Thursday, 30 January 2014
Tuesday, 7 January 2014
Monday, 6 January 2014
3 new videos on my YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/AmoebaDick:-
(1) A recitation of Lewis Carroll's poem The Jabberwock
(2) A recitation of Heinrich Heine's poem Die Lorelei
(3) An excerpt from ch21 of Amoeba Dick, purporting to be a discussion by the Franco-Algerian art critic Paul-Marie Ridicule, of the enema art of Boucher, Bosse and Goya. This is reproduced below. If any Francophones wish to suggest corrections of any of the inevitable solecisms, I will be delighted to hear from them:-
“Ainsi furent encadrées, l’une à coté de l’autre, les deux Odalisques de Boucher, celle de la turque et celle de Mlle O’Murphy, la concubine de sa majesté Louis XV, chacune comme si offrante les fesses à un type de M.Illingworth inaperçu. En outre, pendu en face, tout à fait explicite: Le Lavement d’Abraham Bosse: le docteur, portant sa pistole (son pistolet) énorme de lavement, s’approcha de l’invalide couché. Une femme – l’épouse, la mère, ou la servante? – lui arracha la manche, comme si pour éviter un acte tabou. Enfin, devant les toilettes, une représentation de signification ouvertement religieuse, en meme temps tortueuse: le Trágala Perro de Goya, où fut presentée une foule de moines de l’Inquisition Espagnole forçant un lavement sur leur victime.”
(1) A recitation of Lewis Carroll's poem The Jabberwock
(2) A recitation of Heinrich Heine's poem Die Lorelei
(3) An excerpt from ch21 of Amoeba Dick, purporting to be a discussion by the Franco-Algerian art critic Paul-Marie Ridicule, of the enema art of Boucher, Bosse and Goya. This is reproduced below. If any Francophones wish to suggest corrections of any of the inevitable solecisms, I will be delighted to hear from them:-
“Ainsi furent encadrées, l’une à coté de l’autre, les deux Odalisques de Boucher, celle de la turque et celle de Mlle O’Murphy, la concubine de sa majesté Louis XV, chacune comme si offrante les fesses à un type de M.Illingworth inaperçu. En outre, pendu en face, tout à fait explicite: Le Lavement d’Abraham Bosse: le docteur, portant sa pistole (son pistolet) énorme de lavement, s’approcha de l’invalide couché. Une femme – l’épouse, la mère, ou la servante? – lui arracha la manche, comme si pour éviter un acte tabou. Enfin, devant les toilettes, une représentation de signification ouvertement religieuse, en meme temps tortueuse: le Trágala Perro de Goya, où fut presentée une foule de moines de l’Inquisition Espagnole forçant un lavement sur leur victime.”
Thursday, 2 January 2014
Homage to Klismaphilia - a short story
Homage to Klismaphilia
a short story by Richard Craven
Except
for the striplights glaring overhead the scene resembles, to Signor Arseface's
untutored gaze, nothing so much as a gigantic knot. This way and that bend and
writhe the rails, inscribing graceful curves through the gleaming spaces
between eachother. From the rails in clusters hang, like trussed and vaselined
turkeys, many hot water bottles in many different colours, all shiny. It is,
Signor Arseface finds, his industrial Nirvana.
Signor
Arseface's gaze eventually alights upon a small aperture in the anterior wall.
Occasionally a light directly above it flashes red, and all the warehouse boys
hefting about hot water bottles and rails and clipboards across the panorama
beneath Signor Arseface at his window up in the overseer's office don yellow or
brown hard hats, and stand back to watch the aperture hatch accept the next hot
water bottle as it detaches from a swooping rail, and abruptly slides down the
approach chute into the maws of whatever lies beyond.
Signor
Arseface turns to Ball, and says,
-What
happens next?
-That's
the dumb waiter, says Ball, the ministrating therapist retrieves the hot water
bottle from the serving hatch and thereto delivers the requisite tinctures and
mixtures from calibrated and sealed vessels of application. It says so in the
brochure. You can adjust the pressure at the fundament remotely from front
office simply by selecting the manual override feature. As seen on TV.
Signor
Arseface does not really know how to respond to this. And so he fills the void
by saying
-I'm
sure that will be wonderfully to everyone's liking. What about the
flavour-fonts?
-Raspberry
ripple from Walls Ice Cream, of course, says Ball, ticking them off on pudgy
fingers, iron filings from the Kissinger Foundation, nuclear waste from the
Kuznetsk League of Quondam-Apparatchiks, whipped cream from the MOD.
-We
need steel girders, says Signor Arseface, and hazlenut yoghurt and gerbils and
Ferrero-Rocher. What about ground glass? We got plenty of ground glass?
-Yeah,
we got ground glass, says Ball. He pushes his thick grimy spectacles back onto
his nose. But, he says, we're short on crude oil and quick-dry cement. And one
thing this place needs is lots and lots of glue. For the warehouse boys.
Payment in lieu.
-Bummer,
says Signor Arseface. Where does the rubber for the hot water bottles come
from?
Ball
turns and looks at him as though he is mad.
-Rubber
comes from the fucking rubber shop, he says, where else would it fucking come
from?
-I
don't know really, says Signor Arseface, shifting uneasily from one foot to
another, I had imagined something along the lines of a rubber estate in the
Congo or Malaysia. Vertical integration: that sort of thing.
-But
this is just an enema cafe, says Ball with an air of infinite patience. Enema
cafes don't need fucking rubber with vertical interwankshaft, they need hot
fucking water bottles.
-Which
are made of rubber, says Signor Arseface.
-Which
comes from the rubber shop. Rubber comes from the rubber shop.
-In
which case, says Signor Arseface with a logician’s fetish for parity of
reasoning, why can't hot water bottles come from hot water bottle shops?
-Because,
sighs Ball, gritting his teeth, if there were hot water bottle shops, then a
lot of what they sold would end up in the wrong hands, meaning rogue unlicensed
therapists, amateurs, hobbyists....
-What's
Dick want for this place then?
-Dick?
says Ball, hands by now in his pockets, rummaging furiously for spare change
and maltezers, he don't really give a monkeys what he gets for it, he just
wants shot. And he wants it in Krugerrands. Ball's hands emerge from Ball's
pockets, and are each in turn sniffed by their owner.
-Krugerrands
I can do, says Signor Arseface. He opens the backdoor, and they step out onto
an aluminium fire escape. The hot air hits them a nano-second after the
blinding light. It's been in the nineties all week. A few warehouse boys on
their tea break lounge with crack pipes and bags of glue at the bottom of the
steps, hardly bothering to look up as Ball and Signor Arseface, their eyes
streaming from the brightness, hurry down towards them with averted gaze.
The
asphalt meltingly shines and is sticky with pigeon shit and warehouse boy gob.
A slight resistance at every lifting of foot. To Ball, the sensation is not unlike
how he would imagine walking on water to be if he had any imagination. They
pick their way gingerly in their Italian slip-ons down the dark and slimy
passage between the warehouse and the warehouse next door, which, says Ball,
has been colonized by the lord of whizz.
-Concerning
whom all hail, he adds precautiously.
-Have
we got pina coladas, asks Signor Arseface, Christ! What about the bloody
pressure? What's the pressure going to be?
-The
test pilot survived level PiersMorgan with a calcified rectum, says Ball,
consequently he wasn't too keen on going any higher.
-No
level Saatchi then, muses Signor Arseface, pity, that would've pulled in the
punters.
-I
don't know about you, says Ball, but I've always thought of level Saatchi as an
unattainable and hence purely theoretical level, an ideal which we approach, if
we approach it at all, asymptotically.
-Bollocks
to that, says Signor Arseface, what about the bastard Switzers then?
-Antimatter
in atom smashers, says Ball, which here in dear old Blighty we lack.
-No
attention to excellence, grumbles Signor Arseface, no support for the small
businessman. No bloody imagination.
-It
never ceases to amaze me how anything ever gets done in this country at all,
says Ball dutifully.
Dick,
sporting a particularly blatant syrup to go with his werewolf dentures and his
suit of many creases and his non-existent negotiating skills, greets his
prospective purchasers in the public bar of the Bedbug & Wanking Chariot.
-So,
he expands as he and Signor Arseface and Ball play Mutla Ridge Kill Kill on
Korean videoramamaticotron, you two's want to get into enemas.
-Who
says we do, demands Ball, you ain't told us your keenest price yet.
-I
can come down a bit, philosophises Dick, but not too far, this is a state of
the art enema caff you got here, it's clean for a start, you got level
PiersMorgan in 62 flavours, you got a class clientele, ladies who lunch,
royalty...
-Royalty?
sneers Ball, in bloody Basingstoke??
-You
better believe it, insists Dick, ABC1's the lot of them, tired businessmen,
local politicians,...
-And
bored housewives with bingo wings, and here's you wanting bloody Krugerrands,
says Signor Arseface, what you want them for, I can't just go out and lay my
mitts on a big load of Krugerrands, there's paperwork.
-There's
fraud and corruption, adds Ball.
-Only
if you want planning consent for change of use, or if you're like that whizz
lord next door.
-Have
to grease a few palms did he? says Signor Arseface.
-Look
Messrs Strong 'n' Silent, live and let live ok? says Dick, funny handshakes? Peronsally,
I'm clean as a laundry.
-Bully
for you you cunt, mutters Ball as he gets up in search of more libations.
Dick
has an incredibly light head. For a nascent alcoholic it's really quite
pathetic. Ball and Signor Arseface knew that he would be a pushover as soon as
they set eyes on him. Two or six novelty beers and a bit of Dick's twatting
tiresomely on about specific gravity and other folky arcana see the price of
the enema cafe dropping precipitously. Much later Signor Arseface, cubicled in
his final agony, is to remember Dick's syrup sliding absurdly down his right
cheek like an escaped pubic thatch, whilst its owner swears that Signor
Arseface and Ball are both his brothers. At some point Dick collapses at the
controls of Mutla Ridge Kill Kill and is hefted out to the pub car park for a
quick bit of vomiting before being cajoled into the back of Signor Arseface's
Lexus, where Signor Arseface and Ball invite him pleasantly to invite them back
to the enema cafe in order to witness an actual transaction through the reverse
mirrors with which each enema cubicle is for obvious security reasons equipped
as standard.
They
stand at a mirror watching as before them a middle-aged company secretary
removes his belted Gannex and disrobes.
-Fat
little fuck, murmurs Ball.
-Talk
as loud as you like, says Dick soupily, every suite's soundproofed. Daft cunt
won't hear a thing. Hold on, he adds, we're looking at him through a mirror,
right? Does that mean his right is our left and that?
-Don't
act even more fucking stupid than you already are, says Ball.
There
follows a somewhat unnerving moment when the company secretary comes right up
to the mirror, and, standing about four inches away from the appalled and
amused Signor Arseface scratches first his pubes and then with both hands
worries at the sparse strands atop his bonce, before retiring to perch
self-consciously on the wicker armchair in the corner of the room. The door
opens and a peroxided demi-centenarian harpy in a thigh length parody nurse's
uniform enters the room and hands the company secretary a dry-cleaning package.
-Your
bumless suit, Mr Redwood, she says, her voice emanating eerily and
electronically from a speaker artfully concealed behind the artfully concealed
audience.
-Er
much obliged thank you very much, says the company secretary.
-What
can we do you for this week, the usual? asks the enema nurse.
-Thankyou,
says the company secretary, this week I'd like a PiersMorgan of gravel and
coconut.
-Certainly,
says the enema nurse.
-Oho,
says Dick nudging Ball, this is a departure, Mr Redwood normally partakes of
motorway aggregates and raspberry ripple.
-Special
fucking occasion, rasps Ball, polishing his glasses with his wankerchief.
-Much
obliged, says the company secretary, this is a special occasion you know,
something of a departure in fact.
-Is
it really, how interesting, says the enema nurse.
-Yes,
says the company secretary, usually as you are probably aware I take motorway
aggregates and raspberry ripple, but this week I thought I might do something a
little different.
-Gravel
and coconut, says the enema nurse.
-Yes,
says the company secretary, I thought I might push the boat out a little.
-You're
so interesting you're one of our favourite gentlemen, says the enema nurse.
-She's
dead from the neck up, says the fascinated Signor Arseface, she may actually
mean it.
-Well
it's been ever so nice, says the enema nurse, you just slip into your bumless
suit and press the button when you're ready to go.
-See
you afterwards then, says the company secretary.
The
enema nurse gone, the company secretary busies himself with his bumless suit.
Signor Arseface is gratified to learn that it is a double-breasted polyester
loom knit and is, indeed, bumless. Its bumlessness complicates the company secretary's
deportment. For one brief incandescent moment as he hops about hitching up
first one and then the other trouser leg he bends over, and his audience can
see all the way to Nebraska. Then, sartorially satisfied and oblivious of the
disgust engendered through the looking glass, he pads over on socked feet to
the wicker armchair into which, squirming and wincing, he lowers himself
gingerly.
-You
can't see it from over here, explains Dick, but the nozzle of delivery pokes up
through a hole in the chair. Sometimes the pressure makes the client want to
jump about a bit, but that's been associated with rectal calcification
according to a paper recently published in the British Journal of Clisters, so
General Accident has insisted that all nozzles be fitted with a device that
stops the client jumping about.
-How's
it work? asks Signor Arseface.
-Retractable
teeth what grips the colon walls innit, says Dick, rendering jumping about
sublimely painful. Only way for the client to modify discomfort is by request for
manual override. As seen on TV. Tomorrow's World, only it's today and that's a
fact.
For
the next five minutes there is a low noise which gradually builds up into a
high-pitched whine. Ball and Signor Arseface watch as the company secretary
bends further and further forward in the wicker armchair, his face reddenning
and his breath coming in little grunts.
Dick,
predictably perhaps, is not long for this world. Within hours he has with his
endless prevarications as much as his sartorial offences and his abysmal
standards of personal hygiene exhausted the patience of Signor Arseface and
Ball. Sheets impregnated with L.S.D are procured from the lord of whizz. Dick
is forced to lick the sheets; later, out of his mind, he is bundled down the
steps through the carpark heat haze, past the oblivious warehouse boys, into
the boot of Signor Arseface's Lexus. Ball and Signor Arseface drive their
babbling load some few miles down A and B road, roundabout roundabouts past
newtown housing through tinder dry countryside until the melting macadam gives
out to a rutted track lined with burdock and dying nettles. At the end of the
track lies a walled enclosure some two and a half thousand yards square.
Rusting wrecks and relics of cars, doors off bonnets open to the elements,
slept and shat in by ecumenical of the église de bouteille, piled three and
four high. Ball if given much to reminiscence might have thought of the
medieval tower blocks he saw from time to time when he was with the special
forces in Aden. Dick's inner world is by now too topsy turvy for him to stand.
There is a man in charge here. Money changes hands, and Dick is fed to some
machinery which promptly compresses him.
CID
come to the enema cafe asking questions, but they are stupid. Signor Arseface
is tempted by contumely to lace their cuppas with the remaining acid, but wiser
counsel prevails. The coppers are in the same lodge as the lord of whizz. Ball
tells them that Dick left in a hurry, said he was going to Malaga or Rotterdam
or somewhere, something to do with Krugerrands. The coppers nod knowingly.
Kruggerands equals meltings down equals vatfraud. Housey housey. Wouldn't mind
a bit of that. Mind how you go.
There
matters might rest, were it not for the memory of the company secretary's face
gradually reddening. Signor Arseface is preoccupied, he knows not why. The
company secretary and many others return week after week in order to have their
bums pincered from within whilst being filled to bursting with equal parts
solid and liquid. The enema cafe has clients who like to suffer. What about the
cost accountant who likes a Cowell of wire wool and battery acid up his jacksy?
Just thinking about it makes Signor Arseface's eyes water. But the enema cafe
turns a profit, most of it repeat custom. What do they know that Signor
Arseface doesn't, these penpushers and errand boys and middle managers in their
wide lapels and greasy gannexes and grey slip-ons? How can they be keyed in
when Signor Arseface is not?
The
question nags away at him, until one evening, staying late ostensibly in order
to cook the books, he instead enters an enema suite pushing in front of him a
Corby trouser press. He disrobes and reverently lays out his tailoring. He puts
on the bumless suit. The nozzle of delivery pokes blackly up from the surface
of the wicker chair. Signor Arseface hopes that the enema nurse has cleaned it
since its most recent deployment as, positioning himself somewhat maladroitly,
he gradually lowers himself. It is indescribably painful. Signor Arseface is
just consoling himself that since everyone has gone home and nothing is
switched on he can lever himself off this obscenity right now and nobody will
ever be the wiser, when the lights seem to dim, and he becomes aware first of a
blinding pain as the retractable teeth suddenly clench his gut, then of a low
hum which gradually gathers into a high-pitched whine, lastly of a force from
beneath which threatens to tear him apart but which he is powerless to escape.
He looks desperately in the mirror, but all he can see is his own reflection.
All he can hear is his own screaming. His last memory is, unaccountably, of
Dick's syrup escaping its moorings and sliding down its owner's cheek.
Behind
the mirror Ball gloats over Signor Arseface's death agony.
-Never
did like the cunt, he says to himself.
In
the morning when the stupid coppers come, he's going to tell them that Signor
Arseface's in the Turks and Caicos islands, maybe looking for Dick, then they
can put two and two together and get charlie. Serve them farkin’ well right.
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