It's never what you expect, but one day (probably quite soon) the credit "based on the Tweet" will appear on film, and a little part of the conscientious soul will die.
I suppose it's marginally less depressing than "based on the news story about the naive English teacher who caused an almighty ruckus with his creative writing assignment Tweet".
Living in this world can be...challenging at best, but I'm still glad I'm not on Twitter. Or Facebook. Or anything else with much of an audience.
#stayhidden
Sunday 22 March 2015
Saturday 21 March 2015
Zombie Labrador...and other nightmares.
This could very easily turn into a diatribe about cause and effect, but that would be tedious in the extreme. Hang on, I need another coffee.
Okay, to alleviate the apparent need for an informative segue between a forensic analysis of mild alcoholism and the dead-ish dog which may or may not want to eat my brain, I'll just say this: I put it all down to that new tropical juice I've been using as a vodka mixer. For one thing, it's ridiculously cheap. Suspiciously so. £1.50 for two litres. Now that is ridiculous. It's also damned tasty. That I'm currently on my second two litre bottle in the space of three days, and that I started out drinking it neat before the addition of vodka even occurred to me, may point to its potentially addictive quality.
There's another thing. This may be important, I don't know for sure, but I really don't like dogs. Of any kind, in any context. The hatred, which may be mutual, is certainly almost pathological, and extends well beyond the fact that, locally, their stupid owners allow these animals to foul the pavement and never - ever - clean up after them. If any candidate in the forthcoming elections proposed a new spin on community policing that involved shooting these bastards on sight, he or she would definitely have my vote. (Do I mean the dogs or their owners? Does it matter?)
Understanding dog ownership has always eluded me. I just don't get it. Whichever part of the psyche is responsible for that messed-up power relationship, with its associations of sentimentality, responsibility, and...whatever the fuck makes people doo-lally about something that really belongs on a Vietnamese restaurant menu, I'm happy to report that I'm totally deficient.
If anything, I'm more of a cat person. They I understand. All of which brings me, in much less of a roundabout way than I anticipated, to the demonic, semi-deceased (but still physically rotting) labrador featured in the nightmare that I awoke from at three minutes to seven this morning.
Well, almost. First, I need to stress here that I'm not exactly plagued by bad dreams (discounting the recurring one about an aeroplane crashing into my house, because that's just silly). In fact, the night before, when I fell asleep in front of the TV, I had an absolutely brilliant real-time dream about being alone on a beach somewhere, watching the waves crashing into the shore, and it actually got darker! In the dream! Amazing. When I woke up, I realised I'd been on that beach for several hours. Nothing happened in the dream, except for the passage of time, but it was first-person cinematic in a way I'd never experienced before. Yay for cheap tropical juice...up to a point.
That point of departure from the hitherto 100% positive dream state observed under the influence of concentrated apple, orange, pineapple, apricot, passion fruit, lemon, lime, guava, banana, and mango (with a bit of carrot and safflower thrown in for good measure by the manufacturer) came last night, and it wasn't at all good. First up, there was the presaging guest appearance of one of my dead cats, except she wasn't dead - just demented. Really crazy, and clearly disturbed by something, to the extent that she spent the whole time outside attacking an empty plastic bag. Uncharacteristic behaviour to say the least, even when she was alive. But there was something else going on, and she was trying to draw my attention to it every so often - running up to the shed door, and effectively head-butting it, then retreating and staring at me. A fairly clear message, then:
There's something in the shed.
As in the previous night's dream, I was acutely aware of time passing. Once again, evening became night, but instead of a soundtrack provided by crashing waves, this time the noise came from my cat and that damned plastic bag, which she returned to bothering in apparent frustration at my lack of direct action. Retrieving it from her, and popping it in the bin, I noticed the faint glow coming from the shed window. At this point, my cat made herself scarce, going back into the kitchen through the flap in the back door. Guest appearance over, because the key to the shed was already in my pocket.
There are certain markers in dreams which readily identify them as such - illogical features, details which contradict normality or waking states by virtue of their relative displacement. A cat - long-dead - may certainly be one, but its presence has narrative contextual logic. The shed key, which has an historical placement out-of-reach through deliberate purpose and intent, thus confounded me in situ. It had no place being in my pocket there and then, because previously I had no intention of going into the shed. It may not sound like much, but I was definitely alerted - in dream - to the absurd convenience of this signifier, and yes, it bothered me.
As did the presence of artificial light emanating from the shed window. There is an electric light in there, but why would it be switched on? Perhaps, as a writer, the accumulation of unlikely contrivances had, at this moment, become tangibly unbearable - I should have woken up. Is it, then, fitting that the writer's greater instinct, to know a tale's outcome, overrode such somnolent misgivings? Or, more likely, the role of reader/viewer has a greater still exactitude in determining any dream's progression. [Feel free to discuss this in the comments. As will soon become clear, I'm traditionally devoid of feedback on this blog, and frequently resort to constructing my own.]
No witnesses. That might be the Freudian get-out of any dreamer but, in this particular case, with my cat back in the house and the shed key already in my pocket, it was a truth resoundingly self-evident. Curiosity a motivator, and narrative completeness the relish, I walked up to the shed door and unlocked it. (Was the lobby light on? Alternatively, was there moonlight enough to see my way clearly? Did I feel the initial reluctance of an old lock yielding? I cannot answer honestly, because these details escaped my recollection in the subsequent unearthly display.)
In the light of a naked 60W bulb, screwed into a ceiling fitting, I saw the back and hindquarters of a mangy blonde labrador, barely pulsating upon the concrete floor. It turned, offering up clenched jaws, sightless eyes, and a decaying midriff, the maggots falling from its parts as it moved. I know for sure that I cried out in horror, knowing it had been there for many months, as at this moment...
I awoke.
Eyes wide open, taking in the time displayed on my digital alarm clock, the lack of Radio 5 Live on same, and the sunlight streaming in through the curtained windows of my bedroom. My first thought...
I should've gone and got one of my air pistols, and shot that undead fucker between the eyes. Put it out of its, and my, misery.
So much for cheap tropical juice, eh?
Initial feedback: Tyger Doyle (a fictitious nom-de-plume who really should know better): "So, Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson were not alone. Get well soon."
Professor Sensaes: "Don't you wish your notebooks were hot like mine."
Oh, fuck off.
Okay, to alleviate the apparent need for an informative segue between a forensic analysis of mild alcoholism and the dead-ish dog which may or may not want to eat my brain, I'll just say this: I put it all down to that new tropical juice I've been using as a vodka mixer. For one thing, it's ridiculously cheap. Suspiciously so. £1.50 for two litres. Now that is ridiculous. It's also damned tasty. That I'm currently on my second two litre bottle in the space of three days, and that I started out drinking it neat before the addition of vodka even occurred to me, may point to its potentially addictive quality.
There's another thing. This may be important, I don't know for sure, but I really don't like dogs. Of any kind, in any context. The hatred, which may be mutual, is certainly almost pathological, and extends well beyond the fact that, locally, their stupid owners allow these animals to foul the pavement and never - ever - clean up after them. If any candidate in the forthcoming elections proposed a new spin on community policing that involved shooting these bastards on sight, he or she would definitely have my vote. (Do I mean the dogs or their owners? Does it matter?)
Understanding dog ownership has always eluded me. I just don't get it. Whichever part of the psyche is responsible for that messed-up power relationship, with its associations of sentimentality, responsibility, and...whatever the fuck makes people doo-lally about something that really belongs on a Vietnamese restaurant menu, I'm happy to report that I'm totally deficient.
If anything, I'm more of a cat person. They I understand. All of which brings me, in much less of a roundabout way than I anticipated, to the demonic, semi-deceased (but still physically rotting) labrador featured in the nightmare that I awoke from at three minutes to seven this morning.
Well, almost. First, I need to stress here that I'm not exactly plagued by bad dreams (discounting the recurring one about an aeroplane crashing into my house, because that's just silly). In fact, the night before, when I fell asleep in front of the TV, I had an absolutely brilliant real-time dream about being alone on a beach somewhere, watching the waves crashing into the shore, and it actually got darker! In the dream! Amazing. When I woke up, I realised I'd been on that beach for several hours. Nothing happened in the dream, except for the passage of time, but it was first-person cinematic in a way I'd never experienced before. Yay for cheap tropical juice...up to a point.
That point of departure from the hitherto 100% positive dream state observed under the influence of concentrated apple, orange, pineapple, apricot, passion fruit, lemon, lime, guava, banana, and mango (with a bit of carrot and safflower thrown in for good measure by the manufacturer) came last night, and it wasn't at all good. First up, there was the presaging guest appearance of one of my dead cats, except she wasn't dead - just demented. Really crazy, and clearly disturbed by something, to the extent that she spent the whole time outside attacking an empty plastic bag. Uncharacteristic behaviour to say the least, even when she was alive. But there was something else going on, and she was trying to draw my attention to it every so often - running up to the shed door, and effectively head-butting it, then retreating and staring at me. A fairly clear message, then:
There's something in the shed.
As in the previous night's dream, I was acutely aware of time passing. Once again, evening became night, but instead of a soundtrack provided by crashing waves, this time the noise came from my cat and that damned plastic bag, which she returned to bothering in apparent frustration at my lack of direct action. Retrieving it from her, and popping it in the bin, I noticed the faint glow coming from the shed window. At this point, my cat made herself scarce, going back into the kitchen through the flap in the back door. Guest appearance over, because the key to the shed was already in my pocket.
There are certain markers in dreams which readily identify them as such - illogical features, details which contradict normality or waking states by virtue of their relative displacement. A cat - long-dead - may certainly be one, but its presence has narrative contextual logic. The shed key, which has an historical placement out-of-reach through deliberate purpose and intent, thus confounded me in situ. It had no place being in my pocket there and then, because previously I had no intention of going into the shed. It may not sound like much, but I was definitely alerted - in dream - to the absurd convenience of this signifier, and yes, it bothered me.
As did the presence of artificial light emanating from the shed window. There is an electric light in there, but why would it be switched on? Perhaps, as a writer, the accumulation of unlikely contrivances had, at this moment, become tangibly unbearable - I should have woken up. Is it, then, fitting that the writer's greater instinct, to know a tale's outcome, overrode such somnolent misgivings? Or, more likely, the role of reader/viewer has a greater still exactitude in determining any dream's progression. [Feel free to discuss this in the comments. As will soon become clear, I'm traditionally devoid of feedback on this blog, and frequently resort to constructing my own.]
No witnesses. That might be the Freudian get-out of any dreamer but, in this particular case, with my cat back in the house and the shed key already in my pocket, it was a truth resoundingly self-evident. Curiosity a motivator, and narrative completeness the relish, I walked up to the shed door and unlocked it. (Was the lobby light on? Alternatively, was there moonlight enough to see my way clearly? Did I feel the initial reluctance of an old lock yielding? I cannot answer honestly, because these details escaped my recollection in the subsequent unearthly display.)
In the light of a naked 60W bulb, screwed into a ceiling fitting, I saw the back and hindquarters of a mangy blonde labrador, barely pulsating upon the concrete floor. It turned, offering up clenched jaws, sightless eyes, and a decaying midriff, the maggots falling from its parts as it moved. I know for sure that I cried out in horror, knowing it had been there for many months, as at this moment...
I awoke.
Eyes wide open, taking in the time displayed on my digital alarm clock, the lack of Radio 5 Live on same, and the sunlight streaming in through the curtained windows of my bedroom. My first thought...
I should've gone and got one of my air pistols, and shot that undead fucker between the eyes. Put it out of its, and my, misery.
So much for cheap tropical juice, eh?
Initial feedback: Tyger Doyle (a fictitious nom-de-plume who really should know better): "So, Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson were not alone. Get well soon."
Professor Sensaes: "Don't you wish your notebooks were hot like mine."
Oh, fuck off.
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