Instalment One Hundred and Seventy Six

Life wasn’t actually very sweet in the Land of Milk and Honey, not unless you had a connection in the neighbouring Kingdom, the Realm of Tea and Toast.

You see there’s only so far your economy can get with the ingredients of Sleepytime Nap Drink, it doesn’t make for a productive workforce.

The two lands, once such fine friends and natural partners had become bitter rivals, forever competing for the lucrative weekend-getaway tourist dollar.

The Queen of Tea and Toast knew she too had been damaged by the long embargo, dry bread and black tea does not make for glowing accommodation reviews online.

Like all wars it, it was not a matter of wining but trying to lose less the longest, until one day they were united by a common enemy.

Raiders from the new world, the Cult of Coffee and Cake came calling.

The Queen’s emissaries, Earl and Lady Grey were sent to a brokering with Milk and Honey with a message of armistice.

“Our land must join together or our cultures will perish.”

And so the two lands came together and the new nation of Continental Breakfast was born and visitors were mildly sated but wished for bacon.

Instalment One Hundred and Seventy Five

You need to build up your capital if you want to get ahead son, I was told. So I stared a sports hat shop, ALL CAPS as well as a sports hat shop for kids,  Small Caps to build up some capitals. 

It. 

Was. 

Simply. 

The. 

Beginning.

CAPITALISM started running RAMPANT ACRoss the world. IT WAS every MAN and WOMAN for THEMSELVES. OperATING UNCHECkED it was DISTROYING WE ONCE HELD DEAR and TRUE. CAPITALISM TOOK OVER. NO ROOM FOR DIFFERENCE, DEVIATION NOT WELCOMED. “LOWER CASE IS LOWER CLASS” THEY SCREAMED.

NEXT THE SERIFS WERE RULED SUPERFLOUS AND WE SERIFED NO MORE. PROBLEMS FOLLOWED. BUILDINGS FELL DOWN. I-BEAMS WERE NO LONGER I SHAPED. PEOPLE DIED.

so we tried to live without capitalism. 

we welcomed back all the exiled serfis. issues arose. t-shirts fit no human. y-fronts left it all dangling out in the wind. c-clamps, o-rings and s-bends were now way too small. a-frame houses fell over but a-line dresses were more accommodating to curves. it was a mess. quit your complaining and make your point son, i was told. so i made my point big. 

i’m gonna make my mark on the world, so I had a go at marksism.

Instalment One Hundred and Seventy Four

“We do nothing, still they come.”

“They hunt sister. They kill for joy. Not even eat.”

“They are sheep, know only what others do. Copy.”

The wolves were sad.

“We do better job with child than they. We only kill for need.”

The wolves were angry.

“Change must come.”

The wolves came. Down from the mountains. Out of the forests and the plains.

At night they took the children. All the children.

They was much howling in the village come dawn when the children were found to be missing.

Up in the mountains, in the forests and plains the wolves raised the children right.

Seasons bled into years.

The children returned. In packs. Wild eyed, matted together with loyal hearts.

They marked their territory, there would be a new way. Act true and protect.

The village grew strong and prospered.

The wolves returned.

“You kill bears for us.”

The wolf children said no, the bears do not harm us, you taught kill only in need.

The wolves were sad.

The wolves returned to the mountains, the forests and the plains and stole some bear cubs as their parents slumbered, raised them right.

Soon wolf bears would visit the ungrateful village.

Instalment One Hundred and Seventy Three

Patents are God to their children.

My dad was just like Jesus, he left and said he would return.

After three days his side of the closet was empty, so he was telling the truth. I just wish we had been home.

My sister called it A.D. from then on, for After Dad, and gave up on him.

I stopped believing in Jesus when I was thirteen but still thought he had said some good things.

I believed in my dad a lot longer and he never said anything good.

He was like a set of house keys, always somewhere else when you looked for him. And like keys, you would blame yourself until he turned up. I was sure it was something I did wrong.

Now I’m old, on Sunday morning I listen when the radio plays gospel music, but I don’t believe in the man they sing about. And now I’m old, on Sunday night I listen when my dad calls, but I don’t believe the man he tells me he is.

Turns out it was me that was a lot like Jesus, killing myself for a distant dad’s approval.

We could never get close to our Farther.

Instalment One Hundred and Seventy Two

Like many of you, I was told I to get somewhere in medicine, specialise. Pick something you love, a pediatrician said. She was wrong. Do something were you can make the biggest difference.

I became a Witch Doctor.

Diverse bunch witches, you never know what you’re going to get day to day. Yes I know, there’s a lot of warts, people tell you that and it’s a hundred percent true. But other days you can really make a difference. I had a witch presenting with chest pains, run the tests, turns out it was simply a matter of diet. If you’re only eating greedy kids fattened up on sweets and cakes of course your cholesterol is going through the roof.

And there’s still so much to learn, my paper “Water stored in wooden buckets has adverse effects on Wicken,” will be published next month.

They’re a challenging community, always mixing home-brew cures rather than taking prescribed medication, but we’re making inroads. And sometimes listening is enough. What I’ve learnt is that behind every poisoned apple there’s a women who society told she isn’t fair enough. Treat the patient not the symptom guys.

So don’t curse yourself, be a Witch Doctor.

Instalment One Hundred and Seventy One

The deal Ship Captains get is really second to none. You don’t hear about train captains now do you? They’re just called drivers. No one pats aeroplane pilots on the back for going down with the plane. They’re suck in the cockpit screaming along with the rest of us, no wonder they’re usually drunk in a crash.  But Ship Captains, they’re soooo honourable for going down with the ship! I say you made your bed now you sleep in it pal, I didn’t sink the ship, I don’t have epaulets on my short-sleeved shirt. You know who else has to go down with the ship but literally made zero mistakes? EVERY OTHER MAN ON THE SHIP. It’s not “women, children, and those with no culpability for the situation first!”  If it’s a lady captain I bet that that second rule outweighs the first, if this so called “Maritime Law” is even a real thing. Captains can marry people too! Did we also give them permission to start radio stations off shore? You bet we did. What I’m saying Dad, while you teach me to drive I’m the Car Captain and get to pick the music. No? Classic rock it is.

Instalment One Hundred and Seventy

My bones have a lot more to say to me these days. They won’t shut up, morning through night. My cracking bones reminding me the mistakes I made in my youth.

I rub at them with affection, regretting nothing, knowing I don’t have a jealous bone in my body. They take a crack at me, letting me know I still have a skeleton or two in my closet. Funny bones that they are, they love to cause me pain.

Bad blood runs between us. I search for sleep but the slightest movement sets my bones chattering. Their cracking grows worse and I learn a tough truth about myself. I do not have a kind bone in my body and it makes my flesh crawl.

I’ve had a skin full of my lazy bones but we’re joined at the hip. I offer to give them a piece of my mind but my bones have no change of heart. You and I, we are not flesh and blood they snap, we are nothing more than skin and bone.

A fracture that can’t be knitted.

They’ll defeat me over my dead body, when I am dust and they are still my still bones.

Instalment One Hundred and Sixty Nine

The worst job in America

Curtain up.

An office in disarray, 27 DAYS handwritten on a whiteboard. GREGORY,mid-50,overweight enters stage left.  ANDY,mid-20s, follows.

ANDY
AGAIN!

GREGORY
It’s in the lexicon kid.

ANDY
Hoover’s in the lexicon, Kleenex is common vernacular. We’ve got the President of the goddamn USA dumping our brand in the shitter.

ANDY waves a newspaper, PRESIDENT LASHES WALL STREET.

ANDY

Whatta the clips like?

GREGORY
Papers running hot, rolling across every channel.

ANDY
Spoon-faced lobcock set us back a month. 

GREGORY
We’re getting the speech.

The stately MR PERKINS enters.

PERKINS
I pay you boys don’t I?

GREGORY
Sir.

PERKINS
Then why, while sipping morning Pink-Lemonade did I read “President says Wall Street’s drinking the Kool-Aid,”?

ANDY
We’ve had 27 good days.

PERKINS
There’s nothing good about failure son.

GREGORY (whispered)
I hate the speech.

PERKINS
When my great-grandpappy left his mother’s homemade-lemonade out and returned to find it dried up, he found the idea of our lifetime. In 1978, 200 folks chug the powdered-drink Flavor-Aid mixed with poison, not Kool-Aid boys, mark my words, Flavor-Aid. So why, when someone has a great idea, why don’t we say they’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid?

ANDY erases whiteboard.

Curtain.

Instalment One Hundred and Sixty Eight

“Lovie” he said to me.

“You only call me Lovie when you want a fight to be over,” I snapped. We’d been having a go at each other for a couple of hours. It started with something his mother said about “not needing no fancy education,” which devolved into track one side one of our greatest arguments hits.

“What? I’ve never called you Lovie, what am I in the theatre? Chookas out there tonight lovie!”

“You just did!”

“What? No! It’s that thing, you know that thing that people do when life is bad you say lovie and move on.”

“You say lovie?”

“Yes.”

"Are you sure you don’t mean to say c’est la vie?”

“Say say lovie? No you are just meant to say lovie.”

“Listen to what I say… c’est la vie”

“Lovie.”

“You are so completely wrong I don’t even know where to start.”

“That’s life!”

“YES! In French?”

“What’s French got to do with it?”

“You said that’s life which is c’est la vie in French.”

“Look I didn’t finished school like you but I’m pretty sure love is armour in French because it makes you strong..”

“This is your fucking mother’s fault.”

“Kay Sarah Sarah!”

Instalment One Hundred and Sixty Seven

Love’s guidedog was a loyal and faithfully creature, please have no doubt about it, but even she had her doubts the suitability of the situation.

Aggressive return to work policies had led to the guidedog leading Love back into the office far too soon after the accident. An accident that had led to the need for the dog’s current employment in the first place.

“Maybe start with an easy one,” the dog said to Love as they walk in the door, but Love may as well been deaf too for all the notice she took of the dog’s advice.

“We got us some matchmaking to do ya mangy hound, just point me at ‘em,” was Love’s command.

The dog had no idea what she was doing so simply started sniffing people’s groins, which frankly was not far removed from the system humans had been using themselves since time began.

Matches were made, hearts were joined.

That Love was blind and following pure animal instinct was not a problem, it was that those under Love’s spell through there was something greater at work. That their match was true and unique.

It was the colour blind leading the blind leading the foolish.

Instalment One Hundred and Sixty Six

There’s no anagram of anagram.

There’s no other word for thesaurus.

It takes three syllables to make one syllable.

It doesn’t seem right that there is both a plural for single and also a single plural.

Like a well behaved child, silent letters should been seen and not heard.

Circle should be spelt O.

I suspect people literally misuse the word literally more than every other word in the English language.

Palindrome is a missed opportunity and alphabet should contain 26 letters.

Is there a word that describes words that describe words?

It is a pair of spectacles when it should be a pair of monocles, or even a duocle.

It really should be spelt hyphen-ated but unhyphenated knows where it’s at.

Contraction should put its money where its apostrophe isn’t and become cont’ion.

Being stoic makes me cry.

Monepic. Yes!

Logic has an O so you can poke holes in it.

Which came first, etymology or the meaning of etymology?

You can’t prefix something that ain’t broke yet.

I bet there’s a word in German for when people say “I bet there’s a word in German for that”

Nothing lasts forever, so let’s do nothing together.

Onomatopoeia sounds perfect.

Instalment One Hundred and Sixty Five

Once the cops sold the rights to your rights, “Sir your right to remain silent is brought to you by the McWhopper, so delicious you’ll be lost for words but light on the calories, so anything you can and do order will not be held against your waistline”, it was all over, there was no escaping advertising.

Doctors presented new parents with their baby brought to them by contraceptives, which as any new parents so learns is redundant, a child is the result of lack of contraception but acts as an opportunity barrier for ever needing contraception. Like a gun that shoots backwards, they are a self-fixing problem.

There was not a waking moment you could avoid it, or even a resting one.

Dream product placement was the dream product placement,  let your phone send sponsored signals to your brain as you sleep and get free texts.

Not even death could save you, if you could get 200 people to your funeral the coffin would be free, as long as you didn’t mind it being covered in ads for gym memberships – You can’t out run death, but you can get a head start.

All because we started skipping the ads.

Instalment One Hundred and Sixty Four

He looked at his reflection and saw perfection.

He looked again and thought maybe that wasn’t enough.

He realised the eye glasses over when faced with uniform perfection.

He saw flawlessness was a flaw, that perfection was not perfect.

He understood that it’s a bump in the road that reminds you how smooth your ride has been.

He set about perfecting perfection.

He pulled puppies ears till they learnt to bite.

He taught good children to wield a stick rather than offer a kind word.

He scratched new cars, toed wet cement and walked on the grass.

He left his fractured perfection in his wake.

He fell in love with a smart, kind woman with a beautiful soul.

He treated her so well she fell in love with him.

He told her his life’s mission and her face became a mask of horror.

He listened to her cry, ‘you are a monster, I’d could never love you.’

He was ruined for good, you could now see his black heart in his eyes.

He had been broken perfectly making him perfectly broken, something that would never bring him joy, not anymore.

She was happy to help him complete his life’s work.

Instalment One Hundred and Sixty Three

He saw the future when he slept but when he woke the detail of his dreams turned to steam and slipped through his grasping fingers.

He would search out the subjects of his prophetic visions to try and warn them of what he knew but never had success.

“I had the strangest dream and I think it was about you,” he would begin. “It was raining or we were in the pool, I’m not sure, does your name start with T? There was a very low doorway.”

No one cares about other people’s dreams, real or imaginary, so he was unable to communicate his prognostications. To many he was just another crazy person.

But that is when They came calling.

They recruited him. They are responsible for every wrong, They killed Kennedy, They faked the Moon landing, They are probably hitting on your girlfriend right now.

You ask anyone who did it, “They did!” will be the reply. They took the bad news from his dreams and made it happen. 

Which is why when you open the paper it seems like the nightmares of a madman.

Instalment One Hundred and Sixty Two

I take everything literally and I take everything, literally.

“I might need you to repeat that.”

I am a literal kleptomaniac and I’m a kleptomaniac, literally.

“You’ve not really made yourself any clearer.”

I take everything literally, which figuratively speaking would make me a literal kleptomaniac…

“See I think you have already contradicted yourself.”

…and also I literally take everything.

“Well I agree with you there, give that pen back please. Now semantically speaking…”

No, shoosh now. I’m not into semantics at all, I’m anti semantic.

“I don’t think you should say that too loud,”

But I would say I’m not anti some antics, I love me some antics to break up the quiet between words. I think I come off as odd to people.

“You took the words right out of my mouth”

See I told you I was a literal kleptomaniac. I literally took your words; I take all the words literally, I collect them. Thank you, this has been a great help.

It took time but the Wordsmith always managed to help people find the meaning of their lives, and librarians were always a little bit crazy.

Instalment One Hundred and Sixty One

A 200 Word Story Sponsored Content Feature

Nondescript, unremarkable and unmarketable?

Not a problem!

Good but not great?

Your product need be second best no more, it can be second better.

What if we told you that marketing isn’t for you.

Traditional advertising agencies happily take your money to deliver campaigns that are “just fine for what you are selling.”

We are no traditional advertising agency – we’re something new.

Your leg up might just be having the other guy stumble.

Introducing the Avertising Agency.

Q. What is avertising?

A. Simple, rather than drawing attending to your product we draw it away from your competitors.

Q. Isn’t that just negative or attacking advertising?

A. No, we don’t attack your competition, we just diminish the attention they receive.

Q. How does it work?

A. From the tried and true  “look over there,” model to “oooo a shiny thing,” we have a range of campaigns tailored to not suit the needs of your competition.

Q. If it works so well, why are you advertising?

A. Have you heard of another avertising agency? No we averted them, proof our work works!

We make distraction all action.

Avertising  - Out of sight, out of mind.

Instalment One Hundred and Sixty

In the Forest of Nidus, the Gruntle trundled along a wooded path, merrily mumbling.

The Gruntle had never met another Gruntle, nor had anyone else, so did not truly know if it was a Gruntle or the Gruntle. Such loneliness would have made another creature sad, but nothing much bothered the Gruntle’s good mood. Such was the Gruntle.
Down the forest path the Gruntle saw some friends, the twins Couth and Kempt. “Good day dear Gruntle,” said Couth as Kempt doffed its hat. Just then, up popped the Ert, never in the same place twice, the Ert was always on adventures. “I think I’ve found a way out of the Forest,” the Ert said excitedly, “Come follow me.” And so they did.

The thing about the Forest was while you could go to and fro you couldn’t get there from here. Their there and our here was separated by the Forest of Nidus. The journey changed them as journeys do. The path was overgrown and the Forest hacked and scratched our intrepid wanderers. Nidus took the Gruntle’s mood, left the twin a mess and sapped Ert’s enthusiasm. Nidus marked them each with a part of itself, Dis, Un and In.

Instalment One Hundred and Fifty Nine

Really it’s too fancy to call it a Time Machine, that’s a big call, claiming I invented a Time Machine. You couldn’t just go willy-nilly back and forth. Think of it as a bread crumb trail, not from A to B but from 1 to 2, or more impressively from 2 back to 1. That is all it could do.

But you had to start the bread crumbs, constantly dropping them unbroken in the same spot up until you want to go back to when you started dropping crumbs.

A path through time. Fantastic and fantastical limited.

Shit it pissed people off.

“Couldn't you invent a good time machine?”

“I’m gonna go back to a time I wasn’t massively disappointed by this huge piece of crap.”

Like I owed them something more . Until businesses started up. Creating breadcrumb trails, the longer the trail the greater the cost.  Only they went broke because when people fixed something in the past they didn’t need to use the service in the present.

All in all it was just easier to try and get your life right the first time around, which is why you’ve not heard of me inventing a Time Machine.

Instalment One Hundred and Fifty Eight

There was a time when I couldn’t wait till the end of the week. I loved working five days because those five days led to the best night of the week. It was our night, my girl and I. Date Night.

Look after her I did, fine wine and wine dinning, drinks and dancing, we painted the town red every god damn Friday night. 

Young and in love. We couldn’t get enough of each other. I would fly through the week, bulletproof, just to get to those precious hours. You only get 52 of ‘em in a year, they can’t be wasted.

Glory days they were.

It’s more of a battle now, the days are longer but less time to rest. By the time I reach Friday it’s all i can do to make it onto the couch. Same goes for her. Both exhausted. But still in love. Just tired. So very tired. Friday could no longer push us out the door. But we still put aside one night a month, to relive old times. Not so big, not so bold, baby sitter booked in advance.

And that is how the night after Friday got its name. Sadder Date Night.

Instalment One Hundred and Fifty Seven

She had to break up with Apostrophe, he was too possessive. And so Full Stop put an end to their relationship, it was over, period.

“You always do this, don’t you know?” her girlfriend Question asked. 

“Don’t you see how you are always looking for the smallest fault to use as a reason to escape from all these guys?”

“You said it yourself last time, you said “I can’t keep finding an excuse to finish things off,” that’s what you said,” declared Quote.

Their Sunday brunches were always like this.

Which is why they were so taken back when Full Stop got back together with Exclamation, who she had dumped a year ago.

“This is not like you at all, are you feeling okay?”

“Don’t you remember telling us you were “tired of all the surprises”?”

They were right in their incessant interrogations and recitations, it never lasted, she killed it off quick smart.

But then she found one, one she couldn’t quite find a way to bring to an end. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“You’re in love right?”

“You said I could be Maid of Honour, you promised.”

Full Stop and Ellipsis just were too alike...