Rebecca (not that one)

From 0 to 8, Rebecca didn’t much care to be around people. By the time she turned 9, that hadn’t changed. In school, she was supposed to like Jesus, but he was a zombie, which was kind of interesting and, anyway, he never bothered her.
Her mother, she knew, worried.
“You know how, when a little girl dies, they always say how outgoing and fun she was? What could I say?” She wore a t- shirt that said ‘More Blacks. More Dogs. More PROUD Irish Single Mums!’
“Lies?”
When she came home from school that day, her mother’s friends were there, drinking wine in the living room. She liked to sit in the corner and listen. They often said mean things about people who weren’t there and used the word ‘cunt’ wrong. She’d looked it up.
Usually they forgot she was there after a bit, or pretended to, which was the same thing, but today they kept looking at her sideways and giggling. She didn’t like it, so she didn’t even moan when her mother asked her to fetch another box of wine from the shed.
The giggling followed her through the kitchen and out the back door and into the garden and “SUUURRRPPPRRRIIISSSE!!!!” A bunch of people were shouting at her, people from school, people everycuntingwhere. She did the only thing she could. She ran- in the back door, through the kitchen, up the stairs and into her room. She tried to lock the door until she remembered there was no key.
She lay on the bed a long time, letting embarrassment and anger fight it out for the championship. She tried to look through her book on draft horses, but the differences between a Clydesdale and a Schleswig Holstein suddenly seemed unimportant. She wished that she just wasn’t.
Eventually, inevitably, there was tapping on her door. Her mother’s head appeared with that slightly wonky look it sometimes got after some wine.
“I’m sorry Bec. I thought it would be… good? Anyway, they’re all gone now.”
“I ran away! How can I.. school… I can’t.” she was sniffling.
“Oh, I told them that you’d had too many birthday martinis, like James Bond, and that you needed a rest, like… James Bond. Actually, I think they were kind of impressed. By Monday, it’ll be forgotten. Promise. Maybe we could watch a movie or something? I’ll make hot chocolate?” Sometimes she babbled.
“Aliens?”
“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit!”
Rebecca bounced on the bed.
“IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO BE SURE!!!!”

Authority

I tried to be an author once.

I chain- smoked cigarettes and didn’t pay my gambling debts

I Nursed a drinking problem, watched it blossom by the bottle.

I wrote a bad novella in which everybody dies

I pretended not to care about award and praise and prize.

I cut back on exposition, wrote about a magic kitten.

But the bastards wouldn’t buy the book; they called it overwritten.

Now, in the red and all unread I have to earn to make the rent

There’s little that I’m trained to do… except teach writing tricks to you.

Chirrup

There once was a man from Nantucket,

He died.

So will you and everyone else. F**k it.

I tried.

Shelleyfish

Percy Bysshe caught a monster fish,

And he brought it home to Mary.

Said she, “I just wrote Frankenstein,

Your foolish fish don’t scare me.”

HLP#725

Leonardo Damon’s Long Weekend

Suckin' Diesel!

Leonardo Damon’s Long Weekend

Saturday

Leonardo Damon woke up feeling awful, a feeling that could not wholly be accounted for by the empty whiskey bottle lying on the floor beside him. Then he saw the tin foil lying on the floor beside the empty whiskey bottle. It had been a heavy night. He raised his head and looked around the room. Nobody. They’d gone while he was asleep, thank god. His mother used to say about guests that it was nice to see them come but, by god, it was nice to see them go too. It was even nicer not to see them go, he thought.

He pulled himself up onto his elbow and threw up all over one of the old loafers that he wore for work. His ex was visiting her mother with the kids this weekend, or at least he thought it was this weekend, which…

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Help the Greek People to Help Themselves

Help the Greek People.

Check out this amazing idea (not my idea, I just came across it and thought the least I could do was help draw attention to it).

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/greek-bailout-fund#/story

All this dithering over Greece is getting boring. European ministers flexing their muscles and posturing over whether they can help the Greek people of not. Why don’t we the people just sort it instead?

The European Union is home to 503 million people, if we all just chip in a few Euro then we can get Greece sorted and hopefully get them back on track soon. Easy.

A Damn Poem

Here’s a damn poem

I wish it was good

I wash that it could

And maybe I would

If it weren’t for the noises

That say that it should

Fuck them damn noises

It is what it is and

Screw all the voices

We’ll schlep through the muck

Instead

What Really Happened to Schroedinger’s Cat?

What nobody outside the box, particularly Schrodinger himself, could have anticipated is that something unexpected- totally outside the intentions of the experiment- was happening to the cat.
The radiation, far from killing him, had actually set him free. Of course Mittens (that was the cat’s name) had no conception of what was happening to him. All he knew was that one minute he was trapped in a box, and the next he was free. He also knew that he was hungry.

Cats are by nature resourceful animals, and Mittens was no different. He quickly found a family that was willing to give him a berth. Unfortunately the family perished shortly afterwards from radiation poisoning, which was something of an inconvenience. This was a pattern that would repeat itself with disconcerting regularity over the years. Thus it was that Mittens was destined to lead a somewhat transient lifestyle, which he found fitted his temperament like a glove.

Das Krapital

We have simple solutions to complex problems,
And special offers on shop-soiled pogroms.
Loved up teens, drugged up queens,
Unspeakable, uneatable tins of killer beans.

There’s an imperfect present and an irregular past,
A melted sugar daddy with his trousers at half mast.
Former suffragettes smoking menthol cigarettes,
Ramekins, mandarins, a pixie and some elves.

We have a bust of Nero fiddling with his fiddle while Rome burned,
And the orchestra that played while the Titanic nudged her ‘berg.
Libertarian librarians, over eager with their stamps,
And a lovely Lux Interior, really rather good with Cramps.

Our prices really must be perceived to be believed,
And the invisible ink they’re written in is marvellous indeed.
We’ve got magpies in all numbers to cover every known event,
Endorsed by the office of births, marriages & deaths.

Imaginary sanitary towels for transvestites and
Computers made of pewter that are loved by all the luddites.
Solicitors and barristers- briefs of the utmost brevity,
Greek grammars which, admittedly, won’t provide much levity.

Mills and pieces, bits of weevils, olde timey handloom weavers,
Machines for executions and penal codes for beavers.
We have principal objections against the introduction
Of all the aforementioned and a vacuum with no suction.