1995-2008
“C’mere, Shep…”
Goodbye, Shep…
Dingoes
“Are they shooting at us? Are they shooting at us?!?!? They’re shooting at us!!!”
“Yes, they appear to be shooting at us.”
“WHY are they shooting at us????”
“How should I know why they’re shooting at us!”
“THEY’RE SHOOTING AT US!!!”
“Yes… I think we established that…”
“WHY ARE THEY SHOOTING AT US?!?!?!?!?”
“I DON’T KNOW!!!”
“Why are we even here?!?!? I wanted to go to Australia! ‘No,’ you said, ‘England is much more interesting…’ ‘Australia has beaches,’ I said. ‘England has beaches made out of pebbles,’ you said.
“Will you shut up!”
“‘Australians drink nothing but beer and play a stick with a hole in it,’ you said. ‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘England has culture and history,’ you said. ‘Australia has koala bears and dingoes,’ I said…”
“What?”
“Well guess what Australia doesn’t have that England has? PEOPLE TRYING TO KILL US!!!”
“Oh, yeah, like this was in the brochure! Well, for our next trip, we’ll go to Australia!”
“You son of a…”
“Just shut up and run!”
Eureka
“Bloody hell, that’s it!”
“That’s what?”
“We’ve been running around the countryside, looking for that fecking case, but what if it’s a… a…”
“A what?”
“Hold on!”
“What is it???”
“What if it’s one of those things…”
“What things?”
“Like out of a Hitchcock film…”
“Like a slasher?”
“No, one of those plot devices that wind up really meaning nothing… A Mac… Mac…”
“McNugget?”
“No, not a McNugget… A MacGuffin!”
“Is a MacGuffin like a McNugget?”
“Just shut up and listen! A MacGuffin is like a… Like a red herring. You spend all your time concentrating on this one thing that you think is important, but it’s really not - It’s the other thing that’s important.”
“Okay, so, what? The case is a MacGuffin?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s distracting us from the thing we should be looking for…”
“Yes.”
“Which is?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah. Well. That’s a start.”
“It’s more of a start than everyone else scouring the countryside for the case has…”
“Right. So now we have to stop looking for the thing we know about, and start looking for the thing we have absolutely no clue about.”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s settled then. Fuck ‘em. Let’s go.”
Destination: England
“England. The sceptered isle. Land of Shakespeare and blood pudding. The colonial mothership. Birthplace of Keats and Benny Hill. Home of the pound and the Ripper. Will it ever fucking stop raining?”
The Band
“I’ve been thinking of starting a band.”
“A band? Really?”
“Yes, the thought had crossed my mind.”
“I didn’t know you could play an instrument…”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t…”
“Well, not in the classical sense…”
“The classical sense being…”
“The ability to play an instrument.”
“That certainly complicates matters…”
“That’s certainly an opinion that I can understand, but I’m determined not to let it deter me from starting a band…”
“Well, not everyone who’s in a band has to play an instrument.”
“Exactly my point.”
“Can you sing, then?”
“Not a note. Completely tone deaf.”
“So you can’t sing, or play an instrument.”
“Negative on both counts.”
“And you want to start a band.”
“Definitely.”
“Have you… Have you written any songs?”
“Not as such, no.”
“Not as such?”
“No.”
“So you can’t sing, you can’t play any instruments whatsoever…”
“Not even a kazoo…”
“And you haven’t written any songs…”
“None.”
“But you want to start a band.”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“I believe one, if not all, of those elements are very important components in starting a band.”
“Are they?”
“Yes. Yes, I believe so.”
“Oh. Well. Then. I guess there’s always my fallback position.”
“Yes? What’s that then?”
“God.”
“God?”
“Yes. If I can’t start a band, I guess I’ll just be God.”
“And your qualifications for this?”
“I’ll just set my mind to it. Should be fairly simple. I mean, it’s not like playing the kazoo or the mouth harp.”
“Fair enough.”
“Granted, if the whole God thing doesn’t work out, I think I’ll just take up juggling. I hear it’s quite relaxing.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that. Probably much more relaxing than that whole ‘who lives, who dies’ thing. Sounds like more or a hassle than anything else.”
“I suppose, but surely it’s worth it for the women.”
“For the women?”
“Surely God must get more women than even the kazoo player in a band. Otherwise, what would be the point?”
“I never thought about it that way.”
On Holiday
“But they already saw the body!”
“I know, I know - just give me a minute to think this through.”
“There is nothing to think through. We’ll just have to kill them.”
“Kill them?”
“And make it look like an accident.”
“And how in the hell are we supposed to do that?”
“How the bloody hell am I supposed to know? Do you think I go around killing people everyday? Do you think I wake up and have some eggs and bacon, read the paper, and think, ‘Oh, I suppose I should think of ways to kill people today… You never know what the day will bring, after all…’? I am a data entry technician. I enter data into a computer. I am not a murderer!”
“But you said to kill them!”
“What else are we supposed to do?”
“We could talk to them. See if they can be persuaded to just… I don’t know… Forget the whole thing…”
“Forget they saw us hit a man’s car with our bus, which then exploded in a brilliant fireball,after which we proceeded to coax the location of 15 million pounds of illicit drug money out of a dying man who was still smoldering in the wreckage of his vehicle? We’re going to ask them to forget that?”
“Well, if we asked nicely…”
“You are a moron.”
“So it’s settled then. We kill them.”
“But we make it look like an accident.”
“Yes, like an accident.”
“I don’t know how I feel about actually… you know… killing a human being.”
“They’re not human - they’re American.”
“Trevor makes an excellent point.”
“So it’s settled. We kill them in a fashion that seems accidental, then collect the money, split it up amongst ourselves, and be done with it.”
“And you wanted to go to Australia for holiday.”
4th Grade Of The Gods
Have you seen these children? Refugees from Burrows Elementary, Quantico, and the 1980’s…
Always Seen Never Obscene
Got to stand up
Get up
Move around
And forget
What’s left
I’m right
To let
All the things
That I get
Upset
About just fall
Away
Today I lay
Down
In pity
So shitty
Oh well.
Should Old Acquaintance
I’ve never been much of a blogger. I do too much writing for work as it is, and I’m also not terribly keen on the confessional nature of the interweb.
Still, I suppose there is a useful function to keeping some sort of a journal - or at least a personal online presence that’s not solely work-related. I’m still on the fence as to whether I’m going to make friends and family aware of this little corner of cyberspace… If any of you happen to be reading this, then the answer to that bit of uncertainty is “Yes, I decided to let some select friends and family know.”
2007 was a bit of a wash in terms of entries - other than the occasional bit of odd creative writing and some photos. We’ll have to see what 2008 holds.
Here now, though, is a photo to ring in the new year…
