The Return of Yodo

Conjuring a crooning Bruce Willis is as fitting an opening as this mortal can muster, and I'm sure the subject in question (that one, not that one) has no objection to being placed on a higher than usual podium. And to what do we owe this pleasure? Transport problems, apparently. But whatever the motivation, 'twas overdue, and no amount of nothing-to-says excuse that, not least because it's a — ahem — wob leg, whose nature and practitioners dictate ill-inform and sour, or at best tasteless, nothings. Perhaps, then, this unique (though it isn't) stand is a stand of credibility, forethought, thought-about opinions and the abhorrence of slavishly jotted daily minutiae, rather than the undoubtedly truer reality of I Can't Be Stuffed. Still, the pile's a feather higher. That counts for something.

While we're vaguely on the topic, I should probably say something about the other ladder-dwellers, who invariably rest below the above. Silver downwards are, as far as the World's concerned, dead, nonexistent and defunct, respectively. At this point, the most likely person to publish another boast is Tee Eff Dee, which is an unlikely state to be (in). The reason for this is that my gut has even less faith in the alternatives, who, one feels (particularly this one), were token leggers, carried on a brief wind of hype and potential before being laid to rest back in real life. That said, Time Away is a more desirable pursuit in the end.

So, yes, he's returned, whether for good, for evil or the mean. It doesn't bear stating, and posterity will hate it, but a feather's a feather.

My Fat Heart

I was recently sensitive to nonconscious pieces in this collection of ours, usually of little importance in the Scheme Of Things, usually overlooked. Hitherto, my famous sensitivity only extended as far as fleas landing on dogs — gallant compared to most meat-heads, but narrowly confined to traditional notions of consciousness. It's all very well and good to feel that Thin-Skin Sonic Boom — Poor dog, poor flea; poor you, poor me! — for things that are aware of their existence (awareness = sensitivity potential), but when it comes to things of wood and plastic, or gauche or steel, we have more than a little trouble caring. After all, our concern could never be reciprocated, or even acknowledged, were we to extend a hand of empathy their way. Now, this may be an insurmountable barrier to the image-conscious, but for me, it's an admirable challenge to rise to.

My first tentative steps into super-hypersensitivity were easy enough — I envisaged life as a plank and lay on the floor all afternoon — but when I began to think about hammers and axes and nails, I hit a wall. How can I be sensitive if I'm always being bashed by or into things? It was no good trying to convince myself that these thoughts, or indeed any thoughts, never crossed these emotionless objects — logic hath no place in heart! I was beginning to understand why this was such a criminally unexplored area. To cheer myself up, I spent the remaining daylight weeping over collarless Rex and a magnifying glass.

The breakthrough came when I attempted to get to the heart of a pane of glass — As long as I'm not broken, I'm a success! —, which yielded an improbably elating sadness distinct from my knowledge of Facts. Yes, we were both transparent (fragile, too), but I realised that a lack of emotions means that it's up to me to pick up the slack. In the eyes of the world, it matters not who's weeping, as long as someone is. Everybody — nay, everything — needs understanding, needs the feeling that it/he/her is not alone in this hurtling void, that someone is out there, shedding salt for their predicament or offering arms to fall into. And if everyone had that, hey, maybe there wouldn't be so many prob-a-lems!

Paltry in Motion

Though presently archaic, that semi-abbreviated rhubarb cake, given to me by two collaborating friends, was perhaps the most enjoyable meal in a week. The enjoyment dwindled, ever so slightly, when I discovered that the joke I extracted from it was, for all intents, utterly imperceptible, but hell, I was used to that — I don't intend every sensation as fodder for my muse. Now, where was I? Nowhere was I. Apologies: for no reason I can discern, cake turns my sneer inwards. Compensating for the arrogance of temporary contentment, perhaps? No, not that cake — it's past tense for a reason. The present cake is of a different cloth entirely: chocolate, the obscenely moist variety. Scatters the brain, too. Did I mention that?

Having reached this point, you're no doubt wondering what, exactly, I'm getting at. Well, bless you: you obviously aren't from around these parts. Nevertheless, here's a gallant stab at elucidation: cake, particularly the initial rhubarb, has a way of shaking one about in ways that other foods — beef sandwiches, for instance — are incapable of doing, if only for lack of effort. And the mentioned shaking (more metaphorical than physical) encompasses a general lack of straight-down-the-line reasoning and motivation. Have a civilised discussion with cake and I'll have a fit. Case in point, here: inject what you may where you may, but don't expect to cure the fog.

So, what have we learned? Well, firstly, cake, in this context, is powerless. Well, secondly, cake, in most other contexts, isn't entirely as powerless as it may seem, it being an innocent slice of cake and all. Thirdly, the catch-up, as I now dub it, has the distinction of being utterly indistinct from non-conscious catch-ups quality-wise. The same source bears all, and little can interfere. It's either beautiful or tedious, depending on your ilk. Me, I say it's paltry in motion, twice because it actually means something.

The Myth of Divorce

Gripping my jeans rather uncertainly, I shifted six degrees left. There, in the headlights, an even stretch of asphalt, disappearing somewhere out of eyeshot, revealed itself, suddenly and shockingly, along the curve, with clinically applied streaks of white paint and other cars. A sudden chill sloped down my spine, coming to rest somewhere in the rear-crotch and warming my lap, neither act disrupting my terror. Slowly, somewhat surely, I kicked the clutch to Off, and the engine followed. The ensuing silence was marked by a distinct absence of sound, notwithstanding my grimly impassioned yelps and the roar of other cars.

Newly appointed by the roadside, I made my ingenious bed and lay down peacefully, passers-by my infrequent radio, slowly lulling me with inane afternoon questions. When the moon and its minions crept inexorably into view, I found my dreams and the night was over. I was on the roadside. The next day's heat was beating up my blanket. Rising with typical morning legs, I climbed back in front of the wheel and grazed some more highway. The mood on such occasions, as all but the dimmest attest, moves towards the bleak, with highly damaging detours of unprovoked joy offering unwanted contrast. The weather, too, lowers, from sensitivity or cruelty, somehow by design. In such foul spirits, the surrounding political machinations lose their cloaks, and the love of others feels counterfeit. All we can do is drive on.

When a bad mood's rising, the arts dip. You may have noticed, at certain points, that smelling the roses along your walk is as pointless as it seems on paper. I thusly hypothesise that emotions, as they are, don't breed discrimination, as is so often thought, but lead to lower discernation. If you view such an opinion with the disinterest of distance (I'm assuming you have no connection with the person in question), you will also no doubt spot this correlation. The falsehood of the previous assumption, as I see it, has nothing to do with the opinion itself; rather, it has to do with its failure to identify the intrinsic link discrimination has with base, some would say crude, logic. Now, this logic is something we all possess, whether we admit to it or not, but the wise among us have educated it — indeed, have evolved it — to the point where its conclusions are as well-informed as we ourselves are. The discriminatory, on the other hand, have not interfered with it one iota, and its ill-informed assumptions remain at the forefront of thought. Education, then, is still the key, as it is in so many other areas. The sooner we realise this, the sooner it will be.

Bobbing For Porcelain

Under uncertain amounts of ocean, reaching for something unattainable, waiting in that roundabout way. That is to say, I've woken up now. The crux, however, is decidedly more trivial, borne, as it was, from a public lavatory. Here's the mood: the sound of a successful flush had just risen from one of the stalls — to this narrator it was merely an ersatz change-room, I hasten to point out — and a gasp along with it. The former, unremarkable under the circumstances, the latter, somewhat discomforting under the same. But it is for the third sound, roughly four seconds after the second, that I'm here today: "The cistern works!". Suddenly the resentful group of uptights and perverts had common ground. The knowing among us chuckled while the baffled sped up whichever process they were currently involved in and hurried themselves out of there.

When at last the jubilant alien emerged from the miracle chamber, we were rather deflated to discover it was an attendant of sorts, holding a box of tools. The mood instantly retreated to Soiled and Uncomfortable, and every exchanged glance was promptly returned to its rightful owner. Restoring to the harsh but blessedly un-public-toilet-like sunlight of the intervening street, we scattered to from whence we came and hoped passers-by did not notice our re-entry point. For me, the whence was a grossly exaggerated elephant tusk-cum-seat, where my peers were. For the rest, I care not to know.

I'm fairly certain there's a moral here.

Ill-Expressed But Pleasingly Titled

Thusly begins the retrospective false-start: there's rings beneath my perfunctorily amphibian eyes, inducing extra blinks and caffeinated rhymes therewith (I tried being explicit, but it sounded coyly convenient; you'll just have to put up), not to mention (meaningless phrase) sore gazes at the window and navel, respectively. Details dispensed, we progress: I would have certainly banked on being dwarfed by that knowingly counter-productive hate-monger, from pictures, from intuition. Not so, it turns out. Still, it's regardless in lieu of both the affecting object and the object of affection not being me. The former I diverge on often; the latter I would exchange with, if a likelihood, but not plead in the rain for — not with that fashion. A nip of television for Pub Culture enthusiasts, but not an opinion-brimming filigree for altaring. That status belongs to an unpredictably coloured head on a predictably uncoloured body, who shares a similar plus-half age gap, one guesses. That status, however, is not as a genuine reality — not in a mill. or so. More, someone to know. The difference is in the detail, and the detail makes no difference to me: neither seem really achievable. But hey, I'll take the unknown any day, along with a smile and a wistful liquid.

As a particularly outworldly supermarket drop-out once summed, there's metho in my madness. In this case, as opposed to his, it's metaphorical, representing something profoundly soulful. And I'm in agreement: if ever the 'tunity rose (nouvelle lingo), I'd go far out of my way to call beforehand, no out-blue poppings, no prompt re-stockings. This is gentlemen business. This is gallantry. The rest is down to that abstract white-board cleaner, whose lack-thereof existence is corroding, and a rather strained excuse. Oh but that won't stop good humour. I'll sing for every pleasing sigh they induce, out of key, despite or because of little help from my friends, not caring a wist for the lack of leads, and smile, too. Singing silent tribute, thankful like a good shepherd for all I've gained hitherto on those blessed grounds. Ahem.

In Swoops the Faux

From this angle, last calendar's not particularly impressive total of one-hundred and thirty-three seems all but unattainable, especially in lieu of the as-of-then twelve I've amassed thus far, but, like numerous proclamations before me, none of which, you'll remember, were achieved, I'm going to throw reasonable facts to rot and have another half-arse. Theoretically, an average one-a-day henceforth will actually surpass that number, and even two-thousand and five's superior effort. Realistically, it's black-board clawing.

Incidentally, this goal, like its ancestors, has nothing whatsoever to do with quality. As I've stressed numerous times before, it really is irredeemable on those grounds. Quantity, quantity, quantity: that's how you really waste time — and yes, that verb was conjured to simultaneously evoke a bazooka and a filthy blonde's bedroom habit. Come January, and this'll delete easy.

Occasional, But Hardly Often

As an awful philosopher/poet once mused, This is where mood twists in on itself, too tired to differentiate its various strands. The book itself (though I hesitate to put it in such esteemed company) elaborated along bland, broadly poetic, vaguely philosophical lines, none of which I'll be traversing, but the above introductory sentence (which took some cleaning up, I should add) does manage to inflict an inconsequential gash of rouge with its aimless stab at profundity. In the correct context, early morning emotions do woozily converge, sometimes to the point of numbness, and if you can tear yourself into the distance, it makes for a grimly amusing spectacle. That said, I don't mean the hitherto simply as context for the following, which would seem like the lowest of excuses in the circumstances. Nevertheless, it must be said that at this point, the more inroads the better.

And so we reach several hours beyond the spawning moment — quite an achievement in lieu of the majority hereon. Things of note? Well, the distant hymn of our nation's face giggling and applauding seems even more revolting from this distant vantage, although that's partly imagination's fault. And, interestingly, that bespectacled loud-shirt has advised me, indirectly, not to tinkle the ivory bowl just yet, lest it lead to problems down the tract. That was a metaphor, by the way. But despite the above's sinewy cadence, little of it links with the further above — a wooze of moods indeed. The gap has torn two distincts.

Though lacking the impressive temporal distance of the earlier two, this third helping (and at this point, I heavily stress that first syllable) has the advantage of cicularity — what an ugly word —, and here, adieu-less, it is: the evermentioned and bafflingly dog-eared edition alluded to hardly exists, particularly in a philosophical sense. But that, like Her respective parents' exporting professions, is of no importance of all.