To Help

I go to the section where the magazines about books live. I ooze hope. The American ones - Onslaught, Paragraph, The Wagon - twitch their corners and rustle their edges. The English ones - Mmmhmm, Apt, The Brow - stare at my mouth and sniff. I take all six to the counter and ask the fragrant young waltzer which one will make me feel like its purchase is a small part of what I should be doing with my life. Halfway through the sentence she puts one hand on my collar and the other on the back of my head and says it's all on the internet, everything is on the internet, if it doesn't light up it's not worth looking at, get out, get out of my area.

Ill Bill It Isn't

Could you do us a thing they said, and I did them a thing and they put it up in English and Greek and you can go here and look at it and the other words and photos they've got all having a go at each other in capsules politely. It's only two lines. Afterwards I pasted the Greek version into Google and made it go into English and it was arguably better than the entire output of James Joyce, but too late for that now it's been chiselled into the internet. Cheap shortcut to a snazzy ha-ha though.

The Lots of Well Then People

This magazine is full of words and some of them this month are mine. Why not print it onto a quiche and funnel it down your tear ducts? There are worse ways to spend a day. The other folk have written things that'll dice your eyelids. You might cry but you won't blink. They paid me in words by JD Nelson and Chad Redden. They squirted these words onto little bits of paper and put them in a bag and this bag ended up on a plane and in a van and in a man's hand and onto the floor under the letterbox just in time for the rain and that was it for the morning. The washing stayed in the machine and the Labrador bollocked itself.

Chinwagged

We were given a load of cash and asked what we thought about chewing gum. We didn't think it was very good.
Weird texture and it makes you make a noise.
Yeah the noise is horrible I have to leave the room.
Do we buy it.
Not really.
Maybe before a job interview or before we think we might be about to put bits of our mouths inside other mouths.
So if you were offered some you'd decline it.
Never. Accept it, every time.
But you don't like it.
Not at all.
But you accept it when it's offered.
Always.
Right. Would any of these things make you buy it do you think?
And they showed us some A4 adverts featuring TV brains like Stephen Fry. They all had a bright little gum packet peeping out of their top pocket and a phrase next to their face saying chewing is good and healthy and buy this gum or your face'll collapse.
Do you like these people?
I did but not now they're trying to sell me chewing gum no. I'm surprised and disappointed. And, they've probably had their teeth whitened anyway. This guy in the white coat's the best. I've never seen him before so I'm not disappointed in him.
Here's one with Desperate Dan on it, I think this is our favourite.
Why would I take health advice from a 2D pie addict?
Would it make you buy the gum?
I'd have some if it was free. If it's so essential why isn't it part of life for everyone like underpants and panic? I'd have it if they've somehow made it nice. But it's not saying they've made it nice it's just saying I should have it.
There was a plate of biscuits on the table and two of the people who'd objected to the noise of chewing gum being chewed took a biscuit each and started chewing. Then we were subjected to Joanna Lumley in a cafe expressing the intensity of her belief that chewing gum is a good thing by using the word jolly. As it was passed around there were tuts and groans and someone said oh christ not Lumley.
But people like her.
Well they won't when they see this. It hasn't run already has it?
It has yes.

Extract From Fuck Knows What

"I've just realised you've had a haircut. You're likely to already know this, but I'd like you to know that I now know it too."

"Thanks. I wasn't going to mention it, but then if you didn't mention it I was going to mention that I hadn't mentioned it. Your above-eyebrow area looks much the same as it always has to me, unless you've recently changed it and I haven't noticed, in which case it looks tremendous and very you."

"Thanks. What're you doing with the weekend?"

"I am going to reject mediocrity."

"How long'll that take?"

"My entire life and a bit of yours."

"What?"

"You're going to live longer by not putting any effort in but when I die you'll decide to wear a heavy helmet of guilt which will deflect the suggestions of other people trying to persuade you to stop doing things like producing a magazine that reviews all the other magazines and is called Not Quite Good Enough."

It's Not As Good As It Would Be If It Was A Little Bit Better

If we all had magazines for heads then instead of talking we would just reach up and turn the pages. We could rip out pictures and articles from each other and stick them on a wall or put them in a drawer, and look at them to check that we still liked them and agreed with or had figured out what was written or pictured.