Trans-Uranic, heavy elements may not be used where there is life.

Medium atomic weights are available.

Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel.

Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.

Words can’t describe how much you all have to go out and purchase Sapphire and Steel on DVD right now.

your lie is going around the world!

I don’t know what it means, but I like it.

I look down at the hole in my jeans, so decide to put on my good pair. Pulling them on, I realise I was wearing my good pair to begin with, and that the hole in these is much larger. I decide on my work pants, which also have holes, but smaller ones that aren’t so noticeable, especially since I safety pinned them up.

We go to Flash Restaurant, where ex-flatmate makes the salt shakers dance (and yes, as the Presbyterians always feared, the dancing leads to sex). My brother berates him for his immaturity until the entrées arrive, containing the entire top half of a prawn, claws and all. My brother, clearly struggling for self control, eventually gives up and gleefully uses it to re-enact ‘Prawnthra vs The Dancing Salt-Shakers’ – a classic of its genre.

At this point one of the waiters come over to discreetly double check our reservation, which I presume is Flash Restaurant code for “we’re about to kick your poor, uncouth asses out”.

We talk about how old we all are (the youngest there having just turned 25) – comparing jobs, reminiscing about our student days and other such adult topics. This talk, of course, segues into loud and frequent jokes about skipping out on the cheque through ever more elaborate assaults on the waiting staff.

Wandering homeward we embark on a series of puerile and unnecessarily cruel jokes about an old flatmate and his chances of breeding with any creature or object other than his duvet. The phrase “Congratulations, it’s a bouncing baby pillowcase” is bloody funny with the right sort of set up...

My brother looks around the four of us, over a century of life between us, and states to no one in particular: “Being a grown-up doesn’t make any sense...”

She's got me, so I don't need you
You want me, You just don't know you do
I try to love you while you're spitting in my face
I put you on a pedestal - You put me in my place

We pay to be told
What our tiny futures hold
Yours looks bright
Mine is black
I want my money back

You're religious,
Screaming for your saviour
I'm asthmatic
Clutching my inhaler

This city air is
Killing me
Now I'm become
Just what I was meant to be

Well it might seem hard now
But I'll hold on to the end
And we're not really enemies
Coz I'm your only friend

And you and me together
We'll kill the night away
We'll kill the night away
Kill them all away

Why’s it so hard to remember
all the good times we had
And why's it so much easier
to feel so fucking bad
I know I had some dreams then
but all of them fell through
I wanted to have everything
I can't even have you

Well I'm so fucking faceless
You might as well erase us
I'll take all you can give me
Don't need you to forgive me
I'll kill your fucking Jesus
I'm not some fucking rhesus
I only want to fuck you
To out-evolve your weakness

-Lost Again, Deathboy

So, anyway, my friend handed in an essay towards the end of semester. He reckoned it was some of his best work. Of course he was surprised when it was returned with a pretty poor mark.

Surprise fairly quickly gave way to anger, and he went in during the holidays to confront the lecturer over his sub par marking skills. He found that the lecturer in question was up at the nearby marine reserve doing research, unable to be contacted by any means other than the University’s internal mail system.

Accordingly, my friend set pen to paper and wrote a horribly vitriolic piece complaining about the perceived unfairness of his mark, going so far as to question the competence of anyone who would give said mark to this piece of work. Of course this was an official piece of correspondence, so he contained himself to a certain degree – in his words: “Fuck you, only more polite – but not much more polite.”

So this letter was put into the internal mail, and eventually found it’s way to the marine reserve. The lecturer sat down at the table, opened the envelope, and read the angry, vitriolic letter.

And had a brain embolism and died.

The cleaner found him slumped over the letter, dead-man’s drool smudging the ink.

Of course anyone with even a surface knowledge of biology will be able to tell you that embolisms build up over a very long period, and finally “go off” (for lack of the actual biological term) if not at random then so close to random that it may as well be. So the lecturer’s death was, at best, only tangentially connected to the letter in any capacity.

Still, when the essay was rechecked, the new marker made damn sure that it got an ‘A’...

New Zealand is the chlamydia capital of the world.

Dunedin is the genital warts capital of New Zealand.

The theremin is named after it's inventor, Leo Theremin, who created it in 1923.

And people say teachers waste their holiday time...

-Computer #1, Deathboy

Now, in addition to picking up a bunch of extra responsibilities last term (which she volunteered for, because, you know, that’s what she does) she got sick. Real sick, with some viral thing. Lasted eight weeks or so, which is a long time in a nine week term. As is the way with the Good Teachers, she didn’t take more than a day or two off work, but was knocked about and exhausted for the majority of the term. Now, excuse me for a second while I clamber to the top of the moral highground and get insufferably precious about my job; It’s not one that you can do for any length of time while you’re run down. Most of the websites I frequent are updated by people at work, simply because the sound of keys being hit makes it look like they need more than two hours a day to break the back of this week’s deadline. I’m not saying that teaching is the hardest job in the world or anything, but when was the last time you took a sick day and, in order to do so, had to spend the previous night planning out a detailed five-hour program of work for your temp to do?

Needless to say, my friend’s usually loud and keen enthusiasm started looking a little frayed there last term.

But here’s the thing; what does that sort of knock do to the balance of a person who wasn’t aligned 100% straight to begin with? When your whole life is work, what happens when your system is weakened to the point where work becomes painful?

I was talking to her, telling her of my unprecedented intention of taking two days off in the same week due to illness (there was a day between them; I had to come back to school after the first day – sure I was sicker than before, but that just added to the urgency; I had left my drugs in my desk...) and she stared talking about how it was “This Place” that was making me sick; After two weeks of relaxing holiday, I spend one day at school and get cripplingly unwell. She told me how scared she was that This Place would make her sick like before, and there was real fear in her voice.

Cloudy as my head was, I thought to myself “How do you get like that? How does your thinking get to that point?”

Then it occurred to me: Earlier in the week, I had heard that one of my old students is a bit pregnant. Upon hearing this, I felt a bunch of the following pretty much simultaneously; concern, disappointment, paternal outrage, sympathy, and I swear my cold actually got worse in the ensuing seconds.

But you know, she hasn’t been my student in almost two years. Sure, at fifteen, she’s a bit young to be five months pregnant without causing my head to hurt, but she hasn’t been my responsibility in years. And when you think about it, it’s not like she was my responsibility to begin with – she wasn’t even in any of my classes, and had she been, my responsibility would have started and stopped at teaching her to recognise and use metaphors.

Still, I can’t let go.

I’ve already been driven crazy, I just didn’t notice it...

Then, they are taken into the inner-chamber of the party, where they are shown a number of original water colours by Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer’s desk from his Berlin HQ, and an unopened canister reading simply “Zyklon”.

Much laughter was to be had around our living room at this revelation, especially given the dry comic talents of Stephen Fry and Geoffrey Palmer.

The laughter died down.

A few seconds passed.

My flatmate burst out laughing.

Composing himself, he said “Ha ha, they’re representing the Communist Party.”

Now, with various elections being in the news at the moment, I’ve got to thinking.

My plan is that every polling booth will have a person who, before members of the public are allowed to cast their votes, asks one simple question. I see it as going something like this:

“Have you ever read a book that didn’t have elves in it?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“That’s it, no democracy for you! Step away from ballot box.”
“But...”
“No buts! Into the protein vats. Sharpish now, son, those hungry first year university students aren’t going to feed themselves.”

Or am I being harsh?

Those I know who have seen Super Size Me are all struck by the same scene: The cameras go to one of Jarrod’s pep-talk/Subway advertisement sessions and interview a family-sized teenager who, bottom lip quivering, tells us that seeing him is a mixed experience. On the one hand it’s inspiring that he fought and triumphed in the same battle she is waging. On the other hand, she is just a teenager – she can’t afford to buy two subs a day, so how is she expected to lose weight?

Let’s see if I can say this politely...

This may be a revolutionary concept to you, Feedbag, but you can actually loose weight through the cutting-edge method of not shoveling tons of greasy McCrap down the cavernous suction-hole you call a mouth every waking second of your mountainous life!

There’s not more of you to love, there’s just more of you!

Hmm – Turns out I can’t do it politely. Live and learn.

See, here’s the thing: Jarrod lost a truck load of weight by eating two Subway sandwiches a day and exercising regularly, so how oh how is My-Life-As-A-Teenage-Heffalump expected to do the same? Well, let’s just do the above sentence without brand names:

Jarrod lost a truck load of weight by eating two sandwiches a day and exercising regularly.

Now, you might want to sit down, because this is such a revolutionary idea that it will probably blow your mind like a cheap light bulb, and I'd hate for you to fall and bump what was left of your head...

It turns out that if you don’t overeat, and you exercise regularly – You lose weight!

I know, I can’t believe it either! Why didn’t anyone tell me this? The television should have told me! My obesity is everybody’s fault except mine! I think we all need to sit down for a minute...

Oh who am I kidding, you were already sitting down, weren’t you tubby? Yeah, I’m talking to you. Oh yeah, then waddle over here and do something about it! No, I didn’t think you were going to struggle your way out of that chair.

This post was meant to be something about the American mindset of not taking personal responsibility as illustrated by the fact that the general air of Super Size Me was one of, well, surprise that eating McDonald’s for a month would have an adverse effect on your health. It hasn’t quite turned out that way, but it has nicely reinforced the fact that I really hate fat people.

(This post was brought to you by a fat bastard who is mopping his forehead and struggling for breath after the effort of dragging his saturnine bulk to the top of the Moral Highground.)

Student “So you’re definitely taking a Year 12 class next year?”
Me “Yep, asked for one specifically.”
Student “You have to be my teacher.”
Me “As I’ve explained to you before several times...”
Student “You have no say in who gets into your class, I know. But I’ll change into your class at the beginning of the year, whoever I get.”
Me “Well, you can do that with a note from your mother, but it might involve completely changing your timetable, altering all of your teachers for maths, science and so forth.”
Student “Doesn’t matter. I need to be in your class. I need to actually learn something next year...”

Too crazy to go outside, not crazy enough to have imaginary friends...

Y’know, back when I was deciding to be a teacher, it’s amazing the number of conversations it simply never occurred to me that I’d have...

Over Scribe’s vocals you can almost hear the drummer saying “Now look, you know that sort of behavior is unacceptable, and you need to be punished. I don’t like this any more than you do...”

Walking out of the school gates because I refuse to run – it gives the wrong impression – I storm past some rubbernecking students. “It’s Friday afternoon!” I vent at them without stopping. “It’s the weekend! Do you all think I don’t have anything better to do?”

All I was told by the breathless student who ran into the office was that one of ours had been in a small car accident right outside the gates and the driver of the other car had, in a rage, punched him. Drawing closer I see that the “one of ours” is the top student in my Year 13 class – top of a couple of other classes as well, probably the most conscientious and studious that we have – and there is blood pouring down his face.

He is being ministered to by a group of my lot. Meanwhile, one of my Year 9s – a hypochondriac who stands at slightly less than five feet and whinges about her constant physical ailments so persistently that it’s almost become a game of one-upmanship between us to get her to admit that she’s exaggerating – is talking to the driver of the other car. Well, yelling at him really, dressing him down for his violence and lack of control.

By the time I cross the road one of my larger students has decided that the outsider (as is our nomenclature for anyone not going to our school) needs a lesson taught him, so I immediately find myself with two others pressed up against a shouting moving wall of a sixteen year old who is trying to force his way past us. The outsider is responding in kind and advances to fight, but is held in place by my little third former who is matter-of-factly and effectively chastising him. I want to go over and support her, acutely aware of how tiny she is, and the threats emanating from the outsider, but my attention is distracted by the straining student in my arms, buttons from his shirt flying off as he struggles to get free of us.

An enormous cop turns up and, in a heart warming display of professionalism, completely ignores the yelling swearing bloke with blood on his hands threatening the thirteen year old girl, and immediately arrests the brownest person there, throwing my aggro student into his car and telling him not to be a dick.

Meanwhile the best student at the school stands there, the blood that covers his face almost obscuring the look of shock and unreality.

The perfect end to a long week.

Why teaching is a good job:

The outsider getting angry, posturing, yelling and trying to advance to fight my student. It’s taking me and two others to hold my guy back, but my little third former, less than five foot of blond little kid is holding back the outsider by sheer force of her personality. The bloody-minded verbosity that makes her spar with me every morning, and that makes her the only student who can talk me to a draw, being marshaled into one blunt blockade to stop this guy from advancing.

Every time I think of it, my heart swells with pride.

In my head I’m already wording the speech she’s getting next week about continuing to use her powers for good instead of evil.

Conversant the first: The-Flatmate’s-Idiot-Friend-Who-Tries-
To-Talk-To-Me™
Conversant the second: Me

“How’s it going?”
“Good. You?”
“Not so good. My girlfriend kicked me out, so I’m currently homeless.”
“Oh. Where are you staying?”
“Uh... Here.”
“I... see. How long have you been living in my house?”
“About six days so far.”
“Ah. That certainly does explain a few things. Now you do know the flat rule that any sentence that starts with ‘I’m crashing at your house for more than one night’ ends with ‘argh my testicles you’ve crushed my testicles’ don’t you?”
“I don’t get it. What do you argh my testicles! You’ve crushed my testicles!”

Earlier in the day, while killing some hours by circling in blue ballpoint ink every upper case M in the front section of a month-old New York Times, Chip had concluded that he was behaving like a depressed person. Now, as his telephone began to ring, it occurred to him that a depressed person ought to continue staring at the TV and ignore the ringing – ought to light another cigarette and, with no trace of emotional affect, watch another cartoon while his machine took whoever’s message.

That his impulse, instead, was to jump to his feet and answer the phone – that he could so casually betray the arduous wasting of a day – cast doubt on the authenticity of his suffering. He felt as if he lacked the ability to lose all volition and connection with reality the way depressed people did in books and movies. It seemed to him, as he silenced the TV and hurried into his kitchen, that he was failing even at the miserable task of falling properly apart.

-James Carville

So I’m in last period with The Bad Class. A phenomenon which is about two thirds miracle and one third Me Being A Good Teacher sees them being better behaved than they ever have been before. As they are quietly working I have various Year 13s coming in to shake my hand and thank me for looking after them this year. A Year 11 comes up and says they are having a party in PE, and would I like some food? Hopeful of a biscuit, I accept.

Five minutes later, three Year 11s barge in, arms laden with cakes, biscuits and chocolates.

Standing there with the work continuing uninterrupted around me, munching on my newfound candy, I find myself thinking simply: “Yeah. There are worse jobs than this...”

Why teaching is a bad job

This evening at the senior graduation dinner, saying goodbye to my Year 13s.

These are the ones who were in forth form when I first came to the school – the precocious and genuine and funny and warm and amazing kids that convinced me to stop being a reliever and settle down. These are the kids who have talked me out of quitting this clown college a bunch of times.

I had to stop saying goodbye because my voice was breaking.

Somewhere at the back of my brain I have a rant about this, but it’s one of the peculiarities of teaching: These kids have been an important part of my life for four years, just as I have been in theirs.

And now they’re gone.

Shit.

I’m sad, so no eloquence tonight.

By way of a holiday from elections, departing students and the like I'm going into seclusion for a week.

Thusly, next week is Guest Week, wherein some very talented people will be doing Nov9 instead of me.

First contribution goes up on Monday...

(Ben Thomas is roughly a quarter of the Dog Biting Men collective, purveyors of simply the finest media/politics/other important stuff commentary on the net today.)

When Yr 22

In my early twenties, as at fifteen and as still now, I figured the best way to make sense of anything was just to analogise it to snatches of literature or popular culture that sounded familiar. That may have been a Baudelaire-ian idea – that the only way to explain art is through another work of art. It may have been a nascent appreciation of inter-textuality, the post modern mindtrip that all texts are born from other texts and authors are merely constructions of their words, ad infinitum. No, on reflection, it’s just lazy undergraduate pub philosophasty. I’ve never even read Baudelaire, for fuck’s sake – I think I picked that line up from a record review.

(Josh is the creator of The Giraffe – one of the most consistently entertaining sites on the intermanet.)

No, Jeremy was never really the same after he got back from the doctor. He'd alternate between talking to "the little people who lived in his trousers" and staring into the bathroom mirror, insisting loudly to speak with the management. One day he produced a hollowed-out watermelon with macaroni glued onto it in the shape of a face, which he referred to as "his baby", and tried to feed motor oil.

More recently he's become even harder to deal with -- he now carries a laptop with him at all times, and communicates solely through the medium of Buffy's Swearing Keyboard. Conversation was difficult to begin with, but I seem to have got most of his vocabulary down: for example, he appears to use ELEPHANT COCK to refer to himself, addresses others in the second person with YOU CUNT and refers to his various female acquaintances with combinations of GASH, TWAT, OVARIES and HYMEN (the latter used to refer to younger women only).

Look, here he is now -- good morning, Jeremy!

FUCK OFF.

Fairly well -- what did you get up to last night?

ARSE. WANK. XYLOPHONE BUGGERY.

Really? How is Father McAuley?

TWAT. KANGAROO SPUNK. RECTUUUUUM.

No, I'm about to go shopping -- do you need anything while I'm out?

MINGE! IGUANA SCROTUM. IGUANA SCROTUM. IGUANA SCROTUM.

OK -- see you in a while.

I'm still not certain what he's trying to get across with the IGUANA SCROTUM, but he seems fairly insistent about it. Poor dear.

(Lily Petals is the frighteningly talented wee thing running SMASH)

Whenever Apathy Jack asks me to write something, a wave of deep nausea washes over me. It has nothing to do with him, per se, it’s more an acknowledgement that unless I get those mental cogs a-turning, there’ll be no rest for me. And I like my rest.

Normally I can fob him off easily enough – my computer is choca-block full of things I wrote in my younger and more creative days. Considering I’m eighteen, the phrase “younger and more creative days” is kind of depressing. But it’s true.

The reality is I just don’t write as much as I used to.

It’s a shame really. From what I’ve heard, I was rather good. I even met with some low-level success and for a brief moment in time became the apple of the EGGS writing departments eye. But it just seems harder these days, and the more time that passes me by I think of more and more reasons not to realise the ideas fermenting in the back of my brain, despite the best efforts of the people around me.

Take my flatmate for example, I got a great little talk from him about journalism degrees, writing for Craccum (provided I ever actually make it to university), and generally “realising potential”. “Realising potential” is also a favourite subject of Mr Jacks - not that ranting about it until he gets all red faced, sweaty and upset does him much good.

Le sigh.

My boyfriend likes to take another approach. He seems to take more pleasure than he should in telling me that “if this is your best attempt then you might as well give up now” and that, normally, writers actually write things.

No amount of self pity on my behalf seems to be able to convince these people to give me a break.

So here I am people. WRITING SOMETHING. Something long, poorly structured, and ill-thought out, just to punish you for all that motivation you’ve been attempting to fill me with. Because you’re reading this, that’s revenge enough for me.

Bukowski wrote:

if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.

....

if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.

The first time I read this, it disheartened me. I’ve cried sitting at the computer, not being able to get words out. My stomach sinks whenever a new idea pops into my head, simply because I know I won't be able to shake it until I write it down, and once I write it down, I’ll hate it. The My Documents folder on my computer is an ode to half finished short stories and two line poems that will never be complete… or things that have actually been “finished” but will never be shown to anyone because I can’t actually handle the idea of sharing.

All these things considered, why is it that writing is the only thing that I can see myself doing, in any capacity, for the rest of my life? Why is it, that despite the apparent futility, the absolute self loathing it inspires and general retchedness of my forays into the written word ... why is it then that I still do it?

Because I have to.

I actually have to.

Because while the feeling of writing might not make me happy exactly, the feeling of not writing is worse. I think there’s something all people that screams not only for recognition but for understanding. That part of me is the part of me that makes me write. For better or for worse, I will write. Whether it’s good for my mental health or not, I will write.

Damn it.

I’ve always been envious of friends of mine (Miss Gordon, I’m talking to you) who seem to churn out scrolls and scrolls of writing that doesn’t suck. Whose every pen-to-paper effort is an exercise in eloquence. It makes me feel like the fat kid in gym class.

I don’t know where this rant is taking me.

I should probably wrap up. Sylvia Plath, mother of teenage angst buckets like myself everywhere, once said “I write because there is a voice inside of me that will not be still”. Or something like that, I’m going on memory here.

That’s me. Fuck Bukowski, fuck his “don’t do it”. He’s not the boss of me. The fact of the matter is maybe it won't always be this hard. Even if it is, nothings going to change.

I know I’ve told you two things – the first being that writing is too hard and I hate, and the second being that I’ll do it forever because it’s all I’ve got. This is contradictory. Still, both statements are true.

I just wanted to take a moment to sit down, write something, and let Apathy Jack know I hate him. With every fibre of my being. My flatmate and my boyfriend too. Because making me take writing out of the “too hard” basket, making me face the fact that I feel PASSIONATE about something and am too scared/lazy/full of excuses to actually go through with the perusal of it, making me realise that despite my best efforts I actually Give A Shit…

Because making me realise these things just doesn’t feel fair. But it is. I suppose.

(Andy T Coombs is a writer and semi-professional pervert. Sundry of his miscellany can be found here)

THE BRANSTON PICKLE

A stinking city anywhere, somewhere, lost in the screaming info burnout of late western civilisation. Deaf and blind in an electronic squall, drowning in its own collective shit. A poster child for the 21st century, poised on the brink of uncertain futures, edging towards total meltdown.

A squalid apartment in a damp and neglected concrete tomb on the wrong side of the tracks. A drawn but intense man crouches in prayer next to a filthy old mattress, the only light coming from candles stuffed clumsily into old green bottles.

The walls are bare save for an enormous velvet painting of Jesus gazing downwards at the lost little lambs, and a collage consisting of images of just one man.

Branston Nutcream, self styled self help guru and advisor to the stars. A stack of his books and motivational tapes lies beneath, like an altar to a pagan god. The praying man stirs, pulling out a pile of putrid pornography from beneath the mattress.

I gotta do it. Purge myself of the sin and the filth. Don't need this anymore. Gotta wash the crud off my unclean hands. Dirty, dirty hands. Real men don't use porn. Must burn the corruption and smoke out Satan. Gotta do it.

Gotta do it for Jesus.

Praise the Lord.

It's all thanks to Branston. He gave me the power, the power to reach. All those years inside, rotting away within. But Branston showed me the way, lit up the shining path. He gave me a leg up. He cleared the way. He brought me closer to God.

Branston Nutcream. He's my favourite person next to Jesus.

Gotta burn it. Burn the porn. All the tits and beavers up in flames. Make myself clean again, or my name's not Johnny "Fingers" Darwin.

Oh praise Him.

The lone disciple ties up the smut with a length of string, puts it in an old military surplus bag, snuffs out the candles and leaves the room.

Branston Nutcream hangs upside down from a rack imported into his hotel room especially for the purpose, his ruthlessly exfoliated faced turning red as blood from his feet finds itself in the new and wild territories of his skull.

"Hit me again!"

Juanita, the working girl, bored and surly who would rather be somewhere else, warily obliges, slamming the whip into his naked back as she drags heavily on an unfiltered cigarette.

"Harder," he pants, "I must reach the core. You must expose the sensitive inner man child beneath the diseased exterior!"

"You're one sick bastard," she grumbles matter of factly as she lashes him again.

"It was the nuns. It all comes back down to the nuns. Oh and hey, put that out, you can't smoke in here. In fact in Personal Best, I can help you..."

"Listen bub, if you wanna fuck just say so. But it'll be extra. And I don't take no fuckin' credit cards."

She stubs the cigarette out on his chest. He screams.

Combat fatigued and soaked from the rain, the lonely shadow of Johnny "Fingers" Darwin slinks into the old abandoned warehouse, the one where he keeps the arsenal he's saving for the final battle of armageddon, the one he'll fight before he gets raptured.

He doesn't need any guns tonight, apart from the usual police issue Glock he keeps down the front of his pants, the one his probation officer doesn't know about.

Darwin's come to pick up the roses. One for every day spent inside. Each one for his idol. All for Branston. All for Jesus.

But first to burn it all. Burn the filth. Burn it clean.

The twitching figure clutching the big bunch of roses in one hand empties the vomit green army sack onto the cold concrete floor. Old sticky porno mags lie flapping in the breeze that penetrates the crumbling building like so many dead butterfiles.

He slowly and carefully picks up and old jerry can, and pours the noxious liquid within into an outline of the Jesus fish. As he strides purposefully into the night, the lit match drops to the waiting petroleum.

"Juanita. Juanita! Unzip the mask! I didn't say anything about the mask! Arrgh! Help!"

"Shut the fuck up worm boy."

God smiles upon me. I'm going to meet Him. Not God. Branston Nutcream. Not God. The next best thing. Branston Nutcream, my favourite person after Jesus.

Praise Jesus. All these roses. All those years. Locked away until Branston, until Jesus.

I know where he is. I know where Branston is. I'm going to be famous and I'll be on TV and I'll be on all the infomercials with Mr. Clinton and Oprah and Doctor Phil and Britney.

He's staying at the Towers. I'm going to meet him. Going to meet Branston.

"Had enough bitch, or do you want some more?"

"No more..."

Juanita lashes him one more time and lights another cigarette.

"What did I tell you about those?"

"Who's the dog here sparky?"

She walks over to the minibar and helps herself to a tiny bottle of peppermint schnapps.

"Hey, you should see out the window. There's a fucking enormous fire out by the docks."

"I can't see anything, I'm still zippered."

The witty banter between dom and sub is suddenly interrupted by a loud knock at the door.

"Don't answer it!"

"You'd hate that wouldn't you..."

"Don't!"

Johnny "Fingers" Darwin, almost petrified with excitement, his knuckles gone white clutching the roses. So many roses, so many years. What would he say?

The door creakd open, and his jaw drops.

A short, dark haired woman stands in the doorway, attractive in a PVC miniskirt and boots, carrying a whip. She is topless. Aggressively she thrusts herself forward, pierced nipples glinting in the dim light of the hall.

Whore! Whore of Satan!

"Are you here for that loser Nutcream?"

Harlot! Filthbag!

A dozen red roses scatter across expensive carpet and the strange man runs, a hysterical wail issuing forth from his throat.

"Fuckin' freak," snaps Juanita, and stubs out the cigarette beneath her heel.

Neon apocalypse. Head shatteringly loud eurotrash techno pop blasts out of a PA that stretches all the way to the lighting rig above.

"Ladies and gentlemen. This is the night of your lives, the night that will change the way you think, the night that will make you reach for your dreams..."

The PA boomed as giant screens displayed footage of Branston Nutcream meeting world leaders and partaking in extreme sports.

"The greatest motivational expert life design specialist power coach in the world today, Mr - Branston - NUTCREAM!"

The audience goes wild as Branston runs onto the stage like a demented gameshow host, arms flailing.

"How ya doooooooooin..."

A lone shape stirs in the shadows at the back of the hall, unnoticed amongst the reverie and mindless adulation, and draws a black boxy muzzle level with the stage.

"How ya doooooooin tooooniiiiiiiite..."

The gun has been silenced, so the audience is blissfully unaware of the projectiles inexorable flight path until it pierces Branston Nutcream somewhere in the lower abdomen, and he topples like a flimsy house of cards.

Maybe it's all part of the show. The crowd goes silent.

"He's bleeding!"

Panic ensues.

"Somebody call an ambulance!"

The mass of confused humanity jostles like frightened sheep on the way to the abbatoir, Branston Nutcream lies prone on the stage, and the video presentation of himself schmoozing with the rich, famous and powerful remains in the background.

"Everyone remain calm. Remain in your seats."

The lonely form of Johnny "Fingers" Darwin leaves unnoticed, to be identified by his dental records the following morning when his broken body and shattered face will be swept unceremoniously out of an alley.

Inside, paramedics rush onto the stage and load the wounded Nutcream onto a stretcher, plugging pointy metal things into his arms and tending to the hole punched in his side.

"This is bad, but not as bad as it looks."

He is carried out through throngs of concerned and weeping fans.

"I will get through this. I will turn this around. I will survive this and be a stronger person."

"Stop talking, you're not out of the woods yet," snaps a tired paramedic.

"I will turn this into a postive learning experience."

"For fuck's sake, someone give him the gas!"

A mask slams down on Branston Nutcream's ashen face, and he is loaded into a waiting ambulance, out for the count.

Juanita sits by the window in a bar sipping a Pina Colada, watching a scene unfold downtown. Sirens, screaming, gunshots, the works. She flicks through a fat wad of bills.

Fuck this town. I'm going to Disneyland.

(Richard Jellybean is a man chock full of talent, amongst other things. Some of his talent can be found seeping out of Necron99)

Deu, the brass-geared Sex Machina heard a genital-piercing scream. “By the stygian banana-hammock of Dwayne Johnson!” he thought “Something is afoot! My danger-pubes are a-twangin’!” His clanking stride sped up with the clatter of gears and clunk as heavy scrotal pendulums oscillated into action, catapulting his shiny form down the cobbled slope from whence the ejaculation had emanated. Yes, I wrote ejaculation. It didn’t always only mean the sticky froth hosed out of unlikely members in Japanese tentacle-rape porn, you know? Ian Fleming used to use it innocently enough, but he did also have characters called Pussy Galore. And Giselle Gapecrotch… And apparently he once ended up in hospital with a fountain-pen nib in his bladder after some strange literary sex act. I wonder if it managed to write anything interesting while it was bobbing about in his piss? Could the last great work of James Bond be carved in the meat of Mister Fleming’s pickled bladder? God, I hope so. Which all does nothing for the headlong dash of Deu, the mechanical pervert who began this tale.

Okay, so he’s just an idea based on a pun. Some sort of robot rapist with a silly name. I don’t know why he’s running about, why would he? Does he think there’s a gangfuck orgy ahead that he can get a piece of? Is that what I want my new idea to be doing on this sunny Tuesday morning? It’s all too Gary Numan for my liking. I think I’ll make it about a happy pink pixie instead.

…so yes, trying again from the beginning:

Tinklepiss the Happy Pink Androgynous Fairy hears a holler, and with a flick of her silver wings floats on a trail of sunshine and candy around the corner of the mysterious and as-yet-unspecified locale to find the source of the scream. As the sound grew louder she gave a furious flap of her pixie-wings and rocketed to the rescue…

...SLAP into the burnished brass side of a riveted arsebandit automaton called Deu, who ripped off her wings and practically disembowelled her with the metronomic pounding of his merciless Missile Cock.

Dammit, why do all my stories end in pixies getting their pudenda pulverised? Christ, I need a drink.

(Hewligan is one of the originators of Map For The Blind, whose ranting can be found at Mutopia)

I always knew I was the better man

So just recently I had my brother's wedding, and I got to be the best man. Which meant I had to make a speech. Since it's probably about the cleverest thing I've written lately, I thought I'd give it to Jack for the November 9 guest week. Then, maybe, he'd stop bugging me for stuff. Maybe.

Anyway, the speech...

Everything I know about weddings I learnt from television.

Everyone has their role. The groom - our handsome leading man. (Close enough.) The bride, our heroine. The father of the bride - a distinguished character actor. And me. The best man. I'm the comic relief.

Yup, it turns out that today Rob is Dean Martin, and I'm Jerry Lewis.

But it's not an open brief for comedy. I have a very specific job here. That job is to embarrass the groom.

When I first met Rob - well, he was a lot shorter. And he had less hair. And - just between you and me - he had a little problem with bladder control. Still, his grandmother saw something in him. She said he had a twinkle in his eye, and apparently, that was going to make him quite a hit with the ladies.

Not being a grandmother, I was never quite sure what all that meant. I guess she must have meant his mesmer-stare.

And for years you could see him practising his mesmer-stare. All the time, he was staring at girls. But it never seemed to work. His aim was off. Too low.

Still, today, all those years of practise have finally paid off. Congratulations, Rob!

I was making preparation for urinating in my laundry sink the other day when to my mild horror I discovered a number of things: I discovered my neighbour was in the garden and through the laundry window had a glorious front-on view of my actions, and also that my neighbour obviously wasn’t as blind as I had been led to believe. While I attempted to poke my member over the cold steel lip of the basin, she was eyeballing my activities through the window with what could be construed through the cobwebs as a mad voyeuristic glee. What I had previously thought were cataracts were just the glints of octogenarian lust and if not for the fact I was trying desperately to remove around 2 litres of Mountain Dew from my system before it dissolved through my bladder and flooded my abdominal cavity with that inimitable caffeinated Berroca-and-battery acid drink, I would have removed the object of her interest and waddled bow-legged and bursting to the bathroom. But I was on tippy-toe and the blessed feeling of release and cleansing was too great for me to nip this all in the bud, so I tiptoed and pissed as Granny stopped her doddering gardening and stared.

And started to make alarming motions with her hedge-trimmers.

There was a peculiar spasm in her pallid arms, making the loose skin wobble like porridge in a sock. A birdlike jabbing motion, possibly threatening. But then I realised that these were the stirrings of some long-dead instinct, as the hands with their blue veins sitting inches above the liverspotted skin collided at her lap and with unnatural motion she started to rub herself with the wooden handle of the tool.

This is possibly the most unnerving sight I have ever seen, over a sinkful of yellow liquid, watching an old-age pensioner spastically humping a set of trimmers with a bewildered expression as if like some teenage boy her loins were not under her control. The look of complete bafflement suggested she didn’t really remember how this all worked… I had almost finished my joyous task and set about trying to figure out the vitally-important shaking without either a) whacking my twig and berries against the side of the basin and giving my future offspring head-trauma, or b) getting rogue urine flying around the laundry which my long-suffering flatmate would have to clean up when he did the housework. While I attempted to gain an extra inch in height to give me a bit of room for some pitching and yawing, I glanced up to see the stumbling lust-filled neighbour surreptitiously dropping the trimmers towards the hem of her thankfully very-covering tweed skirt. Suddenly the shaking dilemma vanished as did my penis, taking shelter in my abdomen and whimpering like a kicked puppy. It was a car accident unfolding in slow motion, a potential glimpse of Nietzsche’s abyss covered in post-menopausal grey hair. My eyeballs dried up and the lids became glued open as everything horrifying from my birth to my potential death by rabid dolphin flashed before my eyes to confirm that no, I was about to see the most heinous thing I had ever seen or would ever see… The handles reached the hem and started thankfully to sneak under the fabric rather than hoiking the garment around her artificial hips and at that moment the one still-twitching part of my lizard brain not screaming and doing loops of my skull like a stabbed rat fired up with a query: Was she too riddled with Alzheimer’s to realise she had to use the handled end? Was her senile brain controlled by a long-dead gash too confused to think this forage towards frottage through?

And you know, I didn’t know the lady. I had nothing against her or her kin, had never even really talked to her over the fence. She had never thrown rocks at me for being the child of the devil, or reported me to the police for… stuff. But at that moment I could think of nothing funnier than her attempting masturbation after decades of groinal neglect and disembowelling herself on the pointy end of some ergonomic-grip gardening shears. I decided that someone else ripping themselves asunder amidst their posies and paving stones and dying horribly was a bit of a giggle and started actively wishing she’d get the whole thing messily wrong and die. As I prayed for her sexual sepuku, her horndog harikiri I finally admitted I was, as I’d always speculated, a bastard.

…and decided to shake into the laundry and be done with it.

(Go look at Hewligan’s art)

The Strange Case of the Cyclopean Apocalypse

The crazed demi-mollusks of Kwagalak had emerged into our reality by eating their way out of a mad-woman's mind. Surrounded by their overpowering stench of shoe polish, they had looked at me and begun to dance.

I recognised the dance immediately, of course. I had to admire the invertebrate precision with which they performed the spasticly intricate steps of the unmitigated transmutation waltz. The puce glow which this produced clearly signified that their plan was working, and that their dance would soon bring on the very end of consciousness itself.

I shrugged, and lit my last lucky strike. So what if it was the end of consciousness? I hadn't seen anyone do anything worthwhile with it for quite some time.

(See more of the trios kerrazy antics here)

(The cookie-cutter site Jellybean infects – possibly the only livejournal actually worth reading)

So this is Jack’s wee hide-out, eh? Mmmm. It differs somewhat from the cookie-cutter site I infect in that it has a more personal feeling, and much bigger font for the blind masturbators that flock to it like moths to a bitter flame. And before you ask “how can a flame be bitter?” I assure you all flames are bitter. Go lick one and find out, smart-arse.

Right, all you singe-tongued cretins back? Good. Going to trust me again? No? Even better.

Young Jack, though my junior in years still outstrips me in bone-wearying life experience which has carved furrows in his meat and left him in a state beyond mere wrinkled and haggard, somewhere on a plane of existence where Keith Richards is the healthiest-looking kid on the block and subcutaneous botulism abounds. This is because he has that thankfully-not-infectious virus “Caring” wrapped around his spinal cord and dry-humping his monkey-brain (that nerve ganglion in the thorax that looks after post-midnight cheese) so that from within his hard carapace of grammatical fascism and dead skin he must actually worry about the glue-sniffing foetus-aborting wrist-scratching gun-running government-overthrowing hellions and headcases that grow like bipedal tumours in our dilapidated schools. While some of us use work as an opportunity to, well, in my case type this drivel out, in other cases as a place to pick up loose women or steal office stationery or surf the web for rare Korean thalidomide porn (or combinations of the above: naming no names, but one regular reader of this column picks up loose thalidomide children using his rare collection of Korean stationery-theft porn), Jack uses his work time, and his play time, and his nap time to worry and care about the lunchbox brigade and their teeny tiny issues and dramas about drive-by wedgies and pink-highlighter abuse. For example if some dribble-nosed snotmonster in grey short pants came up to me pointing at a gaggle of scrotes in school uniforms and said “Mistah, one of the big kids took my candy” I’d be thinking “Sweet, some kid over there has candy, I’m gonna shiv him in the kidneys and scoff me some lollies!” whereas Jack would doubtless console the wee mite then demand with righteous indignation the return of the errant candy and chastise the thief with words like rolling thunder (The atmospheric phenomenon, not the monster-truck film). One can see him in some sort of shabby Moses pose bringing students to their knees with lectures on rightness and virtue and making fellow teachers cry with tears of amazement and salt at this fiery battler shaking with Tickle-me-Elmo fury and bringing light to the darkness like a glowstick in a sewer.

The good news for me is that my bastardly behaviour will allow me to become pickled in vitriol and live forever as a soulless zombie Nazi goosestepping through the halls of power and scooping bone marrow from the long bones of innocent urchins and refugees to further my descent into a hellish pit of decadence and purloined sweeties, while Jack will doubtless lose his hair, get gaping weeping stomach ulcers that leave him wracked with pain and vomiting coffee grounds, and finally die ignominiously having turned to Buddhism and developed an obsession with saving ducklings from rural road vehicular massacres. He’s going to DIE, die with a shiny pate and dissolved stomach lining, hugging some squawking feathery chick to his bosom on the hard shoulder of State Highway One somewhere south of the Bombay Hills while I drink nectar and ambrosia and methamphetamine from the new vagina of some willing post-op transsexual Thai prostitute in the penthouse of the City Life Apartments.

So why do I sometimes envy him?

Which of course leads to a long rant explaining that the rules clearly state the laws of the country must be obeyed, implicitly including the statutes on public lewdness.

Which subsequently leads to an argument as to exactly where a car would have to be parked in order for sex therein to not count as public indecency.

Which leads to another teacher walking in and hearing me loudly arguing this point.

I’m not sure if I can be said to have “won” that one, all things considered...

I feel that if a person can’t communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up.

-Tom Lehrer

I remember when I first moved here: I had spent the six months prior in a tiny place which, if nothing else, proved that two semi-crazy sociophobes shouldn’t flat together in a three room shoebox. It was time to go.

I moved into the flat of a friend – part of a century-old unit that proved the only difference between 'an historic site' and 'a slum' is a few years of decent maintenance.

Almost immediately, my frazzled brain set about the business of going even more peculiar.

Of course it wasn’t like it didn’t have help.

Rather than cover old ground, I’ll just point you here and here – things I wrote in the first year or two.

See, rereading the old things – It was easy to make this place sound romantic, in the ‘student lifestyle paying the dues of living in squalor man that would make a good scene in one of those slacker movies that were so popular a while back’ sense of the word. But after a while you realise that for every amusing anecdote about flatmates being idiots, the reality is weeks of picking your way through empty fast food containers and beer bottles, not having any clean dishes, listening to the rats in the walls and living with people who didn’t so much cross the line between annoying and creepy as lurk around it breathing heavily and edging into your personal space...

My flatmate recently found a profile written of her back in the journalist days of her late teens. They asked her where she wanted to be in ten years. She replied that she wanted to still be living the student life.

It’s not ten years yet, but, looking around at the wallpaper being held on with staples, the week old chicken bones on the coffee table, the coat hanger tv aerial, she realised that she was still living the student lifestyle, and, frankly, in her mid-twenties, she was well over it.

Meh – I’m whining. This place has seen a hell of a lot of good times.

The thing is; I can’t really remember them.

I remember the flatmate who snuck into my room every time I left the house, to do god-knows-what. I remember when our lounge was filled with squatters for fifteen consecutive weeks without respite. I remember the midnight shouting matches and overturned furniture from when flatmates would come home drunk and argumentative. I remember being lied to and about by flatmates. I remember blown light bulbs, broken appliances, backed up plumbing and the general Tragedy-Of-The-Commons that is relatively clean people succumbing, Cnut-like, to mess and disrepair. I remember losing not an insignificant number of friends just by living with them for a few months.

Sitting around with good friends enjoying convivial company and intelligent conversation... Well I know that it happened, but it hasn’t stuck in my mind.

There’s the Manic Street Preachers line where James Dean Bradfield sings that he’s poisoned every room in the house.

There’s been too much bad over the years. Even in the last few months – the only time in my lengthy tenure that I’ve actually liked one hundred percent of my co-habitants – I’ve been unable to truly enjoy myself. This place has finally built up enough negativity to be unworkable as a place of habitation.

Nathan “I just found a cup. It had a sock in it.”
Helen “Why is it Stu has to be the one moving out?”

This place has history. The social worker from my school spent a large amount of the seventies getting drunk in this flat. My mother worked with the old landlord’s son. The Head of Art at my school had a sister who lived across the road a few years ago – I’d probably recognise her if I saw her. In the late eighties this was home to several members of infamous New Zealand hair metal experiment Push Push.

I recently saw a band play. I was chatting to the lead singer about an upcoming gig. He told me it was at the Odeon.

“I can just wander downstairs – I live above the Odeon.”
“Hey, do you live with our keyboardist?”
“No, he’s my next door neighbor.”

I honestly can’t remember how many people have, over the years, had some connection with this place or someone who has lived here.

I dunno, I guess I can’t get too maudlin about the ‘institution’ that is this flat - the neighborhood has changed; I can smell the gentrification in the air. When I moved here, there were no apartment buildings, now there are over a dozen less than a two minutes from my door. There are still most of the run down old villas around, but they have expensive cars parked outside them. These houses are worth a lot of money when they’re fixed up nice, and that’s the process I’m seeing now.

I am going to miss this place. I still truly love walking the streets of my neighborhood. Familiar enough to be safe – I feel more secure among the freaks and homeless insane of my streets than I ever did walking the suburb I lived in before I went flatting; today I hugged a drunk who was demanding my breakfast - but still interesting enough that I have yet to get bored with it.

But it’s time to go.

There are things I’ll miss – last night when walking home I could hear an electric buzzing coming through the crepuscular air. Looking around to see what part of the neighborhood electrics had shorted out, I realised it was the sound of the needle echoing from the tatoo parlour, which had opened its window to combat the humidity. Then there are the things I won’t miss, like the fact that, as I write this, I’m covered in fleabites, because apparently we’re infested again...

I’m not making any big announcements here, I’m not saying “Look at me I’m moving out!” I’m just saying is all. It’s getting time to go.

Me “I remember when I moved in here. I was lugging my crap up the stairs, thinking what an inconvenience it would be to lug it all back down when I found somewhere decent to live in a month or two.”
Sarah “How long ago was that?”
Me “About four years...”

Leaving homophobia out of it, ‘gay’ has become an epithet meaning, basically, bad in a pathetic, disappointing and overall crap way. Maroon 5 are gay, this is a gay party and so forth.

Now, if you have really mediocre, run of the mill, boring sex, as I’m sure we all have had (or at least have been party to in some capacity) – does that count as “gay sex”?

Sometimes I think I have too much time on my hands...

Me and a Maths teacher around report time...

“Hey, I need you to fix Sharon's Maths report.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“You keep calling her ‘him’.”
“Yes. Sharon’s a boy.”
“Uh... No. She’s a girl.”
“But he sits with the boys.”
“That she does, but she’s a girl.”
“But he looks like a boy.”
“She certainly does. But she’s a girl.”
“I’ve been calling him a boy all year!”
“That notwithstanding, she actually is a girl...”

The phone rang, and through his giggling, flattie answered it “Kia Ora” which had them both collapsing further. He handed it over to his co-humourist, who calmed himself enough to speak to the friend who had called. He did so by saying, completely without irony: “Sup bro?”

It’s not the casual upper-middle class racism I mind so much as the complete obliviousness...

Alright, just so that I can get it all out of my head and wind down for the holidays: Sundry Thoughts On The Teaching...

....

Best conversation with a student:

Year 11 “Are you going to the Ball?”
Me “Yep.”
Year 11 “But you’re not taking your girlfriend from last year, because you broke up?”
Me “That’s right.”
Year 11 “You need to find a substitute.”
Me “What do you mean?”
Year 11 “You need to find another Asian girl who’ll call herself Alana and wear pink makeup, and take her to the Ball.”
Me “I really don’t think that would be entirely mentally healthy, do yo… HOW DO YOU KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT MY LIFE?!”

.....

Best conversation with a staff member:

Nurse “You look like a yeti or a werewolf! Do you not comb your hair?”:
Me “Not today, no. You see, I lost my comb last week, and yesterday my flatmate found out that I had been using her salad fork to comb my hair, so she made me stop.”

....

Sitting on the mantle piece in my lounge is the goodbye present from my peculiar Year 13: A framed picture of him.

Given that I was there when he started a petition to get a teacher fired, when he wore a sequined gown to the school ball, when he faked his own death in the corridor outside my class, this gift makes perfect sense to me.

Every time I walk into the living room the picture – my kid with collar unbuttoned giving a smoldering soap-opera-star glare (which isn’t as bad as the photo he gave the Nurse, where the whole shirt was open) - has been put face down, turned around, or moved to a less prominent position. I re-right it every time.

I’m sure I’ll get sick of this in a couple of days, but right now I’m having too much fun disturbing my flatmates.

....

Another student coming back to say goodbye told me it was “perfect” having me as her English teacher, and she hopes she is in my class next year.

I told her to wait until she gets her exam results before making such bold proclamations, but she said she didn’t need to – she knows she will pass because of my teaching.

Someone having that much faith in me is more than a little intimidating.

I hope I don’t let her down.

....

Emptying my desk draw I found nine hundred dollars worth of expired hotel gift vouchers.

A student got them from her stepfather who acquired them in some convoluted manner, and she gave me some because she had more than she could use before they expired.

It was a harsh time of year where a few things went wrong and school was hurting my brain, so I was too stressed to treat myself to a de-stressing evening of hotel pampering.

Still, a nice gesture, and one of those Things They Don’t Tell You About At Training College.

....

Looking at my roll book – signed by many students before they went on holiday – and I see a sentence that would make the heart of any English teacher swell:

Hi Sir. Thank you for all your help and we learn from you lots of stuff.

Brings a tear to my eye it does...

....

End of year staff do, we’re all thinking to the future – and what cataclysmic changes will be reaped by next year’s return visit from the Education Review Office (where all indications are that they’ll forgo procedure and simply execute a bunch of management and staff, and hang their bodies along the school’s driveway as a warning to those insurgents who might think of continuing the current rebellion against educating young people...). Someone asked me how long I plan to stay at this plague ship of a school, and a particularly vivid image flashed into my mind:

The pile of rubble that was once my school, smoke clearing as the Ministry of Education bulldozers rumble into the distance and ERO demolitionists wipe the dust from the shoulders. Sitting on the rubble, the lone figure of me.

I rise, as the more resilient of my students emerge from the wreckage.

I pull out a hammer and a staple gun, and address the students;

“Aright you lot, time to rebuild in my image...”

And now my flatmate tells me that it’s just as disturbing because I’m holding a staple gun, and I have a gleam in my eye like I’ve just been stapling things – possibly the student next to me – to other things.

My flatmate does not understand that This Is How You Teach. The staple gun’s name is Junior and it is an indispensable part of my disciplinary protocols. I had recently been stapling things and students to one another, for that is often necessary. And that gleam is my Teaching Gleam.

There’s just no pleasing some people.