A Modern Narrative [1] Goes Live

In the late autumn of 2008, I resuscitated an old book entitled "A Postmodern Belch" from the recesses of my pubic hair (it had sprouted like a moss throughout the city).

When said book had been dusted off, polished up, re-worked and completed with help from my writing workshop associates: mainly Derek, Chris, Mike and Dana, I fell into a stupor.

So, to stop myself from spending another month going "aaaaaa" in front of the computer, me wrote this. Fun narrative. Bouncy. Postmodern. You'll hate it and you're love it.

Beep beep. You can find it here.

An Ode to Impatience

Like the stunned panicking Wobblermen

dancing in the garden of strife

I am the walking bollock

of inconsequence

My flats are plain and my plains are flat

yet sauce drips from the downs

(the ups, the downs)

as I trifle through this piss-take of

poetry, a juicy melon betwixt my thighs,

dripping yelps

"I owe you nothing" says the danger.

David McCullochs swoon around

the lifeless corpse of impatience,

crying "Debra! Debra!"

Mail me,

tell me,

kill me,

oh Debra.

Cantaraville Seven

Oh, the slimy joy! Cantaraville has released its seventh issue! Oh, what larks!

Issue seven features the fiction debut of this squeegeed hobo (me), appearing first on the bill, no less. Perhaps they wish to repel their readers this time. Ha-ha-ha-ha. My story is a charming alcoholic-has-been-falls-for-obsessive-Scottish-fan tale. The usual guff.

Bringing up my rear is Theresa Dick (one of Philip K.’s wives) with a charming memoir about the paranoid genius.

Looks good. You have to pay, though. Which isn’t as good. Never mind.

Issue seven available here.

MONDAY

There should be a guidebook entitled How To Start a Monday. Or, at least, an emergency pamphlet one can refer to when it’s 4PM, you’re still in your pyjamas, and you haven’t done anything yet.

I almost lost my Monday to the vultures of apathy. It was 12PM when the F-E-A-R set in. I awoke at 9.30, went back to sleep for half an hour, then read Nabokov for fifty minutes in bed. Next came a prolonged breakfast, a prolonged e-mail check and a prolonged shower. Gulp. It was 12PM.

So… better get things done. No, I think I’ll have a walk. Perhaps pop to the store and purchase a flavoursome sweet chilli sauce. Oh look, it’s 1PM now. Better get things done.

Oh look! Ella Guru’s Voodoo Kitchen. How entertaining! What a wonderful collection of paintings and sketches. My, isn’t she talented. Oh look! An interview with Zoon Horn Rollo, Captain Beefheart’s finest guitarist. Oh dear. It’s 2PM.

Lunchtime. I know… I shall prepare pasta. I’ll make sure to spend half an hour heating the water and fritter time away with mindless PC war games. Oh, my pasta’s ready! Oh my, that was tasty! It’s 3PM now.

Whoops! I forgot! I’m unemployed and need to look for a job. I’d better search the net and send out some CVs and applications. Oh bugger. It’s 4PM.

TIME TO WRITE, MEATHEAD. TIME TO MOTHERFUCKING WRITE, MEATHEAD.

And I did. 1000 nice words. I like them.

Thank Christ I made it through that Monday. Now, time to prepare for Tuesday (what a bastard).

Cretin Triumph

Last week, I visited the Museum De Cretin. I was quite surprised to see, mounted on the wall, a four by four picture of me, smirking as an albino golfer tweaked my nipples.

“Excuse me,” I said to the curator, “why is there a picture of me on the wall?”
“Oh, sir… you do not know? You have graduated to the Highest Class of Cretin. Well done, you big dummy,” he replied.

So I’m in. I have reached the zenith of Cretinism – a movement whereby all deeply moronic human behaviour is pardoned because of one’s quite exceptional stupidity. No longer do I have to worry about keeping my trousers pulled up in public, giving cashiers the correct money, or offending people by calling them big bogies. Freedom!

On an unrelated (though pertinent) theme, Hugo is a suffering from a similar malady. The protagonist in this rollicking comedy, penned by M.J. Nicholls in the twilight of his adolescence, has a rather burdensome task on his shoulders – living up to his own name.

“Oh wow,” say you. “I would sure love to read that. But I can’t find it anywhere… boo-hoo.”

Never fear. It can be found via the below link at Defenestration. This is a hip ‘n’ happening ezine where the zittiest humorists exchange words and love. I like it, mainly since I've been published there. Otherwise, I would be indifferent. Make sense, gringos?

Hugocentric.

The Blog Elves

Oh my, isn’t the world awash with blog cynics!

There are, can you believe it, some bruised souls walking this planet grumbling about no one ever reading their blog. Even their friends. Oh, what fools!

What these people don’t realise is that the Blog Elder in charge of Wordpress and Blogger has a team of six billion literate elves, whose sole purpose in life is to scour the eight trillion or so blogs we write every second of the day, read each word with rapt fascination, and report back the news to the Blog Elder that the writer is an undiscovered genius whose talents stretch vaster than Mt. Olympus.

So how come these elves never comment on your blog? Oh, they comment all right. Among themselves. They discuss your blog endlessly, remarking on the witty observations you make about your work life, your erratic domestic situation, and that award-winning literary fiction you hammer out in between shots of heroin and coffee. They love you, brothers and sisters.

Take note that those people whose blogs are read by thousands are often critical failures among the elves. See, the elves are smart. They know that the only reason we read other people’s blogs is to get other people to read our blogs. No one ever willingly reads someone else’s blog, lest that blog yield riches, fame, promotion or cheap sex with a Dutch schoolgirl.

So join the cult of the lonesome blog. Take refuge in the elves, because they care. If no one reads your blog… you’ve made it. Join the club today. Share your blog with nobody.

Merchandise available at:

http://www.jinx.com/men/shirts/geek/nobody_reads_my_blog.html

Quirks of Quiddity

Welcome to this, another blog from a starving writer. In this thrill-packed blog-o-rama, I shall be posing as various fictional people, namely ‘Harold Pumiceous’ (a svelte love machine with a pseudonym strong enough to sink ocean liners) and the Russian wunderkind Mikhail Schizimerov (the experimental fiction poseur du jour).

Together, these fictional beings will storm the barriers of M.J. Nicholls’s cranium, peering into the void of this mendacious Caledonian halfwit. Hark at his occasional publishing successes! His spiteful asides on the labyrinth of online e-zines and rags! His hours spent hunched over his cheap keyboard, cranking out semi-amusing comic narratives and tangential shorts about characters loosely based on him! Oh, hark!

Remember: M.J. Nicholls loves you. If need be, he will perform energetic fellatio upon your person with great aplomb. If it gets him published, that is.

There is truth in quiddity.