An open letter to everyone who complains too much composed entirely of quotations from recent movies

Everybody with a car has done it, when you feel like things are out of control, you get in your car and drive.

Nowhere in particular, just driving.

It's reassuring that you can keep a ton of metal under control when it feels like you can't keep the rest of your life that way.

It's never what's happening that's the issue, it's your reaction to what's happening.

Living your life with your face pressed up against it isn't the best way to ogle the chocolates behind the glass.

It's not disengagement, it's voluntary engagement I'm advocating.

To let that which is truly unimportant just slide.

Nobody gets respect from a torrent of sob stories.

Be an example, care but do not care.

grip tightly, let go lightly.

Carry on, stiff upper lip.

Whatever happens, as long as you're warm, dry, fed and no one is trying to kill you; relax.

Your problems are not real. They are just bad ideas.

Stop confusing conception with reality.

Stop alienating your friends and relatives with your silly behaviour.

Suck it up and get on with it.

Oulad Bou' abid (A suburb of Casablanca)

Huffrey Bogurt was a detective who recognized the irony in his name. He was a not-quite-well-known private investigator. This was important to Bogurt. He wanted to live up to his name and no further. While he did solve cases he made sure to choose ones he clearly foresaw as easily solvable.

Like the lost car keys case, oh, last week. He'd followed a hunch that lost things were always in the last place you look and he knew from years of experience that most lost objects in a house inevitably migrated to the sofa. Something to do with the seasons.

Sure enough, they were in the last place he looked, under the sofa.

Bogurt felt warm when he thought about that case.

It was nothing like the case he'd just accepted.

Somebody had lost their remote control.

Internal Dialogue

An ordinary day. In any of our heads. It could be occuring to you right now. You have thought about this before.

One night. Maxwell Mallet-Argent, an 8 year old boy, dreamt of the future. Everyone was a robot. but they looked just like ordinary people. Robots built other robots yet Maxwell knew that even as they did this, the robots didn't know that everything they did was robotic.

None of the robots in Maxwell's dream knew that they were robots or robotic in any way. Although Maxwell dreamt that he would know. But what if he was a robot too?

He dreamt that the robots suddenly remembered they were robots. He felt the change inside every robot.

But nothing in his dream changed. They still just looked like ordinary people. Whether these robots knew what they were didn't make any difference at all.

That was Maxwell's dream.

If this be paradise, give me hell

"I've got one for you."
"What could be worse than a hell where you're constantly reminded of everything you've done wrong?"
"If I created a hell, it would be simpler, I'd take all the happiest moments of your life and have you relive them perpetually until every joy you ever had, every freedom you ever experienced, tastes like ashes and feels like torture."
"Buddy, you're one sick f**ker."
"Yeah, let's grab lunch."

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Spayed or Neutered

It was the long tail end of a jackrabbit roadkill day.

They come out of nowhere and come apart instantly, spreading entrails far and wide.

Jackrabbits.

Macy Sugarspoon had a crisis.

Johnny Threesome had just gotten the hammer. Down for 30 days in the hole.

Johnny got his nickname because he was the only shoplifter in Tupela, Arkansas who could rob the same store three times in a row and not get caught.

Until he did.

So now J.T. a repeat offender, had gotten the hammer and Macy was in her cups.

None of the cheap stuff. Only imported direct from the great distilleries of the Scottish highlands.

Cask-proof. 21 years old. Priceless ambrosia of the gods.

Why did J.T. have to go and do what he did?

Macy thought and thought.

He's a bum, a no good bum.

The original no-good two-bit lower Eastside dog.

J.T. hailed from N.Y.C. originally.

Macy shrugged her shoulders, rubbed them where the noonday sun had bitten, her neck and collarbone itched. She felt grimy.

She stared at the horizon, so easy to do in the late long afternoons of this, the smallest of small towns.
She stared at the horizon and felt the earliest bubbles of what would become an overwhelming hope.

She wouldn't end up Jackhammered rabbitkill.
She was going to be free.

Character Study No. 8 Bob Dobbs

Bob is an amoral man with possibly the emotional maturity of a young boy. Bob does things because they feel good. Bob does things because he can. Bob does things for praise and appreciation.

Bob is not trustworthy. Bob may have killed every noble feeling he ever had. Bob is the kind of person who walks through the world untouched leaving a storm of wreckage and ruined lives behind him.

Bob is not a nice person. Even Bob finds himself irritating, annoying, even cruel?

Bob has bad habits, Bob is a bad person, if anyone ever knew how many stupid, foolish, chemical-assisted or otherwise things Bob has done in his life, Bod wouldn't have any associates at all.

Bob is an animal, Bob is growing meaner with age.

Can anything stop, suspend or correct Bob's path?

This is the kind of character worth writing about.

Only trouble that appears to remain is this: with such an awful character as this, who would want to read about him?

He's a great challenge to write, but nobody could accept such a character at face value.

Bob is a destroyer. Bob will only betray his associates. Bob himself, in the introspective sections of the proposed narrative, would examine his own descent into, for lack of a better word, pedestrian evil, and be momentarily horrified; not because he equals the evil men who are his peers but because he falls so far short of them yet apparently remains incapable of being good.

Such a character would be heaven unchecked to write and worse than hell, a mediocrity, to read.

What am I to do with such a creation? For the sake of society I should make Bob disappear, move him to a villa in Tuscany near Sienna and solitude, so he can live out his fictional life removed from the major currents of other people's lives, perhaps for his sake too? Or is such a niche too good for the likes of what may be just another worn out stereotype?

In creating Bob, I wanted to create a character that I would find challenging and intriguing to write about, yet in so doing I have both succeeded and failed.

This character is not worthless, how much more the pity, a truly worthless character is endearing.

This character is stubborn and childish and a betrayer.

This character deserves nothing, but will get his story told in the end.

But no one will read it.

The day someone got written into a book

There was once an Unnamable Thing. It was something Inexpressible, only the vaguest generalities could encompass it, it had no definition, in any sense of the word.

Beyond the fact that it was, nobody could say very much about it.
It was strongest when it was weak.
It was the opposite too.

That everyone knew about it, that only made it more complex, more complicated.

At first it was simple, but how can something be an Unnamable Inexpressible Indefinite Thing and yet be simple?

The truth depends on where you're standing.

Somebody got written into a book today, but what its pages are made of and how you can read what they say is impossible to say.

Although it is possible to know, I have nothing to say.

Words can't express the rest I meant to say.

Overheard in Karmi Cafe Warsaw

"So get this, I walk into Karmi for a coffee and standing in line in front of me is this really attractive woman,"
"Yeah? What'd she look like?"
"Slim, firm, toned body, sporty, you know, my type,"
"So did you ask her out or what?"
"Hold on, I didn't get the chance,"
"What? You've gotta be kidding me,"
"No, Seriously!"
"What happened?"
"It's her turn to order, right? And she orders a large milkshake, and the server doesn't want to give her one,"
"What!?!"
"No, I swear, this server is a big guy, easily both of us put together, and he looks at her and says 'are you sure about that ma'am? I don't think you want the large milkshake, I mean look at me, I can't finish the large milkshake, wouldn't you rather have the small one?' and she just looks at him and says 'Yes, I want the large milkshake,' but I could tell she was surprised, I mean, who ever heard of a server who discourages customers from spending more?"
"That's totally f**ked up man,"
"No, what's f**ked up is that he then turns around and yells 'hey Frankie, get this, she wants the large one!' and a thin reedy guy in a chef's uniform sticks his head out of the kitchen door and takes one look at this I'm-starting-to-be-very-interested-in woman and says 'Are you sure ma'am? It's a very big milkshake,' and then the server, looking satisfied, turns to her with some kind of 'told-you-so' expression on his face in time to hear her say, with exasperation 'Yes! I want the large milkshake!' but I could tell things had gone way past surreal because I suddenly noticed that everybody in the cafe was watching this exchange like it was the latest and greatest episode of their favourite tv show and..."
"What man!? What!?!"
"...When he finally served her the milkshake he made another face like he regretted giving her the milkshake or something,"
"I don't believe it,"
"No! I'm telling you I'm serious, by the look on his face you'd 've thought he'd given her anthrax or something equally dangerous,"
"So...did she finish it?"
"Yessiree!"
"Score one for the customer! Alright!"
"I was so impressed by the whole scene, I just sat there admiring her, coffee getting cold, there's some memories you don't want to risk spoiling so I didn't ask her right then, besides, I don't think after what'd just happened I ought to introduce myself right away, I mean, how would that look? if I walked up to her and said 'hi, I couldn't help but noticing how neatly you handled that joker back there and I'd like to ask you out!?!' nah, too intense, there'll be another chance..."
"...Hey, where'd you go? you kind of zoned out there for a minute,"
"Oh? sorry, lot on my mind,"
"Wanna talk about it?"
"Maybe later, let's talk about something else,"
"Sure buddy, just hope you don't lose your nerve,"
"What d'you mean?"
"I know that look on your face,"
"So what? Nothing I can do about it now,"
"Whatever buddy, just get her number next time or I'll kick your ass,"
"If I don't ask her next time, I'll deserve it,"

Wordless Wednesday one day later...end of year paperwork!

The hairdresser murders

Detective Harold Johnson examined the large African bat with a magnifying glass. Commonly known by the colourful name of ‘vampire bat’ because they bit into large animals and licked out their blood.

What had a vampire bat been doing dead in a Bond Street London apartment?

He ran over the details of the crime scene in his mind:

Andrew Johnson (no relation) had been found dead on his sofa with bite marks on his face and hands. The bat had been lying next to him, broken and dead.

But the wounds couldn’t have been enough to kill him.

A bloody slipper had been found under the bed, next to a box filled with braided hair, apparently from at least 7 different women but forensic analysis would have to confirm that.

The other two items out of place were the pieces of chewed gum which somebody had ground into the expensive carpet with their heel and the neatly coiled skipping rope someone had placed on the sofa.

Detective Johnson had a theory, but could he prove it?

Someone had murdered Andrew Johnson and planted evidence to lead police to the conclusion that he was the mass murderer currently sought by them, the murderer the press called the Hairdresser for his habit of taking trophies of women’s hair.


The vampire bat had been a nice touch, it was such a bizarre detail that Harold Johnson couldn’t help but wonder about the killer’s motives.

Because Harold Johnson was sure that Andrew Johnson wasn’t the Hairdresser.

This murder had happened at least two days ago, judging by the decomposition of the bodies.

But Harold had shot and killed the Hairdresser 4 days ago, caught in the act with his next victim in an alley.

It hadn’t hit the papers yet, so Andrew Johnson's killer couldn’t have known.

Harold’s heart sank, as the realization struck him.

The Hairdresser hadn’t acted alone.

He stood up in excitement and was reaching for the phone but couldn’t speak, choking, with a skipping rope drawn tight around his neck.

A stale voice growled.

“For Charlie,”

And he was dead.