Saturday 28 December 2013

The Human Race


So we have started tiptoeing upon the great curvature of SpaceTime. 

And yes the rest of the Universe has a head start of billions of years...

But what is a few billion years?


Sunday 22 December 2013

Metaphors 1


The hyena doesn't laugh.
The parrot doesn't talk.
The bird doesn't sing.



Sunday 15 December 2013

The Ex-Boyfriend



"I never liked your body anyway. I was just using it to get to your personality."


Saturday 7 December 2013

Nature


We hate Nature 
Nature does not hate us for hating it
Nature cannot hate
That is why we hate it

Sunday 1 December 2013

The Fire


When an old peoples' home caught fire care-workers carried out a procession of old biddies, still seating in their armchairs, depositing them in the front yard. Once on the lawn the old biddies sat there and acted exactly as if they were in their dayroom.

The last of the old biddies' was carried out of the home. Her hair was on fire. She was placed away from the others in the front yard.

The old lady with her hair on fire opened her mouth then miniature care-workers carried out of her head a series of tiny seated old biddies depositing them on the old lady's boney shoulder.


Saturday 23 November 2013

The Shore of Ultimate Knowledge


On the Shore of Ultimate Knowledge the pebbles are hypercubes and mute philosophers of all shapes and sizes bask in religious stupefaction while the great sea of Metaphysics breathes as you breathe.




Saturday 16 November 2013

Mr Wurzberg


Mr Wurzberg carried a satchel in which he kept a selection of half a dozen long cherished and warn out arguments which, at the very slightest of provocations, he would take out and flamboyantly recite.

It didn't matter to Mr Wurzberg what people made of his arguments or that many contradicted each other or were in some way or other logically suspect. 

What mattered to Mr Wurzberg was the ritual of the thing and the feeling that came with it; the careful unfolding and folding away of the paper, the predictable way his jaw moved, the reassuring sound of his own voice, the sudden sense of his sheer superiority to the universe, the fleeting feeling that he had outsmarted reality, had got one over on things-as-they-were, in short the oh so temporary but exquisite sense of solidity under his ridiculous feet.


Saturday 9 November 2013

Heaven


When Heaven died because no one believed in it anymore it went to Heaven Heaven until people stopped believing in Heaven Heaven then it went to Heaven Heaven Heaven and so on. 

Amen.

Saturday 2 November 2013

National Geographic Channel


Vampire victim's puncture wounds, scientists have recently discovered, contain microscopic fangs which the 'victim' uses to feed off the vampire's life essence. 

  

Saturday 26 October 2013

Holy Mother of God


The Virgin Mary came to her son's parents' evening but spent most of the time on the phone arguing with her social worker.

Sunday 20 October 2013

My Woody Allen Story



One day I saw Woody Allen wearing a beard. 

I'd like to tell you more but I've been refused permission from Woody Allen's legal representatives to include him in a story (beard or no beard).

Sunday 13 October 2013

The Bath


One day a person (as yet unidentified, as yet unborn) will have a bath and when they have finished they will remove the plug and when the water has disappeared down the plug hole the plug hole itself will stretch dali's watch like and spiral inexorably into the hole within itself and behind it, like dew beads on a spider's web, like premises in a syllogism, will follow each and every perfect piece of existence.  






Sunday 6 October 2013

Deja vu



'Aachoo!'
'Bless you.'


'Aachoo!'
'Bless you.'

Sunday 29 September 2013

Deja vu


'Aachoo!'
'Bless you.'


'Aachoo!'
'Bless you.'


Saturday 21 September 2013

Dr Pepper the People Person


Dr Pepper was a neuro surgeon at John Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland one of the oldest health care institutions on the East Coast.

There was a soft drinks vending machine in one corner of Dr Pepper's office and a sign over his desk that read:


 'It's not rocket science 
 it's brain surgery!'


Dr Pepper would spend most of his day in his office explaining very carefully to his patients that they needed brain surgery in order to remove this or that tumour. 

When he had finished explaining as carefully as possible why surgery was necessary he would stand up, say "What's the worst that can happen?" and then hand his patient a soft drink before showing them the door.

Sunday 15 September 2013

Romantic Financial Transaction


The charity bookshop sales assistant was so incredibly beautiful I would drop the book I was pretending to read whenever she looked in my general direction.

She was so beautiful you had to almost laugh -  as if God was playing some kind of practical joke.

When I had built up enough courage to go near her I took my collection of pretentious books and headed over to her till. 

She looked even more beautiful up close then she did from across the store.

As she added up my bill she commented intelligently on the books I had chosen; what did I think of Brecht's acting methods? should Nietzsche be regarded as the father of the unconscious in place of Freud? what was the cause of the breakdown of of The Liberal Alliance in 1885?

I mumbled incoherently to each of her questions and presented my sweaty credit card.

Our fingers touched briefly as she handed me the pin code reader.
Shaking I put my card in the slot but there was a problem the card hadn't been read.

'Take it out and put it in again' she suggested.

I did as requested then typed my pin code in what I hoped was a-devil-may-care manner.

Romantic music began to play on the charity shops radio as my card details were checked. 

There I was face to face with a beautiful woman as modern capitalism did it's thing.

We smiled at each other within our electronically induced silent moment. Neither of us knew what to do or where to look but it didn't in the slightest way feel awkward. This is the most romantic financial transactions of my life I suddenly realised and wanted to share this revelation with her. Just as I was about to there was a beep and the sales assistant, who was so beautiful it was some kind of a joke, informed me that my card had been rejected.

I paid with cash and left.



Saturday 7 September 2013

Deaf Mad Florist


Tragically mishearing the voice in his head the man cut his girlfriends' heads off, wrapped them in some nice paper and gave them to a daffodil.


Saturday 31 August 2013

Cut and Curl


Miss Bagaboo's hair salon became all the rage among her old age customers due to her shimmering, strangely translucent hairdos. 

Sporting a Miss Bagaboo hairdo was soon de rigueur at the bingo on friday nights.

The old dears thought Miss Bagaboo's hairdos were the result of fancy hair products and wonder chemicals but Miss Bagaboo's hairdos were in fact the various appendages of a fifth dimensional being that dissected our three dimensional world at a number of points simultaneously. 

(What the old dears would have done had they known this is anyone's guess.)

Sunday 25 August 2013

Saturday 17 August 2013

Employee of the Month


Bernard A. Bell had worked at Shop-A-Lot for a number of years before he took up the company's offer of having his corpus callosum (the bundle of nerve fibres that connected his left and right brain hemispheres) severed - completely free of charge.

The day after the operation Bernard A. Bell wore a Shop-A-Lot cap to hide the stitch marks and was able to man two checkouts tills simultaneously thereby increasing his productivity significantly. 

The right hemisphere of the Bernard A. Bell's brain controlled his left arm that worked checkout till 4 and was more chatty with its customers while the left hemisphere controlled Bernard A. Bells right arm that worked the checkout till 5 and was much better at facial recognition and more musically inclined.

Three months after the operation Bernard A. Bell's left brain hemisphere was named employee of the month.








Sunday 11 August 2013

The Ceremony


At an undisclosed date unidentified individuals will lay an indeterminate number of wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Sunday 4 August 2013

Toy Guns

"Play nicely with those guns or I'll take them away" said the mother on the bus next to me to her children.

Sunday 28 July 2013

Writer's Block 2


He couldn't write.

He couldn't write even in the middle of a deep still night or in the-almost-religious light of a Sunday morning. 

He couldn't write when he was happy or when he was sad or when he was both. 

He couldn't write in coffee shops or libraries or anywhere else for that matter. He couldn't write in his multi-coloured notebooks he had bought especially or even on the palm of his hand. 

He couldn't write even while on a great journey by train. 

He couldn't write even after he had intentionally made his personal life overly complex and hectic. 

Metaphors were faraway cities to him, personifications were like distant relatives that no longer came to visit.


His pen, he knew, felt nothing but silent contempt for him.



And then one day the writer gave up being a writer and immediately the words flowed and flowed...


Sunday 21 July 2013

The Philosopher

'The good news is that there is an absolute reality' he said.
'The bad news is we can never know what it is.'

Saturday 13 July 2013

On the Planet Zapoon



On the planet Zapoon people have three hands and when they are asked a tough question they sometimes reply 'On the one hand... on the other hand... and on the other, other hand...' 


Saturday 6 July 2013

Botticelli's Venus


Botticelli's Venus feels peckish. 

Botticelli's Venus takes from the folds of her divine hair a packet of cheese and onion crisps.

Botticelli's Venus eats the crisps in High Renaissance fashion.

Botticelli's Venus finishes the crisps, licks her lips, crunches up the empty packet and throws it beautifully over her perfect shoulder into her shell which closes like the lid of a bin.

 

Saturday 29 June 2013

The Exclamation Mark


One quiet sunny afternoon a giant exclamation mark appeared suddenly.

At first people laughed and took photos of it with their phones. Later the authorities were called and the exclamation mark was sealed off with police tape and passers by were told to keep back.

News channel helicopters buzzed around the mysterious symbol. 

Attempts were made to reason with the exclamation mark, to find out what it meant, but the punctuation said nothing.

The army was called in and a platoon of tanks surrounded the symbol.

The colonel in charge gave the exclamation mark one more chance but still the giant punctuation failed to explain it's meaning or context.

The colonel ordered his tanks to open fire. The shells bent the exclamation mark until it resembled a question mark.

Everyone felt a lot less worried about a question mark than they had about an exclamation mark and the colonel and his tanks were ordered back to their barracks.

Two months later the top half of the giant punctuation was taken away and used as a slide in a nearby playground. All that was left of the mysterious exclamation mark was what people took to be just a run-of-the-mill full stop which was soon covered over with weeds and completely forgotten. 

Sunday 23 June 2013

The Screenplay


The screenplay was based on a novel about a character who was writing a short story about a character who was writing a narrative poem about a character who was writing an opera about a character writing another novel. 

It did not get optioned.





Saturday 15 June 2013

The Unlikely Story


One day during morning break a boy was seen wandering aimlessly in the undergrowth on the wrong side of the school fence. 

The fence was too high for him to have climbed over and the gate was securely locked. The RE teacher, who was on playground duty at the time, asked the boy how it was he had got there.  The boy said that he had absolutely no idea. One moment he was leaning against the fence in the playground with his friends and the next he was on the other side. The RE teacher examined the fence but found nothing untoward.

So the RE teacher, being a trusting soul, took the boy to see the Physics teacher and had him repeat his unlikely story.

'It sounds,' the Physics teacher said after a little thought, 'rather like quantum tunnelling, when a particle tunnels through a barrier that it classically couldn't surmount thanks to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and probability density. Normally of course that sort of thing would only happen to subatomic particles.'
'Well he is quite short' pointed out the English teacher who was passing by and who, like most English teachers, knew very little about science.   
'Anyway,' went on the Physics teacher, 'the chances of such an event occurring must be, well, at least 200 million billion to one.'

The RE teacher (whose mind contained a host of equally implausible explanations) decided to make nothing of it and the boy, who had simply arrived late to school and had made up the whole story in an attempt to avoid a detention, was free to go.


Sunday 9 June 2013

The Bicycle


My bicycle's gears are so ingeniously arranged that when I peddle backwards I in fact move forward. This has the comforting psychological effect that no matter where I am actually headed I always feel I am slowly but surely making my way back to where I started from. 


Sunday 26 May 2013

The Dali Lama


The Dali Lama often bursts into unrestrained laughter even amid the most serious of discussions. There is never any doubt however that he cares deeply about the topic since he considers each question at some length and confers with his translators and advisers before rolling around the floor guffawing. 

Saturday 18 May 2013

Sympathy


The tutor heard the story of lament and looked concerned. He opened a drawer of his desk, took out a sympathetic ear and offered it to the poor student who, wiping tears from her eyes, declined explaining that she had already eaten.

Saturday 11 May 2013

AK47


The wealthiest arms dealer in the world, who normally started three civil wars before breakfast, had a special bathtub made just for himself; it was solid gold and had the plug hole in the centre.

One sunday afternoon, as one hundred and three armed conflicts around the world were going on, the wealthiest arms dealer had a bath. Somehow while having his bath, the wealthiest arms dealer in the world managed to get his penis stuck in the plug hole.

'Bonk.'

The pressure from the water was so great that the wealthiest arms dealer was trapped in his golden bathtub.

Meanwhile two governments were overthrown and three new national anthems composed.

The wealthiest arms dealer in the world shouted and shouted for help but it was sunday afternoon and his servants all had the day off.

The wealthiest arms dealer in the world lay trapped in his golden bathtub for hours and hours.


The wealthiest arms dealer in the world only got out of his golden bathtub with the plug hole in the middle by drinking all the bath water and then pissing it out.

After that the wealthiest arms dealer in the world never sold another weapon in his life.


Monday 6 May 2013

Truism


The coiled spring lay in the corner of the room like a coiled spring.

Saturday 27 April 2013

Carbon

The girl was swimming in the lake one morning when the fire fighting plane scooped up water. The girl was dropped on the forest fire raging a few kilometres from the lake.

She didn't help.

Saturday 20 April 2013

Proof of Design

The very best argument for the existence of God I ever heard was told to me by a young baptist minister. (The sad insane look religious people have was only just beginning to come into his eyes.)

He said there had to be a God, just look at a beautiful woman's body.

Like I said it was the very best argument for the existence of God I had ever heard.

I'm still not a believer though: you see I think a beautiful woman's body is a sort of stylised question mark, so I'm agnostic.


Sunday 14 April 2013

The Kiss


Her kiss reminded me of the noise my gas fire used to make when I was at college. Back in my student days the winters were very cold.
I used to kiss girls to keep warm.

Saturday 6 April 2013

The Playground


Next to the thin line was a slippery slope and a grey area.


Saturday 30 March 2013

The Future


Sat in the bath I saw my entire body stretched out before me.

Saturday 23 March 2013

Saturday

A woman went slightly mad as people sometimes do. She was a nurse in a maternity ward and the day she went slightly mad she shouted at every baby as soon as it was born 'Why don't you go back where you came from?'

Saturday 16 March 2013

The Home Owner


David Sporat walked around his house as if he owned it.

Saturday 9 March 2013

Jack and Jill

Jack and Jill went up the hill
to fetch a pail of water.
Jack sat down and started to philosophise 
that he was perhaps nothing more than a character in a 18th Century nursery rhyme and Jill went off with Bill. 

Saturday 2 March 2013

The Little Old Lady


I knew a little old lady who believed, till the day she died, that there was a God in heaven and thus everything was good with the world.

And yet this same little old lady could never convince herself that the light in her fridge went off when she closed the door. 

Go figure.

Sunday 24 February 2013

Politics


She was gesturing wildly and dropped a lump of ash from her cigarette into her belly button. Still arguing her point she ran into the sea.


Saturday 16 February 2013

The Appliance


What sort of crime could make an otherwise sane man spend four years in a tumble dryer?

What unspeakable act would warrant such a fate?

Was he hiding or was his spending four years in a tumble dryer a self imposed punishment? 

Did it have some symbolic meaning? Surely.

What sort of crime had he committed or what sort of crime had he thought he had committed? 

And what if the man had in fact committed no crime at all? 


Sunday 10 February 2013

Internet Dating


I befriended a pervert online. He turned out to be a beautiful woman.

Saturday 2 February 2013

The Terrible Joke


A couple came to stay with us one weekend. The woman was a comedian. She had picked up her boyfriend at one of her stand up performances.

She got drunk and told me it had all been a terrible joke.


Saturday 26 January 2013

On The Road to Damascus


When the mini bus the evangelists were in broke down in the heat they blamed the devil and when a little later a mechanic repaired it they thanked the Lord.


Saturday 19 January 2013

The Glasses


She told me to clean my glasses when it were hers that were dirty.

Saturday 12 January 2013

Leap of Faith


Voice in the Dark 1: 'Think about what you are saying. You're scaring everyone.'

Voice in the Dark 2: 'I have thought about it a great deal.'


Voice in the Dark 1: 'Be reasonable. Don't rock the boat.'

Voice in the Dark 2: 'I can't abide the reasonable. Is it reasonable for me to go on existing without a clue why? Must I move from one end of our world to the other until I die?'

Voice in the Dark 1: 'What makes you different from the rest of us? We all want to believe in more but there is nothing out there. The sooner you accept that the better.'

Voice in the Dark 2: 'But what if there is?'

Voice in the Dark 1: 'How do you know there is?'

Voice in the Dark 2: 'I don't I-'

Voice in the Dark 1: 'See.'

Voice in the Dark 2: 'But it doesn't matter, even if there is only the slightest chance, a one in a million chance, I must take it.'

Voice in the Dark 1: 'Why?'

Voice in the Dark 2: 'Because... I don't know I just must.'


Voice in the Dark 1: 'There you go again, you can't explain why you must do something - you're talking nonsense as usual. You're nothing but a religious fool.'

Voice in the Dark 2: 'And you're a narrow minded Empiricist!'

Voice in the Dark 1: 'Well it's a lot better than believing in the metaphysical fish shit you subscribe to.'

Voice in the Dark 2: 'Where is your vision? You couldn't see a higher reality if it swam over and bit you! You are so blinkered by your conditioning.'

Voice in the Dark 1: 'At least I'm not so open minded I don't hit my head repeatedly against the edges of our world.'

Voice in the Dark 2: 'I was experimenting.'

Voice in the Dark 1: 'You experimenting! Don't make me laugh. What do you know of experimenting?'

Voice in the Dark 2: 'More than you think, I was testing the limits of our reality.'

Voice in the Dark 1: 'Ha! Just as you try to make sense of the lights that sometimes dance on the walls of our world?'

Voice in the Dark 2: 'Yes.'

Voice in the Dark 1: 'And now you think you've found a way out. A way to transcend our reality.' 

Voice in the Dark 2: 'Yes.'


Voice in the Dark 1: 'Well then what are you waiting for Jonathan Seagull do your stuff!'

Voice in the Dark 2: 'Your right it's time. Goodbye my weak minded friend. I will try to return one day if I can.'

Voice in the Dark 1: 'I doubt it.'

____

A door opens and a little old lady with pink hair enters with a tray on which are two cups of tea.
She looks at a figure slumped in the armchair in front of the TV.
'Fred, wake up,' the little old lady says 'I've made you a nice cup of tea.'

As she walks across the living room she does not notice the dried up goldfish lying on the table a few feet from it's goldfish bowl.




Saturday 5 January 2013

The Translation



Island 

A Novel 

By Aldous Huxley

(Translated into one dimension by R. T Tripp)






.








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