Train of Thought

Good heavens, that's a long gap between blog posts.

In my defence (and defense, for that matter), I've been busy watching Werner Herzog films. That takes up a lot of time. I've also started to watch Twin Peaks for the first time, and have its incidental music in my head right now. I'm sane.

Oh, and I went to see Southampton beat Sunderland 8-0 on Saturday. That was rather bonkers.

I should write about those things in more detail, but I can barely bring myself to string even these few meagre sentences together. I'm out of writing practice (and practise, for that matter), and I don't want to pull a muscle.

So I'll just have a brisk walk around the block to stretch my writing-legs (fingers). What form should this walk take? It's nearly Halloween, so how about a spooooooky short story?

***

Vampire Train

The train was full of vampires. A vampire in every seat. In every window seat: a vampire. In every aisle seat: a vampire. In the overhead storage spaces: three dozen collapsed coffins. And a vampire. 

Vampires standing all the way up the aisle, blocking the refreshment trolley. Each vestibule chock-a-block. With vampires.

The train doors opened at Ealing Broadway. One vampire got off, and Naomi got on. 

Though she was a feminist (and a vampire), Naomi was half-hoping that there would be enough chivalry in the carriage for the occupants to make space for her. She hoped they'd squeeze out of her way. Maybe even offer her a seat.

But there was no room for chivalry. Not with all the vampires.

Naomi's seat reservation held no water, holy or otherwise. So she resigned herself to an hour of discomfort.

The conductor hadn't even tried to check tickets. 

"I'm not going out there," he'd said to a colleague. "It's packed tighter than a Welshman's leeksatchel."

The conductor's idioms were legendary.

In the vestibule, Naomi pressed her bosom against a safety poster to avoid the sharp collar-end poking her in the back of the neck.

"Sorry about this," said the collar-owner. "I've just had it starched."

Somewhere down the carriage, someone caused a commotion by opening a packet of cheese and onion crisps.

"Some people..." said the collar-owner, shaking his head and spearing the eyeball of the man next to him.

"That's IT!" shouted Naomi.

There was silence.

"I can't travel like this," she said. "Why don't we just all turn ourselves into bats?"

They assented, and all of the passengers enjoyed a peaceful, roomy rest-of-journey.

Everyone arrived at the convention centre as fresh as a daisy.

***

Chilling.

Utterly chilling.

I hope you weren't reading that alone at night.

Don't worry: it was only a story.

Or was it...

Fresh Hell

I'm making my way through the Werner Herzog boxset and enjoying it quite a lot. The last film I watched was his Nosferatu the Vampyre, which was pretty great - eerie, beautiful, occasionally (intentionally?) funny. A bit too much rat cruelty for my tastes, but things were different back in 1979.

I don't find vampires particularly scary. Or zombies for that matter. I think I've worked out the reason.

Most people have a primal fear not just of death, but of becoming a dead thing. They don't like corpses, which remind them that the human body is just a machine of bone and flesh. Vampires and zombies and mummies are scary because they're a corruption of the human form. It's a violation of the sanctity of humanity.

I don't find them scary because I don't hold the human body in such high regard in the first place. For me, becoming a member of the living dead isn't corruption or perversion or degradation of a sacred person, but more of a sideways step.

Admittedly, I've lived my whole life as a conscious being, with all the hope and dreams and communication and stuff. But that's not to say that becoming a mindless, shambling, flesh-eating monstrosity isn't just as valid a lifestyle choice.

If I saw a zombie that used to be a loved one, I wouldn't think "oh dear god, look at how that familiar form has been twisted and degraded". I'd think "huh - that's a fresh take".

I wouldn't choose to use my limbs, body and teeth in that way, but it's a reasonable tack to take.

In zombie films, a person gets bitten and the protagonists make an agonising choice. If, let's say, Bill gets bitten and begins to transform, they realise that he will soon be just a monster. Bill isn't really Bill any more.

In the films, it's presented as a terrible thing. But I'd just nod at Bill's transformation, as though he was showing off an experimental new hairdo. "Interesting new direction, Bill," I'd say, as I was torn to pieces.

Why should we limit Bill to a life of empathy and eating things other than brains? It's narrow-minded to expect everyone to conform to our notions of "normality" or "the proper".

J.J. Abrams took the much loved Star Trek franchise, gave it a twist and a new look, and presented it as something familiar but fresh. It's the same with zombies.

The comparison doesn't hold completely, or course. One is an unpleasant, soulless, inescapable eyesore...

AND THE OTHER ONE IS THE ZOMBIE HAHAHAHA NO-ONE SAW THAT PUNCHLINE COMING!!!!

Anyway, that's why I don't get scared by mummies and vampires and what-have-you. It's difficult for me to be terrified when I'm well aware that a zombie would make better use of my body than I do.

Bats

OooOOOooooh!

It's time for a scaretacular, spooktastic, bone-chilling, Halloween Tweet Compilation!

The scariest thing about this compilation is that it's just like my normal tweet compilations, and doesn't contain much specific Halloween content! Isn't that unsettling?


OooOOOooooh!

The eerie normality of the whole thing will make your blood turn colder than it normally is, unless you're a snowman or an ice rabbit.

Do you dare step inside the parade of sentences? Will you take your life in your hands by navigating the dingy corridors of whimsy?

Will your heart withstand the fall through several feet of poorly-formatted sentences?

(I try to format these better each time, but Blogger won't let me. It's annoying. OooOOh, etc)

Also, it's not technically Halloween yet. It's temporally compromised. Bwahahaha!

I'm wearing a sheet as I write this. And am sharpening my fangs. And am sharpening my sheet.

OooOoo... oh forget it.

Let's get rolling. I know what you want - a thousand pounds. I'm afraid I don't have that kind (or any kind) of money. So instead you'll have to make do with another edition of

Frankingstein's Twonster

***

There's a sensor on our water cooler that makes it dispense liquid at a tenth of normal speed whenever someone else is waiting.

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Nearly fell off my chair. Tried to play it off as a Newtonian trust exercise.

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I made the following notes during my work meeting this afternoon:

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Cakes have got such stupid names. Like Victoria Sponge. What's her deal?

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When you're parading a corpse through the streets are you supposed to go with traffic or against it?

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When I roll up my sleeves, it doesn't mean I'm going to get down to work. I just want to smoke my sleeves.

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"Tarzan backwards is Nazrat. Marzipan is an anagram of Nazi ramp." - Work at the think tank was hard, but rewarding.

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My favourite thing about the band Another Level was they really captured the frustration of playing a video game that's too long.

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One of the hardest things to eat with chopsticks is a knife and fork.

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It's really difficult to sleep in our bath. We've locked the door. You'd have to shin up the drainpipe.

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I want nothing more than to have my own weekly column. I'd have a Parthenon in no time!

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Documentary Pitch: OVER THE RAINBOW - We follow several people who used to really like rainbows, but now find them a bit 'meh'.

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Sitcom Pitch: MY EIGHTEEN-THOUSAND UNCLES - A hapless college drop-out is forced to live with an unrealistic number of wacky relatives.

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Quiz Show Pitch: WHISK - a mix of card game 'whist', board game 'Risk' and kitchen utensil 'whisk'. The stakes are high, as is the meringue.

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My nose always hits the ground running.

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How do you think they test sneeze guards? I don't think you can replicate the unique magic of a sneeze under laboratory conditions.

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I've thought about learning how to juggle. I don't remember exactly when. Probably 2003/4.

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I'd like to wear one of those gloves with no fingers or thumb, made of paper instead of wool. You know: napkins. One of those napkin gloves.

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But who delivers stork babies?

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I'm dancing as I write this. zldijjp;oj (I just fell)

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Where there's sasmoke there's sapphire.

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Blue Peter once made an underwhelming attempt to find a left ventricle and atrium for a dying boy. It was a bit of half-hearted appeal.

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Children were less keen to earn a Blew Peter badge.

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I once offered a sheriff an apéritif. I didn't draw his attention to it, but I could tell he respected me.

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I'm going to name my first child. (After that, I'll get a bit more laissez-faire about the whole thing)

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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Not when your hands are shaking like that.

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It's common for young botanists to have an imaginary frond.

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You don't need to read to your children. Just tattoo the full text of The Wind in the Willows on their abdomen and buy them a mirror.

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You shouldn't cut off your nose to spite your nose-knife.

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I dreamt about bees last night, and when I woke up I was covered in stripes.

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Should I make a to-do list? I know they're useful, but I just don't like the idea of my day's activities being dictated by a .txt file.

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Could do it in Paint, I suppose.

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Written out, it's not so bad:

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Pitch black on a late October evening, and the unmistakable sounds of an ice-cream van ring out through Summertown. Ice-cream is perennial.

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A true Scotsman never wears anything under his glass kilt.

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Smoking a pipe makes you look like a very sophisticated plumber.

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You don't need to achieve anything on a Sunday, right? It would be blasphemous. I'm just going to sit here, pious and slovenly.

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Our hob has the ring of authenticity.

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"How do you like your eggs?" "With all my heart!" - extract from hen melodrama I'm working on.

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I pointed out a big apple lying on the street. Lucy said "It's New York!". But she was wrong. It wasn't New York, it was just an apple.

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Fans of the England Moisturiser Team are known as "The Balmy Army".

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You may think I'm above jokes like that last tweet. Well I'm not. I'm below them.

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I'm never reckless. In fact, I'm positively bursting with reck. Does anyone want any? I leave my reck in a box outside, like windfall pears.

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Scaly baguette fakery; a double-take at a snake in a bakery.

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Cutting people in half is passé. I'd like to see a magician mince his volunteer and bake them whole again.

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When I go to pick my kids up from school, the teachers always tell me there needs to be some kind of genetic/legal basis of child ownership.

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Pigs view spoons as portable mini-troughs. "How do they do it?" they think, seething.

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If the internet ever cashes all of my spell cheques, I'll be bankrupt many times over.

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There isn't time for thi

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I can never identify with blues singers, because they always seem to get up in the morning.

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I'm feeling foggy-headed today. But luckily I've installed tiny lighthouses all over the flat, which warn me off the corners of tables etc.

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The best way to save-up all your spare pigs is by stuffing them into a giant coin.

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I spend too much time worrying about how little time I spend worrying about what I'm going to do with my life.

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40% of all landfill is composed of the little bits of metal/plastic they remove to make the holes in colanders. #fact

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I spent £5.49 on a bottle of fake fake tan. Turned out to be water.

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It's legally acceptable to buy fake tan with counterfeit money. "Like for like," you say to the shop owner. "Like for like".

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And you can brush false teeth with hypothetiColgate. DON'T TELL ANYONE.

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I've only ever worn an odd number of hats.

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I've got a life-sized skull tattooed on my skull.

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Sitcom Pitch: BELLE OF THE BALL - Amateur campanologist forced to perform vasectomy, mishap = sentient testicle. Vindictive witch(?)

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Quiz Show Pitch: WIN YOUR WIFE BACK - Have you lost your wife? No? Oh. Well never mind then.

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Film Pitch: COURT JESTER - Jack Black is a tennis player who can only win by amusing his opponents. Is sued by an umpire. Finds love (0).

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Film Pitch: FIXED ARROW - Remake of John Woo's Broken Arrow, but with everything going quite smoothly. Christian Slater learns to juggle.

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Reality Show Pitch: SEVEN YEAR ITCH - Following the seven-year mission of an itching powder factory. Starting from scratch.

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I clip my toenails round the ear.

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My Halloween costume is going to be terrifying this year: a slightly older me.

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Too many Cook Islands spoil the Broth Islands.

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A Red Kite circles our neighbourhood. I've taped photos of mice to the heads of the more annoying children in our street. Now we wait.

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My thumb is bleeding. I'm hitchhiking to Transylvania later, so it might turn out for the best.

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I couldn't fight my way out of a wet paper bag because I'm a paper pacifist.

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You can teach a parrot to talk out of the other side of its beak. Takes ages, though.

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You can't spell Thursday without... ur...

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I'M TWEETING TO DROWN OUT THE SUCCINCT VOICES IN MY HEAD.

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You can tell how old a tin of pineapple is by counting the rings.

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That might have been the ugliest sentence I've ever written. It's given me a weird sense of pride. Like having a really ugly child.

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I forgot to own my watch this morning.

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I must have loaded my head with too many imps, because it's imploded. Ahaha. No, SERIOUSLY.

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You can stuff less stuff in a puffin than you can a toucan. #birdcapacitymnemonics

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I'd like to stack loads of paddling pools on top of each other to make a giant paddling wedding cake. But I probably won't get around to it.

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If you stick a flag in it, it's yours, right? I just stuck my flag into the flag of the United States. Now I own LOADS of stuff by proxy.

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"I claim this flag in the name of my flag! I will also cover it in my bunting, just so there are no misunderstandings!"

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The rarest celebratory beast is the Confetti-Yeti (second place goes to the Och Yes! Monster).

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This Halloween, I will be carving a tiny pump.

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Are you not thinking what I'm not thinking? Some of it, surely.

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Pudsey Bear's whereabouts are on a Children in Need-to-know basis.

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If I die before I finish this tweet - and I easily could - that Pudsey thing could be my goodbye. Tragic. I should have said 'bearabouts'.

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Sometimes I get so freaked out that I go all the way through and freak my way back in.

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I put my money where my mouth is. (I'm licking my wallet)

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I've lost the Friday feeling in my legs.

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I'd like to see someone shot out of a cannon into another cannon, then into some kind of photocopier.

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Do you put the clotted cream or the jam on first? I'm rubbish at changing nappies.

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How many people in the world have got a dog called Spaniel Day-Lewis? Too many. That's how many.

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Supermarkets like indecisive shoppers because they cross-pollinate the shelves.

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I'm drinking out of my lucky mug. All of my other drinking vessels are magpies, which make the tea taste all beaky.

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Congratulations. You have completed the 'reading some tweets' game. Please enter your initials below.

I'm going to drink some coffee now. Not all of it. I wouldn't want to rob the whole world of coffee. Just some coffee.

I like my coffee like I like my "I like my coffee like I like my women..."-style jokes: BLACK.

And plagiarised.

Dracular

I performed at a Halloween Cabaret night on Saturday.

I'm not usually a big Halloween person. The idea of dressing up seems fun, but it usually requires going out and talking to people. I don't like either of those things. And if you stay in, you face the terrifying ordeal of trick-or-treaters.

Children are scary enough already. I don't want to open my front door to find four tiny witches demanding snacks. I have to turn all the lights off and pretend I'm not in. The whole night is spent huddled in the dark. It's like the Blitz. Scary, admittedly, but not too fun. So it was quite good to have plans that didn't involve too much socialising, or too much cowering in fear.

Costumes were obligatory. I wore a suit. Which is a kind of costume. I didn't want to wear anything too outlandish, because I thought it would take away from the integrity of my many sophisticated puns and jokes about potatoes. Lucy was dressed as a drowned sea-woman. We sprayed green strips in her hair, which was fun (although it did turn my snot bright green).

The venue was really nice. It was at the Vault and Gardens cafe in Radcliffe Square, attached to St Mary's church. I have some photos of us at the top of the tower somewhere. The church probably deserves its own blog post, so I'll save them for some other time...

Anyway, the cafe had been beautifully decorated with all manner of pumpkins, candles, spiderwebs and ghosts. I assume there were ghosts there. The whole room seemed to be full of invisible and intangible nothings.

There were some excellent costumes on display and it was sold out. The night as a whole was a lot of fun. It included readings from Dracula, belly-dancing, magic, some really good musical acts, and... me.

I was the only comedian on the bill, and I thought it might be tricky to get the crowd involved, but they were really good. It was a great example of how beneficial it is to play to different crowds. Their reactions were totally different to those I've had before.

They seemed quite easily shocked, for one. Jokes that I didn't even consider to be remotely controversial generated some 'oooh's, as though I'd voiced my support for the BNP.

Which I didn't.

Not then.

They also seemed to be really quick to see where I was going. My LSD bit, which I've done a few times, was the main example. They could totally predict the punchlines by the second joke, and I was a little unprepared for it. It still got a pretty good reaction, but it was surprising to suddenly view that bit as predictable. It was a good lesson. In the future, I'll have to judge the audience and alter my approach as necessary. And throw my own faeces if necessary.

I did quite a lot of improvising, which was a lot of fun. I commented on my lack of costume, and went in to a long bit in the style of a werewolf doing observational comedy, which collapsed into an existential cry for help. It was fun, and gave me a chance to bust out my acting chops.

I was really pleased with the set as a whole, and it has given me quite a few new ideas.

***

I don't like serious analysis of my own stand-up. It makes me seem really pretentious.

Maybe I can diffuse that impression with a crude joke:

Knock knock.

Who's there?

I've just wet myself.

....

Hello?

...

Hello?