Champions

It had been going on for eighteen solid hours. 

Blisters had formed, grown and popped.

Blood had spilled. 

Voices had worn more horse than a sad woman at the races who'd been screaming because she'd lost her big final bet on the final race by a nose. 

A horse nose.

Which aren't even cute. 

Depending on the horse.

And your personal proclivity toward this particular brand of majestic hoofed animal snout. 

Witnessed called it the most epic battle of Ring A'round the Rosie anyone had ever seen. 

And now, Roger, legs wobbling from exhaustion, but soul soaring with gloating arrogance, was ascending the winners podium ready to give a victory speech he planned to echo through the valley and vibrate into the already crushed and vulnerable spirit of the loser, Gary.

Yes this had a been a battle fought dirty from the get go. 

Skin had been scratched, eyes had been poked, hair had been pulled, and the trash talk was so brutal three spectators had even threatened to intervene with a fire hose.

An unprecedented act on the circuit, but one that many felt needed to happen. 

Especially after news had come in earlier that day that the local dam had burst and that residents should try and use as much water as possible 'shower twice if you have to' the news had said. 

An unprecedented amount of showering. 

But now Roger had won, and was ready to be showered with praise, but more than that he now hoped to take eighteen hours of built up pain and loathing and shove it deep down Gary's losing fucking throat. 

Yet Roger knew not yet of the dirtiest act that had been played of all. 

A move had been made more dastardly than even the worst move made during the entire horse nose trials of 88.

And who hasn't vomited on themselves thinking about that?

Before the trophy could be handed out, first the official had to test the participants for banned substances. 

And at some point during the battle.

Greg had managed to taint Rogers 'pocket full of posies' with a single Daisy.

Enough to have Roger quite definitely disqualified from this match, and possibly even banned for life. 

But it was only to get even worse.

It would turn out Greg had only even challenged Roger to a match so his accomplices could use the time to ransack Rogers house. 

Also one of these accomplieces was banging Greg's daughter, who'd helped orchestrate the whole thing, and was currently doing it in her dads bed. 

Also the 'throb of victory' that Roger currently felt in his chest would turn out to be the start of a heart condition that would traint the rest of Rogers life

Although few people felt sorry for Roger. 

Everyone on the circuit thought he was only EVER in it for the money. 

And had no real love for Ring A'round The Rosie. 

In fact it had been heard that Roger had once been heard to say 'why "Rosie" anyway, it's a rose, just fucking call it that'.

Although this particular atrocity had never been corroborated.

Most agreed that 'if I'd heard him say that, I'd have killed him on the spot'. 

I think we all would have. 

I know we all would have. 

Unless he was wearing his trademark horse head mask at the time. 

Who could hurt a horse.

Have you seen their noses? 

Soooooo cute! 

A Solid Step

It turned out Craig had been lying all along.

A statue had NOT come alive just to give him a high five.

I mean duh.

It had actually come alive to kick him in the balls. 

Seven - Response Buckets

'Answer me this, If your tears tasted like chocolate milk how much would that affect how much you'd cry the day your favorite pet dairy cow died?' I asked the waiter. 

'When you really want to make a monkey irate do you call it names or just act like you're not bothered by the names it calls you?'

'How many cubes of ice do you like on your spaghetti?'

'Do you consider doors to be more like giant misshapen straws or more like a leaky pool at a waterpark?' 

'Do you ever take a photo of something pretty without immediately making plans to take photos of that photo, and if not why are you even taking a photo, you wasteful dick?' 

'Do you buy your nuclear waste on the black market or through a worker with the official channels working off the books?'

'When you snap at people do you normally choose a towel, a rubber band, or their own legs post dipping them in fast drying elastic plastic'? 

'Who is your elastic plastic guy, and does he work on Good Sunday?' 

'How do YOU misspell Aruphamt?'

'Out of Lemurs, Manatees, and Toucans, which animals blood do you find changes stickiness the most on full moons'? 

'When in the rainforest what gage nets do you prefer to be trapped in?'

'What about when you're in a far less humid yet equally as vegetative environment?' 

'What's your favorite type of wood-chip to use to thicken up your baths?' 

'If your phlegm tasted like Parisian artichoke soup, how would that affect how much you'd cry the day your favorite flu-germ harvester got fired from his day job as an Aruphamt and therefore has to start charging you fifty percent more per bucket'? I asked the waiter. 

These may all seem like obvious questions to ask a stranger you're trying to get to know, but I wasn't asking them for that reason. No these were obvious yes, but they were also pertinent, and perticnity was very impertinent to me right now, I was trying to get a hold on his personality, his likes and dislikes, what made him tick, and what kind of explosion this ticking is leading to, and how dare he risk our lives by ticking like that near us? (And on a side note I was also trying to find a new elastic plastic guy, mine's decided to start taking off religious holidays, what an idiot, surely those are his busiest days!)

You see I'd paused a moment before putting my order in, knowing just how important this order would be, and the waiter had taken it upon himself to 'recommended' the, and I quote, 'tacos, they're great, but the enchiladas are some of my favorites too'. And I needed to know him inside and out before I could make a decision on whether to trust his recommendation or whether to spit it back in his face, possibly with some chewing tobacco mixed in, which would be hard because I didn't have any on me, and I had important stuff to attend to here, stuff that needed to be done in a BIG way, and NOW. I really did not need a trip to the tobacconist right now. Besides, my regular tobacconist was in a different county, and I'm not a disloyal dick. 

His answers, as it turned out, said a lot about him! And a lot is WAY more than hardly ever, possibly even a LOT more. They were as follows. 

'What?'

'Huh?' 

'Seriously?' 

'Come on!'

'Stop it'

'I said STOP it' 

'I told you earlier I don't want to answer your stupid questions'

'Just order something please'

'Or don't, I really don't give a shit'

'What? That's disgusting!' 

'I'm not even listening anymore'

'La la la, shut up or order something or I don't care'

'AAAGGHHHHH' And 

'Seven percent, is that what you want me to say, fucking seven percent!' 

Yep those answers said a LOT! A ton even. And even a ton in a situation when if someone asked you 'how much is a ton in this situation?' You'd answer 'a lot'. Yep those answers told me everything I needed to know about him. And they said it loud and clear -'I'm hard to get a handle on'! 

There was nothing I could do but think about this more. I could not even begin to think about what to eat with this hanging handle that was hard just dangling in front of my face. This was clearly going to take some serious pondering. And I HATE pondering on an empty stomach 'oh for crying out loud, just get me something BIG to eat, and get me it NOW!' I screamed him.

I mean I had retribution to take from him, and here he was making ME  ponder, what a dick! And retribution I would take, BIG retribution, and as soon as I had my food I'd take it NOW! 

To be peddled further*

*Like on a bike, a bike 'continuing' down a path*

*Paths are also great free places to store your spare buckets of flu-germ or exotic animal bloods, no one ever steals* them, I don't know why 

*Stealing being an act that makes you a dick! 

Stop the romanticism

I get it, you're hanging out with a bunch of buddies, everyone is ripping on their kids, bitching away, saying stuff like 'my kids man, such bitches, always bitching about their siblings, and ripping their clothes, bitching about their clothes being ripped, ripping on their siblings' outfits, and bitching that their siblings are bitching on them, I mean, man, kiiiiidddssss!!!' and suddenly you and your friends all realize the exact same thing at the exact same time - 'Bill, our Vampire buddy over there reading the wine list, NEVER bitches about his kids, wow, vampires must have some super progressive and forward thinking parental methods creating harmony in a typical vampire household, we should ask him about them?' 

Well DON'T!!! 

Fact: The only reason sibling relationships in vampire households are so beautifully turmoil free is because typical human sibling arguments over bunk beds and which sibling sleeps in which bunk relative to their preferred bunk (typically is the opposite bunk from the individual siblings individual preference) for them is rendered irrelevant due to the typical vampires typical choice of sleeping upside down while hanging from the rafters, and therefore negates even the possibility of arguments or negativity over bunk positions! 

(Exceptions exist of course, like this typical Tuesday night exchange in a typical vampire house:  

Kid 1: I want the left side of the rafter!

Kid 2: I ALREADY CALLED LEFT SIDE.

Kid 1: But I called NO CALLSIES! 

Kid 2: And I pointed out that you can't CALL no callsies, you have to DECLARE IT! 

Kid 1: Oh yeah? Well declare this - MUUUUUOOOMMM Jeremy is poking me with his talons! 

Mom: Talons? Those are what Hawks have! We're supposed to be bat like! If you're turning into a hawk Jeremy so help me god I'll march up there and put you in the naughty corner. The dark corner, which I'll admit is basically like heaven for a bat, but a nightmare for a hawk, unless there's a rat or two to eat, which there won't be, unless someone's been leaving crumbs around, we eat BLOOD in this house, NOT sandwiches, if I catch one of you damn kids eating a sandwich I'll SOOOOOO put you in the naughty corner! 

Kid 2: Mmmmoooouuummm if Batman is so into bats, why does he fight for humans and not vampires, it's not FAIR! 

Mom: Oh for fuck's sake Jeremy, I TOLD you Batman is not REAL, what kind of moronic loser gives anytime at all to made up things? Now go to sleep!!!

Kid 1: Ha ha, you got yelled at, you got yelled at, plus your face looks like a possum face! 

Kid 2: Mooooouumm, Stephan called me a possum face!

Mom: GO . TO . SLEEP . NOW . OR . I . WILL . POKE . YOUR . EYES . BACK . IN . SO . YOU . ARE . NO . LONGER . BLIND!!!!

Kid 1: ...

Kid 2: ...

Kid 1: ...

Kid 2: ...

Mom: Thank god 

Kid 1: Moooouumm, is it true that some vampires sleep in coffins, can we get coffins please, please, please, please!!!

Kid 2: I call top coffin!!!

Kid 1: No I call top coffin!!!

Kid 2: No fucking CALLSIES!!!!!!) 

So yes, other than on Tuesdays (a stupid day anyway) Vampires do live in households built on the firm foundation of the soft pillow that is sibling harmony, but it's only because of the bunk bed thing, so let's please stop fucking pretending that it's because of progressive and forward thinking parental methods that we could adapt to be used in regular human families in order to create a more harmonious world! It ain't going to happen you idiots. 

Oh also, stop bitching about your kids, you're the one hanging out with a fucking blood eating vampire, no wonder they're a little messed up! 

BreakingNews - Sociopath mistakenly called a psychopath

Tragedy today as a 'sociopath' named Ridge - while attempting to do nothing more than go about his everyday, routine, antisocial, mean spirited and miscreant like daily errands - was horrifically, cruelly, ludicrously and completely incorrectly mislabeled a 'psychopath' by a passing victim of one his activities. 

Ridge responded by completely and utterly freaking out, running around like a madman, screaming like a lunatic, burping like a maniac and ultimately having an explosion of unhinged, schizoid like craziness of such extremity that he accidentally briefly stopped being a sociopath, in fact he slipped off the 'path' altogether!  

Off the path Ridge was shocked to discover raw untouched nature - and with it calmness, enlightenment, freedom, serenity and hope. This of course freaked him out even further. So he yelled at a frog, slapped a tree limb, looked oddly at a hippy, licked a mongoose without first asking it's permission, and told a wild flower that to him it smelled like 'a god damn mass produced FARM flower, take THAT!'

All things that he immediately recognized as far more becoming of  a typical 'donkey brained monkey' than a sociopath. 

With his identity now clearly completely lost to him Ridge went on to dedicate the past six months of his life to helping the needy. Where he has been praised for his hard work and dedication. It's been a very eventful day for him. 

The man who casually (like he didn't even fucking care) just threw out a label on someone he didn't even fucking know was released from the hospital after only twelve hours and told that the remaining egg shell fragments still deeply imbedded in his skin would work their way out on their own within a year at the latest. He's yet to apologize, or even show a hint of remorse for his haphazard and unnecessary altering of the entire existence of someone else's life with this uncalled for labeling. 

When asked how they felt about this lack of remorse by this man against someone he didn't even know, a stranger we found on the street, who knew nothing of the incident other than what I've told you, was quoted as saying 'what a piece of fuckwad flavored shit, the guys a god damn psycho'.

And I think we can all agree with that. 

Please note: 

- The wildflower is being treated with state funded psychotherapy, and some anti-anxiety prescription medication and is expected to make an almost full recovery. 

- The mongoose and the frog are now dating and hoping to have at least a thousand babies, or tadmons, by the end of the month. 

- Neither the hippy nor the tree limb could be reached for comment, and of course we all pray neither of them ate the other one, or worse they ate each other, although if they did we hope they did without the need for name calling, that stuffs mean man. 

Close Call

I feel like the musical 'Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat' would have been vastly different if instead of a Technicolor Dream Coat is was a Technicolor Flesh Eating Bacteria, and if instead of Joseph, his name was Sir Hugs Alot.

Well I mean obviously, who's going to nick a coat off a knight? They have swords!

Six - Fight or uncaged

'Get into my office!' Yelled my boss at me one day with an angry menace being expressed by his volume of choice, in this case specifically as a yell. 

This was back when I was was a rare and exotic bird denier working for the federal department of rare and exotic bird denying. It was a plum job for the most part, the main five roles were as follows:

1. Saying 'nah, don't believe in em' myself'. When asked about our specific belief in specific birds, and with 'em' taking the place of the specific bird being specifically discussed at that specific time. 

2. Accusing professional birdologists of stuff, specifically that they'd done stuff like just painting pigeons to look like things such as different birds we were trying to deny, Lavender Crested TitHawks being a specific example. Or to be even more specific I'll tell you about one of my specific favorite days at work the whole time I was there, which was when I got to yell at a bird loving dick! And more specifically when I got to yell this - 'You're trying to tell me that THAT specific bird in that specific cage you're holding in front of me, is a Wingtailed Blue Mouse Godwit, nah man, you've clearly just glued some cut up blue t-shirt onto a different bird, in this case clearly a penguin to be specific, you lying dick, and oh look, now that I've opened the cage its flown away, definitely a penguin, fuck you for trying to fool people, you're a male body part, specifically a dick!' 

3. Doctoring all company wide memos to say at the bottom 'and remember, it's company policy to say "specific" as often as humanly possible, and anyone who fails at this will have their genitals (whatever that may entail to the specific employee) jammed into an item of office equipment, specially the paper shredder, and specifically the big rusty one by the ladies bathroom'. 

4. Making fun of the kid in accounts with a lisp who couldn't say 'specific' without spitting on the girl who worked on the desk immediately opposite him. 

5. Making fun of the girl in accounts who always seemed to have spit on her for some unknown reason.

It was a fun job. But the boss was a dick. I'd done absolutely nothing wrong on this day that he'd yelled at me to come into his office. Not a damn thing. ZILCH. 

Luckily I'd predicted that this dick would pull this kind of thing one day, so I'd been sneaking into his office every day when he was at lunch and setting up little boobie traps like thumb tacks on his seat to stick into his butt, and sending emails to his wife from his company account that were addressed to his secretary and referenced the fact that she was female, and ended with pictures of his butt, which were easy to get because he was always pulling down his pants at work and dabbing blood off his ass, the gross bastard, and I'd also been stashing some snacks around in case he had a lot to say, and I got peckish. 

On this particular day he was screaming at me for some nonsense, so I went to grab the burrito I'd stashed six months earlier in the locked draw where he kept all the company cash reserves, and yet when I reached for it all I found was a draw full of mush, bugs, stank, and for some reason some tiny fragments of cash. That boss sure was a dick. 

But now, seven years later, and I suddenly knew what the ordeal that day (of having to eat the bowl of fried rice I'd stashed in his briefcase instead of my coveted burrito, while he rattled on) was for. I'd stared gastronomical dissatisfaction right in the eye and burped hard on its lips, or more specifically on my bosses lips, to prepare me for this exact moment. A moment with so much on the line. 

And having faced this pain in the past I know knew exactly what to do the second I began to look over the menu now handed to me by the waiter. 

'Just don't order the six month old draw burrito, it'd probably be mushy, 

just don't order the six month old draw burrito, it'd probably be mushy' I began to chant to myself as a perused the options. Feeling more and more calm that I could make a choice that wouldn't bring further attention to my failures that day. 

Knowledge is power. And I had knowledge. And therefore I had power. And power is powerful. And I was ready to blow my power right in the face of this waiter. 

Of course even if I hadn't had that job, I could have just drawn on some knowledge about ordering options of learned the last time I'd eaten here, about thirty five minutes or so ago with Kev. But I'd forgotten totally about that.

Not that Kev bothered to remind me, that dick, no he instead asked if he could borrow my scarf to tie around his wound and try and stop he bleeding. Why would I want blood on my scarf? He knows I don't like wearing l red on Sundays, but I don't think he even thought about that. Selfish dick. 

Also I had the same waiter as I'd had earlier. Not that I remembered. Why  would I? What kind of a loser remembers other people? A loser like this waiter, that's what type. 

'Seriously?' He said when I told him I'd never seen him before in my life 'you don't remember less than an hour ago throwing a bowl of chilli in my face and calling me a dick for not warning you that chilli was served hot?' 

Why would I remember that? Some people are so self-centered, you're not all we think about dicks! 

'I'll just have any burrito less than six months old that's never been in a draw' I suddenly blurted out, to shut him up, he'd begun to ramble on... 'you don't remember asking if any of your own butt cheek was in the food? You don't remember screaming at me to expose the secret hole of celebrities, you don't remember lighting the table cloth on fire and then accusing the fish in the tank of being selfish dicks for not offering their water to put it out?' On and on and on he went. But the next thing he said shocked me. Specifically to the core. Like seeing a completely mythical bird in the flesh, something like a peahen, and then having every bit of truth you believed in cut from under you, like cutting the legs off a peahen to see if it was actually just a sparrow with dryer fluff stapled to it. 

'All our burritos are less than six months old, and none of them have been in draws, so you need to be more specific about what you'd like please'. 

Yep he said it. And it was a dig. A dig at me. ME! Yes ME! Of all people he could have said that to, he chose to say it to me! And it was a dig. Like what you do to make a hole. And a hole is my favorite type of ground opening. Yep! He'd used the method of creating something I like to hurt ME! That self-centered dick. And now, among the numerous balls I was juggling, all of which represented a disaster, things like:

- Making sure that dick Kev got distracted by me doing something BIG and NOW, that he'd forget that I'd promised that I'd find something cool in the cloakroom. And

- Making sure everyone in the room knew that I didn't think you eat the menus themselves, and making sure they new that by eating BIG and NOW! 

And now I now also had to deal with this dig, and I had to deal with it NOW and in a BIG way. Yep, I now had to add retribution against the waiter to the list, and it would have to be specifically BIG retribution, and specifically NOW! Right NOW! 

More to be unearthed*

*Not a great word for continued, but a nice word none-the-less, it reminds you of earth, and un, and ed, all great things. Although if you ask me at least one of those things isn't even a thing, for example I'm sure earth is really just a large Diamond Taloned Condor* with alligator barf stuck in its beard. 

*Which are of course just seagulls that someone nailed a cactus to. 

Five - crowned request

The things that change your life rarely happen how you think that they will. They may be inspired by long term plans and sustained efforts, or they may come before you've even considered a possibility of change, but when the change actually happens it usually comes swiftly, and out of the blue, like a smack in the head from a surfboard someone accidentally dropped out of a hot-air balloon, which has happened to me three times, yet only once by choice. 

Like I remember exactly where is was and what was happening the day I found out that I'd never be the King of England. It was that devastating that every detail was burned in my brain.

I was at a bar somewhere, and I wasn't wearing a jumper so it must have been summer or heated room, and I think some other people were around, although that might be my wedding I'm thinking of, which didn't end in a marriage because I forgot to go, when suddenly, pow, a movie about a King came on the TV! 

I immediately said out-loud 'that'll be me one day', possibly to people I was with, if I had been with people, or possibly to a stranger if I'd been alone, and someone, possibly someone I was with, or possibly a stranger, replied 'No you won't'! 

I didn't know what he was talking about, so I calmly began to look into it. And, well, over a few months of research, questioning my relatives, studying the history of people lying about their ancestral backgrounds, home DNA testing to test those lies for myself, then going to school to learn how do DNA testing the correct way, (after finding out that just looking at two peoples hair, skin flakes or body fluids and seeing if they sorta look alike is apparently wrong), then redoing those tests, then asking my relatives if they knew how to grow other people's hair, skin and body fluids, then doing some research into the history of people lying about their ability to grow other people's hair, skin and body fluids, I finally came to the conclusion swiftly, and out of the blue, that maybe my parents were telling the truth when they said we were not the British royal family. 

Why the truth now? They'd lied about so much in their lives, like for example:

- My underpants had NOT ended up growing into my body because I refused to change or wash them for three years. I'd been able to get them off just as easy as most scabs in the end.

- I'd actually taken TWO eyes out by throwing darts at my brothers, not AN eye. And 

- I did leave it alone, and it still fell off, my third ear that is, that was growing on the back of my neck. And I'm not even sure why they thought that I wouldn't want it to fall off. I mean I sold that thing to Luke Guff for a buck twenty five! 

So finding out suddenly like that, that they'd told the truth that I wasn't Royal was a real blow. But then many years later I discovered that in restaurants 'the customer is king'. I suddenly didn't care if I was King of England, as long as I'd get to be a king of something one day. So I kept this fact in my brain for many years, just waiting for the right time to use it to my advantage. 

'No I will not eat this glass!' I suddenly declared, while spitting out the three shards I'd already begun chewing on 'In fact, I will instead take a menu!' I stated in a deep booming voice across the restaurant, like the fact it was, with big sweaty fact knowing power, which left ripples of fact flowing through the air, one of which knocked a picture of a clown fish off the wall which landed on Kev's wailing face. Although it may also have been time and gravity that knocked it off. Almost all the art was falling off. It was almost like it was just left around by the old owners and then never touched. It was a pretty shitty restaurant. I even forgot that it WAS a restaurant briefly when the lights were in my face. Have I mentioned that yet? It was Kev's idea to come here of course, what an asshole. 

'Not like to eat though' I added as an aside, while scratching at the scar behind my neck, as it had suddenly occurred to me that the way I had declared what I'd stated kind of made it sound like I was asking for a menu to eat, instead of ordering food to eat off, assuming they were out of plates, it seemed like that sort of place. 

'What kind of idiot would eat a menu. That's absurd!' I now yelled. 

Now I felt like I was overcompensating. There was only one way to reel this back in. I'd have to prove that I had ALWAYS been hungry for real food. And there was only one way to do that - I'd have to order a BIG meal, and order it NOW. And it would have to be REALLY big, and REALLY now, cause they'd already said the kitchen was closing soon, so I'd probably not have a chance to order seconds... Or would I? 

To be more of* 

*Another way of saying that there's   more to come, seriously someone really fucked up with not having more synonyms for continued. Like REALLY fucked up. I guess it's up to me to look into that. Or is it?* 

To be explored* 

You know, like as if there wasn't already enough drama to juggle here! 

Four - Green Through

Here's what pisses me off about glass, it's single only job is to be see-through, it's SINGLE ONLY JOB, and yet eat a shard of it and you can no longer even see it at all! You know, except the bit sticking out your neck, but then you have to break that off and eat it again, and it's NEVER the tastiest bit. I don't know why. 

The glass was the first thing I noticed when I stormed out of the cloakroom.  Glass windows, glass glasses, people looking at the glass glasses through their glasses. But soon I was distracted by more things. Things that had nothing at all to with glass. By the lights through the glass bulbs. By the people eating their food and drinking their glasses of wine. By Kev's wailing for an ambulance or at least a glass of water. By the glass fish tank left over from the old set up which didn't fit the current Mexican theme, I mean the fish in the tank were Cichlids, which are African, they should have had Mexican fish in there, like the ones that lay pinto beans. Stupid owners. By the the class of 78' reunion going on in the corner with the misspelled banner accidentally saying 'glass of 78'. And by the evil super-villain Glassman, who'd taken a break from super-villaining for an hour or two to eat some delicious glass shards and salsa.

Plus I was distracted by the fact that I was now staring across the room at a door which said 'cloakroom' on it. So where had I just been? And how come everyone else in there had knives, and pans, and buckets of corn chips and guacamole next to them? 

To be honest I was so distracted that I briefly forgot what I needed to do. The thing that was so important. The BIG thing. That needed to be done NOW. And forgetting what I am supposed to be doing has always made me hungry. 

Lucky I heard there was a good Mexican restaurant near by. I wasn't sure where exactly so I asked one of the waiters 'do you know where a Mexican restaurant near hear is'? He tipped his sombrero up, tilted his head back and looked at me suspiciously and sheepishly replied 'are you fucking serious?' 

I was.

Deadly serious. 

And when people ask me if I'm serious when the answer is that I'm deadly serious, things take a turn for the deadly, and when things get deadly they get serious - deadly serious. 

I grabbed for a knife, but instead got a glass, and I held it up into the air and yelled at the waiter 'it's ok, I'll just eat this'. 

And that's when things in the room reached a level they'd previously never been before - just as heated. How I would deal with this would affect the whole rest of the afternoon, and I needed to deal with it NOW, and in a BIG way!

To be added to* 

*Another alternative for continued, albeit a shit one. Someone really should look into that. 

Three - Incorrect Graft

Friends of mine, of which I have many (such as my best friend Kev, my little brother Gav, my older sister Dev, or even one of my old school chums like Liv, Sav or Fev), know something about me that is a thing about me that they know is a thing that they can rely on to be a thing of mine - and that's that I don't like to dilly dally.

This is for many reasons, such as:

- I don't know what 'dilly' means.

- I don't know what 'dally' means.

- I don't know what 'dilly dally' means.

- I don't like things I don't know the definition of. 

- I don't like wasting time unnecessarily by messing around in a dawdling fashion resulting in time being treated idly leading to a lingering sense of delay and ultimately lallygagging. And 

- I don't know what lallygagging means.

But another thing my many friends will tell you, (friends like my best friend Kev, my Dad Puv, my cousin Aev, or even my best fiend Kev), is that I don't like things that amble along as if there is some sense of intentional avoidance or reluctance to get to the next thing.

It's one of the reasons Kev knows he's an asshole, because he's been far from reliable in this regard over the course of our friendship. 

Like one time I cut my foot while trying to carve my toe nails into the shapes of my favorite guitar models, and so I called up Kev and asked if he'd bring me over a selection of skin grafts in various skin tones, so that I could match the closest one up just right before glueing it over the wound (I didn't want weird looking feet, obviously) and it took him nearly three hours! I'd realized I'd actually just spilled my Fender Telecaster Red Nail Polish almost two hours before he showed up. AND he didn't even bring any black skin grafts saying 'I knew it didn't match yours'. That racist. Then he wanted to know if he could have a go playing one of my guitars! What a dick. 

So when he has actually cut himself, albeit in a stupid 'I said fork not knife you dick' way, there was no way I was going to dillydally on my goals here. 

But then, disastrously, after looking already for a while, I'd found nothing but disappointment  in the cloakroom. Literally zero else. 

But If you thought that just because I said what I found in there was literally nothing but disappointment, and that this means that I didn't find anything else in there BUT disappointment in there then you'd be wrong.

Oh and I'm not talking just regular wrong. I'm talking really wrong. And really wrong is barely a finger print off being dead wrong (depending on how thorough the forensic team on site were). Which is to say that, oh yeah, you better believe that you are wrong. Really stupidly wrong. Wrong like a fire pit in an ice factory, which I guess is probably more wasteful than wrong, but wastefulness is wrong! Wrong like a train built to the moon, which would be more miraculous than wrong, but miracles are weird and often tied to religions and cults and miracle workers, all of which themselves are wrong. Wrong like the time Kev thought I'd buy chocolate off his daughter to help pay for surgery for the kid at her school to get her eyesight back. I mean school kids should not be performing surgery on other school kids, that shit is WRONG. Seriously, try it on a old person on a donkey or something first at least, and if you're going to buy a donkey with my chocolate money I want a ride BEFORE you fuck up its eyes! 

So yeah, I found literally nothing in the cloakroom, but I also found other stuff in the cloakroom. Lots of stuff in fact - Disappointment, humiliation, a small spider, that my shoe lace was undone, a musky odor, an eyelash in my eye, and even more, but none of those were what a sought. 

I was in there at least fifteen minutes before I gave up. Which is a long time for me. I once spent only twelve minutes looking for a lost kitten. Sure I'd found it after four minutes, but it's the time that counts. 

In the cloakroom I looked for what I sought till my little heart nearly gave out (I was born seven months premature so my heart never got to full size. Although my mother had been planning to carry me for fifteen months, so I did only nearly die). Yet despite my searching, today was not to be my day. I didn't find anything remotely interesting in there. No trap doors. No secret passage ways. It was a bust. A horrible bust (the worst kind of bust). 

There was only one thing even slightly intriguing that I found in the whole damn cloakroom - An awesome looking, fitting and feeling leather jacket, which I could tell just by looking at would look amazing on me, but I didn't want it. I don't have any girls I'm crushing on to woo with it, I'm totally into exotic girls these days, and there is a supply of them as short as a broken record in this hell hole town.

Oh and there was also the two first class tickets with no name on them to some place called Venezuela, but who can afford hotels and meals in restaurants in this economy?

Oh and there was the safe that was unlocked with the several wads of cash with the sash around them saying 'unmarked, trust me'. No thanks, who needs the pressure of having to make decisions like which awesome thing to buy with wads of untraceable cash? 

Fucking cloakroom. I hated it now. It had ended up having three remotely interesting things after I'd said there would only be one, and I hate when the only thing turns into three things, make me look stupid will you numbers? You pricks! 

So I stumbled out. Now I just needed to save face. I needed to do something big. Big enough that Kev would forget what I'd promised. I had no idea what it would be, just that it would have to happen... NOW! And I'll tell you this, this thing would lead to things of such size that only a psycho would make you wait to hear more one second longer. 

Well I'm NO PSYCHO! So I shall make you wait at least TWO seconds more.

To be furthered*

*Another word for continued, which I'm using now as I used up continued in part one, and there is no way a story as important as the one I'm telling you here shall include any repetition or other delaying tactics, whether for dramatic affect nor any other wonderful literary or story telling device, no way in hell, NO way in heaven, and no way in the afterlife, regardless of ones destination in it, with heaven and hell being the logical options, and any of my friends could tell you that. Probably not my old school chums or family members, all of whom I'm estranged with, but the rest of them for sure. 

Two - Frosty Responsibility

My mate Kev has never been the reliable sort. One time when I locked myself out of my apartment it took him the best part of three hours to merely get his date to leave his bedroom, drive up the coast to my parents house, break in and get my spare keys from the locked draw in my dad's home office then drive them an hour back down to me. Seriously? Three hours! I'd realized I'd left the back window open nearly two hours before he showed up. Then he wanted one of my last five beers! Dick. 

Another time when was at his place and I asked if I could have a beer he replied 'I think there is one left in the outside fridge, help yourself'. Yep! That's right. He didn't even get it for me. 

Then one other time when I was moving he only helped me for half a Sunday. Then when I realized that I didn't have room in my new place for the large fridge I owned and asked if he wanted to take it, he claimed that he 'already had a fridge', so I said 'well you have a garage, stick it in there' and then he said 'I can barely fit my car in there as it is' and then I said 'park on the street you lazy prick, and besides once when I was at your place you didn't even have any cold beers! None. Who the fuck treats a visitor like that? Take my fridge and you can have a fridge just for beer and be a good host for once'. 

That shut him up. I'd obviously convinced him. But then later, when I asked for the money he owed me for buying it off me he said he'd only give me the price I paid for it $899, which turned out to be $50 less than what it cost to buy a new one in the modern market due to inflation! 

Yep, Kev, he's a good mate, but he can't be relied on for shit. That means when he actually DOES get something moderately right, like spurting blood to give me cover, I know I have to get my part right too. It's hard to call someone out for being a lazy, unreliable dick if you fuck shit up yourself occasionally.

So opon my first purveyance of the cloakroom I knew that my ability to make fun of Kev for stabbing himself with a knife instead of a fork was on the line. I had to find something. And something good. Very good. Good enough to warrant being both found and claimed as being good. 

And I had to find it in the cloakroom. Because that's where I both was, and where I'd claimed I'd find said good stuff. 

The search was going to create a story worth detailing in every detail like a poet detailing something poetically, and when you're going to do something like that, you want to do it swiftly. Something I personally would never, ever fail to do. 

To Be Continued*...

*long for Cont, you know to be clear

One - A musk of anticipation

I stumbled out of the cloakroom. I needed to do something BIG, and I needed to do it NOW! And it had to be something very big. And something extremely Now! 'Now and big' I thought to myself, solidifying the situation, the goal and the necessary speed to myself, while simultaneously wasting time that could have instead been used to think of something else, possibly something big to do, or even something to do achievable with speed. Speed in the now sense. 

To be honest I perhaps should have come out even earlier, but I'd been forced to stay in the cloakroom longer than I'd desired because I'd struggled to find it to be filled with the the types of things I'd been coveting, and I didn't want everyone to know that I'd failed to find what I was seeking, especially after I'd made such a huge deal about the fact that what I was seeking was going to be easy to find. 

'Only coats? Bullshit!' I began, when doubts had been aired 'cloakrooms are the oft forgotten wonder chests of restaurants, filled with trap doors to wine cellars so full of wine that they could make even a wino pee his pants, and ceilings so unnecessarily high that all sorts of amazing things would be stored on the high shelves, enough to make short people nail blocks of wood to the underside of their feet for a mere glimpse, and hidden doorways to VIP rooms so grand that they HAVE to be secret or else every celebrity in town would want in, and NO establishment can keep the volume of hidden recording devices that would be required to collect all the information required to blackmail THAT many celebrities to pretend they like your food, which is the the LIFE-BLOOD of the restaurant trade! Yep cloakrooms, and if you think I'm wrong, then you are a moron and a fool!' I'd leveled at my friend, when he'd questioned why I wanted him to purposely jam a fork into his thigh by the bathroom doors to create a scene and provide me cover.

'But this is a Mexican restaurant in a building originally built for an ill-conceived fish tank themed seafood restaurant, they don't even sell wine!' He'd replied. Apparently trying to get out of his relatively minor part of the scheme. 

'A fish tank themed seafood restaurant sounds like a fine idea, even a fun idea' I'd retorted.

'The kids were told "you're in a fish-tank" now let's eat some fish", they thought they were going to get fucking EATen!' He said, catching himself from  breaking into a yell. 

'Maybe that's a good lesson for the kids, did you think of that? That maybe kids need to learn that not every time they think they are going to be eaten will they actually be fucking eaten, so maybe just stop your crying and toughen up, I mean cannibalization was eradicated from these parts once they broke up that cult that had forgotten to buy seeds for their community garden, but kept watering, raking and hoeing in vain for three years before the leader went insane and ate his number three, so toughen the fuck up kids. Besides, if this restaurant made people feel like they were about to be eaten, that's even more of a reason they needed a private VIP section, who wants to eat somewhere where they feel the food may be them? "Oh wow, this is delicious, what is it, oh fuck it isn't me is it? Did you drug me and carve some of my ass cheek off then wake me up, take me to a nice restaurant, have it cooked and then feed it to me! If you did I'll carve a fucking hole from your ass cheek you dick!" Yeah right, that's how celebrities want to eat? You dumb piece of shit Kev'. 

That shut him up. I'd obviously convinced him, and over to the bathroom door he'd gone. Then he'd paused. Then he'd looked like he was about to do it. Then he'd paused again. Next he'd retreated into the bathroom. In there he took ages. I never asked him what he was doing. I have a couple of ideas that I sketched out in my 'What I Think People Were Doing When I Couldn't See Them' visual journal, and I wrote a few ideas down in my 'IF You Crossed Me Then I Think it MAY Have Been In One Of The Following Ways'

List Diary, and I later reenacted out some of the most plausible options in what turned out to be one of my messiest days at my 'Performance Art' Practice Group (I'd also brought everyone what turned out to be crumbly cake).  But let's face it the options are endless. The chances that I nailed it down are pretty unlikely (Unless he was looking at himself naked in the mirror while imagining to himself the parts of animals he most wished would grow on his own body suddenly sprouting from his skin, which is of course what most of us do in restaurant bathrooms). Then he came out. Paused again. Next he took a glass of beer off a strangers table and chugged it. Then got into a verbal altercation with the man he'd stolen it from. Let it escalate to the point of a push and shove off. Then suddenly slammed the man to the ground, grabbed a butter knife, and yelled 'buy you a new beer, here's your fucking beer', and then buried the knife into his leg.

What an asshole. How can a butter knife to your leg be equivalent to a beer for someone else? He's just lost a beer and now you're chucking confusion onto his pain? Plus, as I now yelled out across the room 'I said a fork you moron' causing everyone to look up at me. 'Look dickhead, now everyone's staring at me, this is the OPPOSITE of what I was going for! Can't you do anything right you dick!' I added. What a dick. 

But then he got lucky. A gush of blood began to spray from the wound. An artery or something must have popped. And while people dove for cover I was able to sneak into the cloakroom unseen. 

And as I opened the door, and crept into the dark, musky compound of possibilities, a huge smile radiated off my face. The smile of possibility! 

But little could I possibly know at that time, just what disasters awaited me. Big and immediate disasters. The kind everyone would want to hear me tell about in a big and lavish way, and now. I'm talking really BIG and immediately NOW! A wish I will of course honor. 

To be cont*....

*Short for continued, you know to save time and space. 

A worldwide journey to become a household name

 

Kev wanted to be someone who could be described as being a 'household name'.

So he traveled the entire globe, and  attempted to knock on every single door, to try to introduce himself to every single person. 

The mission did not work out as he'd hoped.

(He had a remarkable ability to regularly time his knocks for the same time people had scheduled their monthly bath, oh and many people in places like Siberia, Belarus or the posh parts of England didn't understand what the hell 'g'day mate, let a bloke introduce himself, the names Kev, or Kevo to me mates' even meant). 

Still the legend of 'the ol' bloody stump where his hand should be door banger' does get told around the odd camp fire now.

So it was still totally worth it.