Sclatchy Rigmarole

- A lack of visibility.
- I've been tending to the ghouls.
- On a volunteer basis?
- It's not very clear.
- Under a powerful timetable?
- They keep long hours and set no deadlines.
- I expect the results will astonish and repulse?
- I'm not sure results are a decent expectation.
- The executive committee disagrees.
- They haven't got a constitution.
- They still have eyes.
- I agree.
- I trust you gather my berries, here.
- I smell a crumble full of meaning.
- There'll be a review period. A good long stare at your bollocks.
- I'm flattered.
- Followed by a focussed discussion.
- Absolutely.
- Topped off by a verdict, the weight of which will vary according to -
- I'm sure.
- Good luck.
- Yes.

Minimum Fuss

A bench by the fountains and the sun for breakfast. A sweating egg in a black leather jacket landed on my right and pointed a camera at the crow on my left. He asked permission for its picture and wondered about its habits. I ate a cheese and chicken sandwich and believed I mustn't move. The egg told the crow it had great feathers. It nearly moonwalked. He compared it to a jackdaw but needed it to know he didn't mean jackdaws were better. It bobbed its head and blurted yeah and flew away. He leaned in and showed me his pictures. I nodded and said decent. He looked at me. I chewed through the silence. He compared the rear of a passing woman to the rear of his girlfriend in the mid-seventies. I got the feeling they were no longer together. I didn't want him to ask me who's removing my trousers these days and he didn't. I chewed.

Soonly Near

One more delay to go then no more delays and the thing will be available by the end of the month and it's going to turn your life around or not adjust it at all.
Simon Reynolds and Alice Ball did the cover. This is the front of it. It also has a back. The back will have you foaming at the eyes. It contains a commercially suicidal but very accurate description of what's inside. I'll attempt a more sensible version on here soon. But in a word: entertainment.
Simon's unlabyrinthine website is here.
Alice's doesn't exist.
Thanks for snailing with us.

Skyline Comb Tomorrow

I won't bore you with the details (I'll bore you without the details). It's all gone a bit quiet and vague what with the sky crisis and the pub about to change hands but not quite yet for the last hundred weeks and a long line of hunches and inklings for the same as usual to feed on while it burps out the uncertainty we dance around like insolent chihuahuas and still no actual date. I just watch the other halves of the long sufferers smash towers of liquid into their cleverness and wonder when the TV will die of a golf overdose. I've been encouraging the garden to express itself and holding poorly-attended midnight dictionary readings on the motorway footbridge. I can't believe you haven't turned up.

The Gone Tomorrows

Lucy suggested writing a story on a beer mat. I went to a pub. There were no beer mats. I read most of Bill Drummond's book $20 000. It was good. I drank three beers. The man next to me at the bar asked if the book was good. I said it was fucking brilliant. We talked about the KLF and burning a million quid, then nailing ten thousand quid to a board and framing it and selling it for more or less than ten thousand quid, whatever it is they did. We both were a bit blurry on the specifics. But admirers. I didn't tell or ask him about stories or beer mats. He was very friendly or deranged. I was very friendly or deranged also. The bloke from Elbow was next to us at the bar. I bet he's written a few things on beer mats. Maybe that's why there were none. I didn't ask. He's none of my business.
If a beer mat was there I would've written something tight and delicious in one take with no crossings-out, then left it to get soggy and crumpled, and within a week I'd've forgotten exactly what the words were and I'd spend the following year trying to recapture them, and if anyone asked so what do you write? I'd say beer mats, mainly, you know, it's a bit niche and best viewed through the bottom of a glass.

Must Haven'ts

Simple things followed simple things until an effect was produced. The effect was a bit boohoo. The things were manufactured torrentially and distributed in battalions and dressed in gowns and left in places where people might pick them up and buy them. After a while a sticker was added to the front of them and people almost couldn't not buy them. Eventually so many people had bought them and talked about them that anyone who hadn't bought them felt sick at the thought of doing so, because everywhere they looked they saw people with them, and in the other direction was a bright animated advert for them, and in the papers were discussions of them and of the people who owned and were talking about them, or hadn't yet bought them but planned to or hadn't yet bought them and did not plan to, because of all the hectoring and boofboof.
There were attempts to turn the things into a film. The first one failed because of weather and no money. The second one failed because of two deaths and no money, but raw noisy footage exists. The third attempt is being made in secret, by a web of people who know how to keep secrets secret.