Clouded Thoughts

He ran franticly around his apartment, looking though boxes marked "to throw out", "broken" and "stolen from Gore Vidal". He was running for so long he had to stop to catch his breath, this was surprising as it was a studio apartment and only had about 5 feet of floorspace. When he first moved in he asked if there would be room for his grand piano, to this day it hangs in limbo above the building.

He hadn't left this place for 6 months, maybe longer, he lost track after six months and that was at least 20 weeks ago. Becoming increasingly detached from the outside world, his only connection was back issues of the New Yorker and the guy who delivers the Chinese food. He looked a the walls all 3 of them had photos of better times the fourth was lost in a tragic scrabble accident, but hes eyes shifted back towards the photos because he hadn't always been like this.

Only 2 years ago he was on a wave of success, to the extent that getting the MacArthur genius grant counts as success. It was interesting that he won because he had never done anything of any note, he then fell under the illusion that it was simply because he was a genius and why wouldn't they award it to him, in fact "why hasn't it come sooner" he said to friends. His friends, how he missed them, he hadn't seem since that day on the yacht, though this may never have happened his mind was becoming more and more fragile and muddled these days. He was aware that these friends did exist and that they had names, though what they were he didn't know.It all just seemed to fade into a blur of memories now, like an orange and a shoe in a blender.

So, he felt he had searched every inch of the apartment, even to the extent mattress was in tatters and his sofa was reduced to tears. None the less he hadn't found what he was looking for but he remembered wise words, "its always in the last place you look, and always save bottlecaps". For a moment that last part struck a chord with him, not because of any significance but because he had always enjoyed the sound of the word bottelcap.

His eye was drawn to the TV which has been on all this time, it was the music that had caught his attention. They were showing a re-run of an old Charlie Chaplin movie "The Gold Rush" it had always been one of his favourites as a child. he sat down but jumped up because of a cactus that had clearly been put there for comic effect but when he sat down again and gazed at the TV for a moment he was hypnotised by two dinner rolls dancing. He felt like he was a child again as he laughed and the feeling of detachment and confusion that had plagued him was being washed away.

He looked up and for the first time in months saw what was around him. Nothing. Nothing of use or value anyway. The apartment was a mess and so was he. He couldn't even remember what it was he was looking for only a few minutes ago, or was it a few hours. He felt like he has just had an epiphany, a moment of clarity, which had nothing to do with the fact that his bank account was looking as healthy as a man eating glass. He stepped outside of his apartment building and looked up, but that hurt his neck so he looked down and found, a bottlecap.

New Years Resolutions

"Do one thing that scares you every day"

This one was very ambitious but Ed was willing to give it a go after being given the book "Yes Man" for Christmas he felt it was time to be adventurous. So on new years day he accepted a bet to jump over three cars on a motorbike. The fact that he had only learnt of the existence of motorbikes that very day was irrelevant (before then he just thought that push bikes had gotten a bit fancy). So there he was, at the top of a poorly constructed ramp waiting to the sparkle glue to dry, when suddenly his foot slips and he was away. Before he has time to react he is over the three cars and landed on the other side. Unfortunately the brakes failed and he rolled off into the sunset and wasn't seen again till June 16th teetering over the edge of tower bridge in London.

"I'm going to grow my own food"

This one is from the outset a bad idea but Tim was resolute in his affirmation that he was a gardener at heart.Though he was new to physical gardening he had pretended to read a lot of books on the subject and was aware that vegetables came from between the toes of mythical beasts and not from the supermarket storeroom. So on his first day in his new allotment he had a selection of seeds to plant but in a strange twist he sneezed and sent this assortment of seeds everywhere. he figured that that was enough and went to find the nearest Starbucks. Several weeks later when he remembered the allotment he returned to find an overgrown mess and strange mutations of vegetables including a carrot/potato which talked to him in a voice not unlike Joe Pasquale, a parsnip/marrow with a thirst for blood and a wild cucumber/onion that had commandeered a chicken. the lesson to be learnt here is never grow food on and ancient Indian burial ground. `

"Try and meet more new people"

The short version of this story is to limit meeting new people. The long answer is that when Fred met some new people he became involved in a world of leather and handcuffs and he felt obliged to look interested.

The Other Day

"I'm leaving you and be sure to buy some fresh milk" that was the last thing he heard her say before she leapt through the window. Luckily it was a ground floor window and she was able to get up and walk to her car. He took a moment to absorb what had just happened, took note of her buy fresh milk reminder then continued to eat his left over stew.

Now he was on his way to see her to discuss the divorce, she had wanted an out of court settlement, so she told the judge to meet them outside the court. Looking at his watch he realised it had stopped about two days ago and subsequently he was a couple of hours early, so he decided to take a stroll though the park to take his mind off things. Sitting down on a bench he began to think of a dream he had that night before, where a group of disenchanted religious figures were asking him for guidance despite the fact he wasn't a moral authority on anything other then how to make a good toasted sandwich and which kind of know to use when attaching a tarp to a bear, running away from them doesn't help so in an act of desperation he leaps off a cliff, but instead of falling into the sea he falls into a small diner where he applies for work as a chef.

"What does it mean?" he asked himself standing back up and walking along this less then beaten side walk. He stopped into a nearby café and ordered two coffees, one for himself and one for anyone else. The anyone else turned out to be an old school friend who happened to be sitting in a corner reading Crime and Punishment which immediately attracted him to her. She was much more beautiful then he remembered and they had a few laughs about old times and she found his current situation very amusing. He had to leave and they didn't exchange numbers, he figured it was just one of those nice things.

On the final leg of journey he began to think of his marriage in its entirety. Had he really been such a bad husband. He had only had a few insights into married life as a child. There were his parents of course who masked their arguments by doing the Charleston. His grandparents who after sixty years of marriage still felt that pure hatred for each other they felt when they first met, she was getting married and he wandered into the church drunk he wasn't her fiancée but she didn't want to make a scene so she pretended he was and they got married to save face, then they stayed together out of spite. The only other example of a marriage he seen was Mr Waltz across the street who seemed to have a very good relationship with Mrs Waltz, he used to bring her some flowers at least once a week. Then everyone found out the Mrs Waltz was nothing more then a vase with a picture of Margaret Thatcher glued on to it. The flowers were simply to stop it from being empty.

Soon he could see his wife in the distance, tapping her feet with impatience, soon she began snapping her fingers too and when the judge took out his trumpet it turned into some sort of jazz concert. Now the time for progressive jazz was over and they got down to business. "Stephen, I want half of the kids" she said. "My name isn't Stephen and we have no kids" was his cunning reply. Though of course it was true, then indeed had no children, she had just always wanted some and so fabricated some imaginary one, making it easier to divide them in half.

After several minutes of bickering, a break for tea and cake and several more minutes of bad your moma' jokes the judge had decided he heard enough. "I sentence you both to death" he said. This came as no surprise to the unhappy couple so they shook hands and decided to go their separate ways. They later found out the judge was nothing more then a daredevil mugger trying to rob them and so disregarded his legal opinion and final ruling.

A letter

To my commanding officer,

I was very disappointed to be sent off to battle at this time for many reasons. Not least because I was in the middle of fixing some plumbing when I was told that I must leave immediately now I have left the house in a terrible state with no water and bits of pipes all over the place. Though I will admit it was a mistake to take the plumbing apart in the first place as I had never even seen pipes until then and had assumed that water coming out of the tap was due to witchcraft and hamsters running an wheels.

My next grievance was that not only was I sent to war, but I was the ONLY one sent to war and let me tell you those armoured vehicles are quite lonely by yourself, especially when your sitting in the back waiting for a non existent driver. So I had to get out and walk the 30 mile journey from the airstrip to the camp. At lest that's where I thought I was headed. I arrived in a holiday resort in the costa del sol in my full gear surrounded by many confused, angry and scared holidaymakers. Why was I sent somewhere where there was no war?

I write this letter from a hotel room that I had to pay for myself by pawning my gun in a local shop so I do hope you will reimburse me for this in the form of coupons for show polish. If this trip has thought me anything its that you can never have enough show polish and also that the worlds largest ball of string isn't actually that big.

I will now end my letter by saying I wish to see you when I get back to discuss what happened here. I'l bring potato salad if you provide the cold cuts.

Regards

Private C. Wellsbetter

A history of conversation

The idea of conversation was first proposed by Edward Swillington in 1864 at a power lunch in buckingham palace. Of course the idea of people talking to one another was nothing new, but he has always dreamed of a world of where this kind of communication had a name as until then people had many names for it including: Smelping, Word Jousting and Noise Exchange.

Since then there have been many famous conversations. There was the case "Jesus vs Santa" in 1956 when it was decided how to organise christmas. Another famous case was "The two Sinatra's" in 1970 when mysteriously two identical Frank Sinatra's showed up for a gig and they had to decide who gets the last club sandwich.

The invention of the conversation also led to the invention of the eavesdropper or "Conversation logger", a strange individual who feels that other peoples business should be listened to, logged and then shared with the world. Which in turn led to the rise in popularity of the tabloid and the ear horn.

So where does conversation go from here? Ideally it will all be done telepathically which will eliminate that problem of not being able to get your words out, but the post office says that this wont be available for at least 20 years.

Howard Chalk

You won't find Howard Chalk, known as Howard to his friends, in any history books, books or even mentioned on a place mat at a fancy restaurant. This is because his lifelong ambition to be an infamous jewel thief never materialised and he was doomed to remain in obscurity forever. No matter how well he planned his robberies he was always foiled at the last moment, usually because he misheard the bus driver and got off at the wrong stop or he was unable to open some doors due to his lack of thumbs, something which later earned him the nickname "the fumbler". In fact on one memorable occasion he had to call the police to let him out of a jewellery store when a door slammed behind him and he became stuck in a small bathroom.

These are the entries from his diary on the days leading to and following his last great attempt at a robbery.

25th of April 1927

At the age of 76 I'm starting to wonder if jewel thievery is the right career for me. I was thinking of taking one of those adult education classes at the community college maybe something to do with business or maybe an art class. I've always felt I have this inner artist inside of me because whenever I see a paining of some fruit I get hungry, angry and begin to complain that my paintings are better despite the fact I've never done any paintings.

26th of April 1927

Forget what I said yesterday. Today I heard a drunk Eskimo in town talking about a jewel the size size of his big toe, and let me tell you this guy had some HUGE toes. He said it was either in a boats end in Libya or a goats head in India. I have resolved to go with the goats head and I will depart to India tomorrow. This will be my big chance to go down in history, just like that man who ate all those coins.

29th of April 1927

Sorry I haven't written anything in a few days but I've been stuck on a plane. The pilot got lost twice, first over the gulf of Mexico which we circled for hours looking for someone to ask for directions and then once again over Sweden when we too the wrong turn off the motorway. But I have now arrived in India and plan to do some research on where the goats head is and steal it tomorrow night.

30th of April 1927

Having done extensive research I have located the head. Tonight will go ahead as planned. Nothing else to say except that my mattress was a bit lumpy and on investigation I found that a family of bears live under the bead and use the mattress as a storage unit.

1st of May 1927

I write this after a failed job. Everything went to plan until I got to the head. It looked just like my childhood imaginary pet Hershi. So I phoned my analyst and told him about all the childhood memories that it brought up and by the time we had finished talking it was opening time for the museum and I owed my analyst $110. So I've decided that when I get back home I might take an art course.

The origin of hand signals

Have any of you ever wondered where certain hand signals come from? Like when someone sticks their middle finger up at you what are they really trying to say? Neither have I, but for those interested in this sort of thing I have compiled the origins of some of the more interesting signals. Unfortunately time did not permit me to reference any established works on the subject, so most of what I have here has been obtained from second, third and nth hand sources coupled with some common sense.

The "V" Sign or Two Fingers

The Origin of this dates from a middle ages peasant game involving a large wheel and some candles. A player would set up two candles on the wheel directly in from of him and make what we would now call the "peace" sign to another player opposite him. Dice would be rolled and after some vigorous dancing they would be checked. If it was below 7 the candles would be moved one notch clockwise. If it was above 7 the player would be given a coupon good for a free oil change. As the candles moved the players fingers would follow and when you are making the "V" sign then you have lost the game. People would understandabley be annoyed at loosing and soon this hand signal became a bad thing and meant a subtle "fuck you" to the person you had lost to.

The Pretend Phone Signal

When someone puts their thumb to their ear and their little finger to their mouth you understand this as there is someone on the phone for you or or they feel the distance between their ear and lip is too short. But this signal has had many meanings through the ages here are just some of them.

In Victorian times when smiling was frowned upon young reckless men would use this sign to represent a smile. In fact it became so popular that a limited edition 75p coin was issued where the queen herself was making the hand sign.

In the middle ages it was used by aristocrats to say (Note: I am paraphrasing here) "I am going to get one of those sweet piercings where you get a chain from your ear to your lip".

There are very little records from the dark ages but I heard from a drunk guy in town saying that it was used in the middle ages to represent that I am interested in buying your horse. Interestingly they used both hands for this, thinking that it made them look like a horse. In other cases it was a signal that meant "I want to covet your wife".

I picked up a document from before records began that chronicles the first use of this signal. It simply meant that there is a smoke signal on the machine for you.

It seems the signal has come a full circle then.

The Invisible Drink

When someone puts and invisible drink to their mouth they are asking if you want a drink? But this was not the original meaning. In 1774 Sir Igor Ducking had an unusual tick that make him make this gesture every 37 seconds. To avoid embarrassment at social occasions and football matches he would make all his friends and everyone named Adam do it too. As Ducking always had a drink with him people thought it was something related to drinks and that is where the signal comes from.