January 2012
19 posts
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September
Tonight there must be people who are getting what they want. I let my oars fall into the water. Good for them. Good for them, getting what they want. The night is so still that I forget to breathe. The dark air is getting colder. Birds are leaving. Tonight there are people getting just what they need. The air is so still that it seems to stop my heart. I remember you in a black and white...
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I didn’t take a picture of the child-sized stuffed gorilla sitting out with the rubbish when I was walking the dog this evening. The child-sized stuffed gorilla has been leaning against a fence at the end of someone’s driveway for a week, but tomorrow’s our rubbish collection so I guess it’s done for. The stuffed gorilla, being child-sized, is too big to wind up as one of...
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My Hero
It’s O.K. to keep hearing your worries, so long as you stop talking to them. Shun them like a double-crossed Quaker.
Imagine how quiet it would be, like shutting off the droning ocean. That’s how our parasites must feel about our hearts. What a racket, all that pumping. Shut up shut up.
Cicero said Chrysippus said that the life in a pig is a preservative, keeping it fresh until we want to eat...
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My Brief Careers
As a doorman I didn’t know who wanted in, who out. As an anesthesiologist, I wanted every one awake between the rotten heart cut out and the motorcyclist’s installed to say how it felt. Under the robe, I wore a holster. I became unafraid of ladders. I confused the word career with careen. I was a walk-on bastard with three lines dispensed by the second scene. I mean how one morning you look in the...
I’ve been thrashing around in this small, stagnant puddle of misery, but luckily the ‘This username and/or password has not been recognised’ message which signals the closure of my university account has really focused my mind: now I can stop mucking around and get on with some proper directionless upset and jaw-clenching.
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My walk to work is laughably short, even with the added difficulty of a highly-strung dog to wrangle. I have short legs, too, and I’m not what you’d call a morning person. My enthusiasm is always low, that’s what I’m saying. I listen to episodes of ‘Robin & Josie’s Utter Shambles’, but since my walk is only seven minutes long, and I never remember to...
I’ve been driving for six years, but this afternoon I have a driving lesson because we have an automatic now and I’m terrified of driving it, shut up. I’ve been in charge of an automatic car once, and had an ugly crash when someone slammed into the back of me, and somehow my brain has convinced me that it was my fault.
What do I do with my left foot? Will the driving instructor...
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The thing I find most compelling about the BBC’s Sherlock update is that in the world of the show, no one in a 90s movie will ever have said “No shit, Sherlock”, and no child will ever have experienced the soul-terror of that creepy, adorable-dad-kidnapping bat fuck from ‘Basil the Great Mouse Detective’.
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Thank goodness they passed that law allowing you to kill anyone who answers the question “Do you take sugar?” with “No thanks, I’m sweet enough!”
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I guess I’ve been working on a base headache, just getting some colour down before I go for the real thing. Something about the light in the office is off, even after the man in the next desk climbed up and unscrewed a couple of the flickering bulbs overhead. This same man puts the smoked ends of his roll-ups in our shared bin, but I’m trying to be nice - he runs the clandestine tuck...
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I can’t sleep, because I am an arsehole. I start back at work tomorrow and I can’t sleep and I had such plans, people. Shiny bouncy hair and eyeliner and breakfast (my god, such a breakfast) and I was going to walk there. But now I’ll get up and run my head under a tap and beg a lift and it’s all terrible and forever.
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Reminder about the songs currently in the charts
They mean how beautiful and near she is. Though now each asks no more than to rest an elbow on your consciousness as a tired lane swimmer pauses for breath at the end of the pool, then pushes away again, when they do it won’t be forever; they will catch you in some bar or bedroom and mean how beautiful and near she is.
- - Tim Cockburn
December 2011
28 posts
Good afternoon. I slept funny and pinched something in my neck. I’m spending tonight the same way I’ve spent new years for 4 years: sitting with my best friend on her mom’s couch, drinking tea because we can’t be bothered to go to the (30 second walk away) off-license, watching-but-not-watching a series of shitty films.
In 2011 I got a masters, at least one great...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-12-25) →
Neko Case (17)
Hymie’s Basement (10)
Big Star (5)
Grizzly Bear (2)
Golden Boots (1)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
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I’ve heard your cries, and I don’t like to disappoint, so here is a shredding update:
After filling 14 bags, I came to a pile of papers from 2003 (we’re…we’re not good here) written by my brother when he worked here. He’s now a fancy-pants smart guy in London.
After filling 14 bags I am not close to done, but - lucky me! - I did find a Big Box of Dead...
I only wrote down a couple of hours on my time sheet for today before submitting it, and because I’m a perfect angel I came in anyway and started picking away at the ‘Shred This’ pile which currently occupies a whole corner-and-half-wall at the back of the main office. I did that until the damn thing overheated, and I got sick of pressing the paper down inside the bin, and I...
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Golden Boots - Days are Night
the days are night...
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My American mother can’t remember ever making eggnog, but when I read her the details of recipes she says no, definitely not, or makes a face and waves her hand for the next one. I’m sitting on the floor in the living room because on Friday a man came and unpicked our couch, the chair, and left us with the backs of both and two arms. He apologised for the mess and the inconvenience as...
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By the Flowers at the Supermarket
At the supermarket the floral woman asks me if I need any help. Complicated question I reply, and spend a few minutes dipping my face into the dripping breath of the flowers. I’m ready to be helped now I tell her and she asks me what my intentions are. I’d like the girl to see that I can have flowers inside a big glass jar on my coffee table just to look at and I don’t need them to be...
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Epithalamium
A bee in the field. The house on the mountain reveals itself to have been there through summer. It’s not a bee but a horse eating frosted grass in the yawn light. Secrets, the anguish of smoke above the chimney as it shreds what it’s learned of fire. The horse has moved, it’s not a horse but a woman doing the stations of the cross with a dead baby in her arms. The anguish of the house as...
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Dolly Parton - Here You Come Again
Here you come...
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Cake - Frank Sinatra
While Frank Sinatra sings...
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Brian James - Ain’t That A Shame
I’d...
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Yesterday I had a conversation which saw me accepting a year’s contract and a not by-the-hour paycheck, one which is going to be big enough that I’ll cross the threshold and start having to pay back my student loans
and still, the most exciting thing, the thing-I-can’t-stop-thinking-about thing, is the fact that I got to update my submissions spreadsheet with a...
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Things I Like, a List
Andrew Root/undertrees asked people for scenes from their favourite films, then he drew them. He drew mine! In case you were wondering, that feeling you just felt was your socks being thoroughly charmed off.
Call this burying the lede, call it bushel-based light-limitation, but I just found out that one of my poems is going to be in Magma. This will be my first publication, and it’s a...
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Toolkit for surviving unexpectedly bleached undeniably bad hair: bright red lipstick (blot and reapply until you can no longer move your mouth); bad light (which is actually good light, because it warms a be-gingered barnet up several shades); blusher (just put it everywhere); bitchface; belief in your own babe-ability; the cold dead-eyed stare of a killer(robot); blessed co-workers who will...
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I decided I was done with box-dye red hair for now (even though it is my one true love) and slapped on a pack of ‘Colour B4’, a dye-stripper-outter I’ve used before to no ill effect. This was 2 hours ago, and I hadn’t looked in the mirror since I finished rinsing it and left it to air dry. I…well okay I had forgotten that in the last 2 months or so I’ve used a...
November 2011
28 posts
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-11-27) →
The Four Tops (10)
Britney Spears (8)
Solange (3)
En Vogue (2)
Danny Kaye (2)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Today at my dentist appointment I hope to finally convince him that my discomfort is not due to pain (or the fear of), but because it is a really awkward social interaction and also because I spend most of the time thinking about when the prime time is for sitting up under my own power when he raises the back of the chair. When do people do that? Is everyone else springing from the chair as soon...
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