Brothers and Sisters?”

“Is Brothers and Sisters the one with Emily VanCamp in it?”

My pompous good ‘ole married handsome wedding-ring-wearing ‘doc clicked his fingers like a rebel pimp. “That’s what I’m talking about! Just her storyline alone will soften your heart. In Everwood, she is younger, and will reawaken your teenage dreams. Make you whole again.”

“Those dreams were not bad,” I said. “I think I will give this Everwood a try.” Lord knows I'd been fractured by the likes of X-Factor.

That I did, and upon the closure of episode 22, I sought to seek the remaining 3 seasons. This was my life now, and I based my entire diary around it. Everwood, Emily.

by TAZ

© Okus Pocus

DNM Fiction 2012 edition

Tripwire Internal

Excuse the depression factor. I’m sure Ron Todd, if he had met Sebastian, would have told him to just ‘snap out of it’. As simple and as true as that. Ron Todd’s guide to a broken heart, or any problem, for that matter, is to get drunk, get a prostitute, and beat her up. While we don’t share that philosophy, we kinda see where he is coming from, by taking matters into his own hands rather than moping around and letting the world wipe its feet on him. Sebastian was very inactive, reclusive, and lonely towards the end, but, despite his disturbing, scarely veiled threats in his college newsletter column, died of natural causes, in his sleep.

Of two evils choose the least – So I worship Bacchus.

I was born Sebastian Worboys, and this is my favourite song on the brink of my demise. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DwMJggG-vs Why not play it AFTER you read this? I’d appreciate it.

Who cares to know where it all started to go wrong? I know where I could have first tried to do something, and I know where I did actually try to do something, later on. But the time for forethought and action is gone. Now I lack the youth, the support, the finance, everything.

No matter who or what is to blame, aside from my dipstick fool-to-folly attitude, the fact is that I want gone. It’s almost unimportant, how things got to this. The truth is that they have. Regrettably. And I am haunted by my failures and mistakes.

I’ve not lost the ability to cope, it’s more like having lost the will to keep on coping. I could still plough on and appropriate something leaning towards relevant personal success, of course I could, but that wouldn’t be realised for a long time, if at all, and during the day-to-day meantime, all I see is barriers, obstacles, hindrances. And I’d fall, just as I have, again and again, lower and lower. I even see slight habitual annoyances potentially becoming mild episodes of psychosis. Once your thoughts are twisted, the knots tend to tighten your perceptions out of control.

All the good things I do best are only coping mechanisms in themselves. Art, writing, etc ... pointless. Born of conflict. It could be beautiful, viewed and respected, carried out there, profitable, but it won’t be, so it won’t.

Instead I’ve constructed an enemy inside my head, with my own hands, and I’ve realised, of late, that he’s here to stay. He’s me. My very own Tripwire Internal.

Chasing my tail for another how many years? No thanks. The formative years have been settled. I’d rather be tragic than sad. S.Worboys

~

P.S Just to make clear: I don't do cries for help. I genuinely just want gone.