My Trainspotting experience was one of the few times that I saw the film before I read the book. And it is also one of the incredibly few times that I consider both items of equal high quality.
Continue reading “Auld Author – Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh by Leila.”
Here we are at Week 594.
Before we start, I need to answer the question that I asked in my last posting –
Swims is the word that is the same upside down as it is right side up.
How many of you will write it and check??
Or how many of you have cricked your neck looking at that typed word on your computer screen??
Continue reading “Week 594 – Riddle Induced Spinal Problems, Look Deep And I Loved The Ice-Cream Ones.”
AUGUST 2021:
“My will is your authority,” says Vern, the bishop’s mitre wearing business dealer. His blue veined cheeks turn red, then purple, as he laughs until the tears flow, rocking back and forth, holding his sides in front of red-bearded, yellow-toothed twenty-seven-year-old Alex as they sit making connections and trades in the rusted bus that is Vern’s hoarder home. “Hold the mirror higher,” Vern commands, and Alex does. He sees the red capillaries bulge under Vern’s eyes. “Where did you get this holy hat?” the dealer asks.
Continue reading “Between Vern and Alex by Harrison Kim”
The dreadful ghoul has been beaten to death after death with cudgels, sticks, baseball bats and dirty old men, but the hardest thing in writing to do, I think, is setting out to be funny and actually succeeding. I do not know if Todd Mercer had that in mind when he set out to write The Assistant Town Drunk: From Zero to Hero in Seconds, but funny is what he delivered. There’s subtle wit and slapstick all the way through this one and we highly recommend it for those who might be feeling low.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns: The Assistant Town Drunk: From Zero to Hero in Seconds by Todd Mercer”
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The dumbest question to ask a kid must be “What do you want to be when you grow up?” (Often preceded by “So”). For me the best answers for that are “How the fuck should I know, I’m seven”; “Lizzie Borden” and “Anything that takes me away from you.” But I never used any because even at that young age I knew it was an insincere “points winning” question usually asked by some dweeb whose aim was to screw my mother.
Continue reading “593: Limping Mind Games”
In my mind, I walked in bare feet on a narrow, yellowed, dry-grass path, not stilettos or Merrell’s, Asic’s or glass slippers. Posturing and protection seemed incompatible with the advancing disclosures.
Left and right there were walls of water like the falls in certain hotel lobbies and shopping malls, but seemingly static, not flowing, like glacial ice, the same layered turquoise and white, and mirrored, warped, the way shame distorts what isn’t love into something recognizable and consequently accepted. There was enough width for my shoulders plus an inch or two on either side.
Continue reading “Almost Cinderella by Claudine Mussuto”
“The dead don’t die.” – Jeff Tweedy
Whoever believes that a 58-year-old man can’t rock out any more hasn’t heard (or has heard and hasn’t understood) Jeff Tweedy’s new song “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” from his 2025 triple album Twilight Override.
The symbolic title of this song alone is worth volumes as it encapsulates an American way of life, for good and ill, in five words.
Anything with Lou in it has to be great, or near-great, to justify the use of his name and this song is.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever: Tweedy on Reed an essay from Dale Williams Barrigar.”
Another week, another Saturday Posting!
Week 592 if I’m not mistaken.
I wondered why I had so many random stories this week. But I realised why, I held the newspapers back and hadn’t read them for a few days, most of this nonsense, I found today. It’s actually a bit of fortune as I had very little to go on. What I did have can wait for another day.
Continue reading “Week 592 – R.I.P The AP, Julius Is Second And No Nail Varnish.”
Birthday Well Wishes
Happy 250th Independence Day to America! (and to everyone also born on this date, Eva Marie Saint at a whopping 102 and Elliott the Header Pigeon who is attending the Extreme Cigarette Butt Eating Contest in Philadelphia this holiday weekend ). It may not be in season for some to say nice things about and to America, but the U.S.A., like most places is far more good than bad and is a collection of people–not just one person. To all who sneer, I suggest you read what J.C. had to say on the subject of stone casting. And although it is further ironic that the UK should wish the former colonies happy birthday, just think how chaotic things would be if the Revolutionary War had gone the other way. PM Trump anyone?
Now, On with the Show
Asking writers why they write is pointless. It’s the same reason why kleptos steal and killers kill; it is a mental compulsion, sometimes good sometimes bad and always somewhere along the borders of insanity. Some people have the writing disease way worse than most. The bad off will cut words into their skin if they have no other way of getting the job done (and for the visual artist, Van Gogh’s ear-ectomy definitely got a lot more than a thousand words across). Most of us can control ourselves to the extent we can wait until a saner method is handy. But the answer is always the same. Writers write because they are writers. Birds bird. Lizards lizard. Maggots get compared to unsavory people. Writers can go through long periods of inactivity (for some that may be weeks, for me not even a day), but there will always come a time when it must happen, or (to quote Hemingway) we state: “I feel fucked inside.”
Continue reading “Week 591: Natural Born Quillers”
Woke up to frosted window panes and frozen pipes. Marta and I made do with the gas stove, lighting it old school with matches against the hissing invisible stream. Water supply was low, but would last us a few days. The driveway had vanished beneath the white, with only the stitch of barbed wire fence to mark road from field. While I was attaching the snowplow blade to the truck, Marta called out from the house that Pam, our neighbor, wasn’t answering her phone.
Continue reading “Cup of Flour by Tim Boiteau”
literally stories 