PODCAST: Knowledge Enema - Episode 4

To quote British soul sensation Lemar:

"Been a long time - You say you missed me. Word gets round - You shouldn't have dissed me."

Wise words. And apposite.

Admittedly, you didn't say you missed me, word doesn't get round, and (to my knowledge) you haven't dissed me. But it has been a long time. Not since my last blog post. That was fairly recent.

No, I'm talking about a little podcast I like to call Knowledge Enema.

A long while back, I did three of these with my colleague, friend and fellow humanoid Alex Clissold-Jones. We're back with a fresh one. This is Season Two. The second seasons of shows are always better than the first. If this was The Wire, it'd be all about the docks. Luckily, it isn't.

In fact, it's been so long that I'd forgotten that I had a formula blog post for telling you about the podcast. You can find them here:
Knowledge Enema - Episode 1
Knowledge Enema - Episode 2
Knowledge Enema - Episode 3

The premise is a simple as it is confusing. Each episode, we attempt to remove useless knowledge from our brains, and replace it with something more beneficial. 

At the end of each episode, we do a sort of sketch-thing based on the topics we've discussed. So listen to the end (especially of Episode 2).

On this edition, we discuss murder mysteries. We get rid of our memories of culprits (so we can reset our detective dials and solve everything afresh) and Cluedo (for some reason). We then replace that knowledge with a murder mystery of our own creation. It's WATERTIGHT. Listen to the clues and see if you can work out who killed whoever it is that gets killed.

You can listen and download at the Podbean site here:

http://diamondbadger.podbean.com/

You can also listen and subscribe via iTunes. This link is in those old posts, but I can't check it here. So if this doesn't work just search for 'Knowledge Enema' on the iTunes store.

http://tinyurl.com/yl5t5ly

(Hopefully no-one will have stolen our name. It might also be a good name for a terrible punk band.)

And if you're unwilling to click on either of those links (because of your religion or something), you can listen to it here!

   
   
Podcast Powered By Podbean
   

Pretty sweet. Mmm. Yeah.



That's right.

...

(I couldn't think of a way to finish this)

Products

I suppose you're all wondering why I've called you in here.

Someone has died, and the killer is in this room.

I intend to flush out the perpetrator and expose his or her villainy. Justice will prevail.

It was Nicola.

Don't look at me like that, Nicola. You know it was you.

Case closed.

I hope you've all kept hold of your return tickets.

Take a goody bag and get out of my sight.

***

It's annoying when you lose the end of the sellotape. You were given custody of it and now it is gone. The judge granted you full access in good faith. He is probably full of regret right now.

I don't care if you have the roll. The roll is useless without an end. The end is the door and the lock and the key.

If you trap your only daughter in an air-tight concrete casket, I'm not going to give you credit for keeping an eye on the casket itself. Without a way in, it's useless. She's dead, and your reputation is in tatters.

Responsibility is important. You can't play fast and loose with something like that.

And now? I need to stick something to some other something, and I can't access the tape. If you had played closer attention to the end, we'd all be sharing a beer and a laugh right now. But you lost the end. So all we're sharing is a feeling of disappointment in the one of us that isn't me.

I don't want to make a big thing about it.

It's just annoying, that's all.

Your daughter is fine.

***

My head's all over the place today. I'm not feeling very well ("Well, that's all very well..."), and I can't commit to any activity. That's why I'm writing this. Creating sentences is a noble enterprise, even if they're this one. I want my day to be as productive as possible. I don't care what I produce, as long as it's something.

I've been thinking about going through my old blog posts and properly labelling them. At the moment, I only label my "tweet" posts, but it might be useful if people could look for specific topics.

I might even introduce some kind of Retroscissors feature where I can highlight past entries.

I'm sure there are one or two hidden gems from three years ago which no-one ever read. The trouble is, I'll have to wade through all of the hidden non-gems to get there.

Of course, doing this would be the most self-indulgent thing ever done by a human.

More self-indulgent than someone commissioning a sculpture of themselves commissioning a sculpture of themselves.

More self-indulgent than the Queen using a bank note to pay for a stamp.

More self-indulgent than Cameron Crowe.

I might do it anyway. There's nothing wrong with being self-indulgent. I don't just indulge myself, after all. I'm just quite indulgent. I'll indulge all manner of things.

I should give some examples of my indulgences, but I've written the word 'indulgent' so many times that I've forgotten what it means.

Is is short for 'indul gentleman'?

Is it some kind of slur?

Language is running away from me, and I can't catch it without tripping over my tongue.

***

There's nothing more dehumanising than running out of ketchup.

***

Keep your distance close, and your proximity closer.

***

Two little vignettes there. They could have gone on Twitter, but you get them instead. This blog was here long before Twitter. You guy(s?) get preferential treatment. In fact, when I'm unveiling something spectacular, you'll get priority tickets.

I haven't got any plans to unveil anything at the moment. Perhaps a murderer hiding as a bride. Nicola, for example. She's exactly the kind of person who would do a thing like that.

A thing like bride-hiding.


***

I keep coming back to this post, like a fiercely loyal prince beating a dead horse with his sceptre. I should end it somewhere.

Or maybe I could just keep updating it for my entire life. It can be thousands of pages long. People will have a real insight into my existence, provided I remember to hit the 'Publish' button on my deathbed.

I probably won't remember.

I should end it now. Life is like steak: more easily digested in small chunks and smothered in creamy peppercorn sauce.

***

I wrote all of the above yesterday, but forgot to hit 'Publish'. I wasn't even dying.

Oh well, at least I've had a day to generate some new thoughts.

...

...

Wednesday has a 'd' in it.

Whodunnit

I've never written a murder mystery blog post before. Which is surprising. I've covered most genres. Kitchen-sink drama, off-beat black comedy, bathroom-sink drama, costume drama (difficult to indicate in text alone), dinosaur redemption epic, rom-com, sonnet, spoof news article, com-rom, Kevin Spacey.

But I've never written a murder mystery.

I've written about murder mysteries. Especially in this well thought-out exploration of the fetishization of murder. Sadly, it's two and a half years later and my Paedophile Mystery Weekend business venture has yet to come to fruition.

But I've never written a murder mystery.

UNTIL NOW!

(Well, not now. I haven't written it yet. I'm writing this bit. I haven't even decided if I will write one or just skirt around the issue.)

A good way to write a compelling mystery is to start at the end and work backwards. Well, I'm going to use a similar technique. I'll start at the beginning and work forwards. But at the end I'll have all of the characters travel back in time. There's more than one way to cook a potato.

The most important thing to remember when writing a murder mystery are:
1) Someone must be murdered
2) There must be some kind of mystery
3) The victim must not be a fish (people don't care about fish)
4) You must have more than one plausible suspect
5) Always leave your reader guessing about whether numbers 1-3 are true
6) Motives are like denim jackets: everyone must have one
7) If in doubt, GOOD

I've never written a murder mystery before.

But I feel qualified to impart seven rules on how to write them. And I also feel qualified to annotate my murder mystery as I write it, to let you know which techniques I'm using (behind the magician's rabbit curtain, if you will) and why they combine to create the BEST MURDER MYSTERY EVER.

I've never written a murder mystery before. I haven't even thought about what this will be about. I may not even follow through on this introduction. But I'm still confident that this will be the BEST MURDER MYSTERY EVER.

Also, it will be in French.

***

I've just come back to this blog post after some time away from the computer (I was waxing an orphanage).

This last section seems to include quite a bit of me (the old me, from a while ago) goading me (the current me). I've hilariously raised expectations, challenging myself to meet the preposterous requirements outlined in the above brief.

The trouble is that you're (presumably) reading this all in one go. It won't have the desired effect. A person stitching up their future self is quite funny. But as far as you're concerned, my past self and my current self are the same person.

For goading to be effective, the goader must elicit some frustration in the goadee. But if both goader and goadee are the same person, the goading turns out to not be goading at all. It's just stupidity. Or self-harm.

And self-harm isn't funny. Unless it comes from a clown. Even then, there's a pathos to the whole thing - balloon razorblades, deliberately-scalding pies - which tempers the chuckles with yuckles (the laughter of disgust).

I've challenged myself to write the best murder mystery ever. I think I will struggle to do so.

I've challenged myself to write it in French. I think this will be extremely difficult. I know about eight French words, and am shaky on grammar. At the very least, my poor French would further hinder the quality of the finished piece.

But I'm always game for a challenge. So I'll write the mystery. It will probably be short, badly written and will certainly be in English.

***

Like a Knife Through Butter

an Inspector Lammb Mystery 

by

Mick Stmedia

CHAPTER ONE

On a Saturday afternoon, a car with three passengers bore a hole into the countryside. On the dashboard of the car was an invitation. On the invitation was a signature. The signature was a forgery.

"I've been counting bushes," said Higgy, one of the three. "But it's difficult to tell where one bush ends and another begins."

Dav squashed a fly with the tip of his index finger, opened a crack in the electric window and rubbed the fly parts into their slipstream. "There's only one bush," he said.

Lo drove. They had come from London.

And so Higgy (potential murderer), Dav (potential murderer) and Lo (?) were carpooling, even though they'd only met each other a few times, and all of those times had been costume parties. That morning was the first time they'd seen each other's real faces, uncovered by eye patches, surgical masks or the beak of "a toucan that's also a milliner". The latter was worn by Dav, who had been annoyed that his creative genius didn't win some kind of prize. None were awarded that night.

"What do you think it's going to be like?" asked Higgy, sitting on her hands and wiggling to the poorly-sequenced music in her own head. 

Dav opened a book that was lying on the back seat. He didn't pick it up, but opened it where it lay, all prone and unreadable.

"Party going be killer, man," Lo's English was not good. "No costume, no problem. Gone get LASHED."

"Yeah. Yeah!" Higgy straightened up in her seat, buoyed by her initial "yeah".

"Should be right near," said Lo. She picked up the invitation and propped it up on a Dalek figurine. "Number five... two... two... two..."

Higgy looked at the house numbers on her side. Dav closed the book and looked through the window, eyebrows first. "There," he said. "By the bush."

A big cloud blocked out the sun and the other clouds, as Higgy, Dav and Lo got out of the vehicle. Lo had parked in a parking space. It seemed like the thing to do. 

Near the parking space was a gate. Behind the gate was a long gravel driveway. Beyond the long gravel driveway was a large house.

On the gate was a sign. It said 'Avenbaden Manor'.

The three passengers started to walk.

***

At one o'clock in the morning, a phone rang in the dark. On the fourth ring, the phone was answered.

"Lammb here. ... Right. Let me find a pen."

At quarter past one in the morning, Inspector Lammb climbed into his impressive car and turned on his SatNav. It took three tries to spell Avenbaden correctly.

END OF CHAPTER ONE.

***

This will be continued. Possibly. I don't normally continue pieces of writing, but the characters are so well drawn in this one that I might have no choice.

The challenge was a worthy one. The goading was rewarded. It's good to push yourself. Especially if you push yourself into a cupboard full of naked people.

I'll let this all sink in.

I may be the new Colin Dexter, but it's probably too early to tell.

Absent Father

I forgot my blog's birthday this year. It was on July 2nd. That was ages ago.

Never mind. It's not like a child. It won't resent me for my forgetfulness. I hope.

It was four. Four years. It seems older. It seems longer.

I wonder how many words I've written in that time. I wonder if I could have employed those words on a more worthy project.

I don't really wonder that. What could be more worthy than this? I can't think of anything.

***

I can't think of anything.

My brain is empty. I'm not angry at anything. I'm not excited about anything. I'm not amused by anything.

I can't think of anything.

I'd better get some coffee and we'll see where we are after that.

***

I'm back, but my coffee's too hot to drink.

Where was I?

Oh yes: inside a vacuum, inside a beige dome, in the middle of the Gobi desert, inside another beige dome, in the middle of the emptiest section of deep space.

Actually, that sounds quite fun.

What shall we discuss whilst my coffee cools?

Dum-de-dum-de-dum. (I'm twiddling my thumbs etc)

Keep in mind, I can't think of anything.

Oh! Hey!

Do you ever do that thing, right, where you're all like "I'd better answer the phone", right, because the phone is ringing, yeah? And you go and pick up the phone and press the green phone key or 'accept call' or whatever, and you're all "Hello?" and then the person on the other end of the phone is like "Is this Roxy?" and you're all "Umm, does this sound like Roxy?", and they're all "Is this Roxy?" and you have to go "No, mate. I'm a man." and they're all like "Oh, sorry", and then you're all Roxy?

Do you ever do that thing?

My coffee is now so cold, I could eat my dinner off it.

***

A lot of people would say: "If your head is empty - if you have NOTHING to say - then why write a blog post?"

A lot of people would say that if a lot of people read this.

Well, having nothing to say is the cornerstone of all good blogs. That's what a blog is. It houses nothing. It stretches nothing all flat like pizza dough and covers it in sparkly .gifs and headers and links to other bits of nothing elsewhere.

Where would be without nothing? Nowhere. There's something to be said for not saying anything. And a blog allows you to say it in bold.

***

Three reasons why I'd never throttle a dog:

1) I like dogs, and dislike cruelty to animals
2) If I was going to kill a dog - and I'm not (see reason 1 above) - I'd use a more foolproof method, i.e. luring it into the path of a tram or drowning
3) There's something inaccessible about the neck of a quadruped. Do they even have necks?

***

I haven't been to a child's birthday party at Wimpy since I was myself a child.

***

Sometimes, writing a blog (and forgive me if I, with my meagre four years of blogging experience, am patronising the many blog veterans that comb my writing for gold dust) is a case of typing. Not writing, but typing. You're not looking for meaning. You want meaning to come to you.

Type. Type, by God! Don't think. Don't write. TYPE.

If an infinite number of monkeys sat at an infinite number of typewriters, ink demand would be high. You'd need to ship in an infinite number of octopuses. Then there'd be tentacle/typewriter jamming situations. The catering would be a logistical nightmare.

But you'd get the Complete Woks of Shokespeare.

So some experiments yield diamonds.

The end justifies the self-indulgent means. (And we all know what self-indulgent means! I know I - Paul - certainly do(es).)

***

You see?

This whole thing began with me typing. But look at the fruit it has... yielded? Is that right? It can't be "yeld", can it?

The octopus thing, the evocation of Roxy, the un-proofread rawness and intimacy of the whole thing.

Always leap before you look at yourself in the mirror. Pride doesn't come from accomplishment, it comes from taking risks and dragging unwilling companions into a cave for no reason. Because that glint - the glint that could easily be a hungry crocodile's eager eye - could just as easily be a diamond.

A crocodile's diamond.

Firefly

I didn't play with matches as a child. I didn't pull the legs off insects. I didn't smoke behind the bike sheds. I didn't smoke at all. We didn't even have any bike sheds.

I didn't get anything pierced. I didn't shoplift. I didn't swear at strangers. I certainly didn't litter. I didn't spit in the street. Or at all. I never told my teacher to fuck off. I didn't skive off school.

I did listen to music with a lot of swearing in, but it was mostly in my bedroom at a reasonable volume. Certainly not blaring out of my headphones. Mobile phones weren't around, but if they had been, I would categorically not have played my music out loud at the back of the bus.

I didn't beat anyone up. I didn't do graffiti. I've never smashed a window.

I didn't get drunk before I was seventeen.

I've never been in trouble with the police. I was never suspended or expelled from school.

But...

but.


But every Monday, from the ages of twelve to eighteen, I would set fire to an old people's home.

Not the same one, obviously. I'd get caught. And burning down ashes is no fun.

I mixed things up. Sometimes I'd travel to another town, just for the thrill of it.

I didn't play with matches as a child. I mentioned that before. But I did play with a cigarette lighter and some petrol. I did dabble in the odd Molotov cocktail.

I don't think I caused more than five or six fatalities. The old people's homes were pretty well drilled - they usually got everyone out OK. It was only the odd heart attack or forgotten loner that felt the lick of the inferno.

They got more and more prepared as the burnings continued. My reputation grew. The Grey Flame, they used to call me. I think. I've lost my scrapbook, but I think that's not just a name I made up.

The Grey Flame.

Sometimes, when I was scouting my next geezer barbecue, I'd overhear the residents talking about me in hushed tones. They were afraid. "Who could do such a thing?" they wheezed. "What's the world coming to?"

The world was coming to smouldering rubble. But I didn't say that.

Show, don't tell.

Sometimes I'd rescue insects from the fires. I didn't burn the legs off insects. They'd done nothing wrong after all.

I've never smashed a window, but I've melted a few. The fire brigade smashed some, so perhaps I was partly responsible.

Eventually, I outgrew it. Like you outgrow Guns N' Roses.

The Grey Flame was extinguished, and the elderly residents of Southampton could rest easy in their starched beds. They'd get consumed by loneliness, which is colder than fire, but penetrates more deeply. And has thicker smoke.

No-one ever found out. Because I was nice to my teachers and didn't tattoo bus shelters.

I was a good little boy.

***

That certainly went in an interesting direction, didn't it? It started with an honest description of my goody-goody childhood, then became quite dark.

That's probably what happens if you don't smoke or spit as a child. The smokers and spitters probably write really cheerful blogs about how much they love their disgusting children.

Incidentally, I don't think fire engines should be called fire engines. It makes them seem like they're supporting the fire. Arsonists should drive fire engines.

Fire fighters should drive water engines.

Or ladder wagons.

Of course, ladder wagons are currently driven by people who repair tights.

It's counterintuitive.

Bang Bang

Children like weapons.

I certainly did. Even though my parents weren't too keen on buying me any violent toys.

I can totally understand that impulse. Any good, liberal, humanist parent would like their children to grow up without knowing the feel of cold steel, or cold plastic steel-equivalent.

It's much better for children to grow up being interested in cars (environmental damage and crash-risk), stuffed animals (enslavement of living things) and sports (steroids and homophobia).

I probably wouldn't want my children playing with toy guns either. Violence begets violence. Guns beget guns. Knifes beget stylish ankle-holsters.

But they're just so cool.

A swashbuckling sword-fight is always going to be more fun than a teddy bears' picnic - unless the bears are mutants with Uzis (which will damage the fine china).

The trouble is that violence is a part of so much of our cultural history. Not just actual history, but myths and fairy tales and films and television. It would almost be impossible to keep children protected from violence.

But do I like that kind of reasoning? The idea that violence is 'natural'? Most people who appeal to nature do so to justify terrible atrocities. "Of course I kicked the dog into a load of stinging-nettles: it's human nature."

The pro-gun lobby use that kind of argument all the time.  And they're idiots. It's funny how people only use the "it's only natural" defence for things they like. So bible belt puritans can proclaim the inevitability and righteousness of gun ownership, but condemn masturbation as an 'unnatural' evil.

I suppose violence at a young age can be damaging, or could be a natural expression of fundamental human needs. The way children grow up is complicated.

I'm sure there are children that play violent video games and watch horrific films, but grow up to be real sweetie pies. And children who are forbidden television and end up shooting a policeman out of boredom.

Sweeping statements are almost always statements that should be swept into the bin and set fire to.

I remember going to Toys R Us with my mum, wanting to get a Marvel action figure. (This was my favourite thing - and my mum's least favourite thing - which shows how much she loved me).

There were two that I needed: The Punisher and Dr Doom.

But my mum thought they both sounded too horrible. So I didn't get either.

I'm sure she didn't refuse to buy them - but I could probably sense that she was suffering in the Cathedral of Plastic Capitalist Terror and didn't want to make things worse.

To be fair, she had a point about The Punisher

He 's a Vietnam veteran whose family was gunned down by mobsters, and started a one-man war on crime. I don't know if that's a suitable toy for a child.

I suppose heroes teach us important moral lessons. The Punisher might have taught the eight-year-old me that street punks deserve lethal justice. That's an important thing to learn as a child.

The moral of the Spider-Man stories is 'with great power comes great responsibility'.

The Punisher story teaches us 'with loads of guns comes a large amount of smoking, bloody justice - also: WEAR A SKULL'.

But still: 'CAP FIRING WEAPONS'? That sounds pretty fun.

Dr Doom, on the other hand, seems fine. I mean, he does have an ominous name. But that's not his fault. It's his name. He's called Victor Von Doom. If he was called Victor Von Smith, he'd be called Dr Smith.

But he wasn't. You can't ask a man to give up his heritage.

And look how jolly he looks! He's like a special gnome. With a steering wheel for some reason.

POWER DRIVEN WEAPONS too.

I don't know what that means, exactly. All weapons are driven by some sort of power. Except for the Spontaneous Knuckleduster, which works through magic.

Look at his little tunic! If I had a tunic as a child, I would probably have done better at school.

Also, Doom is the ruler of Latveria. He has his own country.



Children need to learn about diplomacy and handling responsibility and creating robot replicas of yourself and battling that accursed Reed Richards!

Even without these horrible toys, I found ways to be morally dubious. You can make a sword out of a big stick. You can make a Howitzer out of a complicated configuration of sticks.

But I think I have a rational and correct attitude to violence.

I don't slaughter criminal scum, I'm opposed to gun ownership, I admire swords on a purely aesthetic basis, and I have not yet killed a policeman.

You can't hide the ugly facts of life from children. But you can condition them to understand what ugliness is, and why compassion is preferable.

And if they don't understand?

Give 'em the belt.