Mattalogue; Holy Bazoola! I'm fat?

So, yesterday I was rambling around Leigh, when yet another kind stranger felt the need to tell me something which I apparently hadn't realised up-till now. 

"Oii! Fat-tayyy!" she bellowed across half a field (She had a voice which sounded like the unholy union between a gorilla and a fog horn). 

I looked down at my somewhat cumbersome paunch. "Ee gads!" I announced loudly over the Game of Thrones soundtrack which played in my ears. "I do believe you're right!" 

So I thank that pure hearted 14 year old girl and her little group of equal minded angels for pointing out this glaring flaw in my otherwise flawless person. Because we all know that not conforming to a physical standard set by the media and shallow people is worse than anything, even rudeness.

But seriously, taking the piss aside, I've always found it weird how physical "oddities", be they obesity, hair or something as mundane as an 'unsightly' mole, can have someone labelled and mocked. It's apparently acceptable to shout "oi fat-bastard!" or "ginger-pubes!" at someone for these terrible offences, yet you rarely hear of someone being mocked for a truly bad quality such as vanity, hatefulness or eating Marmite.

(I am of course, sidestepping the issue of bigotry, because that's an entirely different kettle of sharks that being a straight white male, I know nothing of)  

I've always been overweight, and hey, I got over it awhile ago. I have my issues, but guess what, they're MY issues. I even tried 're-claiming' it once, but it lasted for approximately seven seconds, before I became incredibly self concious about the whole thing and ran to the kitchen to absorb a bucket of knock-off Hagan Dazs and inject cheese into my veins. 

There are however some advantages to being overweight, not just an extra bit of warmth and being an excellent pillow. 

People expect nothing of you. The thought process seems to be something like 'Oh they're fat, ergo lazy ergo will never actually do anything'. While this sounds terrible, when you fail, no one makes a big deal about it, and when you succeed people seem pleasantly surprised. Another 'perk' of being portly is that people ignore all your other more serious issues. This is perfect for a damaged (oh god...did I actually use that word? Knew I shouldn't have listened to Linkin Park this morning), arrogant, social misfit such as myself. 

That last point by the way, links (surprise, surprise) into a significant character in my writing. One of the main protagonists is a young fat boy by the name of Nathan Walker, who, both begins with and develops some serious issues over the course of the plot, which are duly ignored because; "ha! Look at him, he's fat." 

On a related note, just because a character shares a single trait (because I felt there were very little overweight, male teenage protagonists) and hails from my hometown, does not mean he is a self insert character. I'd like to think I'm somewhat more grounded and clever than him. 

Anyway, whinging over! 

Lacon Nights Tidbit

The melted finger tips grasped the final jar. If he’d been listening he would’ve heard the sound of his exposed bone clattering on the glass. The flesh from his hands had long since disintegrated, the nerves dulled to a point of non-existence. He held the rim up to his cracked lips and poured.

He didn’t care what they said; it was possible to overcome the burning. It was like tinnitus, one day you just got used to it and it was no longer an issue. The acid slithered down his throat, burning everything it ran over. It hit him instantly, like a shot to the abdomen. He rolled onto his back, the yellow froth erupted from his slack mouth.

It began to expand along his face and eventually dripping into his eyes. That part still burned, he was certain there was no way to avoid it either. He took a last look at his apartment. It was like a blackhole, no light could enter or exit. However, instead of being down to gravitational mass, it was more to do with his heavily tinted windows. And possibly the deep black curtains that covered the aforementioned windows.

The apartments ‘Theme Wall™’ had long since been broken by a night of partying, as had the lights. Not that he minded, he liked the darkness and the lack of distractions. It left a blank canvas, for his supercharged mind to wield its considerable talent over. What he saw varied, sometimes pain, sometimes ecstasy, sometimes nothing more than pins and needles. As the ships whizzed, whirred and hummed past his apartment the sounds reverberated around the room and into his head. He saw the noises as colours, which in turn he felt. The smaller ships were purple and wavy, while the much larger humming ships were huge and white. They all hurt.

He felt the gasworm juice soak into his corneas, he smiled as the toxicity stripped away his brain cells and slowly turned the grey matter into mush. It was a nice feeling. He had total control. Some said it was the dealers who had control over them. He and other readers of Worm-juicers Biweekly scoffed at such an idea. He read it whenever he could be bothered to wander over to his monitor wall and click the icon. It gave him helpful harvesting techniques, the best ways to milk a worm and the top 10 greatest filtering substances, toxic waste from the Oozing Gyre was always in the top 5.

Gimpy limbs and footballers special friends

Day 6.5 in the great pop challenge of 2011. I've faced many opportunities to break my personal bet. Just today I went to the local Sainsbury's garage for a drink. Got myself an overpriced bottle of water instead. As an interesting aside, I was served by a girl from my high school, it was an odd experiance. Reminded me of why I hate this place, it sucks you in and digs its hooks in. Before you know how old you are, you're trapped forever. Like an overly clingy mother, the kind who keeps you spoon fed well into your 40's. Maybe I'm just pretentious.

My legs hurting more than usual at the moment, it's a nice burning/crushing/twisting pain that likes to switch itself on and off when it pleases. Like some sort of sadistic kettle. Where was I going with that metaphor? I swear it's affecting my already -criminally poor- judgement.

So that explains why I'm glued to my laptop at gone 2 in the morning. One of my limbs feels like it wants to go on strike, the other quickly following suit. Aaaand my ever reliable head is having second tenth thoughts about company I keep. Or rather, company I try to keep. So, I guess, like a footballers 'lady friend', I'm being buggered at both ends. Of course, I was too drugged up on faith in human decency and -cliche alert!- friendship to feel that little phallus creeping inside me and screwing me for all it was worth. So now I'm just kinda left here, lying on my own, covered in stinky gunk and unable to walk properly.

Cheerful post!

We're All Going On A...Easter Holiday...

Never before in my life have I said this, but, I'm currently on holiday...in smoggy Leigh. "But surely, how can one have a holiday in a town where NOT being the result of an incestuous union is considered taboo?" You're potentially asking. Well the answer simple, anythings better than living with Norman Bates. It's nice to be able to wash the stench of dead/wet dog/poop out of my nostrils every once in awhile and replace it with...the stench of poop and curry.

Also, for anyone who actually reads this; http://www.leighjournal.co.uk/news/8625319.Man_charged_after_brother_stabbed/

The guy who arrested him was none other than my dear moderately-old dad. I'm pretty damn proud, as are the local police.

I'm hoping to do some writing in my time here, mostly focus on my recently sprouting Sci-fi idea. I have two working titles for it, The Eon of Neon (wooo for rhyming!) or Lacon Nights (y'know...like Arabian nights, but it's set in a far future mega-city called Lacon...).

The idea is to have a collection of short stories all featuring a different central character(s) set in and around the aforementioned mega-city. I've got a few ideas at the moment, some of which include a shape changing sex slave (yes, I'm aware they're as old as the medium itself), a guided tour over a land once known as 'Amurrika' and a cult of mercenaries who base themselves on "The old Heroes", such as The Bat-man, The Spiderman and Aquaman. So...yeah...watch this space!

Mattalogue; The Egg.

With a small amount of shock and upset I realised something last night. Next year marks the tenth anniversary of me deciding I should become a writer. Which is odd considering that in that ten years time I’ve only really been writing for four of them. And only really writing to a passable degree for the last…I dunno, never.

But, it got me thinking. What was the even that triggered me choosing this? Then I remembered, it was a walk, in the Scottish hills.

I was lagging behind as always, my granddad storming ahead, desperate to see birds and ‘the view’. I was more interested in getting back at 3:40 for Digimon and it was already 3:10. Pre-adolescent rage bubbled under my skin and I picked up a stick, trailing it in the dirt track we so dutifully followed.

I swished it around periodically, hoping to sabotage my Grandad’s bird watching. Turns out birds aren’t intimidated by a 12 year old idiot-child waving a stick around. Realising I was defeated and wouldn’t be able to get back in time to watch my favourite show of the year, I sulked even harder.

I looked at my feet and the dirt, as if I was refusing to take in the sheer beauty of the land that surrounded us. I focused on the stick as it left an outline in the path behind me…in my head, it was a sword. A scimitar more precisely, probably because the stick was curved. It was then that my imagination fired off. I stopped sulking...and began to think.

Who was holding this sword? Not me certainly, I could barely hold a kitchen knife without shaking, partially through cowardice and partly thanks being ‘diseased’ with dyspraxia. I imagined a it would be a big creature, thanks to a childhood love of the subject, my head seemed to fill the blank in with a Dinosaur. What kind of Dinosaur you ask? Well a ‘raptor’ of course.

(note…as something of an amateur palaeontologist, I know all too well that ‘raptor’ is NOT what you call that particular kind of extinct reptile and that a raptor is indeed a bird of prey).

I saw this 'raptor' stood upright, tailless and intelligent, like you or I (well, you at least). He held the sword firmly in his left hand, but on his face I imagined an expression of hopelessness.

But why was he like that? I asked myself. In my head I seemed to automatically generate a backstory for him, he was a leader who had won a war and had tried to return to his village. Only to discover it had been razed to the ground by the remainder of his enemy.

On the hillside next to me, I imagined the ashen wreck of what had once been this warriors home. But who had done this? Humans, of course.

By this point I was excited to the point of actually wanting to write it down. I’d never reached that point before in my life. I’d always hated writing, thanks to my dyspraxia I’d always been behind and in pain, not that I use it as a crutch for my own failings of course…

But anyway, I envisioned a name for this up till then nameless character. Tethys Eem.

I imagined what was going through his head, the guilt, the inconsolable rage and the desire to end it all there and then. I dropped the stick as my imaginary companion dropped his sword. I saw him begging a God that I’d never heard of for someone to be alive, some member of his village to have survived…

It was then that I realised I had, not only a hero, or a race. But a story.

...and then two come at once! Not quite a poem, not quite a story.

The Word and He Who Spoke It.

There was once a man, cunning as he was evil

Blessed by the darkness and singed by the light

He united the men and enslaved the women

The virtues of the land were accredited to his love

The pain and toil, his disfavour,

The blame all yours.

He sat atop the tower of clouds

With a foundation of bones

Upon the mountain of madness.

They followed his will,

Lived by his morals, for fear of damnation

Crushed under foot

His standard looming over every town

His image in every room

Servitude measured in fear

To love another was to hate him

He gave your face its smile

Your cheeks were blessed with his tears

The fathers would beat their daughters

To the rhythm of his heartbeat

And the mothers scald their sons with his tongue

His footsteps echoed doom,

While his name rhymed with thirst

The fingers of his empire raped the land

And flexed their grasp

Day by day, year by year.

Driven by his armies of ‘Maybes’ and ‘One days’.

All marching to The Word.

The Word uttered with a sneer and wink

From the crack lips of our tyrant king

And The Word,

was ‘love’.

Mattalogue; Promises, Goals and Curiously Strong Mints

Well, well, well dear reader. I am infact alive. I know I’ve not made an entry on this infernal thing for a good while, but I’ve been busy.

Was that an effective lie? I’ve been trying them out lately. Y’know the kind of situation, where you’re all civil and nice to someone, but inside you’re secretly screaming obscenities at them and their mother. That kind of lie.

Anyway, lifes been rather strange lately, don’t get me wrong. It’s been good, but just, very very strange. But to say any more on the matter in such a public place would be ‘controversial’.

Christmas was rather impressive for me this time around, not only did I receive a box of Marks and Spencers ‘Curiously strong mints’ (the ‘curiously’ in the title makes me think they’re alluding to some mysterious ingredient, more than likely poor people), the new COD game (the unwrapping of which heralded me waving goodbye to sunlight and social interaction) and perhaps most importantly. A Kindle. Within hours I’d bonded with him and his pretty E-ink face and I named him Kevin Sorbo…after the well known Hercules/reading/technology connection.

Anyway, New Year, New Matt. So the annual tradition of setting aside goals and breaking them all by the 2^nd of January begins. Seeing as such goals will no doubt be broken I might as well post them here.

1. Lose the weight. - Cause seriously, no man needs this many spare tires

2. Get one of these ‘job’ things. - Despite my vast disinterest in the thing, apparently money is necessary to live.

3. Get a haircut.- Save money on shampoo

4. Keep that special person happy. - I hope to keep this goal going at least.

5. Write down stuff! – Maybe even have Land of the Poisoned Skies half done by this time next year. Maybe fully done, uni permitting.

6. Pass Uni again- So far there have been no great victories, only small defeats.

7. Be a nicer person – Something everyone could work towards. Well, except you of course.

8. Make use of Kevin Sorbo and read more- No point trying to be a writer if you only read books with pop-up flaps.

Anyway, before I sign off, I wrote a full three chapters of my ‘project’ yesterday. I was quite impressed, till I realised they were from Book 2 (Filling The Void), not Book 1. But hey, whoever did things chronologically?

I’m off to shoot Asian people in the face now. Toodles!