Current mood:	curious
Current music:	"Year 2000" - Silverchair (a veritable anthem of the time)

RE: assorted passage excised from unfinished novella, "With Ghunns Blazing" (c)
[I appear to be enlivening and entertaining myself graciously, generously, with exemplary burning nostalgia recently, when observing non-directed ordinance at this computer, by sifting through the aggregated collation of half-mad, saunteringly surrealist fiction that I constructed and scrivened quite some time yon; the intermittent following, then, represents an excerpt of just such an animal. The piece is truncated from an incomplete novella entitled, "With Ghunns Blazing: Book Three in the Somewhere Near Quissia Chronicles", a trilogy of extended novel / book-length works (fabulist satires), which I composed in late 2001, early 2002, whilst encumbered and convalescing, tee hee, at jubilant justice junction, o fine and giving high-school. I've asserted, in the past, how decidedly and retrospectively unimpressed I am with the veracity, value and critical literary quality of the self-amusing writerly shenanigans that I produced when I was but a student and a kid (in some way, I suppose I still am, yes yes), but to further my emotive headspace and champion some hard-won pride, I feel it must be claimed that, in apprehended actuality, I sort of like what I'd wrote. It's inexperienced and fibrous as though whatever talent I possess was an orange lichen, then, attempting to gain hold on its ephemeral source, granted, and it comprises by no means the iridescent letters of a pillar of high art; truth told, truth revealed, what it was was an experiment, just as everything I write can be deemed as such, and very likely, forever will be capable of being perceived so; I was young and inexpert, and I, perilous and intrepid, was throughout that time methodically attempting to battle internal beasties so as to achieve an affected authorial voice to which I felt most comfortable. Finding a voice through writing, I would subjectively and intimately suggest, is a sizeable approximation of the effort in being a writer: without having industriously forged the instrument to vocalise your creative energy, that restless and occasionally burdensome artistic virtuosity, how can one be expected, seemingly, to produce something pure and gestating from within? Before you can sing, be it badly or otherwise, I would profess, you have to struggle with the inexorable fight of the dog, to find your voice.]


"Heavy and Sturdy stood at the gate. As gates go, this one was not very different from the average stereotype. It was brass, and had a large knobbly lock attaching it to the impenetrable rock face. The rock face acted as a small rotunda, surrounding the pair in an arena of granite, and vines hung lifelessly from the rock walls.
There was sign buried beneath a fixture of growth and lichen, and Heavy strained to read what it was.
‘ “Ring Bell, Knock Twice.”’ Heavy shrugged and looked for the so-called bell. Although he couldn’t identify where the bell was, he was certain that it wouldn’t have said bell if the sign had meant “climb over the gate”, so he continued searching.
Sturdy retrieved a deck of cards and began playing an impromptu game of rummy with himself. ‘Press the bell,’ Sturdy intoned, as he played.
Heavy grunted. ‘I would, o novice, if I bloody knew where the bell was. Apparently, however, *you* seem to know where it is, so rather than search for it fruitlessly, why don’t you press it.’
Sturdy grunted. ‘It doesn’t exist.’
Heavy stood perplexed, and his expression emanated such bemusement. ‘What?’
‘It doesn’t exist. The bell, that is.’ Sturdy gathered up the cards from his improvised hemisphere of rock, and bundled them into his satchel.
Heavy nodded slowly. ‘The bell?’
‘Yes.’
‘It doesn’t exist?’
‘Yes.’
‘Get away from those bushes, they must carry fumes.’
Sturdy sighed. ‘Don’t you see? It’s fundamental neo-karmic theory. Like, “see this spoon?” “Yeah, I see this spoon.” “No you don’t.” “What?” “There is no spoon.” You get? Rudimentary No Spoon thought process: if something is non-existent, why bother looking for it? Just press the bell where you think it deserves to be. Now, press the bell.’
Heavy Lout pressed the bell.
Nothing happened, and he was beginning to think that this entire escapade had been fashioned from an insane mind, when the gate opened on its well-oiled hinges.
A little leathery man with the countenance of a moss-grown kiwi fruit answered. He was a weathered, wizened fellow, and seemed to have as much grasp on reality as a horse does to a coconut tree. His face resembled a catfish, in the same way a large policeman resembles a search warrant. He wore a faded orange robe, the type a person who doesn’t particularly care much about its fashionability or practicality would wear on a Sunday afternoon. He had a whiskery sort of beard and smiled with his eyes closed.
Heavy searched his internal dictionary for the appropriate descriptive word: venerable.
The man smiled. ‘You an idiot,’ said the smiling man.
Heavy blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said you a sodding idiot. Can’t read? Says ring bell, knock twice. Not ring bell twice. Don’t you care for tradition?’ The smiling man remained smiling. He traversed from Heavy and Sturdy without the apparent addition of movement of feet. Because, as far as it could be seen, he had no feet. He was just an unfashionable orange robe with a venerable, whiskery face. As he moved, Heavy could hear the distant whirring sound of clockwork, or perhaps a hummingbird.
‘Who you?’ the venerable smiling man said, addressing Heavy.
‘Heavy Lout, a Delai apprentice. This is Sturdy Equilibrium, my companion.’ Heavy waited anxiously. He cleared his throat. ‘Er, Sturdy and I know the Question to the Meaning of Life. We seek the Answer.’ Heavy waited. ‘Also, I am a god.’
The venerable smiling man’s face crinkled in wry amusement. ‘God? You not god. You stupid idiot monk with tickets on oneself. You not even apprentice. You dirt.’
The venerable little man closed the gate.
Heavy balled his fists. ‘Oh yeah? Well. Well. I may be dirt, but dirt is durable. You on the other hand are an unfriendly, unmannered fool with as much hope in seeing the future as he does in seeing his cataracts. I’ll be dirt in the morning, but dirt with a future. However, you’ll always be as pleasant as an ingrown fragment of toenail.’ Heavy thought. ‘And you’ll die without a future.’ He waited. There was no response. ‘And perhaps you are already dead. And if so, I feel pity, Little Gatekeeper of the Dead.’
Heavy nudged aside a sprouting of fronds, and retreated. Sturdy watched him go.
‘Er, sorry about that,’ Sturdy called. ‘My friend didn’t mean it.’ Then thinking better of it, Sturdy declared, ‘And your bell riddle sucks.’


The debt-collector’s name was Teacosy. He could be distinguished from other peoples by his shock of hair the colour of a lemon, like a peroxide experiment gone wrong.
Teacosy had the words LOVE and CATS emblazoned onto his knuckles, the latter because he didn’t know how to spell ‘HATE.’ But what made Teacosy an utter anomaly was the fact that no-one seemed to be able to determine why he had ever been named Teacosy.
Some people spouted apocraphyll suggestions that he had murdered someone by making them a cup of tea, and so subsequently had gone unrecognizably feral. Others seemed to proffer forth the fact that Teacosy’s favourite passtime was attaching a giant string to his victims and bobbing them up and down in a pool of scolding hot Earl Grey.
Teacosy was the only one who knew why, to be frank, and this made him even more lethal than he already allegedly was. Someone more knowledgeable than another person will, generally, use this knowledge to his advantage, intimidating others. Actually, there’s an entire occasion commemorated to this concept: it is known as the Presidential Campaign.
Teacosy extracted the orange trilby from his head, and scratched his scalp.
The publican shuffled forth. He could perceive a bad’un when he saw one, and Teacosy was indefinitely a case of perfidy. The publican inched closer. Oh, *and* bad shampoo.
‘Excuse me sir, but I have to shut the bar for an hour or two. So if you’d kindly remove yourself from my establishment I’d be much obliged.’
Teacosy whinnied. ‘You’ve a good pint here.’
The publican exchanged the stance known as the defensive for one known as the pompous. ‘Really? Why thank you, sir. Er, but: so if…’
Teacosy placed a few coins onto the table, and pointed towards a packet of beer nuts which was tacked among a flotilla of others to a diagram of sorts.
‘If I get that packet there and you remove it, do I get to see her gazombas?’
The publican’s eyebrow arched. ‘But sir, it’s an illustration of a sheep.’
It’s rare, but sometimes suns supernova. Sometimes Jesus weeps. Sometimes nuclear power plants explode. Sometimes the rivers turn to blood. Sometimes birds fall out of the sky. Sometimes mushroom clouds billow from nothing. Sometimes the world stands still.
Sometimes Teacosy blinks.
‘Does this make it more or less attractive?’ inquired Teacosy, waltzing out into the rain.
However, even in the blackness his haircut was high and waxing."