Sift the tuna from the brine, it’s smile time ; add some mayo to the flakes, shake, and illuminate.

Exhume some vegetables from that moldy fridge-draw tomb and you might have a salad soon… huh? [cups hand to ear] you dig the non-mammal meal?

Veal is out, but any sorta keel-hauled meat is a treat. Like your ladies you don’t mind them gambas, take the head away and suck the sweet meat from the limbs. Crack a crab claw and cleave the taste y’all.

Crustaceans and pisceans may form the eats that you mix with your beans…happy now? Those beans have parents, and the onion screams as loudly as any lamb, when tossed into the pan. Vegetarian? A fascist of life…choose that which doesn’t meet your ivory-high-horse standard and…eat it. How dare you. We are related to all life on this planet. The veg is our brother.

Although :

A line has to be drawn and I’m drawing it. You and your halcyon, simian yawn … I’m ignoring it.

I’m with my mammalian brothers, check our swim-style, arms made flippers, nostrils gone blow-holes, streamlined sublime : flying through the brine-time. Like the horse, you are my most noble friends, and I will not eat you.

Unless absolutely necessary.

Julie started work on a Tuesday. I noticed her being led by supervisor Grisholm to her desk and instructed in the arcane rites of data entry ; inducted at great length (in the way that only the most gifted in needlessly complicating simple tasks are able) into the elite group of keyboard-prodders that crowded the north wall of the office.

Julie’s diabolical cunning was evident from the beginning. She eschewed the awkward humility befitting a fresh employee and instead conducted herself with a sickeningly admirable confidence. She engaged her fellow workers in charming conversation. She offered (offered!!) to get the coffee. With a smile, she bade a cheery farewell to each and all when that first day was finished. Her first day! It had taken me a month just to meet Justine from Accounts’ glazed gaze!

It was a week later that Julie revealed her true genius. At 11.10 am, just after the trolley-man had been round, Archie Legg, a depressingly ferret-like man with a face like a pet-burying child, held his customary mid-morning scone in his bony pincers and … he sneezed. Three short inhalations preceded the mucal expulsion. Within a heartbeat Julie had pounced.

“Bless you !” she said. The two words descending notes like a sarcastic door-bell.

“Thank you !” was Archie’s obligatory response, in the same hum-drum sing-song two-tone.

Through the crook of Julie’s arrogant-arm hand-hip I caught a glimpse of Tracy’s face, mouth agape ; horrified.

Tracey had been the ‘Bless You’ girl of the office for the five years that I had worked there. For three of those years I had struggled to finally reach an unspoken agreement with her so that I did not have to say “Thank you” to any eruption-based benedictions. There was a moment of obscene clarity as I caught Tracey’s eye and we both knew : she had been usurped.

Selfishly I thought of myself and of all my hard work undone in an instant. For the next few days I managed to work sneeze free, but I knew that the ancient dust-filled air-con was slowly counting down ; ticking off the tocks on my achoo-clock. Meanwhile Julie cemented her position. Tracey gave a brave showing, and once even managed a ‘bless..’ before being cut off and overpowered by Julie’s monstrous authority.

I took to sneezing into the stationary cupboard. I would race from meetings to spatter sneeze-milk over incoming postmen. I upended tables to cover my shameful pneumatic evictions. I had resolved to go to any lengths … suffer Promethean gizzard-ripping, to avoid saying ‘Thank you’ in that moronic melody.

A month in and Julie’s demonic brilliance had already secured her the position of ‘Team Leader’. Admittedly it was a post that presented no real pecuniary benefits being somewhat similar to the title of ‘Chief Slave’, and yet it was still a remarkable achievement, and doubtless only the first step of her ascent towards ultimate unholy power.

And so came the day, mid-morning again, as the trolley-man arrived whoring his sundries, that the final tick was ticked, the last tock crossed off … and I sneezed.

Silence. No blessings, no stasis punctured. Had I made it? Was I through to freedom?

Almost immediately fat Kev let out an enormous sinal evacuation.

“Bless you !” said Julie.

“Thank you !” said Kev.

Er, hello? Why not me? What was wrong with me? I’m not good enough for a bless-you? What is this? Some private little sneeze-clique?…and then I saw it : a conspiratorial look, a wordless interchange, an eye-to-eye-shake between Julie and Tracey…they’d cut a deal!! From then on they had 70/30 ‘bless-you’ rights, and me?…I’d been frozen out!

As I left the office that day a seagull mouthed inanities overhead before perching menacingly above my car. As I bweeped the alarm and connected the key to lock, the gull shrieked pterodactyline, bitter little tongue wriggling mockingly between beak.

And in that moronic melody, that sarcastic two note bell-chime that distressed me so, I said it :

“Faark yoouu.”

Blast from the past ; I reach to wipe a speck from my screen, and smear it all over. Smearing, wiping, clearing, obscuring.

Am I become the pivot upon which the world revolves? Around me all is in flux, yet I remain, immutably bored.

How then, to step from the safe centre into the eddying rush of change? A brave plunge? A high-dive into the alive?

The lilliputian ropes that bind me can be broken easily enough, but I fear that first elastic ping, the tang like a whip-crack on sunburnt skin.

With a snuffle, I muffle the speakers and set the player on shuffle ; who pops up but Ella Fitzgerald : Somethings Gotta Give.

Baby doll, ain’t that the truth.

The rain smacks the pavement, and the pavement squeals like a newborn.

I knock back another gulp of hot black-grit water.

I’m in a coffee shop, in Upper West Dulwich. I give a nod and the waitress brings me a fresh cup. She’s an Original ; I see her tattoo as takes away the vacant vessel. A slow curve along her forearm like a worm looking for a home. She looks at me funny. Everyone is looking at me funny.

Ok, stop it. No-one knows who I am, I’m cool. I’ll kill some time, wait for the people … I’m miles away from my pad.

I’m sitting in the corner by a window that looks out onto the street. People out there…all with somewhere to go, something to do, swimming around in the rain and blending into each other like toilet paper in a hard flush.

I punch up the local news on the mesa and make like I’m studying events. But I’m looking at her ; the Original.

I’d known an Original once…years ago now. Young guy, a driver for my old company. I’d been intrigued by his hard-core beliefs, that the genome shouldn’t be augmented, interfered with. They believed a strict ‘Darwin-restrict’, that human evolution should progress at it’s own pace without improvement from the very beings that it had created. This irony was lost on them, as it always is with fundamentals. For the most part they’re indoctrinated from birth and the benefits purely illusory. The negatives are all too plain : less than half the life-span, susceptibility to disease and genetic disorders. It always seemed crazy to me how people could choose the less over the more.

She clocks me scoping her ; I check a look into the street, all nonchalant like.

“Thank you for your custom Sir.” She slips the bill under the saucer like a croupier taking all the chips. I look at her and she nods subtly downwards. As she turns away I check the plas-sheet : “Second cab west”. I dig. Old style. I throw a glance at the Original as I leave … if she knew what I was carrying I’d already be dead.

I slip into the street and the rain backhands my face. I look down the line and see the cab, it’s top light flickering with optimism. Over my shoulder, she’s watching me go, face stretched behind the glass, the running water a prism.

The dishes in the sink are piled high like pebble towers on the beach, tottering with a Schroedinger quiver.

I survey my domain, my flat, my cell. Someone has been here ; things are not as they should be, or at least, not as I had left them.

The window : open wide to the world, saying “ah”. I peek, and see them far below. Workers. Scuttling like cuttlefish in the rain, cheap chameleon-grey suits adapting to their environment, unintentionally. By. Becoming. Wet.

Turn inside :

Two sheets of paper partly adhering to the table with cold coffee flap desperately in the breeze like a seagull, be-mudded and left by the tide.

Except we’re far from the shore, such basic boundaries. We are in the greatest city that humans have ever built, so they say. Millions of us pouring over each other like glasses of water over a face fresh from the desert.

I survey my domain, my flat, my cell. A gutted boat, an abandoned hulk. Mind the rudder as you step into the kitchen…it’ll bruise your knees as it tries to find purchase in this city.

This grey city … take out the colours ; less to worry about.

As I wade and kick my papers about the place I realise, like a bad chord, what they were after, and how little time I have left.

So I vacate, and a pigeon flap/slow-hand-claps me down the stairs. [The lift's broken again]

Posting anew, like a pigeon chased away by a car, wings flap as it flew, like a cyclone in Myanmar.

Many folk dead; and the little one said : “Roll over, roll over!”

And they all rolled over and one fell out…

And as our papers are filled with ‘Britney Hilton’, let me quote your man Milton :

“Whence and what are thou, execrable shape?”

You infuriate me. With your ignorance and sheep-willing you denigrate the crying while perpetuating the killing.

And then you’ll pray. The most immoral act. No deed needed , no effort made, no action undertaken, no price paid for the prayer ; just say some words and hope and share in the hysteria. Why ‘actually’ do anything when you can bow your monkey head and wish for a lottery win?

God? If you’re listening…you disgust me in the strongest possible terms.

Expelled.

Culture wars. The Enlightenment has been under attack since its inception. Take a look at the list of books that the Vatican banned, it’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum and yep, it’s a pretty good reading list! Ban, lie and obfuscate continue to be the watchwords of organised religion. Ironic that the first country to enshrine the Separation of Church and State into their constitution are so besieged by anti-intellectual religionists.
In a few days a grotty little ‘film’ will be released into the world, like a bird-turd dropping into your beer. That mealy-mouthed homunculus Ben Stein ( who’s most worthwhile contribution to culture is saying “Bueller ? Bueller…?” in nasally, brain-dead, monotonous whine) is fronting a film called Expelled : No Intelligence Allowed. It is essentially a tissue of dishonesty, lies, and untruths in the name of Creationism. Yeah, I know, it’s the 21st century. Doesn’t seem to matter to these people.

Maybe I’ll write more tomorrow, suffice to say that there is something sinister going on with these nutcases…

Meanwhile, I’m joining with the reality based community by adding ” Expelled ” links in an effort to big up the google rating for Expelled Exposed, organised by the magnificent Eugenie Scott, herself interviewed for the film ” Expelled ” under false pretenses. I urge you to do the same.

Dawkins has a good go at the film here.

Smile, and pick a bottle from the pile. A view from above, you need a non-slip grip, don’t approach with a kid glove. Double-thigh hold the container like I told you, use your Mickey Rourke effort-face and steel your soul colder…

…you have to evict this fella that holds back the gold.

Give that cork some tough love.

Bottle-tops…

…once removed can replace your T’s with glottal stops. A few more of those, when popped, might produce some O’s, slip into the glass and view the world through it’s silky prism. Each bottle contains a truism. Search for the prose contained, adjust your vision, and as you reach for the rose that grows from that final drop … you’re comatose.

“Everybody should believe in something — I believe I’ll have another drink.” W.C. Fields

[fotos from my personal cellar]