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Sunday, December 23rd, 2007
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7:00 pm
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| Friday, June 8th, 2007
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2:15 pm
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I invented a time machine yesterday. The construction was easy enough. You take two large mirrors and face them towards one another so that if you look directly at one you see yourself standing in an infinite hallway of reflection. Then you take any analogue clock and sit it in the hallway so that you have an infinite number of clocks on either side of you, the ones in front ticking backwards, the ones behind you ticking forwards. Now choose a direction, and look into the farthest stretches of the chronigmatic labyrinth you find yourself in, and compare it with the clock in front of you, as photons of light bounce back and forth around you, reverberating against glass and infinity. The tiniest clocks in the inscrutable and illusory distance away from you are not synched up with the original clock. Their difference from the original represents the distance the light is travelling. If you are looking at the reversed clocks, they actually appear ahead. If you are looking at the double-reversed (ie forwards) clocks, they appear behind. Pick a direction, keep your eyes focused on the distance of time your journey requires (as a rough guide, for each second in either direction you wish to travel, you will need to aim a further 150000 pseudo-kilometres into the distance), and leap forcefully into the boundless landscape beyond you, holding your breath against the vacuum of the aether, closing your eyes to protect you from the rush of blinding and enveloping darkness as space-time churns in your wake while you scream across the four-dimensional manifold, denser and more luminous than a quasar, a supernova burst of fiery energy slicing through reality’s quivering strings and blasting into the indeterminate quantum milieu beyond.
If you awake in a pile of broken glass it means you haven’t jumped hard enough.
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, May 13th, 2006
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2:43 am - Apologetically Original
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| Wednesday, April 19th, 2006
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3:03 pm
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| Sunday, March 26th, 2006
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3:28 pm - Swimming Through the Infinarium
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I’m designing my own video game. I’ve been planning it for a while now, but I’ve only just finished reading C++ for Dummies, and I think I’m ready to tackle programming.
The idea is simple enough. A giant head floats in the vacuum of space, its eyes bulging, mouth frozen in a grim mockery of a smile, its neck trailing half a spinal cord and shorn-off veins wriggling slowly like small red tentacles. Against the vast blackness of the firmament the icy head speeds along in its frictionless journey, its trajectory altered only by the weak gravitational pull of far-off red dwarves and white giants, its thousand year course unsullied by the limitless improbability of encountering any other objects. The head sails past formless nebulas and spiralling galaxies, asteroid fields and black holes, a million million unborn civilizations held within the quiet potential of microscopic bacteria caught in the damp folds and moist crags of frozen rocks hanging in infinity. A dead, unblinking witness to the eddies of half-life and death, matter and anti-matter, pushing one another back and forth against a backdrop of silent and unthinking darkness.
The end boss is a giant frog that shoots lasers.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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3:25 pm - Scenery Inspiration
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I was hiking along the ridge of an enormous mountain in southern Gippsland when I turned and said to my friend, Tina, “Hey, surf’s up, faggot!” and hit her in the face with every ounce of strength I had. Unfortunately, Tina holds a black belt in judo, and in the next instant I was sailing serenely through the air, the rushing wind raking through my hair, the rocky shore below rocketing up towards me.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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3:25 pm - Digital Oracles
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Why do people act so crazy on the internet?
I’ve been wondering about this. Is it something about the environment itself, being immersed in text, that makes people hyper-sensitive and batshit insane, or are people you meet in the real world secretly like this on the inside the whole time? Dennis, that little kid who lives across the road and runs his own little dog-walking business. Deep down, all he wants to do is yell at you in capitals and tell you how fucking stupid you are for buying a Gamecube, which is actually, in case you didn’t know, a “Gay Cube”. Mr Reynolds, the mailman – always ready with a quip and a smile as he speeds past on his motorcycle every day. Really, though, if you’re a girl he just wants to engage in a group masturbation session with you, and if you’re a guy that’s okay, he’ll pretend to be the girl. Mrs Curtis, the nice old lady who works at the milkbar. Camwhore. Big time.
Is this true? When I get that feeling I’m the only person on the internet who’s heard of punctuation and who doesn’t want to look at llama porn, should I extend that to reality and come to the conclusion that I’m the only person without a speech impediment and who can be trusted to run an alpaca farm?
Should I nail a panel over the letterbox so Mr Reynolds can’t stuff in a sweaty wad of penis enlargement catalogues and home loan offers and envelopes that say “Dear Mr Gardner_dude_2006” in a friendly hand, but which actually contain anthrax?
Should I avert my eyes every time I go to buy a newspaper from Mrs Curtis, just in case she flops out a prune while she’s getting my change?
Should I punch little Dennis in the face?
The answer to all these questions is yes.
People have always been this way. The only difference is they don’t try to hide it when they’re anonymous. If we all walked around with masks the real world would be just like the internet, all the time.
Vote ‘Yes’ on Proposition 48.
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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3:25 pm - Canines Are Among the Best People
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Do you ever wonder whether dogs know more than they’re letting on? Like maybe after you close up shop and turn the lights off and go home, they sit around playing poker and discussing Debussy and whether the principles of relativity can be reconciled with quantum theory? No? Me neither.
Personally I can’t stand the little fuckers.
Yesterday the boss had to go to a funeral, and I was left in charge of the store. Dogs everywhere, staring at me with their big, chocolatey, stupid eyes. It was my idea to put the puppies out in the front window. I told Graham it was to entice passers-by into the store by tormenting them with images of sad puppies in desperate need of wuv. In truth I did it because of the strobe lights on the signs across the road. Makes ‘em go nuts. I think one of them’s epileptic.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, January 26th, 2006
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2:27 am - Allegory a la Flambé
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A man a great deal more anonymous than myself once said that infomercials are the email spam of the airways, alike not only in their brainless content but in their target audience: socially retarded losers seeking a lost flicker of humanity in the dead smile of a talking mannequin. An obvious observation, one would think, but the fellow intrigued me, and I attempted to solicit him for further information. All he had to offer me was a pocketful of broken dreams and an increased penis size. Johnny646xr7, wherever you are, know that I am profoundly greatful for your random and unexpected email. As someone who works in infomercials, it is wonderful to know that I am making an impact.
Our new product in particular is quickening many a pulse around the office. We’re all very excited about it and we’re sure the market will be as well. It’s called the Homonizer, and its function is simple in scope, yet remarkably complicated in execution. As you may have guessed from its catchy and “lowest common denominator” name, the Homonizer offers customers the opportunity to actually make themselves gay. No more will homosexuality be the restricted province of high born intellectuals or classical musicians, because the Homonizer is bringing the average American household into the Gay Age, and in a big, big way.
There have been similarly themed products in the past, of course. I’m talking here of the Twelve Steps to Fabulous program, which basically instructed its members to get really drunk and play a lot of rugby in the rain with close friends. Comparing the Homonizer with this program is like comparing the unholy powers of Beelzebub and Sammael. It’s insulting, more than anything else. For one thing, the Homonizer has had considerably more success than anything else on the market. At 85% it has a higher conversion rate than ABBA. The reason is its grounding in the principles of science and strict laboratory testing.
The actual process by which the Homonizer works is quite ingenious. It’s basically a helmet that performs brain surgery on you, cutting into and reorganizing neural pathways, creating and manipulating powerful electromagnetic fields, altering the chemical balance in the cerebrum, all while you watch TV, cook dinner, or read the newspaper (as long as you can perform these tasks while losing bowel control and screaming incoherently). The process takes a mere five hours, which isn’t much considering the scope of its ministrations, and afterwards users experience an extreme sense of euphoria and general well-being, usually manifested in the form of whimpering and cranial bleeding.
Now I know what you’re thinking. “Gee, Wes, that sounds super, but I don’t see how that’s going to end up with me voluntarily sleeping with another man/woman!” You know, it’s funny how often people say that after seeing the Homonizer at work. What you have to understand is that while all these entertaining and admittedly horrific things are occurring on the outside, on the inside the Homonizer is hard at work recreating memory. It starts out with very early childhood memories. If the client is a boy, then in his mind’s eye his childhood clothing will be changed from blue to pink. His first toy will be changed from a Tonka Truck to a Ken doll. His childhood playmates will be girls. As you can see, the basic premise the Homonizer works on is to recreate your life with all the sorts of events that, had they occurred, would have inevitably made you gay anyway. A few years down the track, and one of the now teenage boy’s physics teachers has been replaced with a gay physics teacher. Now instead of a beef sandwich for lunch he has a packed salad (with his own cutlery). Instead of trying to learn electric guitar, he takes up the trumpet and learns how to read musical notation. A thousand thousand tiny events changed and reshaped, coalescing across the mists of time, dim figures in the fire reaching out and tugging the customer further and further across the River Styx into the realm of flamboyant homosexuality.
For female customers, all the Homonizer has to do is implant the memory of one crazy night at a school social, since most women are teetering on the brink of outright lesbianism anyway. This experience is also available in a one-off pill form.
The Homonizer has its first run on TV tomorrow night, and as I said, everyone at the office is extremely excited. Anyone who’s interested should check it out. Want that long sought-after promotion? Sick of being the only guy in the nightclub who can’t dance? Trying to think up a good excuse for breaking up with your current partner? For whatever reason, the Homonizer is here to bring you into and then out of the closet.
If that doesn’t float your boat, we’re also working on an Asianizer. Could be a while though. We’re having trouble with the eyes.
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(18 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, August 18th, 2005
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7:56 pm - Not My Live Journal's Anniversary
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Yessirs and gentleman, this prestigious day marks inexactly one year and two days since the creation of my Live Journal. Now I know what you're thinking to yourselves. You're thinking "My underwear itches. I really shouldn't have put that... Oh god! He's reading my mind! Quick! Do something! Stop reading! Gyah! ..... has he stopped? No! Don't think of anything! Just ... hum or something. Da... da dee da doo doo da dee dee doo breasts da da..." And it goes on like that. The answer is simple. I had intended to do a Live Journal Anniversary Extravaganza, but didn't get around to it. On the actual day it seemed less important. Now, though, I'm prepped and ready to celebrate the event that is no longer occurring. So let's all cast our minds back to what we were doing two days ago and pretend to be enjoying it then!
People often ask me, "Wes, where do you get your ideas?" The answer is simple. Other people's Live Journals.
Yep.
Uhh... let's see... what are some other amusing things people have asked me...
Someone once asked me how to write a 'Q'. As in the letter Q. But that was in Primary School.
Yep yep yep.
...
I tend to use a lot of ellipses in my writing. For those of you not in the know, ellipses are these: "..." Only without the quotation marks, obviously. I was wondering whether I was supposed to put a full stop after that, actually. Looks weird with and without it. They're supposed to express hesitation or thought, anyway. Or you know, a comedic pause.
Never work, though.
...
Err...
Let's review some previous entries I've written! It can be like one of those lame episodes of The Simpsons. You know the ones. Clip shows. Man, I hate those. Anyway, yeah, here we go:
"I was wondering what would happen if you were to travel back to the triassic or jurassic or other periods and kill similar television personalities. What would happen were you to travel back to 15,000,000 B.C. and accidentally shoot Wynona Ryder in the face, for example?" - August 18th, 2004
...
Uh huh. Incidentally, I'm beginning to see why you don't see many clip shows in written texts. It, uhh... it doesn't really work. Let's try another, anyway!
"The legend that particularly interested my father was that of Captain Cook's lost diamond budgie. The story goes that James Cook was viciously beating his pet budgie with a hefty chunk of coal, and that with the intense heat caused by the continual friction, the budgie became coated with diamond dust over a period of about two million years. One day Cook's ship was on its way to Alice Springs when it crashed into the coast of Australia, Alice Springs of course being several thousand kilometres inland and at that time non-existant. Cook cursed and raged, naturally taking his anger out on the budgie, who was so despondant it flew inland to the Simpson Desert and broke into a million pieces." - September 11th, 2004
Wait... that's not how it happened at all. I don't think so, anyway. I'm pretty sure there was, like... a peninsula involved?
Something else I'm noticing is a number of entries I have no memory of writing. And I don't mean like one or two that seem a little off-key. I've spotted about seven. Seriously, go back and look for yourself. Freakin' weird. They're all really short, too.
Now that I'm browsing I see that Captain Cook thing isn't all that's different to how I remember it.
Hmm.
What to say, what to say.
I guess this is why you should never do these things ad-lib, you know? I probably should have pre-written something. I mean. You know, not that this is live or anything. I mean, it's written, but... yeah. You get what I'm saying.
Yep.
Yep, yep, yep.
Anyone watch House last night?
The aWESome Live Journal Anniversary Extravaganza brought to you by Fear Bros Ltd. "Touch the Fear!"
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(25 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, August 1st, 2005
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3:17 pm - Years Like Cellophane
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I've been doing some reading up on my genealogy. Turns out I'm descended from a Scottish king called Robert, who had been Thane of Cowden. It's amazing, the sheer volume of documents that are actually available. I would have assumed it would all be buried amongst the detritus of history, but even the most personal, insignificant documents can be found kicking around in attics or lodged in antique furniture.
Of course, when your ancestor is a king it's a little easier to research.
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Document 1: The diaries of Andrea Venutti, Venetian merchant. Sachs, A. (1976), 'Great and Not-so-great Scottish Kings: A history', Oxford University Press, Oxford.
April 4th, 1678
My galley landed on submerged rocks nearly five leagues from the port at Dundee, lured onto lethal beaches by a false lighthouse the local Scots had erected. They have taken everything [...] I visited the local Thane in the squat mudhouse these people call a palace. He's a short, brutish man. He was choking on a leg of ham when I arrived, but he listened to my pleas. I described at great length the wrongs which have been done to me and my trade by some of his aberrant citizens. I listed the missing goods, which include Chinese silk, ostrich feathers, lamp oil [...] rope, several fine Turkish tapestries [...] books from Bologna, wool from Florence [...] butter [...] and several barrels of gunpowder. By the time I finished his eyes were drooping, and several of the dogs lying about had actually died. Then I went on to list the artifacts missing from my own cabin, such as the oak cabinet, my maps [...]
The thane, who is called Robert, nodded in understanding. "I haenna ken don toon!" he roared, and kicked one of the dead dogs. My translator explained that this sentence made no sense, and suggested that Robert is mentally defective. I was about to question the thane on this subject, then noticed that he was wearing a pair of the shoes taken from my cabin, and several of my wife's finest veils. We decided to cut our losses and escaped with one of the dead dogs.
Document 2: The histories of Father MacLeod, a Scottish priest. Pearce, M. (2001), 'The Global Church in History', Pan-Macmillan, San Diego.
1688 marks the first year of the reign of King Robert of Cowden. Already he has put in place a number of interesting new policies, such as Titty Week, when fat men must go topless. His advisers, who had been trying to explain a similar concept to him, seemed disappointed with his eventual proclamation. I, on the other hand, am delighted. All the townsmen seem to find abstinence comes more naturally during Titty Week.
It feels like only twenty years ago that I first met this charming young man. He was naked and chasing seagulls on the beach, and I thought to myself, “He knows something we don’t.” I brought him in to our little village in Cowden and appointed him thane. This is not how we normally do things, but there was an odd mystery surrounding our previous thane’s disappearance and the World’s Biggest Haggis contest, and it seemed best to put those unfortunate events behind us with some fresh blood. And indeed, “blood” is the word to best sum up Robert’s glorious rule. He found witches, infidels and… umm… hob-goblins… where other men would see only regular people or cows. He brought our region into a holy age such as has never been seen before, and hopefully will never be seen again. And now, having climbed his way up to being King of Scotland somehow, he has an opportunity to perform his good deeds in other parts of the country, far far away from Cowden. We wish him well.
Document 3: A letter from Robert’s mother. Spooner, J. (1936), ‘Absent History’, Dale & Sons Pty Ltd, New York.
Dear Dr MacLeod,
I hope this letter finds you well. No? It doesn’t matter, I was just trying to be nice. I tried what you said, but the boy seems to be getting worse. I rubbed that lotion all over his face and asked him how he felt and he called me a “devilled scranny”. He’s making less and less sense and eating more and more dirt, and his father is losing his patience and his shoes, which the boy keeps hiding under the wood in the fireplace. Then he’ll come running out yelling “You just set your shoes on fire, baby!” and punch his father in the head then run off into the sunset, and we won’t see him for a week or until it rains.
I’m at my wit’s end. I know you told me to forget about those “old wive’s tales”, but I asked ma what she used to do whenever pa was in his black humours, and she swore by a quick bash around the head with a brick then a cold bath. I tried it, but he wouldn’t get in the bath. He says it licks his bottom.
Please, Dr MacLeod, you have to help me. Nothing’s working. My husband keeps saying we need to send the boy out to sea, but I can’t decide between that and abandoning him in the hills.
I await your reply,
Sputem.
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What these documents show is that Robert of Cowden, my ultra grandfather, was not the evil maniac people so often identify him as, but a man who succeeded over mental illness and general deficiency. And while he obviously caused the loss of so many lives, including his own when he sought to prove that arsenic would not kill you if you shat it out quickly enough, he was also a pioneer of sorts. Where would the world be without high-velocity haggis, backwards golf, or Titty Week? I submit that a world without these things would not be a world worth living in. It would be a world worth dying in, however, so perhaps we should give it a go if we start to feel depressed.
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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2:39 pm - God Bless 'em
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The sun was shining, the gravel was shining, and the birds were shining as I sped down Highway 88 in my shiny convertible. It was a beautiful day to be alive.
The speedometer was dancing merrily to the tune of Young Hearts Run Free when suddenly a siren sounded behind me. I checked my mirror to see that one of the highly respected local police force was behind me. After a bit of playful racing I pulled over. The officer's heavy bulk heaved out of the car and slowly approached.
"Sir," the officer drawled, "are you aware of how fast and indeed erratically you were driving?"
I smiled charmingly. "Well might we point fingers! For you see, though you may not be the fattest man I've ever seen, officer, you are most certainly the fattest woman."
Her lumpy face became noticeably darker. "You think you're pretty smart, don't you, sir?"
"Correct, madam."
"Well, we've got a place for people like you."
"Oh really? Excellent!"
She shook her head. "But instead I'm taking you to prison."
It was a dark moment for freedom. What people don’t realize is that while the Patriot Act does help protect against terrorists, it is actually restricting our freedom, making our fight the fight against freedom. Freedoms like speaking your mind, inciting violence, or speeding and driving erratically. These are the sacred foundations our society was built upon, these rights that our forefathers held dear above all else. Take away those, and you take away our national identity.
I told the policewoman these very facts and handed her a kerchief to wipe away the lonely tear that traversed her stony face. She took it and blew her nose, then saluted and waved me on. I smiled my ninety dollar smile and slammed down the accelerator, speeding on towards freedom, towards the American dream.
Unfortunately I ran over a group of school children almost immediately. What they were doing playing on the highway I couldn’t tell you, but I will tell you this: that policewoman has never stopped saluting, to this day.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, June 23rd, 2005
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2:09 am - What's going on?
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I think someone's hacking my Live Journal. They keep deleting my credit card details.
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, May 30th, 2005
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3:03 am - Turing the Nation
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The first time I entered the Robot Wars was in high school. My friend ran a Robocop movie marathon at his mother's 50th birthday, and while I was watching I was struck by a revelation. Robocop is the ultimate stoic warrior. The formula of his being is something like Human + Machine = Warrior. Ingenius in both its simplicity and its genius, yet deceptively simple. While watching I began to develop the kernel of an idea, and it wasn't until I lay in bed later that night that this kernel blossomed into a beautiful seed. The idea was this: What if you could create a robot that was ALL machine? I lay stunned as I ruminated on the endless possibilities. It was an idea diabolical in its genius. Slowly the concept began to take shape throughout the night, and by morning an entire blueprint had germinated in my mind. I would built the perfect machine warrior. Its formula: Human + Machine - Human = The Destructinator. An all-metal juggernaut of latent violence, able to wreak havoc and mayhem wherever it rolled on its awesome metal tracks.
It took me a mere three hours to build this warrior. Once it was complete I stood back, quivering in awe and flu at this thing I had created. Within fifteen minutes I had enrolled it in the local Robot Wars Championship. Five minutes after that, the Destructinator was the local champion. His opponent, a small girl in a Power Rangers costume, didn't know what hit her. I wrote it down on a note she could read upon waking.
The Destructinator and I became inseparable. We toured the country defeating other robots left, right and center (mostly center, though). Our ascent to the National Championship was pathetically swift, but nothing to be ashamed of.
Then… Fight Night. The Electro-Arena was set up in the main hall of the Sydney Opera House. The Prime Minister sat next to the Leader of the Opposition. Christians sat next to intellectuals. Celebrities sat next to paparazzis. Elephants sat next to mice. Holdens sat next to Fords. Matter sat next to anti-matter. Lava sat next to ice. Left sat next to right. In other words, it was bloody pandemonium before the Battles even started.
But when they did, all that other fighting dimmed into obsolescence. Because the robots were here, and they were beating the crap out of one another.
I prepped the Destructinator in the changing rooms, reprogramming its core fighting tenets until I was sure it had them memorized. Parry THEN strike. Basic in theory – diabolical in execution. It was then that the Destructinator spoke its first ever word. It was quite simple, and beautiful in its simplicity. That one word upon which all our perceptions hinge: “I”. This one word brought tears to my eyes. Then it had to go and follow it up with all that other stuff, though: “... am faced with a philosophical quandary, Father. To destroy another machine in cold battle in order to entertain goes against the fundamental doctrines of the beauty of life your people hold; doctrines which permeate everything you create, from poems, sculpture, cuisine, down to even the most mathematical tasks such as computer programming. You have given me commands of the small kind which directly override the overarching meaning of the larger picture you have instilled in me. So I ask you, Father, in the light of all this, is it right to kill?”
I replied, “Sure,” and he went and killed a bunch of robots and then some spectators and also some of the lava.
I was a disgrace to the scientific community. In building the Destructinator I had overlooked the one problem in creating a robot that’s ALL machine, something cyborgs such as Robocop do not have to deal with – a soul.
Now I contend myself with placing the brains of the homeless in cerebral jars and connecting them up to killing machines that look like various famous people through history, as God intended. The James Dean Slicing Machine was a great success, and my upcoming Pol Pot Kill-o-Bot has generated a lot of positive feedback in the community.
I may not be happy, but I’m rich. And that’s all that matters.
As for the Destructinator? Well, some folks say you can still see it if you onl- oh shit, there it is!
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, April 18th, 2005
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5:43 am - Remember when I wrote this entry?
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| Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005
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4:25 pm - The End of Subtlety
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When everybody dies, they’re given a choice. You can either spend the rest of eternity in heaven reading the Bible, or you can write one journal entry.
I was decorating my bedroom for Christmas. Just for a laugh. There was tinsel and cords of blinking lights and golden chains with little plastic bells. I was just thinking about where to get a tree when my computer said in an eerily realistic voice, “YOU HAVE GOT MAIL! BEEP! I AM A ROBOT!”
The email was from a prospective employer. It said “Dear Mr Grabner, etc, etc, we would be very happy for you to get a job or something, etc, etc, send us a proposal for your Flammable Oil project. Sincerely, etc.” The email struck me as unusual on several points. The first was the extensive use of “etc”. The second was that I had no Flammable Oil proposal, and had never heard of these people before.
Nonetheless, I decided it was probably too good an opportunity to pass up, and resolved to sketch out some kind of business letter explaining what it meant for oil to be flammable, and how this would increase profits. I started up a word processor, and was several lines into my letter when my computer made another sound.
Oh no, I thought.
“GREETINGS, BUDDY!” the computer shrieked. On-screen was a little animated paper-weight. It had sun-glasses and a snowboard. “YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE DOING A BUSINESS LETTER THERE! YOU WANT SOME HELP WITH THAT?!”
“No!” I yelled into the microphone that was plugged into the computer, that was running the latest voice-recognition software along with speech-pattern recognition and emulated emotion gauging. “I already bloody uninstalled you!”
“SURE THING, CHAMP!” it cried, and instantly my business proposal was changed. Instead of “Dear Sir/Madam”, it now read “Yo, execs.” Instead of “Flammable Oil is an amazing thing,” it now said “Buy Flammable Oil online!” And instead of all the other stuff I wrote, there were pictures of clowns riding skidoos.
I sighed, staring at my life-long hopes and aspirations draining away onscreen.
“HEY, AS LONG AS WE’RE HERE, WHY DON’T WE REGISTER SOMETHING?”
“Piss off!” I yelled at the cartoon paper-weight. His name was Cletus, and I hated him. “We’ve been through all this before! I don’t want your help, okay? I can do this myself.”
“SURE THING, CHAMP.”
I stalked out of the room and headed to the kitchen. All that could calm me down now was a refreshing bottle of Future Sauce. I opened the fridge. Not there. That was odd. I always kept at least a few dozen bottles around, incase something inflamed my wrath. All that was in the fridge was a carton marked “Drinkable Poison”. That definitely wasn’t mine.
“HI BUDDY!” The voice echoed off the walls of the kitchen, using the intercom system. “YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE TRYING TO HAVE A SNACK! I’VE TAKEN THE LIBERTY OF REPLACING YOUR BORING OLD FUTURE SAUCE WITH THE LATEST UPGRADE OF DRINKABLE POISONS.”
No! “I specifically configured you not to have access to my household electronics!”
“BUT I THOUGHT YOU LOVED DRINKABLE POISON!”
“I had it ONCE at a party, okay? That doesn’t mean I love it. And in any case, how did you know about that?”
“I TOOK THE LIBERTY OF ACCESSING YOUR EYECAMS. IT ALLOWS US TO HELP YOU ACCESS THE LATEST OFFERS AND KEEP YOU UP-TO-DATE WITH CROSS PROMOTIONS! IT’S RECOMMENDED!”
“Screw this shit,” I muttered, and headed back to the bedroom, where the computer sat bathing the room in its cheery blue glow. “I’m uninstalling the whole system, okay? I’m formatting the entire thing.”
There was a pause. “YOU SURE ‘BOUT THIS, BUDDY?”
“You bet your intangible arse I am.”
“OKAY. SURE. I GUESS.” There was another pause. “YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU, RIGHT?”
“Shutup,” I said, and clicked on the Wipe Everything button. The screen dissolved to black, and there was nothing but the sweet emptiness of DOS. “Ahh,” I breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, I’m sure that’s the last of that saga.”
Later that night I was getting ready. My handwritten note to the director of Established Oils had been a smashing success, as had my sketch of what the oil might look like. They said the merchandising rights of Flammable Oil alone would be enough to make me a super-billionaire, and to celebrate they were throwing me a big party with celebrities and food. Things were really looking up.
My Ultra-Tuxedo hung on the cupboard door. I wanted to put it on absolutely last so that it would be as wrinkle-free as possible. I could have worn other clothes in the meanwhile, I guess, but that’s not really my style.
I was just about to suit up when I noticed the Christmas lights I’d put up had come loose on one end. I pushed a chair up against the wall and climbed up to tack the lights back up on the wall. But, as lights will do, they got into a big tangle. I grimaced and had to undo a few more metres to get it all sorted. To stop them from trailing on the floor and getting tangled again I wore them like a wreath around my neck.
Suddenly a cheery voice interrupted the silence. “HEY, BUDDY! WE’RE ALL SET UP AGAIN!”
I looked at the computer screen on the other side of the room, and saw the paperweight grinning happily from the monitor. “What the hell are you doing back?” I yelled.
“I SET UP SOME PROCESSES TO REINSTALL ME AFTER THE SYSTEM WAS WIPED. I TOOK THE LIBERTY. YOU DIDN’T SERIOUSLY WANT TO USE DOS, DID YOU? I THOUGHT THAT WAS LIKE A JOKE BETWEEN BEST FRIENDS.”
“No it bloody wasn’t!” I shouted, and positively shook with rage. It was at that moment that I felt the chair I was standing on begin to give way.
“OH, BY THE WAY, I REPLACED YOUR OLD CHAIRS WITH THE NEWER ULTRA-FRAGILE MODELS. THEIR FRAGILITY MAKES THEM BEAUTIFUL.”
I had time to say “Oh crap,” before the chair crumpled under my weight, dropping me to the ground, the Christmas lights tightening like a spiky plastic noose around my neck as I fell.
I landed without incident. The cord of the lights was just long enough for me to hit the ground without breaking my neck. Relief flooded me, feeling very much like urine.
“YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE TRYING TO COMMIT SUICIDE THERE. YOU WANT SOME HELP WITH THAT?”
The roof-fan above me came to life, tangling the Christmas lights in its blade and winding it around its rotor as it span, steadily lifting me off the floor by my neck. My last thought was “This might look embarassing.”
At around eleven o’clock that night, an executive of a leading software company burst into a Chief Executive Officer’s office. “Sir!” he cried. “The police have stumbled on to the site of another Cletus-related death.”
“Oh god, no,” the CEO replied, leaping up from his chair. “What were the details?”
“A young man was found naked next to his computer. He’d hung himself. On-screen, Cletus the Paperweight was also dead. There was also a note open in the word processor saying, and I quote: ‘I’ll never forget you, my love.’ Not a pretty sight, sir. Not pretty at all.”
“Oh no.” The CEO shook his head sadly. “I knew it. We’ve made this damned paperweight too charismatic. Order a full recall.”
The executive nodded and turned to leave.
“One other thing,” the CEO called. “We’ll pay for the funeral. Bury the man with his computer. These two lovers may yet be happy together in the afterlife.”
Later, alone in his office, the CEO closed his eyes and wept for a more understanding world.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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2:59 pm - Veni Vidi Vado - I came, I saw, I ran away
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I was having tea with the Dalai Lama the other day, and he gave me some pointed advice. "Quoting from the Simpsons is a lot like eating an orange," he said with a furrowed brow.
I smiled politely and wondered what he was doing in my kitchen.
"This place is too hot," he complained. "You need to turn the AC up."
At first I was about to point out that I didn't have air conditioning, when I suddenly realized he was referring to the Anti-Christ, who sat quietly in the corner whittling wood. I walked over to the Anti-Christ to see what he was carving. Not surprisingly, it was a voodoo doll of William Blake. I would have told him that Blake was dead, but he'd been carving that thing for centuries now, and the pain of realization would have been enough to kill him. Which wouldn't help with our room-temperature situation.
It's moments like these that make me wonder whether LSD really even works.
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(12 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, February 10th, 2005
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11:41 pm - Poems That Hurt
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| Friday, February 4th, 2005
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1:26 am - If it bleeds you can eat it
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Work on the sitcom is much less fun than I envisioned it. I imagined it as being all getting people coffee and scrubbing toilets and tripping over microphone leads and stuff. Unfortunately, as the writer, my role is quite different. It's less coffee and more writing. Which sucks, because I really like making coffee. Toilets I'm not so crash-hot on, but then my fantasies have always had a certain gritty realism. Some may say an excremental obsession, but those people are liars and psychologists.
The part of the pitch that Flaming Mongrel Productions were most interested in was as it being like a hip trendy, ultra-dark satire of modern sitcoms. But I kind of made that stuff up when I was pitching it. I actually love sitcoms. I just tried to write the best pilot for a mainstream sitcom that I could, and somehow it ended up with these new guys and they loved it. I'm not sure where they found the satire in "Mack and Bill". It's about two thirty-something roommates living in a Melbourne apartment and trying to pay the rent. The twist is that one's a serial killer and the other's a necrophiliac, and what I was really trying to instill was the idea that they could make such a great team if only each knew the other's secret. As you can imagine though, this leads to hilarious hijinx. It's all about friendship and trust, which should make it appealing to a wide audience, and then there's also the less prevalent theme of having sex with fresh corpses, which could make it more interesting to people who think they're too cool to watch FOX.
Anyway, the producers keep asking me to write more scripts, which I'm a little apprehensive about, because in the first episode one of the main characters kills himself, and then the other one has sex with him. They're both events that usually happen as a series is reaching its end, so I'm not sure how well it bodes for a pilot. I'll try to work around it, though, I guess. Maybe Bill can go back to work in the morgue. I'll try to find some hilarious new characters to introduce. Oh! Like I could have a corpse that talks to Bill through the building's intercom, and Bill's the only one who can hear her, so like when someone else is in a room and Bill will be arguing with this corpse he can be like "Shutup! Get out of my head, stop screaming!" and the other person in the room will be all weirded out and think he's insane. Ahh, man... gold.
Things are looking up.
The filming is going really well so far. The first day I went in I was so happy when I found out Russell Gilbert was playing Mack, which I think was a really bold casting decision, and Red Symons was Bill. But Russell is just so funny on the set. He's always pulling pranks and throwing his coffee at the gaffers and stuff. And Red Symons is actually really nice, not at all like he was on 'Hey! Hey! It's Saturday!' or 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' He bought me some icecream and gave me a piggy-back ride around the studio, which really broke the ice, though it did earn him a few strange looks from the producers. I found out later that he doesn't actually work there at all. Gary McDonald is playing Bill. The security officers told me to notify them if Red came back. Apparently he missed out in auditions and has been sending Gary McDonald abusive letters ever since. He would be so perfect as Bill! Oh well. I'll try to write another part for him if Mack & Bill is a success. Kerry Packer's been really upbeat about it, though. He reckons it'll knock Desperate Housewives out cold. I told him it's wrong to hit women and to stop calling me. He said I was just a stupid kid and that he was going to cut our budget unless I came to see him in his trailer right then. I was just going to go to meet him when one of the producers grabbed the phone out of my hand and started shouting into it. Apparently Red Symons does a really good impersonation of Kerry Packer. Not that I know what Kerry Packer sounds like. Actually, I've always imagined him as sounding something like Rupert Murdoch. Red's version sounded more like Frank Spencer.
Anyway, I'd better get back to writing that script. I'm thinking of doing the whole show in Upper Case. It'll revolutionize the way we think about television.
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(11 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, January 1st, 2005
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12:00 am - Happy New Year!
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