Categories: Memoirs, With Clive, With Geoff, With Keith, With Ken
Con, then front
You know what I mean? It’s like when you’re waiting for a train and you see some mad bloke come up to you, all of a twitch, with that desperation for eye-contact that clinically sane people don’t radiate. He’s glaring at you, edging his way from the periphery of your vision. And then you recap - the past five minutes are far from clear. You were in some kind of reverie, tuned in to the headspace after the “we” of the office. Were you throwing your arms in absent –minded punctuation marks to the beats lodged in your ear? Were you chanting the tasks waiting to be tackled that evening, as you mentally wiped out one to-do list and replaced it with another? Perhaps that guy was just pulling the face everyone pulls when they’ve met some mad bloke on the platform.
Overheard (two from school, two from songs)
You spend the first five years trying to get with the plan
KEN: you hear they’ve started bringing in form assemblies?
CLIVE: like, an assembly where your form would be up front, orchestrating the readings, role-playing the inherent coolness but latent sinfulness of smoking - where the main element of the role play was that you were allowed to untuck your shirt - and what-knot?
KEN: nah, like grouping the school by forms so you get 7 Manning, 8 Manning, 9 Manning, 10 Manning and 11 Manning all together. It’s to promote some form of intra-form harmony, at least that’s what I’ve been told.
CLIVE: your mole on the inside.
KEN: yeah…mole.
CLIVE: won’t it just breed divisiveness?
KEN: I think that’s the sub-text. Already you’re meant to be able to see the results. Allen’s for the boffins, Wiseman has all the lithe sporting ambassadors.
CLIVE: breeding for the future…
KEN: I don’t think they gone as far to introduce breeding, they still think the rather primitive sex education, fusty atmosphere and stern looks will serve as the most effective prophylactic.
She likes to strew poppies as she wanders in your mind, so you can’t tell she’s been there.
Ike Yard - Loss (from New York Noise, Volume Three or 1980-82 Collected)
Dating
I tried aging my friend recently. Getting the sample for the carbon dating was a bit intrusive, so I settled for lopping off one of his limbs and counting the rings (damn those fortunate species can measure the passage of time without simultaneously and abruptly halting it). Like wines and cheeses, we pick up flavours from our environment, brewing up a heady concoction for connoisseurs to appreciate. Unlike those products, we have no handy shrink-wrapped label detailing our provenance and maturing conditions, nor guides to our nose and bouquet. Here’s to constant ripening instead…
Sleeparchive - Bleep 03 (from Radio Transmission EP)
Three of them
As he looked skyward, a fat sulphuric-tinged orb hit him squarely in the eye. Clive simultaneously resented his desk-bound job that kept him aloof from these elements and internally swore at whoever had contaminated with acid the liquid currently rinsing out his eye. This unscheduled lunch break was becoming more of a trudge than anticipated, veering away from the excuse of "fresh air" and towards aimless moping, of the kind undertaken at work, only with more sweating attached. The rain had started slowly, like the final shakes of a colander, but the grey sky was now teeming with great plodding spheres. His feet vainly sought the scarce dry ground on the muddy path, his eyes rose occasionally to fix his course on the brow of he hill.
The monkey wrench span round, describing a silver arc, gleaming in the garage’s half-light. Ken knew that his own car would never have such attention heaped upon it, there was no EU attention-mountain full of surplus mechanical love due to wranglings in the economy’s control system. Ken much preferred this hypothetical economic interference, debating money supply, as no pile of gold bullion was waiting to be deployed and prove him wrong. Your hands stayed free from oil as well. He skittered out of the path of a wobbling wheel nut, as if it were a 16 wheel juggernaught bearing down on him, and not simply one of the component parts. The light flickered. If this were a horror movie, Ken thought, I might have disappeared when the lights come back on. The grim, sweat-basted scene, men arched round a wheel-axel in temporary dumbfoundment, themselves being watched by a catalogue of women with low self-esteem selloptaped to the walls, re-emerged. Ken was still there.
A couple of window displays barked at Geoff, invading his vision as he strolled along the strip of shop facades in this satellite of warehouses cunningly disguised as shops, as opportunities that seem to orbit all towns. His hands were forcefully rooted in his pockets, fondling the box whose wires shot out and into his ears. A welcome invasion, unlike the shops.
He reached the brow of the hill, realising that he just needed to find the right windmill to tilt at.
He coughed, and when no one responded, quickly slipped out of the garage.
He hummed, whistled and considered shouting. He had decided what he was going to do that day.
William Onyeabor - Better Change Your Mind (from Love's A Real Thing - The Funky Fuzzy Sounds Of West Africa)
Multiple Choice
Which entry won most "best attempt to bring cartoon violence into confrontation with our quotidian existence" award?
Which of these would be a worthy addition to the game of Cluedo?
Which answer correctly identifies the most popular killing spree of the specified year?

Recently, I was asked a very bad question in an interview: would you say cohesion in teamwork is a Good Thing? (And yes, the capitalisation was clear from their tone.) Now, unless the interviewer was very generously giving me the opportunity to mention that day’s “magic word” (cohesion), to be rewarded with a place on an agency waiting list and the possibility of cake, this question serves no purpose except to weed out morons*. The interview panel then proceeded to ask me several questions designed to see what I thought of “diversity”. Running through my mind like tickertape was the answer “whatever diversity is, it can’t achieved by a tickbox exercise blu-tacked on to the end of your recruitment procedures” but it failed to find my mouth. Well, at least it wasn’t multiple choice.
Runners up in the worst question asked at interview include "tell us a joke" and "what's your favourite album?". Both jobs were, at best, tangentially connected to comedy and music.
Mississippi John Hurt - Frankie (from Candy Man Blues: the Complete 1928 Sessions
or Anthology of American Folk Music (edited by Harry Smith) depending on the size of your purse or wallet.)
* or maybe those with a lacklustre English vocabulary, such as foreigners.
Bright Colours
Quiet Magic. I wrote it again in my notebook. It's hard to say why. I was hanging around in the backgarden, watching the trees slowly fall to pieces in the autumn bluster. Again, later, drinking coffee in the same spot, the same words came to me.
The wind had fallen with the dimming of the sun, and silhouettes of bare trees trembled like static. I felt a bit dizzy. I had been cooped up all day - fuck: all week - reading on the sofa, my legs stretched over the side, my shaky prospects disappearing from view. I hadn't spoken much recently. It's true, I could recall with fondness the conduct of polite checkout girls (which, frankly, made the gruff efficiency of bus drivers seem terse and insignificant by comparison: pompous, even)... but little beside that. I always enjoyed television most on foreign soil, alien syllables congealing like notes from Trane's sax. Same with radio.
Out here, a few footsteps from the doorway, light from the kitchen at my back, was poor recompense for my hours of study. Finishing my coffee, I resolved to take a stroll in the nearby woods. I had my .mp3 player with me: and it's true, 128mb is scant storage space - inadequate, really - but the accordance between this tiny, rewritable data tub and the endless iterations of discrepant sonics articulated on the same reel of tape (typical of beloved c90s) was all the seduction I needed. I fantasised about a market leader alternative with a grossly indulgent capacity: but the fantasy depressed me slightly, I still had no money. Besides, the fantasy of 80gb, of (essentially) everything in the same place, lacked refinement.
It was also disquieting to discern in my fantasy an often obscured kernel at the core of most hardware purchases: that I wasn't shopping for products, still less for services, but for images. My daydream, however tenuously, tied me to the consumption of images typical of the age: "indoctrinated daydreamers" all of us, or rather, the human animal daydreams, but he has only recently learnt to manipulate the daydreams of others on a popular scale. Perhaps what I wanted, in a temporary fashion, was to be somebody else looking at me using my piece of sophisticated gimcrackery, seeing my hands brush against the aluminium controls without feeling the blood within.
Perhaps not. I was finding it hard to distinguish possibilities from reality (the purest expression of doubt? - Or delusion?). It had to be said, the latest spec appealed to me with an immediacy absent from the realm of reverie.
Anyway, shopping for images, is that really so bad? If we do indeed shop for images, and not for products, surely we're at a level of critical analysis where the moral dimension applies only to methodology and not conclusions? It seemed that an entrenched Protestant pragmatism, and that alone, could posit a rugged, common-sense shopping-for-products in place of a hedonistic, impossible shopping-for-images. At least, it would be more accurate to say: where the necessities for survival are secured, even guaranteed, shopping according to need gives way to shopping according to desire. At least on some scale, however tiny, the Utilitarianism of previous industrial regimes had been eclipsed. Were Utilitarian values to be placed upon a certain product, it would only ever be in the service of a profligate economy of desire and dismay.
But what I really wanted to tell you about was the girl I met in the woods, and all I've done is waste your time thinking about .mp3 players, the consumer society; typical bourgeois Western travails. She was still dressed from work and I recognised her from the bus. She looked like she knew me, she must have thought I was someone else. She wasn't pretty, she looked hesitant and slightly awkward. She touched me, apart from the sofa the only thing all week, and kissed me too. "I don't know your name," she moaned.
"It's Kenneth".
"Hmmm, Kenneth".
It was all pretty idiotic really, but it felt great. She pulled me off near the brook, and I swear as she tugged away my length glowed, first fluorescent pink, then green, then orange, till i splattered my semen over her pinafore. It felt great, really good, I would probably have fainted if it wasn't for the colours, I stared horrified at my cock as the orange died like fading embers. I rubbed my eyes. I think she thought I regretted it, because she became distant afterwards. She gave me her number and we said goodbye.
I Cube - Un Proton Pour Toi Un Neutron Pour Moi (from Acid Tablet)
酒倾吐了从瓶入玻璃
房子是安静。酒倾吐了从瓶入玻璃- fizzing 声音和一个水果的气味。第四天隐居几乎通过了。有三他们, 这里, 肯尼斯, Clive 和Keith, 和另外四下面。楼梯变得高度政治。战斗隐约地出现了在天际, 由坏natured 啼声预示。房子的极化长期未需要。名人要求客厅作为他们自己, 以伴随要求在厨房。这留给三位pals 一点选择但疾走在楼上和快速地要求所有四间卧室、卫生间、宣扬的碗柜和锅炉作为他们自己。如此要求, 房子的这分界是关键对了解两个队战略。剥夺厨房, 和一个前门, 我们的三个英雄设法谈判一个方式在大厦的边下和分配地段如下。同样, 楼下, 名人- 被剥夺卫生间- 喜欢对排粪在半完成露台外面。除奇怪的爆发, 有现在是沈默达大半二天。两个队准备基本武器和防御。争斗计划速写在特别时尚。肯尼斯辩解了战斗来临在周末最早。他们安定享用他们的酒, 听见噪声在stairwell 的底部当他们同时采取了他们的第一个饮者。
Justin Maxwell - Hardware Store (from The Sensational Digitized Sound)
森林が外である
ケネスサンは単独で坐っている。彼は書いている。森林が外である。葉の風はthunderous とどろきを作る。部屋のコーナーで火は火格子で燃える。Clive サン及びKeith サンは外で帰宅してい、車に取り組む。それらはオイルで覆われるが、これは意味しない不幸であることを。このパラグラフを終えた後彼はそれらに茶をする。ケネスサンは彼の仕事を完了し、ドアの方に動く。彼はソファーの毛布で包まれる子ネコの1 匹に気づく。彼女の極小の頭骨をなで、傷付けて彼は肉の部分が耳の1 つから切られたことを気づく。子ネコを密接に見るために曲がって黄色及び黒い目の後ろで潜んでいる彼は、はじめて、ほとんど人間のsentience に気づく。恐れているから遠くに、子ネコはmirthful - 楽しませてようである。彼はClive サンが外で声高に誓うのを聞いた。事は計画されるように進んでいなかった。
Arctic Hospital - Frost Castings (from Citystream)
가을은 나무를 먹는다
늦은 11월. 가을은 나무를 먹는다. 도로저 쪽에 개 게릴라피신처는 이다. 바람은 그들의 짖는 소리를 가로 건너서 나른다. 오후는 조금 결과에 통과한다. 단호한 활동은 못들어오게 한다. 시험적인 단계를 위해 시간 이다. 너는, 설정한다 정밀도의 어느 표준규격을 엄격함을 요구할 수 있는다, 그러나 결과의 특성은 그것의 애매한 모양을 유지한다. 일의 가치는 미래 일안에 명백하 단, 그때, 이들 아니다 일. 절기는 이들 일의 변상된다. 예외는 깜짝 놀라는 형광안에 밝을 것이 점화할 것이다. 활동 및phonecalls, 날짜 및 약속. 봄안에, 겨울의 과일은 지상에 내린다. 너가 충분히 길게 기다리면, 착륙할 전에 너는 그들을 붙잡을 수 있는다.
Mogwai - Terrific Speech 2 (from Zidane)
La foschia era bassa
Presto sarebbe tempo di andare. Kenneth ha rifinito il suo caffè e rapidamente si è mosso verso il portello aperto alla parte inferiore del corridoio. Clive e Keith hanno sembrato ansiosi e dato il benvenuto a lui senza parole. Slittando nella sede posteriore dell'automobile, addormentato mezzo ancora, si è appoggiato a indietro ed ha ascoltato il ronzio del motore mentre il distributore a spaglio di notizie ha elencato, in un monotono irritazione, tutte le atrocità che erano accaduto o avevano evitato nelle ultime 24 ore.
Quindici minuti più ulteriormente su, alla stazione di benzina grande sui bordo della città, Kenneth si era svegliato sufficientemente per considerare l'interazione con altri individui una possibilità all'interno dei suoi mezzi. Comprando una carta, rinviante all'automobile, ha appoggiato ad un istante sulla struttura del portello aperto ed ha osservato circa, prendendo nei suoni e nelle viste di questa mattina grigia in autunno. La foschia era bassa, tranquillo e stava andando essere un azionamento lungo.
A Hawk And A Hacksaw - The Sparrow (from The Way The Wind Blows)
