Kilgore Trout

Kilgore Trout is one of the most prolific unheard of sci-fi writers of the 20th century. Trout is credited with writing thousands of short stories and a number of novels. Often as soon as he finished a story he dumped it in the trash bin and started writing the next story. He did not care if you or I read his stories, he wrote them for himself. A majority of Trout’s works were published in 50s-70s era lurid magazines whose sole purpose were to show large breasted women and their nether regions. Trout’s stories were simply filler that allowed the magazines to function under the guise of literary function. The world is better for having had Kilgore Trout participate in the pointless cycle of trips around the sun.

“Why are we born, only to suffer and die?”

“You were very sick, but now you are not. There’s work to be done.”

Introducing Det. Lee

When Detective Lee got the dispatch call for a suspicious death on Sunday morning he knew it was going to be a shit day. After a week of heat the skies had opened up before daybreak and now the wind rolled in off the ocean causing the citizens to staggering around at forty five-degree angles. Det. Lee pulled his unmarked cruiser to the curb outside of Tenement Block C and lit a cigarette. He waved to one of the uniformed lackeys and threw open the passenger door for him. The young kid, twenty years old and straight out of the bush, climbed into the cruiser. 

“So, kid, what’s this suspicious all about?” Det. Lee said, while offering him a cigarette, that he gratefully accepted, lighting it as if he had been smoking all of his life.

“Ahh it's a real nasty scene in their chief. I tell ya, it's gotta be one of the nastiest ones I've seen.” 

Det. Lee smirked at the kid who had only been through one full summer as an officer of the East Purgatory Police Department. “Thirty years on the force I tell ya. Over fifteen as a homicide detective and I still can’t take a vacation in the fucking summer because of the rotters,” he said, shaking his head. “They think there is an increase of murders in the summer. That’s fucking nonsense. Especially since they don’t even want us bringing in murder charges!” Smoke billowed from his mouth as he continued his lecture for the bored pupil. “There’s just as many murders in the winter, maybe even more. Only difference is in the winter there’s no blasted heat to rot them down. Come the start of summer the stench builds so quickly that we are alerted to bodies all over the place. Who knows how many of them have been lying there since the winter waiting to rot.”

“Yeah. You said it Detective.” The kid flicked his cigarette out the window and exited the car.

Timequake

Just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Timequake (1997). His last published novel that he wrote over ten years (although I think it is over 5 years x2 because of the re-run) and is mostly about the novel that he couldn't write, Timequake 1. It’s nothing amazing and it is very sentimental about his large extended family, which I liked, but the main idea for the story is great. 

In 2001 there was a “timequake” that sent everyone back to exactly where they were at that moment in 1991. Everyone must live the next ten years knowing what is going to happen but unable to change any of the decisions or outcomes. In 2001 at the exact moment when the timequake kicked in during the original timeline everyone’s free will is reactivated, but because they were on auto-pilot for the last ten years no one reacts immediately and chaos ensues. 

Pretty funny stuff.

Dreams for the skeleton man

One night his dreams took on a new dimension. Instead of watching his nightmare from a bird’s eye view he was sitting on the futon in Laz’s apartment and watching himself in a dream, on the shitty TV. The TV would cut out from time to time, show meaningless statistics from baseball games that had never been played, and then it would manifest nothing but blue static for what seemed to be hours at a time. The dream had a Disney effect where the small grotesque creatures who inhabited Laz’s apartment became cutesy, big-eyed versions of cockroaches, maggots, rats and crows. They would watch the dream transfixed, throwing out comments like, “Jeee-whizzzz what a pickle that cucumber has gotten himself into. Te-he-he.” Or, “I remember this! I remember this! Glory be to Satan who has blessed me with these vivid echoes.”

Of the depraved shows in which he was both the sole spectator, (if you did not count the critters), and the sole protagonist there was one episode that received more airtime than the others, although it was slightly modified each re-run. This particular episode always started off the same way. He had just been buried in the rundown cemetery outside of East Purgatory. There was no one in attendance except for the gravedigger. No family members, no friends, no lovers, not even any critters. As the first shovel full of dirt was thrown onto the cheap pressboard coffin the skeleton man in the episode was awakened. He banged helplessly on the lid from the inside and yelled, inhaling dirt and dust as he did so. The gravedigger was unaware of his screams and continued piling dirt into the hole until his lunch break, at which point he left the grave half filled. At that moment a deadly pathogen made contact with the earth’s surface and killed anyone who was not underground. The pathogen, being so powerful, did not allow itself to stick around for very long. There were no cases of human to human transmission. 

Hours go by and the skeleton man continues his barrage on the coffin door until it reluctantly bursts open. When he emerges from the coffin he looks around the cemetery and sees no one. Unaware of how the world has changed since his failed entombment he idly moves away from the cemetery and towards East Purgatory. Approaching the city he is confronted with the mess that has been made of his hometown, as well as the realization that there is no one around to clean it up. He opens his mouth to speak but instead of words all that comes out is nonsense, “Dee-da-doo-de-lee. Dee-da-doo-de-lee.” The closer he gets to East Purgatory the more excited his critter viewing partners get, “This is it! This is it! Oh boy our favourite part!”

Walking along the streets of East Purgatory the skeleton man high steps over crumbled bodies and puddles of piss and blood. Consequently, one of the side effects of the pathogen was projectile vomiting blood until the stomach lining itself was spewed up. Covering his nose with his t-shirt, he floated through the streets until he was outside of the public library. When he entered the library the dream shifted and the TV turned to blue static. He was left sitting in the dream with the critters who were disappointed that they did not get to see what they knew was in the library. Regardless of how the dream changed, pathogen, atomic bomb, meteor, the skeleton man was always led to that same library and never permitted to enter.

Needless to say his mind was increasingly flimsy. During the resurgence of these dreams he would only leave his home to purchase cigarettes and balloons of heroin for fear of what may happen if he were struck by an episode while in public.

Taste testing

The diminutive apartment in Tenement Block C was dark save for the light coming from the small, box TV. Laz’s stiff body remained on the futon where the skeleton man had left him hours ago. His soiled sweatpants were filled with shit and piss that his body had expelled shortly after his death. The second blow delivered by the skeleton man that day had cracked the ribs on the right side of Laz’s body and punctured his lung. His lungs had slowly filled with blood before they collapsed in on themselves and sent blood shooting out of his mouth and down the front of his white t-shirt. 

The stillness in the apartment had enticed his unseen roommates out into the open. Cockroaches climbed over his body and sampled the smorgasbord of dried blood on the front of his t-shirt. A small family of ugly rats had emerged from a hole in the wall and were now dining on Laz’s toes. Having gnawed through his socks they hungrily stripped the skin from his toes and chewed on the spoiled meat. A small bluebird sat perched on Laz’s head and drove it’s beak into his eye, plucking it out of the socket, and drinking the nectar of the pierced eyeball. As the dangling eyeball dripped retinal fluid it hung from a series of muscles that looked like a slimy worm. The bird instinctively directed its attention to the worm-like muscle and snatched at it with its beak. Severing the connection, the bird tilted its head upwards and caught the gory mess in its mouth, swallowing the muscle and the deflated eyeball.

Evelyn Waugh

“Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression”.

I was first introduced to Evelyn Waugh by Dr. Cory Rushton in my Eng 101 class. While I was an uninspired student who wrote meager essays I will always be grateful for this introduction. After reading Vile Bodies (1930) I knew I had found an author who spoke to me. In the past nine years I have read fourteen of Waugh’s novels and listened to numerous recorded interviews.

Evelyn Waugh was a British novelist, biographer and essayist. Waugh’s first major achievement as a novelist came in the form of the satirical novel titled Decline and Fall (1928)  which he followed up two years later with one of his greatest works, Vile Bodies (1930). 

Vile Bodies satirizes the “bright young things”, a group of young wealthy British individuals who spent the post WWI years partying, and basking in a decadent lifestyle. This novel explores the division between the young who missed the war and their family and friends, some only a handful of years older, who experienced firsthand the horrors of WWI. Waugh himself notes that this is the first novel where a majority of the conversations take place on the telephone. This feature illuminates the distance between the characters and their reality as well as miscommunication.

Brideshead Revisited (1945) is Waugh’s self described magnum opus. Waugh wrote the novel in six months after he was injured during a parachute jump. Wartime privations had Waugh longing for a distant past where the food spreads were decadent, the wine was plenty and the only worry for the aristocratic class was who to invite, and equally important who not to invite, to dinner. At this time the motif of Catholicism emerges in Waugh’s work as a serious topic rather than another established hierarchy to satirize. Brideshead Revisited has been adapted into a film as well as an 11-part miniseries.

Between 1952 and 1961 Waugh completed the Sword of Honour trilogy; Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955) and Unconditional Surrender (1961). This trilogy reflects Waugh’s personal experiences during WWII and has limited battle scenes. Post WWII Waugh’s writing becomes more conservative in tone and subject matter. Despite this newfound conservatism he does not lose his deft touch for humour poking fun at the bureaucratic mess that develops alongside the British war effort.

Special mention to Black Mischief (1932) which chronicles the misadventures of Emperor Seth and Basil Seal as they try to modernize the fictional African island of Azania. Another favourite of mine is The Loved One (1948). This short novel attacks Hollywood. Waugh had visited LA in 1947 to work out a film adaptation for Brideshead Revisited following its American success, something that Waugh viewed as a professional failure. Although an American studio feature of Brideshead was never fully developed, Waugh did write The Loved One based on his experiences in Hollywood. The Loved One was later adapted into a movie of the same name (1965) by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood.

outtake

Time passes and the fresh nail polish on Belinda’s toes hardens. Moving gracefully from her seated position to the record player, Belinda slides the Roxy Music album into its sleeve and replaces it with the debut record from Sonic Youth, Confusion is Sex. The second the noise starts pumping into the room, Belinda’s mood is elevated to something that closely resembles the feeling of happiness. She purposefully marches to the bed and strips the blankets off leaving only a white sheet made of soft Egyptian cotton. Lying down on the bed, Belinda tilts her head forward bringing her chin to her sternum and stares at the painting on the wall across from her, Perpetual Sacrifice, painted by Alfonso Ossorio and gifted to Belinda on her fifth wedding anniversary by John.

Belinda removed her terry cloth robe and gently dragged her hands along the length of her body. She pulled herself into a seated position with the soles of her feet pushed together. Massaging the tops of her feet, she admired the fresh coat of nail polish that reflected the low candle light in the darkened bedroom. “Beautiful toes. Beautiful feet. Beautiful friends”, she repeated her mantra to herself on a loop. With intention, she began to wind her fingers into the spaces between her beautiful toes, rubbing the joints and stretching the toes out wide. She pulled her right foot closer to her pelvis and tentatively fingered her clit with the big toe. Pushing hard against her clit, Belinda dipped a toe into her wet pussy, releasing a small gasp as she did so. In the background Kim Gordon screams, “Now I wanna be yr dog!”, over and over. One after another Belinda inserted the remaining toes into herself while simultaneously engaging her ujjayi breath to relax the bent right knee. Her pussy gripped the toes and greedily sucked the extremity. Now the top half of her foot was delicately jammed into her pink pussy. She stared into one of the many faces of Jesus in front of her and tenderly humped her foot, rocking her pelvis back and forth. The room vibrated with the toneless noise from the record and it blocked out the hysteric moans jumping uncontrollably off of Belinda’s puckered lips. Her pussy contracted around her foot and as she orgasmed, her foot was displaced and a geyser of ejaculate followed it, shooting off the bed and soaking the carpet. Belinda laid back exhausted. Her right foot shimmered in the candle light and the inside of her thighs looked like someone had drizzled honey all over them. Sometimes she enjoyed her loneliness.

Do you ever see a picture where you are wearing a piece of clothing that you no longer have. You wonder where it went, why it went. You remember some old guy at a glass factory telling you the tshirt is from when the dead played in upstate new york at the bills stadium, then you remember that you havent bought new clothing in over a year. maybe cause you have no money, but probably because you dont care about fashion anymore.

This is not a blog

This is not a blog. This is a blog.