creepy and hatboy rule the world

lateral obsessions

2009-05-17T18:38:00.001+08:00

i've put up a new blog - with a growing amount of the old couch of doom reviews, as well as more fresh stuff. it's just a dumping ground, really, but i like it.

you can find it at http://www.lateralobsessions.com

new stuff and archive

2007-02-22T23:09:00.001+08:00

i've been promising an archive of my work for ages.

so, i finally got around to figuring out the google groups system and have found it a fantastic way to archive my work. yay! so check out the link...

lots of creepy and hatboy stuff there, including the ebooks...

don't spoil the rush

2007-02-17T09:17:00.000+08:00

hatboy has locked himself in the garage. i feel sorry for him. it’s hard enough for me to keep my sanity, what with the pizza delivery drivers still on strike, as well as the added stress of the theft of our soldier, but hatboy’s always been a softie on the inside.

i made myself some coffee. the coffee had mutated, evolved in the dark place under the sugar. it smelled strong, potent, and filled with nutty flavour. it bubbled. it squirmed in the container, and squealed as i poured the boiling water over it. i tried to ignore the strange evolution of our only coffee supply, and instead concentrated on how to coerce the sugar into taking a bath in the not-quite hot enough water. the sugar has always been picky about the temperature of its bath.

i drank the coffee slowly, careful not to drink too much in one sip.

it burned into my mouth. it slid down my throat, its tiny fingers clawing the edges of my swallowing tubes. it scraped holes down the side, and i screamed as it bit into my stomach to stop being murdered in the acid bath. i heard it hiss as it died, consumed by the skanky acids, faces burning in flame unnatural.

and then, like some train ploughing off its rails, it smashed into my face. my head crunched, and i felt the dizzy kind of back-of-the-throat taste as concussion enveloped my eyes. stars, i swear i saw them, melting on the edge of survival.

tripping over the violet curtain, i tried to crawl into the bathroom to be violently sick, but the coffee rush snaked around my brainstem, squeezing its revenge. i saw the moment of my birth, countless eons ago. i saw the nature of my demise. i saw the seven faces skimming the cold dish, their tongues lapping up dishwater, lips foaming bubbles of washing-liquid froth. their faces twisted and were scratched out of my memory with pins.

and then, just as i thought everything was going to be fine, the black ice froze my insides, boring great holes into my brain until i was hollow.

when i woke, i rushed to tell hatboy not to touch the colombian blend. but it was too late. he was squirming on the floor in front of the television, screaming, “the spiders! why haven’t they stopped crawling around my chest? are they mad? are they looking for something? i left my pencils upstairs!”

i thought i’d help him, so i hit him on the head until he closed his eyes to sleep.

sometimes it’s fun being this heroic.

support vs. tolerence

2007-02-16T19:55:00.000+08:00

politicians invaded our television today.

they’re going to war again. this time, they say, it’s righteous.

this time, god is on our side.

god was on our side last time, too.

centuries ago, the knights invaded the middle east in search for holy places to loot. along the way, they decided to do some pillaging.

today, the politicians are going to invade small bits of some country. along the way, they’re going to loot the entire country and do some serious liberating of all that oppressed oil.

they’re being polite about it, though. they’re handing out leaflets to the locals to make them feel a lot better about their lives.

“we’re only doing this,” the leaflets say, “because we have to. we’re not enjoying this at all. not one bit. if you could kill your neighbours for us, it’ll help us a whole lot and we promise to import our sitcoms in exchange for your cooperation. have a nice day. and don’t forget, as soon as we’ve changed you for the better, to eat at mcdonalds!”

sounds like a bargain to me.

kill for cosby.

hatboy wonders when the movie’s coming out.

i tell him i hope stephen segal’s not in it.

segal gives me the creeps.

robert z'dar's jaw

2007-02-16T19:49:00.000+08:00

“wow. look at it move!”

“it’s worse than watching one of ninjagirl’s zombie films! it can’t be real. no way it’s real.”

“it looks real enough.”

“it looks deadly. you think he needs a licence to carry it around with him?”

“has to. no way it should be allowed to roam about on its own.”

“imagine running into it on a dark night.”

“no thanks.”

“it’s, like, hypnotic and stuff.”

“oh no! he’s talking! make him stop, it’s creeping me out!”

“it’s aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!!!”

george

2007-02-16T19:38:00.000+08:00

“hi, creepy. i can’t decide what to do with my next movie. i’m completely stuck. any ideas?”

“what’s it called, george?”

“star wars seven.”

“that title’s got to go for starters. too predictable.”

“oh, thanks. hang on. let me get a pen.”

“sure, take your time.”

“right. got it. fix the title. what about realistic dialogue this time?”

“dialogue? what do you need that for? just put in a few more explosions, give us a new colour lightsaber, and give yoda some hair. preferrably candy apple red. that’ll save you money on having to hire writers.”

“brilliant idea! anything else?”

“yeah, put more boobies in it this time.”

“right. boobies. done.”

klingons in the biscuit tin

2007-02-13T21:10:00.000+08:00

i had to battle a rogue band of klingons who had decided to make off with the biscuit tin today. their leader, a savage looking mutant, with terrible scarring to his cheek, proclaimed the choc-chippy goodness as prize, won in fair battle.

of course, blood rituals were involved, so after much spillage, they considered the payment justified the siezing of the treasure. i disagreed.

much to the amusement of the larger klingons, i offered to fight for my biscuit tin. they asked how much blood i was willing to leak onto the tiles.

i glanced at the pale unwashed porcelain and grunted. as little as humanly possible.

the battle commenced at oh-one hundred. in the darkness of the kitchen, we stealthed each other into corners and whacked ourselves senseless with foam batons. i was in the middle of mashing their leader’s head against the fridge, when one interfered, much to the dismay of his comrades, and proceeded to give me what i could only call ‘one hell of a mmf mmf, ouch.”

because of his interference, i was rewarded with my choc-chip biscuit tin, complete with a replacement packet, and grudgingly told i would not be seeing them in the future.

i pity the poor inexperienced one, because he no doubt found himself cleaning the ovens for the next few weeks.

i, in the meantime, have established a healthy respect for klingon women, and hope one day to travel to the klingon homeworld to further encourage my newly discovered tolerance for strange foreheads.

a dingo stole my coffee

2007-02-13T21:04:00.000+08:00

hatboy fills the cup full of java goodness. hot steaming coffee tickles our lungs and swamps our eyelids.

we make slurpy yummy noises and tippy-toe to the couch.

hatboy warns me not to spill a drop on the carpet, advice i regretably ignore.

“now you’ve had it,” he tells me. “the coffee dingo will come steal your coffee now.”

“coffee dingo?” i scoff.

he tells me of the time he spilt some coffee on the duvet. “just a drop, it was.”

the coffee dingo had come, silently sneaking through the house on his paws of much coffee-stealy. “i only turned to the television for a second. to watch the cheerleaders do their little dance, you understand?”

i nod, understanding.

“then, quicker than it took for them to do their jiggy dance of much eye-explodey, the coffee dingo slipped into the room and slipped out again, into the night. and i’ve never spilled a drop since.”

i asked if he actually saw the coffee dingo. hatboy shakes his head. “didn’t even see the swift flicker of its spooky shadow, and that was the creepiest thing about the entire incident.”

i think of the many times i’ve filched hatboy’s coffee. “i don’t think any nasty dingo’s going to steal my coffee,” i tell him. i’m very confidant about that.

hatboy shrugs. “it’s your spillage,” he says.

i place my coffee on the table beside me, and look about for the guide to foxtel’s night of horrors.

when i turn back, my coffee has been filched.

presumably, somewhere out there, in the dim dank night, a lonely dingo pads slowly toward a healthy shadow, where he sits back on his haunches, exhales a long sigh and, hugging my mug close to his hairy face, begins to softly sip that much-beaned goodness.

hatboy looks wise. “i told you so.”

“damn your super-sidekick powers of much dingo-knowy.”

attack of the souped-up ramen noodle brigade 2: post-attack rituals

2007-02-13T12:38:00.000+08:00

later, as we sat in front of winona ryder on tv, hatboy blew on his coffee to send steamy ghosts into the air. “y’know that thing you did with the second noodle ogre? how’d you do that?”

“oh, it’s just a matter of turning their wrists until you hear a soggy snap.”

“delightful sound.”

“wasn’t it? what about the squishy noises they made when i rammed their leader into the pot.”

“still gives me the giggles.”

“you didn’t finish all of your warrior.”

“i’m saving some for my burgers.”

“not noodleburgers again? how you can do that with perfectly good defeated ramen is beyond me.”

“think you can defeat another army tomorrow?”

“i don’t think so. we’re being ravaged by a band of sneaky sausage rolls and tomato sauce beasts, remember?”

“oh, yeah. i forgot. wednesday?”

“the spooky kebab creatures of khalim.”

“saturday?”

“i think i could fit them in.”

hatboy patted his ample girth. “me too.”

attack of the souped-up ramen noodle brigade

2007-02-13T12:23:00.000+08:00

we had just walked through the door, armfuls of corn chips, coca-cola, jaffas, strawberry and creams, choc milk, bbq shapes, chilli dip, and winona ryder goodness, when we were swiftly set upon by a dastardly brigade of mutant ramen warriors.

“creepy!” my super-sidekick yelled as he was thrown to the ground by two rather ugly mutations. “we’re under attack! forget me! run away and seek revenge for my death at the hands of my merciless noodle captors who will no doubt torture me for many years with all kinds of insane devices! i shall not give in, though! i shall fight with my last breath and as that last breath comes, i know you will come and boil these buggers in a soup of their own making!”

i stepped back. “no! i will battle with you, side by side until the noodles are broken! their cunning shells are no match for my martial arts!”

“martial arts? creepy! you don’t know any martial arts!”

“ah, but i do! i never told you about my time in the jungles many years ago. when i got lost in the vine-like horror of our laundry, i was taken under the wing of a jedi chi master who taught me to defend myself from such evils as this! i will crush their noodley arms and gnaw on their bones!”

“look out! they’re all around you!”

“all the better to do - this!”

and this i did.

this site's gematriculator rating

2007-02-10T11:27:00.001+08:00

the borg have a plan 8: dreams from green alcoves

2007-02-09T23:26:00.000+08:00

it’s been six days since we were implanted with borg technology. hatboy’s been wandering around the house in the daytime, his implants making him do strange stuff. like cleaning the dust from off the top of the kitchen cupboards.

i’m re-evaluating my borg-lacking-humour theory.

the implants have brought back my dreams. i dreamed last night of a possum, caught in the crossbeams of a semi-trailer. the driver saw it, but didn’t bother to slow, beep his horn, or swerve a little to miss it. he just left it up to some weird trailerpark trash god he’d known when he was a kid.

the possum rode the rest of the way, half its brains spread across the wheels of the semi, like a post-modern sculpture in motion. stray electrons filtered into the brain, letting it know pain without awareness.

i dreamed that the hitch-hiker standing at the side of the road was watching the truck pull closer in the night. he put his hand out, and waited for the truck to slow. he didn’t try too hard to get it to stop, and nor did he encourage it by waving. he just left it up to some weird hitch-hiking god he’d known when he was a kid.

the truck did stop, and the hitch-hiker got in, sat through ten minutes of stunted sentences, pulled out a bowie knife and stuck it as far as it would go into the throat of the driver.

glancing into the corner of my eye at the time, i realised it was almost three pm. time to wake up.

i watched the red dribble down from the driver’s seat and puddle between his motionless feet.

what the hell, i thought. give it another fifteen minutes to see if it gets interesting.

the borg have a plan 7: waking with implants

2007-02-09T23:22:00.000+08:00

we wake with implants. somehow, as we slept, seven of nine transported us home. hatboy’s got a silver implant jutting out of his cheek. i distinctly remember seeing a similar thing on angus of borg. i’ve got two on my face, one on my belly button, and two on my inner thigh. we’ve both got one sticking up from our wrists.

my eyes feel funky, but i think that’s more to do with the hangover.

hatboy’s freaking out. “what have they done! they said we were getting tattoos!”

“well, they’re kind of like tattoos,” i croak, wishing he’d lower his voice. “they’re collectable, at least.”

he doesn’t think i’m funny. he flails about, his arms smashing into cupboards, upending drawers. his mouth is foaming. at least now we know what one of his implants does.

after the berserker implant has decided to quit filling his body with berserk nanoprobes, we skulk into the lounge to watch some television, and i finally figure out why my eyes feel funky. at the corner of my vision, a small digital clock ticks over. it is green, which is pretty slippy.

i try to tell hatboy about it, but he seems a little distressed. i think he’s also found out how one of his other implants functions.

after about two minutes he looks a little better about it.

“hey,” he says. “i don’t think this is going to be so bad.”

we couch and i reach for the remote. the television switches on without my touching our little buddy. i frown. “it’s never done that before.”

hatboy looks startled. “our wrists,” he says. “remoties!”

i aim my wrist at the television and think of channel 25.

hatboy thinks of channel 6.

i think of channel 19.

hatboy thinks of channel 5.

i think to 7.

he beats me to 9.

we do 8, 11, 1, 2, and i’m about to think us to 10, when we find 13, a previously blocked channel. it seems our wrists now decode child-locks.

hatboy grins and we decide to couch with the sights and sounds of two grown adults, engaged in what could only be described as “doin’ the nasty.”

implants are slippy.

the borg have a plan 6: the dream half-remembered

2007-02-09T23:20:00.000+08:00

i don’t know. can’t remember.

the whole world is spinning. what’s that? oh, a tattoo? no? what? implant shmimplant.

i think i’d like to go sleepy bo-bos now. what? your face looks funny.

stop staring at me. i wish you’d not talk so loud. how can you be so chirpy?

what’s that? hey, that’s smooth.

ouch!

where am i?

blue rings of saturn fill the viewscreen. i am an amoeba. my blobby flesh expands and is consumed. so many voices spilling down my spine like trickles of red wine. fizzy on my tongue.

huh?

no. i don’t know what you did with the remote.

turn the channel.

turn the fucking channel!

the static, it won’t re-tune.

nothing.

quiet.

equilibrium.

and somewhere, out there in the distance, a lone sailor plots his course. the stars shine, and his face is held, proud against the wind. “we are sailing,” he tells me. “forever sailing.”
shut up.

be silent.

you’re going to spoil it all. the mood, you see.

the children. he said the children would come for us. with knives.

what children? his children.

i don’t understand. fast eddie reaps the whirlwind.

ouch! quit sticking needles into me. what are you doing?

i think i want to sleep now.

voices. too many. itching my eardrums.

who is it? come in. oh, hi. how are you? did you get my letter? i wrote it two weeks ago. i don’t understand. if you didn’t get it, did it get lost in the post? it’s such a small thing.

by the way, did you know that you’ve just been assimilated?

the borg have a plan 5: american sitcoms

2007-02-09T23:19:00.000+08:00

we beam back to the cube, and search for a place to slump. groaning borg fill the alcoves, and lie sprawled across the gangplanks, being sick. seven leads us to a small alcove area which seems deserted. she gets ready to plug herself in, and hatboy passes out at her feet.

i hear a sound, like a terrible moaning. not the kind of moaning you make when you’re really really drunk, but the kind of moaning you make as your life slips further from your fingers.

“what’s that?” i ask.

seven looks down at me, an almost-smile passing across her face with all the real presence of an apparition.

i crawl to the small doorway from where the sound is coming from. inside, a group of weird drones sit in comfy chairs. their eyes are stapled open. they’re watching american sitcoms. they’re strapped to their chairs, and the sound is being plugged into their bubbling brains in 3d surround sound.

dolby.

i shudder. “my coke god, seven. that’s horrible!”

“no, creepy of borg,” she tells me. “that’s species 9675.”

the borg have a plan 4: seven of nine and her merry drones

2007-02-09T23:17:00.000+08:00

after liberating the planet from their opressive individuality, the borg decide to party. borg parties are odd affairs, and i attempt to get into the spirit of things by collecting bits of broken metal and sticking it to various parts of my body with a mix of various adhesives which seven swears will not last through the night. “sure, they’ll fall off by morning,” she tells me.

i begin to wonder if the borg lack of humour is merely a facade. i decide not to stick any more pieces to vital parts of my anatomy, just in case.

hatboy’s artistic approach to throwing-up has earned him the nickname “chucky the chunderous of borg” by several borg admirers, who assimilate his vomit-landscapes from where he sprays them on the pavement. they take the little pieces of alcohol-induced art up to the cube to decorate their alcoves with.

angus of borg sits in a corner, sipping from a great mug of mead. the lizard lies strewn across the valley, its once massive body assimilated into tiny little pieces, none larger than my pinkie toe.

once the ax-throwing competition has ended, and the winner declared, the drones begin to get terribly drunk, and like most technologically enhanced species they can’t help but get nasty when they’re tiddly. they make incredible boasts, trip each other up, re-assimilate unattatched limbs, and insult each other.

“your momma wears analogue implants!”

the borg have a plan 3: the planet is dull

2007-02-09T23:14:00.000+08:00

the planet is a dull brown. the people are fairly non-resistant. they are easily assimilated. seven says they were putting up more of a struggle last time they were here. she says that, once, one of them poked her in the face with a stick.

we are shocked by the rudeness of random stick-poking. seven says that’s why she’s assimilating them. to teach them some manners.

the only real problem we encounter is a giant lizard with fourteen legs and jaws so large it swallows borg whole. seven of nine considers the predicament for a few seconds, then orders the borg to locate angus of borg. one of the other drones shudders. “not angus of borg,” it says. “are we sure?”

“we are borg,” seven says.

the drone complies.

angus of borg is about four feet high, and wears a kilt. he has bright red hair. he grips a gnarled pipe between his yellow teeth. his eye implant is spooky. his sporran has little red lights zipping back and forth like those on that black car from knight rider.

hatboy grins. “see?” he says. “even the borg know kilts are a sign of manliness.”

angus of borg foams at the mouth. he steps toward the lizard, which growls. it is the kind of growl which sends mere mortals running for their feeble lives. but angus, he’s a borg drone, and borg drones don’t run. they walk.

so angus of borg walks forward, both arms extended, fingers curled into claws, and screaming his battlecry; “ah, ye dahrty greet jessie!”

his implant-filled fists smash into the astounded lizard’s skin, sending billions of nonoprobes into its bloodstream. “big fist! angus smash!” yells the pint-sized drone.
nonplused, the lizard reaches down and sniffs the berserk little drone. angus of borg glares up at the massive jaws and teleports into the beastie’s red mouth. little fists flail about from inside the chewing jaws, and the sound of the snarling borg inflicting many nanoprobe-infected wounds, whilst being well-crunched, fills the night. bits of borg fall onto the ground at our feet.

twelve of fifteen collects stuff to light a bonfire with. hatboy settles down to watch the show.

seven of nine begins taking bets.

(this episode dedicated to afrj's infamous angus mcsmashie, whose smorghish parrots will not be forgotten...)

the borg have a plan 2: tonight, we viking

2007-02-09T23:13:00.000+08:00

we decide to dress as vikings for the current expedition. hatboy wears an overlarge helmet, with a bent rhinoceros horn on one side and a chickenfoot on the other. he says the rhino horn is for luck. we’re both wrapped in slippy bearskins and our leather boots are scuffed and revolting.

seven says we stink.

we tell her that stinky is the whole point of being a viking. we tell her we’re not going to wash for the duration of the expedition.

she orders the drones to somehow make the cube move faster.

we offer to lend her a bearskin, but she’s not interested. we try to get her to wear a viking hat, or at least a cute little seal pelt.

she tells me that, one day, when i least expect it, when everything is coming up creepy, and the frogs in my attic are croaking nicely, when the revolving doors fail to hit my back on the way out, and when i finally think i’ve tasted the perfect taco, she’s going to do something extremely horrible to me.

i tell her, “horrible is irrelevent.”

she says, “tell that to species 9675.”

the borg have a plan

2007-02-09T23:09:00.000+08:00

seven of nine came for a visit today. she brought with her a bunch of friendly-looking borg who began to quietly assimilate our furniture, until seven noticed their doings and told them to stop it.

they’re going on an expedition. some planet is resisting them, and she wants to know if we’d like to join her. hatboy’s a bit dubious. he says his project is almost finished, and he would much prefer to spend his time tinkering.

she tells him that there’ll be plenty of pillaging.

he asks when we’re leaving.

after being transported to the borg cube, hatboy shakes his head and mutters, “how do i get into these messes?”

i grin at him and pat his shoulder. “resistance is futile,” i tell him.

polecat the mean

2007-02-09T23:06:00.001+08:00

he knocked on the door and woke us up in the late afternoon. he pointed at the sign we’d left on our door for the lost surfer. he told us that he figured it meant we knew fluid. we told him what we knew of the legend, and he filled us in on some of the blanks.

fluid never said the word ‘globule’, and never owned anything blue, just in case.

polecat, on the otherhand, was dressed entirely in blue. he said it helped him to come to terms with the imminent end of the millenium scenario.

“it’s going to be like mad max,” he told us. “there’ll to be no water, and gasoline will be the new currency.”

he’s collecting barrels of petrol in his basement, and he says he’ll make a fortune when the millenium bug brings the world to a grinding halt.

he sits with us to watch tv. we munch salty goodness and then he hits us with the crazy part of his plan.

he tells us that, when the millions have finished rolling in, and his petrol has been sold to the new world order, he’s going to donate every single cent he makes on the petrol boom to the orphaned children. he says he knows what it’s like to be an orphan.

“the world would be a better place, if only every orphan had a transformer doll when they’re still young enough to appreciate the value of a toy which can change shape when confronted with violence.”

gulliver's travels

2007-02-09T23:01:00.000+08:00

in iceland, englishmen eat the green contents of reindeer stomachs, and consider it a vitamin-enriched delicacy. when they come to australia, they eat the tails of roadkill kangaroos.

headhunting tribes eye english travellers with analytical gaze, probably measuring up a stump. they raise the blood-dripping heads of their enemy, and i blink. i didn’t expect that.

kind of refreshing, really.

in africa, the farmers are dying. there’s some perverse justice there, but what it has to do with the colour of skin, i don’t know. only that, no matter what you were when you began, when your head is turned into a fetish mask, you still look pretty silly.

the englishman is back, making sour face while nibbling on a nice fat grub.

i wonder what kind of expression they’d stretch his face into if he were a fetish mask.

elsewhere, americans are being gnawed on by sharks, and in the northern territories, they’re being chewed on by more wildlife.

when crocodiles snap you up in their rugged jaws, they roll you across the pebbles under the murky water-blanket, making furious love to your body. they don’t want to eat you all at once, though. they keep pieces of your body as trophies. take you out, months later, and remember your struggle.

i watch the pretty newsreader as she crinkles her forehead and tells me about the divers who have been lost forever in the murky coral off our coast. their pale bodies are probably floating across the sea bed wrapped in green algae ribbons, their dragging fingers teasing the clams.

i love tourists. they’re so funky.

the zombiegrrl

2007-02-09T22:57:00.000+08:00

she knocked on the door and i answered. she told me she had a watch. i didn’t know why she wanted to tell me that, so i shrugged, and offered to let her clean my windows.

the zombiegrrl groaned, pushed her way past me, and let me know all about her watch, which was of vital importance to humankind.

she opened its face, revealing a compass, which always points west, a thermometer stuck on 17 degrees, a mirror, which she said is for signalling passing ufos, and a series of small buttons which are used to aid in the satellite positioning of, the codes for using, and the guide on how to obtain thermo-nuclear devices.

when she left, i took the watch, and proceeded to push all the buttons in random order until the alarm screamed rudely. that’s it, i thought, i’ve finally destroyed the world.

when nothing happened by the end of the week, i gave the stupid watch to hatboy, who offered to rewire it into a handy doorbell. we set it to play rock around the clock whenever anyone pressed it, and we took great delight in pressing it all day long.

needless to say, when xol came storming through our front door two days later, we were a little surprised to find that we’d been unwittingly ringing her mobile phone each time we used our new doorbell.

our ignorance of the watch’s function was probably the only thing keeping her from tearing out our intestines and turning them into a casserole with a side of brains.

one choc milk, one juice, and one coke

2007-02-09T22:38:00.000+08:00

today we decided to sit inside to beat the outdoor heat.

we closed all the windows to keep out vicious flies, which butted the glass with their heads in desperate effort to regurgitate our meals. we turned on the air conditioner, cooked up a small batch of noodles (hatboy didn’t do funky things with them this time), loaded the bar fridge beside our couch, and sat down to enjoy the daily routine of frosty drinky-goodness.

hatboy, closest to the fridge, played bartender all day.

“what you want?” hatboy grunted, pointing at the fridge.

i put three glasses on the table. “what you think?”

“one choc milk, one juice, one coke?”

later, as we sat sipping crushed ice and juice from a brandy glass, hatboy stretched his legs onto the coffee table and sighed. “i love summer,” he said. “the weather’s so darned slippy.”

the wolfman cometh

2007-02-05T19:45:00.000+08:00

he rapped on the door sometime after midnight.

“hi, i’m looking for the drackenstein place.”

i pointed at the spooky castle next door. lightning flashed and illuminated its black pointy top, which made for a neat little display of special effects and provided a convenient method of enlightening my visitor.

he howled his thanks and scampered off through my garden.

“hey!” i yelled after him. “get off my weeds!”

i’m thinking of getting a no monsters allowed sign for the porch.

ninjagirl's new job

2007-02-05T19:38:00.000+08:00

ninjagirl’s new place of employment is our local video store. we’re allowed to get out free movies on the condition we never call her a counter-chick.

hatboy and i tumble into her store on the first day and demand service.

“hey, counterch-uh, girl behind the counter! we need stuff!”

ninjagirl glared and stomped over to us. “well, hatboy,” she hissed. “if you don’t want to see your stuff yanked out of your guts with a large knife, then you’d best be off getting it yourself!”

as she sauntered back to her counter to receive the praise of her boss for a job well done, hatboy looked at her with disappointment.

“you would have thought she’d learn how to deal with customers, wouldn’t you?”

“i thought she was quite polite. you still have your guts on the inside.”

my super-sidekick snatched up aliens: resurrection. “i guess you’re probably right. still, we’ve got something more important to think about than the disgusting manners and lack of social graces as found in checkout chicks.”

“what’s that?”

he grinned and shoved the video cover under my nose. “winona.”

an idea

2007-02-05T19:36:00.000+08:00

tonight we went for a midnight stroll along the beach.

ninjagirl and hatboy argued about something esoteric.

his logic was countered by her determination to be right.

hatboy offered to prove his argument by playing his bagpipes, and ninjagirl offered to end his career rather abruptly with her sword.

that’s about when they turned to me and demanded i resolve their conflict with my opinion.

i considered their arguments carefully.

“i think you’re both wrong,” i tell them. “even if aliens had the fashion channel, they’d never consider eating with the president for long enough to discuss your dilemma to begin with, let alone form an opinion based on these simple facts. maybe you should both form an action group and get leaflets printed. you could use a missile to send them into outer space. the aliens could read it and then, if you give them your email addresses, they could reply to you straight away.”

they want to know from where i got such a ridiculous idea.

there’s no way any self-respecting alien would be caught dead on the internet.

attack of the masked homicidal knife-wielding neck-cutter

2007-02-05T19:33:00.000+08:00

i woke to hear the slithering sound of someone sneaking up my stairs.

at first i wanted to leap out of my futon and straight into action, to do battle with whatever monster dared to wake me from my dreams about winona ryder and her frilly underpants of much joy.

i considered using my dreaded fruit loop stance while fending off their counter-attack with my many years of cheesy-crisp training. i could take out their eyes with a swift right-chomp and as i did so, i could take off their legs with two large corn crisps.

unfortunately, when i turned over to retrieve my arsenal of super-sidekick power, i found i’d eaten them (probably in my sleep), thus explaining both the dryness of my mouth and the many crumbs which fell into my eyes.

betrayed by my nocturnal eating habits, i decided i’d probably have to consider surrender.

it was a tight squeeze, but i finally managed to fit under my futon.

the floorboards are blue

2007-02-03T19:58:00.000+08:00

the lunar eclipse began ten minutes ago. soon, the white face will be copper. it will take many hours for it to end. for the purity to return. this happens only once every thousand years.

meanwhile, i’m lying on my floorboards. my bare skin sticks to the glossy sheen. shard of shattered light sprinkle like wet puddles across the wood. i trace their outline with my fingers.

i can see the moon through the window. the clouds threaten to take it away. in the distance, the lightning spikes the thunder. rain will come soon. when it does, it will enter my window, spattering across the floorboards, forming little cults. they won’t want to talk to each other, but sometimes they will fight. some will be absorbed into the larger cults.

now and then, my fingers will shave them into smaller pieces.

i’m looking forward to playing god.

delicatessan

2007-02-03T19:57:00.000+08:00

many varieties of bean fill the shelves, but only a few will suit my newest curry invention. i need chick peas. red lentils to turn it into slush. a smattering of soya beans to give it texture. and a few dozen kidneys to break monotony.

the girl at the counter doesn’t understand. she says beans are bland. i tell her that it isn’t the beans which are bland, but the haircuts of those who eat them.

in order to back up my argument, i point to the tomato puree bottles stacked against the ancient jars of pickled cauliflower. i tell her that if the puree were to consume the cauliflower, it would think the cauliflower bland, but if the cauliflower were to consume the puree, it would think the puree to be the most boring of flavours. however, and i tell her this is the most important part, if you were to sprinkle a bit of romano on the puree, it would be tasty.

i tell her that gumbo sounds better than it is, although hatboy’s recent experiments with this odd little recipe has almost changed my opinion.

she hands me my beans and asks if i’d like anything else.

i buy a coke. it’s not as fizzy as it was when i was ten.

the forty-second rule of the couch potato

2007-02-03T19:55:00.000+08:00

there are many rules which guide the life of your average couch potato, and to never watch an episode of the bold and the beautiful is one of them. but that’s just common sense.

the forty-second rule deals with the couch potato’s attitude to life. there is nothing beyond the couch, says the thirty-fifth. there is nothing beyond the bar fridge, says the forty-first. people are generally sensible, says the forty-second. the forty-third is the rule which deals with couch stains, and specifically identifies a couch as being not only a mode of corporeal transportation, but a dinner plate, too. handy things, couches.

our couch has been broken-in just nicely, and i think we’ve more or less got it just the way we want it. we’ve added some stains, made a small tear in the arm, and even melted some candlewax on one of the cushions.

i’ve been sitting here, on the great greeny couch, watching some documentary on how whales are being slaughtered for scientific purposes, and some people are upset about that. meanwhile, those same people are dumping mercury in the breeding grounds of those same whales, and many other whales are dying off as a result, but no one’s particularly upset about that, and i’m wondering if the forty-second rule of the couch potato needs re-considering.

there was a book released some time ago. quite a remarkable book, it out-sold many others. it stated that humans were ‘mostly harmless.’

i don’t think anyone consulted the whales about that particular entry, or perhaps some other may have been composed, and i don’t think it would really have had anything to do with thanking anyone for the heavy metal content in the local fish.
an advertisement has been haunting the program, with a man asking for donations to save these same whales.

he’s got a nice gold watch. my watch is an acme watch.

i like my acme watch. it’s blue.

i think another whale just floated among the waves, a dying testimony to the sixty-fifth rule of the couch potato; humans are indeed the most contemptible of species.

eerily, i don’t feel like watching television, so i turn it off and stare at the wall.

it’s very flat and doesn’t move.

getting to know the guys

2007-02-03T19:52:00.000+08:00

davros burped. “well, that’s nothing!” he croaked. “this one time, i was, like, ten seconds from completely destroying the earth’s moon, thus rendering all their lunar-based technology completely useless. it would have been easy for my daleks to take over the earth from then.”

“the only thing easy about that plan, my dear daleky-type-person, are your bimbo daleks!”

davros scowled at the tall man wearing the glossy black face-mask. “i’ll thank you to be more respectful. it took an entire regiment of rebels, an all-knowing meddling timelord, and his tardis-full of rampant sidekicks to ruin my plan in the final ten seconds, but only a single peasantboy to ruin yours, mister vader.”

“but this boy had the force. and a laser sword. what did your timelord have? a pocket-knife?”

“a sonic screwdriver could hardly be considered a pocket-knife. it’s deadlier. and much more fun at parties.”

the clowny-looking guy sighed. “well, i think both of you have never had it bad. why, a few years ago, i had the timer clicking down. i had batman strapped to a great machine of doom, which would have killed him at exactly midnight, which was when my machine was set to destroy gotham city. then wouldn’t you believe it? we had a power outage! caused by one of my own minions dropping a spanner onto an overhead powerline, no less.”

“ah, joker. we know you got it bad. but that’s because you’re incompetent. my stormtroopers were better minions than yours. hell, even davros’ daleks were better minions than yours. at least they managed to kill some rebels, even if their noses are rather pointlessly created.”

the joker waved his arms about. “i resent that! it’s not my fault you can’t get decent minions in gotham.”

“minions. if we didn’t need them, we’d have taken over the world already. my daleks would be like momentos, then. i could put them on all the street corners to frighten naughty children.”

“amen to that. i could turn my stormtroopers into little nightlights.”

“i’d not worry about my daleks wearing bikinis.”

“what? your daleks wear bikinis?”

“yes. i caught a few of them at it the other week. what’s worse, is they’ve been auditioning at strip clubs.”

“well. i’d pay a few dollars to see that. hang on, are you talking about your bimbos, or the clunky wheely-bins?”

“the wheely bins. oh, the shame.”

“ouch. i feel for you, little man. i really do.”

“gee, thanks darth. at least someone understands.”

“i caught a few of mine wearing sexy black lingerie, too.”

“really? that makes me feel a lot better.”

“mine have never worn lingerie. damn.”

“shut up, joker, and get us another round of beers.”

“lite, or extra lite?”

“no, this is time for the hard stuff. bring on the shandies.”

“be right back then.” the joker hobbled away.

“hey, darth, did you hear about ming? i heard he got beaten up by a footballer.”

“you heard that too? poor ming. at least the people who ruin our mighty plans have some kind of force, or wacky transportation. ming, beaten by a mere mortal. how humiliating. no wonder he didn’t show up this year. hey, a wookiee told me that the guy who’s been killing pizza delivery drivers was supposed to make an entrance here this year.”

“really?” davros looked dreamily into his empty mug. “that’s so cool. y’know, i really dig his work.”

“me too. the force is strong with that one.”

“yadda yadda, force shmorce.”

“why don’t you train to be a jedi, davros? i’m sure i could teach you a trick or two.”

“really?”

“sure. the force can be fun, sometimes. here, watch this. when joker comes back, i’ll crush his windpipe for a bit. that’s always amusing. and, if you want, i’ll show you how to levitate barmaids’ skirts.”

“ooh! now there’s a talent i could use!”

“i thought you’d like it. now, shh, because here he comes with those beers...”

timezones

2007-01-27T19:00:00.001+08:00

hatboy wakes us all up before midday.

no one can believe it.

ninjagirl nearly cuts his vitals off.

xil, who had been sleeping in front of her door, merely offers to shoot holes in him with her ray-gun. hatboy points at his sporran of anti-raygun-doom.

she sighs. “You super-sidekicks are no fun at all.”

xol spent the night in my bed. i’ve been in a chair beside her, watching the throbbing vein in the side of her neck. there’s something soft about that vein.

i wonder what it carries.

blood? water? spooky martian goo?

hatboy pokes his head through the door. “it’s time to get up.”

“i didn’t get down yet.”

“then you won’t notice the difference.”

i couldn’t argue with that one.

any way you want it

2007-01-27T18:58:00.000+08:00

we’re all going to the shonen knife concert.

xil and xol battle each other with plastic lightsabers all the way. hatboy has brought along his camo-bagpipes and ninjagirl tries to find out where they are.

“are they there?”

“no.”

“here?”

“no.”

“over there?”

“no.”

“is this them?”

“warm.”

“ah-ha! they’re here!”

“no.”

xil and xol

2007-01-27T18:57:00.000+08:00

xil and xol, the martian twins, came to visit us today.

their martian squeaks and squeals were like windchimes to the ears, and ninjagirl was almost hypnotised by their voices. i brought some corn crisps of much-cheesy-goodness and some bean dip into the television room and we sat down to watch macgyver. xil thought the show was ridiculous, but xol clapped her tiny hands and screamed in childish delight whenever macgyver did something wickedly surreal with duct tape.

“he’s crazy!” she cried.

xil shook her head at her sister. “you’re the crazy, lady.”

ninjagirl tried to say something, but she wasn’t terribly used to seeing aliens watching macgyver while fighting over the largest corn chippies and pulling the hoods of each other’s jackets over their heads.

xil noticed the look on ninjagirl’s face. she pointed in my direction. “he’s not my type. but you, you’re pretty.”

ninjagirl blinked.

hatboy sat up.

italian zombie movies

2007-01-20T22:52:00.000+08:00

hatboy hides behind a comic as ninjagirl subjects us to her latest zombie film.
there’s a lot of meat-eaty and plenty of splattery skin-stretchy.

i’m not sure why hatboy’s a little squeamish when it comes to zombie films. he seems quite the opposite when it comes to eating his awful noodleburgers.

i tell him about his noodleburgers and he ignores me, especially when i mention the sauce.

ninjagirl tells me to hush. she says, just as the screen turns a delicious shade of red, that the good bit is just coming up.

i have to disagree. i tell her that, considering the colour of hatboy’s cheeks, the good bit will be coming up a little sooner than expected.

hatboy excuses himself as another zombie eagerly munches into the neck of some screaming vixen in white. his flight is followed by ninjagirl’s cries of, “wait! hatboy! you’re missing the bit where it bites off her nose!” and “now it’s using its fingers to tear out her tongue! come back! you’ll miss the intestines scene, soon!”
“oh well,” she says as the happy-go-lucky zombies begin chewing eyes. “at least you’re here, creepy.”

another vixen in white attempts to flee the castle, minus her dress.

the screen turns that wonderful shade of red again and the screaming begins anew.

“ouch.”

“watch as it bites her knuckles!” ninjagirl chortles, perched on the edge of her seat like a vulture.

“that reminds me,” i say. “pass the popcorn.”

you will be assimilated

2007-01-20T22:51:00.001+08:00

we were stunned to receive a visit from seven of nine today. well, when i say visit, i mean a veritable entourage of borg-infested technology as she brought with her a wave of biological and technological integrities to help us combat the overwhelming space-fleets of the choc-licorice armada.

after a short, but hearty, photon exchange, we claimed victory over the omega quadrant, and helped ourselves to the booty.

we ridiculed the natives, took away their puny firearms, and revoked their driving permits. we executed those responsible for american sit-coms, and giggled as a damaged borg tried desperately to assimilate a keg of alcoholic produce (which we’d confiscated, showing maximum force and reasonable mercy - that is, to say, none), and we nailed armless men to the walls and called them art. i stubbed my toe. hatboy couldn’t stop imitating the borg, who were getting very annoyed with him some fourteen hours later. seven of nine got paralytic-drunk, but still wouldn’t let us see what was under her body-armour.

we sang pirate songs, ate pizza, threw bottles into the air and disintegrated them with our phasers as they fell from a great height. we threw up in a nice porcelain bathtub, our vomit soaking together in some odd other-culture version of blood-mingling. we feasted on the remains of our enemy, conversed in stunted sentences, and declared everything irrelevant.

and it is. irrelevant.

we caught a lift on a borg sphere and headed home. hatboy is now known as hatboy of nine, and myself, i have been given the dubious title of creepy of nine. personally, i wanted to be called creepy of borg, but seven told me that the queen already had a buddy.

next week, we’re doing manhattan.

frogs in the attic

2007-01-20T22:50:00.000+08:00

we have frogs in the attic.

they croak at night. they sing for hours. my cat prowls under the manhole, crooning to himself. the rhythm is kept by crickets, who perch outside. they don’t come into the hearth, which i keep warm in winter for them.

the frogs sleep a lot during the day, which is lucky for them, otherwise i’d go into the dark space with a very large hammer, and i’d splat them all, one by one, with my super-hammer of doom.

there are tadpoles in the river, which runs down the back of the garden. they’re like little black mutants, all at different stages of growth. some with legs, some without. some with stumps, while others were sleek and unblemished. when i was young, i used to put them in bottles, and keep them until they died. i didn’t know how to keep them alive, but i wished i did. i didn’t like it when they died.

i’d give them funerals by saying sorry, and burying them in the weeds.

lahmia crush the skaven scum

2006-12-29T12:35:00.001+08:00

i glared across the smoke-layered battlefield.

hatboy stared right back at me through a haze of blood, sweat and pizza fumes.
his rat ogres shifted uneasily as my black coach of ratty death and rodent doom creaked from its lair behind my giant castle of much lahmia-owny.

his rats eyed each other, long teeth twitching nervously in the sudden quiet as my lahmian queen of the vampires (tentatively named cindy), took a step back and cackled at the moon.

that’s about when the craven crew turned tail and ran screaming from the battlefield, heartily pursued by a bloodthirsty regiment of skeletons who rattled their hideous banner at the retreating rodents.

the banner, like most of my army, was green, and had a smoothie painted on it. the smoothie was red.

red is evil, you know.

as the skellie warriors and the screaming black coach taunted their frightened foes with spiky spears of skin-stabby, i decided then was the time for my battlecry to soar through the undead night, lifting the black heart of cindy to do fast and furious bad things to hatboy’s scattering army of much hasty-flee-makey.

“ah-ha! now you will die at the icy fingers of the army of blood-smoothie!” i pointed at his sour expression. “your blood will make good smoothie. we will drink now.”

i made slurpy noises for effect.

cindy looked interested in this blood smoothie business, but then what vampire wouldn’t be?

hatboy groaned, leaning forward to attempt a miracle. he knew this was his last chance to recall his troops and perhaps save some face in front of ninjagirl, who stood above us, carefully quoting from japanese texts to provide us with the appropriate war-type atmosphere.

i grinned at my super-sidekick as he retrieved the dice from our battlefield. “you’re dicing with death now, ratboy.”

“don’t you ever get tired of saying that?”

i slurped in his general direction.

muppilicious

2006-12-29T12:31:00.000+08:00

much as i hate to admit it, hatboy is the true master when it comes to invention.

two months ago, he built a time tunnel and through it we visited many milkmaids as they frolicked in the dark ages which weren’t at all dark. in fact, we needed to take our sunglasses for the most part.

our oakleys annoyed the local populace and twice we had to battle our way free of witch-hunters jealous of our shades.

this week, hatboy made a muppilator.

he first showed me the muppilator by leaping into my room, chortling with glee, aiming the hideous device at my brain and giving me a good chunky dose of radioactive muppet goodness, thus turning me into a muppet, complete with silly voice and bulging ping pong ball eyes.

“i’ll get you for this!” i screamed at my giggling super-sidekick.

“say that again!” he howled, falling to the floor and clutching at his belly. “you creepy little muppet! sing the rainbow song!”

i seized the muppilator from his shaking hands and switched the dial right up. he looked at me through a haze of laughter-induced tears and i was pleased to see his gleeful expression wiped clean from his face to be replaced by one of sheer horror. “no,” he croaked. “not on full-power! you wouldn’t. i was only kidding. come on, creepy, don’t zap me on full! no! no!”

i did. i zapped him on full, and watched with a kind of satisfaction as my too-smart-for-his-own-good super-sidekick turned into a tartan-clad muppet with a big mouth and red cotton-candy hair.

“now,” i said as he finished jumping up and down in fear. “where’s the reverse-button on this thing?”

“reverse-button?”

“oh no.”

st. alia vone reaches an understanding

2006-12-13T21:55:00.001+08:00

she dresses in black. all the time. black shirt, black jeans, black ribbon to tie back her black hair. she’s got white skin and wide grey eyes. thin lips, wild mouth, and sharp cheeks. she hardly ever listens, but she does hear everything you say.

i met her at the video store. we both wanted to hire the same movie, and i had it on reserve. she looked me up and down, and i felt my superhero powers shiver. deciding i was relatively harmless, she offered to let me watch the video at my place. she also offered to let me pay for it, which i did.

she told me her goal was to collect pieces of the men in her life, and to keep each piece in small jars of liquid preservative, just as mementos. i offered her a nail clipping or a piece of my hair. she smiled, and her mouth was too wide. “i’m collecting more appropriate body-parts than mere incidentals,” she said.

we watched the rest of the film in silence. at the end, she thanked me for being quiet, and left. two days later, she returned. she scraped a piece of skin from my knee and placed the flap in a small glass container. i watched, fascinated, as she stitched my knee closed, and covered it with a bandage.

she told me about her last boyfriend.

“it wasn’t my fault he was allergic to knives.”

biopsy of a pizza

2006-12-13T21:49:00.001+08:00

it had some slices of mushroom, which weren’t rubberised. the cheese was tasty, and had chunks of fetta clinging to its fingers. i said it could have done with more tomato sauce, but hatboy disagreed.

he claimed that in the distant past, much of the pizza sauce had been bred from pizzas in order to achieve the perfect base needed to lure unwitting predators closer to the pizza. i disagreed, saying that it wasn’t so much the pizza base i sought in a potential pizza, but the sauce, which should conceal the taste of the base, whether the base be cardboard, or fluffy dough flavour.

he had to admit that my argument was compelling, but that with a decent base, there wouldn’t be too much need for heaps of sauce.

we considered each other’s argument for some time.

finally, i decided he could be right, but that i still would have preferred extra sauce, because this particular breed of pizza had a high cardboard-to-flour ratio.
nodding sagely, hatboy grumbled, “well, if you’re not going to eat it, pass it the hell over.”

couch

2006-12-13T21:47:00.000+08:00

we are called on by the mayor to save the city once more from evil spacebugs or somesuch dastardly devices of horror.

we listen to his pleas, and assure him we’ll do our best. hatboy hangs up the phone and dives to the fridge for a magic can of cokey-goodness. “well, creepy?”

i stand straight and as tall as i can get, which still isn’t quite so tall as my slouching super-sidekick. “we must save the city with our super-sidekick powers of much badguy-beaty!”

he throws me a can and i pop its fizzy top. i guzzle a hearty amount of cola as my super-sidekick reveals our wickedly devious plan. “let’s couch.”

hours later, he passes me some cheesy snacks. “you think the evil has been vanquished?”

i consider. “we’d best make sure. quick, subject it to the comedy channel for a few hours.”

thus, another global catastrophe is averted for yet another day.

the art of mooching

2006-12-13T21:45:00.000+08:00

the city is always a place of hustle and bustle. the eerie quality of a city, however, is never fully understood until one successfully mooches. to mooch is to slide through the underlayers of social convention. it’s purely a superhero thing to do, of course, for most people don’t have the time, nor inclination, to mooch.

one mooches by paying strict attention to a lack of pace, and by allowing the mind to focus instead on the little things. on the flavour of oxygen, the brush of a single whisper of wind, and the smell of a girl’s watermelon perfume. to linger one’s eyes on a discreet distance wherein nothing is in focus. to order a coke and sip it slowly, paying attention to the feel of every small fizzy bubble as it creeps across your tongue. to mooch is, therefore, a complete lack of respect for importance.

when you hit the mooching zone, you feel it.

you look around and see a weird assortment of creatures who hustle past you, their suits all smooth, their eyes all glitched, and their pace is frenzied. they have conformed, and they show jagged signs of unrest with each step, but they never know it, because they don’t see themselves in the mooching zone.

i like to mooch where no one can see me mooch.

i like to mooch in my bathroom.

television dreams

2006-12-13T21:36:00.000+08:00

i wish that i could remember my dreams, but, as a super-sidekick, i am forced to suppress this memory-recall ability in order to keep my sanity. us super-sidekicks are often plagued by doubts and fears, and these things are not condusive to the heroic adventures we must endure.

but i’m sure, that if i dreamed, i would dream about televisions and their war for supremacy in a world dominated by walking creatures and biological entities. i’m also sure that, soon, television advertisements would interrupt ordinary dreams, cutting through every five minutes to advise the dreamer of the latest in tampons, or skin care products.

the blue screen radiation would melt every part of my face, except my eyes, and i would be forced to feed through sight, instead of taste, and would find lori petty to be appetising, and oprah would just give me food poisoning.

i’d have nicole de boer for dessert. often.

my only real problem with this new system of existence, would be that they may force me to watch soap operas. perhaps they’d even come out with a staple diet which we must all consume in order to be healthy, and one of the main five food groups could be talk shows, or judge judy. the skanky horror of this vision of the future has filled me with dread, and it’s no real wonder that i shun the dreaming-recall part of my brain, suppressing it with coffee and anzac cookies.

hatboy eats the evil noodles

2006-12-10T21:32:00.000+08:00

we’ve had a packet of two-minute noodles collecting dust in our kitchen for years. ninjagirl doesn’t really go for this particular brand of noodle, and i seldom cook anything which has arms and legs and probably its own language.

however, hatboy has no such considerations for new lifeforms so breaks open its plastic skin, stabs it with a fork to make it keep still, and cheerfully deposits it into a pot of boiling water. the poor noodles squeal and struggle, but he stirs them in until they are quiet again.

then he drops in some of those frozen peas which have been there since one of our other squatters died of food poisoning. i hadn’t wanted to throw them away just in case some hoboes found them in our bina and fell victim to the same fate.

i tell hatboy he’s being foolish.

“there’s other food in the fridge, you know. some of it’s fairly new.”

he strains the noodles and begins piling them up onto a bread roll, determined to create his patented noodleburger. he lays strips of cheese across the cooked noodle, crushes its legs and arms into the roll, squeezes some sauce onto the top, then closes the roll and proceeds to munch.

apart from witnessing several small green goblins rolling a snowman up my stairs, he says the noodleburger was just dandy.

“but it really needed some mayo.”

daylight excursions

2006-12-10T21:30:00.001+08:00

sometimes ninjagirl and i retreat outside during the day.

on these rare occaisions, we generally drift up to the corner deli to buy a few slushies and some crazy imported candies. we walk down to the beach and sit in the sand watching the loopy people swim with sharks. we try to spot the fins.

sometimes we see dolphins, or windsurfers.

once, we saw a whale. ninjagirl wanted to go and harpoon it, but the sensible side of her said it wouldn’t be a nice thing to do. besides, we’re vegetarians and there wouldn’t be anything we could do with all that whalemeat except try and sell it to passing tourists.

she always shades herself from the sun with a large paper umbrella. she sometimes lets me under it when she’s feeling generous, but mostly i have to make do with my hat.

“one day,” she tells me. “i’m going to impale a surfer on his surfboard.”

ninjagirl

2006-12-10T21:21:00.000+08:00

i met ninjagirl on my fifteenth day at junior school.

it happened midway through what was quaintly called a lunchbreak, when a gang of snarly goons cornered me in the hallway and demanded my shiny things. familiar with the ritual, i dug into my pockets to give them up.

ninjagirl, however, had noted their playground antics and took their enterprising ways as a personal insult. when the leader advised her to mind her own business, she quietly skewered him on her sword and held the other two by their ears.

“apologise to creepy now!” she hissed. “or i’ll rip out your intestines and offer them to him as a token of your remorse!”

nowadays she’s not so eager to defend my pockets as she is to raid them.

the philosopher's stuff

2006-12-10T21:20:00.000+08:00

there’s evil, and then there’s evil.

the alchemists, they knew plenty about evil. for example, they knew that if you mixed all sorts of stuff into a bowl and set it alight, it did something evil to its surrounding area. usually it turned other stuff into bits.

the alchemists looked for stones, and even made a few here and there.

they tried making gold, too, but mostly all they managed to do was give themselves an early death through inhalation of wacky poisons.

however, modern alchemists know that the philosopher’s tincture is freely available for fifty cents a roll at any local convenience store. sure, it’s in disguise, but it’s the same stuff alchemists have been mixing up for centuries.

it’s also gone one better in that it’s strawberry flavoured.

unfortunately, the addition of this sweet flavouring has the dastardly side effect of making the stuff extremely addictive.

and that’s why, tonight, i am bouncing up and down like some kind of mercury-overdosed alchemist as i unwrap roll after roll of that delicious strawberry sundae life savers goodness.

meerkats

2006-12-10T21:18:00.000+08:00

when i was a young creepy, i went to the zoo. my family didn’t take me, and i didn’t go with my school. i went by myself to visit the meerkats there were two baby meerkats playing with their parents.

i watched them for a long time, and giggled whenever they stood to attention, heads cocked to one side.

their little eyes stared with such intensity that i shivered in fearsome delight. their tiny fists seemed to carry a defiant strength, and i wondered what they’d do to the world if they could break free.

they’d form rabid gangs and attack the citizens of the earth until these gangs could raise an army which would sweep across the globe like economic reform in favour of some dark neo-capitalistic god. the meerkats would enslave the populace, arrange the surviving humans into workgangs, and whip them until they dug new tunnels for the meerkats to live in.

when most of the visitors had moved away from their cage, i whispered to the babies.
“hi there. my name’s creepy. i’m a meerkat sympathiser.”

i don’t know if they understood, but if they did, then at least i won’t be put against the wall when their revolution comes.

plan chip from outer space

2006-12-09T15:01:00.000+08:00

there was an invasion by a lost contingent of bbq chips today. me and hatboy had to fight to maintain the equilibrium. we crunched their tusky outer-shells and consumed their munchy inner-centres. sitting in the couch, my hands flicking with lightning speed into the chippies’ space shuttle, i was suddenly struck by a fear of the bbq uniting with the armed forces of the liberal salt and vinegar front.

i don’t know how to confront salt and vinegar, and i don’t think hatboy (skilled as he is at holding whole fleets at bay), could deal with salt and vinegar, as well as a wave of bbq, all in one flooding army of salty goodness. we’d be overwhelmed should such a treaty between the two factions be made.

i decided to send scouts into the field (true to my intense military training during ‘nam), to test the likelihood of this action, but i lost contact halfway through a regiment of bbq snacks.

i hope to use musk-flavoured sugary goodness to foil any attempt at unification.

zombies are fun

2006-12-09T15:00:00.000+08:00

in night of the living dead the zombies kind of shuffled slowly along, determined to annihilate and chew on the corpses they could create out of screaming young american victims. in evil dead, the zombies shrieked and screamed “dead by dawn!” which was really slippy, and made us howl with laughter.

zombies in movies are quiet, unobservant, dull, and seem more intent on your arm and the flesh beneath the skin, than they are on the chainsaw you’re wielding. they remind me of my family. i’m a vegetarian, and when i visit them at meal times, i notice the way they consume their meaty dishes. they don’t so much eat, as ravish the prey, sawing it to pieces with a mixture of glee and satisfaction in their otherwise deadpan eyes.

and the kids across the road, when they’re sent out on saturdays by their mother, who wants to clean the room where they keep the sega console machine, have this way of shuffling in the light, blinking as if it was the first time they’d ever seen a world outside of intricately organised pixels. they groan too, little moans of dissatisfaction, and you think at any time they’re going to say, in that grating monotone, “braaaaaaains...”

if i were a zombie, i’d like to be a chinese zombie, because they hop.

saving the world

2006-12-09T14:55:00.000+08:00

hatboy and i are sidekicks in the never-ending battle against evil. we save the world every day. we halt the spread of carnage, place criminal-types behind bars, hang out with the rich and famous, wear spooky masks and colourful caps, and score with chicks every time we show our super-sidekick faces in public.

we have a secret base, where we possess technological powers so far unheard of in the public arena. our pentiums are three generations younger, our modems run on optic fibre, and our floppy disc drives are silent. we also have a special ray-gun, which we use on visitors who have seen the inside of the base.

this ray-gun wipes their memory for periods of up to four days, depending on how strong you set it. so, when we caught vicki vale in our batcave, we just flooded her with radiated brain cells, told her she’d had a fainting spell, gave her a dollar for cab fare, and sent her home.

the memory-vacuum-mind-sucking-ray-gun is also great fun at parties.

house

2006-11-10T11:29:00.000+08:00

hatboy and i live in a house which doubles as both a place within which we engage ourselves in a battle of wits over control of the remote, and as a secret base of operations from where we pursue all manner of evil villains and force them into understanding that violence is not the answer to their own twisted childhood experiences.

sometimes we even make smoothies here.

ninjagirl lives here, too. we call her a squatter. she calls herself a roomie.

hatboy thinks that’s just terrific, especially seeing as how she always cooks batches of tasty ramen goodness.

he says being a super-sidekick can have its advantages, like super-sidekick groupies such as ninjagirl.

ninjagirl says being a super-sidekick groupie might have its advantages, too. that is, if she were a said super-sidekick groupie.

hatboy shifts uncomfortably on our sofa and enquires, reasonably, as to the nature of these advantages.

ninjagirl ponders her answer for some time.

“well,” she says. “for one; groupies would often disembowel sidekicks simply for being referred to as something so sleazoid as groupies. i’d call that an advantage.”

hatboy offers her some popcorn.

he says he’s glad we don’t have any groupies.

he says he’s much more considerate to the female of the species.

he says he’s considering going to feminist reprogramming sessions.

he says he’s even thought of buying a dress.

i tell him he’s already got one.

he says kilts don’t count.

i tell him i think they do.

ninjagirl tells us both to button our lips and put macgyver back on.

where we sit

2006-11-10T11:27:00.000+08:00

a couch potato is a potato first, and a couch second. that is to say you can peel back the skin, eat the flesh and fry the pieces to make chips, but you can’t ever sit on one. at least, not without feeling very uncomfortable indeed.

i’ve been couching now for about six years. sure, six years doesn’t seem much time to you, but before that i was beanbagging, and that’s a whole new lifestyle altogether. for example, when beanbagging, you can’t really put your feet up on the coffee table.

2006-11-10T11:21:00.000+08:00

creepy and hatboy were created sometime in the late 1990s. it happened quite by accident one evening when i was sharing a few too many episodes of doctor who and star trek: voyager with a good friend of mine, one andrew hindle.

we were stood around in his kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil, and talking a bit too animatedly about the pros and cons of various badguys, and just how well the daleks would go against the borg. we decided the poor daleks would be assimilated a little too quickly, and used as wheely bins.

giggling with manic glee, we more or less continued down this track of mixing universes and then blending that with dreams of just exactly what would we do with a starship, or a tardis for that matter?

oh, beware, poor milkmaids, for your virtue is under threat...

many episodes of creepy and hatboy were hammered together right there and then, with relative ease.

the actual characters of creepy and hatboy are, naturally, ourselves, and the books were entirely biographical.

well, give or take an episode...

at the time, a friend of ours had taken to calling us by these crazy nicknames. hatboy, because he always wore a hat, and creepy because, well. because i am.

it was no great leap of logic, then, for us to consider writing a book about our dreamy adventures with a tardis.

we decided right there and then to collaborate.

i would write a few episodes from creepy’s point of view, and he would write from hatboy’s point of view. it would be genius. it would be marvellous.

unfortunately, there was a fatal flaw in an otherwise perfect plan.

basically, my good friend andrew’s a lot more prolific than i am, so he was working on any number of projects, whereas i pretty much had a free schedule. i hammered out the first book (creepy and hatboy: save the world) in the record time of two months while andrew had barely hammered out an episode.

i waited impatiently for him to catch up, so i could write the sequel but he was going to slow, so i decided i would write a prequel – one which did not use the character of hatboy at all. i called it creepy and ninjagirl. unfortunately, i didn’t like that book, and it fell into the realms of industrial waste, so i started again, and penned creepy and hatboy: the horror of drackenstein.

i mean, what the hell, right?

for more information about lucas thorn, and creepy and hatboy, visit http://www.recklesscouchcreations.com