Month: March 2018

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One evening

They tell me pain can be interesting. But it has never been to my liking. She had a habit of shooting up with razor blades, said she liked the strange rush of fear how it melted the pain into a dirty kind of pleasure. I can’t tell if she is addicted to pain or simply just a weirdo. For some reason she was popular with the younger girls in the office, probably because of her exotic choice of hair colour.

Even now I can feel her drawing power from me. Pay no attention to me, I tend to whine at the slightest discomfort following my primitive impulses. I’ve got to take the power back. Rage Against the Machine told me that. She’s fondling her breasts now.

Listen to me talk to the world. I want you to think I’m oppressed. Can you follow what I mean? She wants pain. I want pleasure. There’s a discrepancy in the power dynamics of this relationship. Control. Loss of control. Control. Loss of control. Lose control. Never had control. No control. Accept my grief.

Are you crying for your mama? I can console you! Come, little darling, come to your good mama. I’ll sing you a lullaby. Everybody knows romantic love doesn’t concern love at all.

Large dark shapes move in and out of the corner of my eyes. They’ve been exposed to the outside world, had fear planted in them. I want to say that I’m scared, but there’s no time for that. I have to perform without bloodshed.

I’d sleep with you any day.

I’m too nervous to respond. I’ve lost her. I don’t stop, but move more slowly. Now i’m unconscious, a machine, resting against her shoulder.

She leaves me there etherised upon the mattress.

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Webcomic

Inner workings of Hell

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Pardon me

(1)

“To be be Happy” is something I never really sought. You ask people what they want out of life and an automatic response is generally, “I just want to be happy.” I never really understood what that meant. “What do you mean you just want to be happy?” was my usual response. I was looking for something deeper, something more profound. I took being happy for granted, like it’s a default state, not something to aspire to. There’s a difference in my mind between happy and happiness. Happy is an emotion, the opposite of sad. Happiness is a state of being. It’s one of our inalienable rights according to the U.S. Constitution. That which is inalienable can’t be taken away or denied. I should clarify, the constitution say we have a right to the “pursuit” of happiness, which taken in the context of 1776 meant “prosperity, thriving, wellbeing” in contrast to today’s meaning of happiness which focuses on “pleasant, positive emotions and having needs satisfied.”

There is a darkside to happiness. It has become a duty and a burden – a moral obligation. My happiness is making me sad.

(2)

Pardon me while I burst into flames
I’ve had enough of the world and it’s people’s mindless games

If you were to burn like the phoenix and rise from the flame what would your rebirth bring? What would you want it to bring?

(3)

Continuing on with the deadly sins, here’s sloth.

SLOTH

1. What is one thing you’re supposed to do daily that you haven’t done in a long time?
2. What is the latest you’ve ever woken up?
3. Name a person you’ve been meaning to contact, but haven’t?
4. What is the last lame excuse you made?
5. Have you ever watched an infomercial all the way through?

6. When was the last time you got a good workout in?
7. How many times did you hit the snooze button on your alarm clock today?

(4)

How do you get to know someone? Do you ever really know someone beyond what they show you through their constructed words and explicit actions? How much do you really know about me? You might know me better than I know myself because you can see what I can’t see in the negative spaces between the things I say and do and the things I don’t say and don’t do. So tell me, what do you see?

(5)

Oh Lord in heaven (if there is such a place), what holy moment is this coming through the mist?

(6)

Riot walked into the bar. He paused for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dim light. He scanned the small room looking for a familiar face. He didn’t recognize anybody tonight. Just as well he thought. Sometimes a man needs to brood in his beer without being bothered by conversation.

(7)

Another Friday has crept up on me. Life is funny thing. We’re all running about doing our thing until one day the running stops and we are no more. Kinda makes you wonder what’s it all about, really? I had a “real” philosopher try to tell me that I had no real new thoughts – that my thinking wasn’t original. I guess he never read the Book of Job. There is nothing new under the sun. And to bring into the 21st century – everything is a remix.

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Can you leave your mind behind?

(1)

Truth is in the perception of the moment like the time I set my room on fire. I was fascinated by how well Brute burned until I looked and saw the trail of fire I had dripped across the floor. In a panic, i threw the Brute into the trash can. Moments later my room began to fill with smoke. In another panic, I poured the contents of my trash can out the window. Better that than the truth I’d learn if my mom found out I was playing with fire.

(2)

Can you leave your mind behind, those 70,000 stray cat thoughts of visions and revisions a thousand ways she walked.

(3)

When it comes to dogs, I like a mix between a German Shepherd and a Dobberman Pinscher, else I like the scruffy mutt that followed Mel Gibson around in Road Warrior. Or maybe Charlie of Travels with Charlie fame. I quite fancy that. Getting a dog and pick up truck and hitting the open road. The dusty open road. The kind of road where I’m not likely to see many other people for miles. The kind of road with wide open spaces on either side.

(4)

Stephen Hawkins died today. He was 21 when he was first diagnosed with a very rare form of ALS, a form of motor neurone diseases. Few expected him to live beyond a couple of years.

“The realisation that I had an incurable disease that was likely to kill me in a few years was a bit of a shock.”

55 years later on, death finally caught up with him.

(5)

He scribbled the words ‘rights of passage’ on the chalkboard.

In 1968, American troops landed on the shores of Vietnam. Many of these troops were boys about to undergo one of the most important rights of passage for men since man first picked up the stone and the spear to defend what he considered to be his by divine right. They were about to undergo a baptism of fire, not in the biblical since, but ever much as enlightening.

Do you remember your first kill?

(6)

You can win the battle and still lose the war. Remember Pyrrhic? He was the king of Epirus. He managed to defeat the Romans in two major battles between 280 and 279 BC. He strode into Italy with 25,000 Men and 20 elephants and lost so many men that his victory essentially null and void. It was a hollow victory and deserving of becoming forever known as a Pyrrhic Victory.

Life sometimes feels like a Pyrrhic Victory.

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Blog Featured Friendship

That was a long time ago

I need to lose all sense of audience, play my part and bow out at the end. Now you see me, now you don’t. It’ll be just like that in the end. I had a run in with Schrödinger’s cat last week.

I used to love M from afar in science class. She hated me, or so I thought. She used to kick me. Call me names. Even bit me once. Then one day, behind a bush, she kissed me. The fighting stopped. We became boyfriend and girlfriend and the magic stopped too. After three days of being boyfriend and girlfriend, we called it quits, and went back to being “frenemies”. The magic returned.

That was a long time ago.

The birth of Facebook brought us back in touch. The usual likes and comments ensued. Life carried on. After the novelty of being reunited with an old friend wore off, she drifted back into the outer reaches of cyberspace. I haven’t heard from her since 2012.

Up until a few days ago, she was alive in my head. I was excited to see her picture pop into my feed the other day. Until I read the comments. Turns out, she passed away a few years back. Up until I read the comments, like Schrödinger’s cat, she was neither dead nor alive until the comments comfirmed her status.

Rest in peace M.

 

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Blog Featured

Into the fire and Ice I go

(1)

I want to exorcise the demons from [my] past, but where would I even begin such an exercise? These demons, no doubt, have made me who I am.  Into the eternal darkness, into the fire and into the ice I go.  Walk with me now.

(2)

In the cinema there’s a girl. I sit next to her. I steal a glance and suddenly recognise her. She used to work three cubicles down from me. She looks at me suspiciously, I say “It’s me, Clay.” I place my hand upon her knee and break down crying. A grown man weeping.

(3)

I found out today that the trolls are winning. And that made me sad.

(4)

“I’m not an idiot,” the artist confided in an interview. “I know that people are mostly interested in it because it’s David Bowie. But I think it’s still a valid artwork.”

 

(5)

Let’s explore the seven deadly sins starting with ANGER:

1. Who did you last get angry with?
2. What is your weapon of choice?
3. Would you hit a member of the opposite sex?
4. How about of the same sex?
5. Who was the last person who got really angry at you?
6. What is your pet peeve?
7. Do you keep grudges, or can you let them go easily?

(6)

It’s been a fairly standard day. Typical Monday. Cold, grey, and wet. Hanging out with the lawyers today. Spent most of the day designing a piece of micro-learning content using Microsoft Sway, a program up until last week, I had never heard of, even though it’s been out since 2014. It’s not bad if you want to knock up a quick and basic multimedia story to deploy via the Web. Control over the design is limited so if you like tinkering with the final look and feel of your presentation, you probably won’t enjoy Sway all that much.

(7)

Why are there so many mopeds in Vietnam? Italy’s first black senator. And The history of the Chinese typewriter. Because I knew you’d want to know such things.

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