living with coote.

We burnt a cake and decided never to speak of it again. We flew a shit kite and decided that it’s all we’d talk about for months. We considered what would be the best way to manipulate our mental states to produce the best body shape outcome. Once we ordered fresh fish that came with lemon juice and salt crystals. I should point out that the majority of this is fictitious. Following government legislation, this blog operates under flexi-truth, an initiative introduced to help working families deceive one another. Down at the docks we prank the sailors with me in my dress, pudenda surly and small. I would let her teach me dance if I didn’t fear nuclear holocaust and the subsequent destruction of Shakespeare’s language. (Television has come to dominate a life that once stretched ecstatically towards the good things in life.) Her attitude towards libraries merely overlaps, rather than corresponds. The first few days were, I now discover, awkward. 'Thank you' to my bland enemy for revealing a truth about conversation and her. The pancake was politely eaten with knife and fork. Study time, nap time, bath time (solo, of course). Daily recommended jazz intake exceeded every hour. Too much foot tapping makes you go blind - you think it's a coincidence? BRACING REVEILLES raise us.

The one upside of priesthood – sadistic, power-hungry old fools who teach iron-age lies to children don’t get to pass on their genes. Fear reform, my Brights. That said, I'm probably becoming a Christian. My cognitive faculty for perceiving God is smothered in sin like a steak in cheese sauce, trying to breathe. I know nothing of my own delicious meatiness. My meaty flavours are smothered in all this goddamn cheese.

I just want to meet a nice ex-Farc militiawoman and settle down to a life of domesticity and PTSD and daily news of, yes, another family member being murdered to punish her desertion and deter others from acting similarly. This is not so much to ask, I think.

a poem i wrote whilst other people were reading their poems

i didn't listen to marta because
i was gulping back sluicing spit that threatened my competency.
my competency is very important to me. sorry marta.
i was competent.
josh is a surd. a surd is an unforgivable sin. [TURNS OUT IT'S ACTUALLY A NATURAL EVIL. YOU GONNA BREAK MY BALLS OVER THIS? I WAS UNDER PRESSURE. SELF-IMPOSED PRESSURE, BUT PRESSURE ALL THE SAME.] josh is the kind of unforgivable sin i like to commit whenever i have the necessary equipment - harness, chaps, misogyny, llamas.
rare gentle tanya, clear quavering neologist
'silent not subtle understated' -
stuttering on the beautiful lines is GOOD GAME.
the parrot was superglued to the hat. dan's hat
looked super-purfluous under lights, but he may just be a man crush;
i always go for stubbled heteros with talent & sincerity & penis dysmorphia.
primal thumpy scratchy
high-lingering shu
is good for me & good for you
& good for me & good for you
echo slime nightmarish beauty-clink
as cool as a white girl is ever gonna get.
i'm glad marta's back.
i felt bad about the first verse.
i kind of need to take a leak, though...
kat is the kind of girl i hope will find the notes i leave in books down at the south bank. her boyfriend is kind of guy i encourage to participate in dangerous sports, & to intervene in knife fights.
i did not have time to write
anything good about sam. this is to his credit.
there is nothing so noble & sublime
as gathering to share what we have.
marta - you aren't even my lover,
but i miss you in bed.

first in a while, on a familiar theme.

I'm in the John Soanes museum wearing trousers with too much crotch. I'm jogging past his grave by mistake. I'm lying down with a vest on and sucking in my gut. I'm listening to a gay man sing about every little facet of love. I'm determining my better profile in the bathroom mirror and cursing love rivals, wherever they may be. I'm learning to bake and listening to snigger-giggles interspersed with the occasional 'oh very good!' I'm reading 'Top Ten Mistakes Men Make With Women' and sighing, very heavily.

Things I've started doing.

Using 'money' as a synonym for 'cool'.

Calling the Dutch 'an excitable race'

Telling girls they smell like pencil shavings, smirking all the while.

Interjecting with "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face... for ever".

Breaking my day down into a minute by minute schedule, becoming increasingly frantic with each moment improperly passed, eventually grabbing fellows by the lapels and bellowing into their faces ' I haven't timetabled this breakdown'.

Demanding 'white man's wages' everywhere I go.

Asking directions and condemning the responses as 'cowardly fence-sitting'.

Calling my Mom and Dad.

Writing letters of complaint to cereal companies when my experience falls short of transcendent. Applauding good efforts that come close (Tea for Me honour roll: Cinnamon Grahams, Ricicles, Just Right).

Looking for grammatical errors in the newspaper and circling them. Looking around for someone to show. When I find someone, I proudly thrust it into their hands, chest out, blowing hair out of my face all cavalier and satisfied. When I don't find anyone, I eat until I can't eat any more, and then I force myself to be sick.

Watching movies at the BFI, which is bloody brilliant, mate. Bit of film for you mate? BFI's for you mate. Get yourself down the BFI. That's where the films are mate. Bloody brilliant.

How not to teach.

I think it’s quite safe not to listen to this man, a good natured Polonius, words falling dead, stillborn from the mouth, see-sawing (umbilical swinging) from one uncontroversial statement to its equally uncontroversial opposite. Anything, for the love of God, say anything substantive. Watching others teach to learn how to teach is useful, and if nothing’s going in yez may az weel. What makes him so terrible? Qualifying and digressing before the point has been made, I think. It forces the brain into an irritating balancing of unimportant side-issues, a regressive back-burnering for stuff that turns out to be useless. Some vexing mannerisms, too; stuttering; the eyes-wide, multi-nod to solicit assent, (for nothing); the trundling, tea-cosy regionalism that makes life seem an interminable bore, all grandfather clocks and old sweets for guests. Get some goddamn charisma.

Me, I’m going to be such a classroom badass. Written by a dead white man? Tear that shit out. Wanna say ‘irregardless’? Fuck it, man, say ‘irregardless’. The only rule is ‘express yourself’. If Mr CCL spent 70 clams on hookers and 376 on rum, coke and methamphetamine…

Nobody puts Cancer in the corner

two things i read and liked enough to write down

'The greatest thoughts are accessible to the least of men. Why do we have to struggle so? Because understanding is a function not of ratiocination but of the psyche's stage of growth. There, Brother Ass, is the point at which we are at variance. No amount of explanation can close the gap. Only realization. One day you are going to wake up from your sleep shouting with laughter. Ecco!'

- Pursewarden in 'Clea' by Durrell

'It amazes Elisabeth that I'm not ambitious; but that's precisely why. I don't want to cut out a special place for myself in the world. I feel that I am already in it'

- Francoise in 'She Came to Stay' by de Beauvoir

Mate your a ledge (SICK!)

This is a list of all the things I don't like. People who can't spell 'legend'. People who too easily award the honorific 'legend'. People who describe fairly ordinary behaviour or events as 'legendary'. People who abbreviate the word 'legend'. Witless graffiti. Girls who scowl when they are uncertain. Men who play team sports of any kind, with the exceptions of cricket, wrestling and doubles table tennis. Men who only know how to display affection for other men by abusing them. Failure to obey library laws. My inability to score in the library. The conflict that arises within when considering whether or not to break the unwritten 'no rutting in the library' rule were I to score in the library. Performance poets with moron politics. People who complain about political correctness. People who huff, sigh, or place their heads in their hands when someone is addressing them. The absence of universal liposuction for every man, woman and child, on demand, regardless of financial means - this is fight worth fighting. Advertising that tries to be my 'friend'. Brain fug. The necessity of massive exertion. That the preferred way of having fun, meeting people, making friends and generally living life for my demographic is really unpalatable to me. That this is how I get my kicks.

This is a list of things I like. Treacle.

'Pathological specimen - extreme danger of infection'. How would you handle finding this piece of tupperware on the kerb?