Things start well.

I’d look at the Alps and I’d try and make them a bit more triangular, y’know, like how you’d draw a mountain is you were 7 years old. All peaks would be snow capped.

The grass would be greener and the sky would be bluer.

Nations would suddenly  start finding gold seams in the most unusual places. Poor countries reliant on labour would suddenly have more internal wealth, and more to export.

The armies of the world would be puzzled to find that every warhead they fire is a dud.

Cold fusion is suddenly discovered, it was a lot easier than previously thought. The scientific community wonders why we’d had so much trouble with it in the first place.

The poles begin to cool, the arctic refreezes. Water levels descend.

Observatory crews look up one evening to find that the constellations now actually look like the objects they supposedly represent. Orion hunts a rabbit across the sky.

All is well. Better, perhaps, than it has ever been.

A thousand years pass.

Triangular mountains aren’t appealing any more. They’re boring and predictable. Once again the weather begins to take its toll, and mountains begin to reform, decade by decade, becoming the scraggy  hunks of rock they once were.

But the process is too slow. Like watching paint dry. Something else is needed.

Nearby residents begin to hear a rumbling deep beneath the earth. They notice smoke coming from a nearby peak. The village is evacuated. A day later the top of the mountain explodes. Glowing Magma flows thickly down the mountainside. The green fields are turned white with ash.

The village is destroyed but it will be rebuilt.

There’s a Monsoon in the Kalahari.

There is an earthquake in Manchester. Hardly anyone dies.

The next day an army tests a new weapon. They are shocked to see it work. The blaze the explosion ignites a forest. The smoke billows from its embers, the same dull red as the fumes above a distant rumbling volcano, ready to erupt again.

-Thom

I’ve been playing Prototype recently. If you know about that game this’ll make a lot more sense. If not, there’s lots of explosions and something exciting happens with a spade that I won’t spoil for you.

-Thom

Parents say many things to their children. Often it’s for their own good, other times it’s just to terrify the little blighters. Why? Probably just for the lulz. There’s a few gathered below.

Always eat your greens, they say. Or bad things will happen.

The television will make your eyes go square.

Masturbation will make you go blind.

Be good, Santa won’t come.

Don’t pull faces, when the wind changes you will be forever stuck.

If you’re not quiet the bogeyman will get you.

Laugh before breakfast and it will end in tears before dinner.

She that pricks bread with fork or knife will never be a happy maid or wife.

Stepping on ants brings rain.

The white bird foretells death.

-Thom

-Thom

Blue collar workers clock in with pale timecards. They move crates from ships to storage containers, stocked stories high in bland primary colours. Forklift devices prowl the lego maze of boxes, moving packages to the lorries that wait quietly at one end of the site. Gorged with produce, they choose their moment and file onto the open roads of Britain. Within, the cargo rattles.

Like particles flung into a solution the cargo spreads across the land. Tolls are paid, boxes are unloaded. Warehouses and shop stockrooms are filled.

In one second floor bathroom several people attend to their work.

The liquid substance is a concotion of several chemicals bought from overseas supply companies brewing tailor made molecules in vats.

The bath is from Wickes. It is mass produced in vast moulds in distant factories. The plastic sheets that line the bath are industrial weatherproof protectives. They roll off machines at 2 square metres per second, perfectly clear. Now pale and dusty they hold the substance like dead skin.

The substance sits in a bath for several days. The solid substrate is carefully removed and packed into plasticine white blocks. They wear masks for the smell.

Nails and tacks of all shapes and sizes fill the store. Short black ones, long sharp silver ones. The electric lights slide over their narrow threads. There are millions.

Copper wiring is cheap. Mined from open veins in Chile, Wound by machines in miles and insulated in black rubber.

The wiring is nothing difficult. The soldering iron fuses its targets with star-like brilliance. Electricity flows through the walls in glowing veins, fresh from the distant pylons and the smoking power plants.

The satchel is one of millions on sale in all good clothes stores. The plastic casing is improvised from kitchen equipment.

The sun is beating down hard. The tar is soft underfoot. The machine mutters to itself for a moment before spitting out its ticket.

The man with the satchel sits down. The bus rolls away silently from its stop.

-Thom

Imagine if you will, in this analogy the ship represents a person’s reputation, a fragile thing at the best of times. A person’s reputation existing as a hot balloon full of nonsense and hearsay, from which an individual can craft a rather flattering self image and promote it to the world, preferably through the medium of dance.

Permit me then, if you will, to lie to you for the next few hundred words with the aim of sabotaging the reputations of myself and anyone else that comes into my head. How many ships will my loose lips sink? Start the stopwatch.

Today I paid a visit to the jobcentre to request money from the government. All around me people were shooting up. A man told me to take a seat. he was certainly drunk and he smelled like a camel, he said something like “I killed a man this morning, he’s lying in a bathtub full of battery acid” and indicated that I take a seat.

Then the consultant called my name. A busty wench with auburn hair beckined me over, chewing a pencil seductively. We made small talk over candles and red wine. The mood was soured when a crackhead attempted to sexually assault my chair. A nod to the security guard soon saw him ejected. I slipped the man a fiver and asked him to pass a message to the jazz band in the corner. A musty old tune from the ages began to ooze through the office.

The consultant began to type my details into the computer. She informed me that my benefits would be tripling under a government scheme designed to show more love to hobos. I graciously accepted with a subtle tip of my fedora.

“What do you do all day?” she asked.

“I write transcendent prose.”

“Wow, is it good?”

“You haven’t lived until you’re read my transcendent prose, baby.”

We went on to date. The sex was amazing, since you ask.

On the way home someone tried to mug me. His attempts to stab me were repelled by my toned titanium torso. A flick of the wrist and the man was sent flying over a nearby house, where he hit Bob Dylan, who was singing Mr Tambourine Man and riding a flying pig to heaven.

“Good work!” said Batman.

“No worries,” said I. “It’s just how I roll.”

So I arrived home in the passenger seat of the Batmobile, waved goodbye to the Dark Knight. I had to duck to avoid the small rainbow that had formed over my doorway.

Within a big steak awaited, and I noticed to my surprise that my flatmate had replaced the fireplace with a waterfall of real ale.

It had been a good day.

- Thom