BoBo Goes on Vacation

Bob sighed, relieved to finally be home to his modest single wide. He jingled his keys huffing as his gut fell just below his Hawaiian shirt. His dog began to bark for its owner inside.

Bob was a middle aged man, balding, overweight and bespectacled; though this wasn't necessarily what he saw the mirror when he entered the bathroom. "Today's the day, BoBo" said the clown, luminescent, in front of the shaving cream and prescription medication in his medicine cabinet. Bob mumbled in agreement, penis in hand, as he emptied his bladder. It sure feels great to be home.

Bob walked out of his bathroom and over the dog, still barking. The Pomeranian obviously didn't know Bob was its new owner, but all that will change.

Bob took the cheap Xerox he found and placed it next to the empty cans of Pabst on the little linoleum dining only really big enough for one. Bob's small trailer didn't bug Bob much. Bob never had company over. Bob slowly unbuttoned his Hawaiian shirt, covered in hula girls, ones like you would see in old fashioned tattoos. He then kicked his shoes off, then rubbed his socks off his feet then finally let his slacks fall to his ankles. It sure feels great to be home he thought.

Bob, naked, walked the few feet to his fridge and opened it. Bob saw some day old Chinese food, a jar of Dijon mustard and a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon. It only had three left in it. I'll get some more on the way there, bob thought, and then get some food on the way back. Bob took the last three beers and the Xerox and walked to his room.

He had drunk the first one by the time he had walked through his bedroom door and got the Pomeranian to shut the fuck up. This Bob's most valued time and he wanted it to be perfect. Bob sat the beers and the Xerox on the make up table and sat down on his padded folding chair. In the spotlight framed mirror, Bob could see how he looked and watch himself transform into what he really was. Bob began to apply his make up, first a base of white, then blue around the eyes, then red around his mouth, arranged into corners up to his nose, accentuating his cheeks and all the way down to his chin. He saw a clown sporting a malicious grin in the mirror.

Then noticed his erection, and mimed surprise. He drank another beer, idly playing with his penis. Bob was now fully erect, and ready. The clown in the mirror concurred. “It’s show time, BoBo”.

Bob stood up in his chair and turned around to see a naked woman lying in his stained bad sheets.

“I didn’t see you there Susan” Bob said, feigning embarrassment, still lazily jerking off.

Susan said nothing, she just smiled and opened her legs, her thighs almost yawning, calling Bob to her.

“Well, don’t mind if I do, Susan”

***

Bob sat on the bed, cleaning his make up off his face with one hand, drinking the last beer and smoking a cigarette with his other. He looked at the Xerox and then the blowup dolls head next to it. He turned his head the other way and saw his semen lazily drip out of the pussy hole between its inflated vinyl legs.

The Pomeranian was barking the whole time he did it, but Bob was pretty sure that was the best nut he’s busted in a while. His dick was a little sore, but a good kind of sore. After he got through the second Marlboro red, he came back to earth, the dog still barking furiously at him, it’s body jumping back as it yapped at Bob.

“Oh shut the fuck up...” Bob realized he didn’t know the dog’s name.

He put his beer down and grabbed the Xerox photocopy next to the blowup doll and looked at it through the glasses he just put back on.

MISSING DOG

POLMERANIAN, GOES BY FLUFFY

CALL SUSAN, (907) 338-6121

Just under ‘missing dog’ was Susan, a blond woman, mid-thirties, holding fluffy in the frame of the picture.

Bob took a shower, put his best Hawaiian shirt on, (a classy number with cubist palm trees on it) and then took fluffy into his Subaru station wagon.

“You’re going to be fine” BoBo the clown said reassuringly, gleaming from the rear view mirror, back at Bob.

Bob dialed the number.



Smell that Barbeque
MMM MMM
Big Mike.

Malt Liqueur and Marijuana

Why am I awake? Well, I'll certainly not say its because of vacation debauchery. I'll certainly not say it's because  I was hoping to get a text back from some chick. That's right. I said text. However, I'm glad you're hear reading this. I would be dreadfully put off it that where not the case!

Yes, hey, a bunch of silly pictures to divert from that fact that I have no ACTUAL experience as a professional writer. Well who gives a flying titty tickle. You sure shouldn't. Heres Pete with the weather.

It isn't so often that one can find themselves so willing to create something, artistically, and even have the desire to share it with the rest of the world. That is what some even accidentally do. Can't keep proper frame of mind but...uh...famous dead guy quote.

~Xavier R.

Puppies and Butterflies

“Maybe you’re getting used to the way they smell” said Lumpy to John. If Lumpy had eyebrows, he’d have one raised.

“No, Lumpy, I’m sure they’re beginning to smell less” coughed John, a grizzled old man trying feebly to push a shopping cart full of his belongings forward.

“Well, John, I really don’t see how that could be the case” Lumpy retorted, taking a condescending tone.

“Lumpy, you don’t even have a nose”

“Touché, John”

***

Dave and Macy, Biology and Psychology undergrads respectively, adjusted their gasmasks and cocked their shotguns. They’d cleared 5 rooms on the fourth level of the apartment complex and the found biters in every single one of them. They weren’t making any allusions to fucking around.

Dave kicked the door 4 times before it began to splinter and sag at the lock, after which it was one stiff kick before it gave entirely. Dave and Macy rushed into the apartment, Dave into the room adjacent to the entrance to the apartment, Macy to the bathroom across the hall from the bedroom. There was nothing in the room besides a bed, a dresser, a computer and some DVDs in a rack. Dave shouted “Clear”. Macy saw no biters in the bathtub, they were always in the bathtub. Macy shouted “Clear”.

“Maybe there’s no-one here?” Dave queried, cautiously optimistic.

“Don’t be so sure” Macy told Dave, pointing at the locked door just past the living room/kitchen.

They could just make out the sound of someone vomiting.

***

“What do you want you bet its brain parasites? Or bacteria!” Lumpy said to John.

John just grunted.

“What’s wrong John?” Lumpy asked, concerned. Ever since it happened, John hasn’t been the same. It started it off small and contained, for a month or so it would be done, but then it would happen again. John was determined to hide alone until it was over. Every time John and Lumpy found people, the people seemed to just go insane and kill each other. 

That and they never seemed to take kindly to Lumpy.

 Lumpy was John’s daughter’s before she moved away. Even though the long seasons of solitude made him question his memory, he never really recalled Lumpy talking much before it happened. 

"What's wrong, John?"

John grunted again.

“Either way, It’s rate of recidivism is pretty impressive” said Lumpy blithely. “It couldn’t be anything else besides bacteria or a brain parasite. It would kill off a group, then transmit itself to another enclave of survivors somehow then kill them off… maybe its airborne?”

“Whatever it is, we’ll never know Lumpy” John sighed.

The difficulty of pushing the cart was getting ridiculous, John figured there was something stuck in the wheel, he kneeled down to check and of course the smell got worse.

***

The smell, even through the gasmasks, was fucking horrible. Between the decaying, half disemboweled body on the bed, the vomit, the shit and the general smell of death permeating from the very wallpaper, Dave and Macy could barely hold back their gag reflexes. When they find biters, they either find them eating each other, shitting barely digested flesh in their pants, or vomiting it out.

“Aren’t zombies supposed to just eat us? Not throw us up?” Macy asked.

Dave would’ve subconsciously pushed his glasses up if he wasn’t wearing a gasmask at the time. “One, they’re not zombies, they’re not even dead. They’re just people eating other people raw, and we’re just not that great at digesting raw human flesh.”

Macy gave him a glare through the coke bottle lenses of her gas mask. “Okay, Mr. Biologist smart ass. If they’re not zombies, what are they?”

“I don’t know! They were people, and I guess they still are. I guess they’ve gone little nuts.”

“A little nuts? Severely schizophrenic maybe, but you don’t just catch schizophrenia.”

“They remind me of this brain parasite that affects rats. They infect rats and reprogram their brains to find and get eaten by cats. These parasites thrive in a cat’s digestive systems.”

“Makes sense, but biters don’t infect other humans, they just eat them”

“True” mused Dave, “There must be a carrier, someone who has it but isn’t a biter: they just give it to those who don’t have the parasite.”

“Hey, Dave, what does that look like to you?” Macy pointed at the blood splatter on the retro wallpaper with her shotgun. The splatter behind the biter they just took out with two rounds of buck shot, one from each of them.

“Uh, the brains of that woman we just wasted?” He didn’t see where she was going with this “I think I see a tooth”

“No, no, no, Dave. You ever hear of a Rorschach test?”

“Oh yeah!” Dave said merrily and paused for a moment to decide. “It looks like puppies”

“Puppies?” Macy asked, baffled “It looks like more like a butterfly to me”

“No, it’s two puppies sitting sort of back to back, you see it?”

Macy turned her head and said “Oh!”

***

Dave and Macy left the apartment complex cheerily swinging backpacks they had filled full of canned food and knick-knacks scavenged from the fourth floor until the sight of an elderly man with a shopping cart chastising a sock monkey stopped them in their tracks.

“No, Lumpy, I’m not going to touch it with my bare hands” hollered the old man.

The old man gave pause for a reply.

“No, Lumpy! It’s a goddamn finger stuck in the wheel.”

Pause

“You don’t even have bones!” He began to cough.

The old man didn’t notice Dave and Macy cautiously walk out in front of them, shotguns at the ready. Dave politely coughed to garner the old man’s attention. The old man looked up at them as if interrupted from serious business, not showing any outward signs of fear of the two shotguns being pointed at him.

“Yes?” said the old man, annoyed.

“Are you talking to a sock monkey?” questioned Macy, bemused.

The old man looked at them blankly, then to Lumpy and then back at them. “Yes” said the old man, as if talking to a sock monkey was completely normal and that that was a stupid question. He let out a chesty cough.

Dave and Macy looked at each other and realized this conversation would be going nowhere unless they changed tactics.

“Why are you pushing your cart through a pile of bodies?” Dave asked the old man. The old man raised an eyebrow to the couple then began to look around him; seemingly shocked to find that he was in fact pushing his cart through formally neat rows of dead bodies, and had been for some time. Rows of bodies that Dave and Macy taken out of the buildings to rot in the street.

“Why are there dead bodies in the street!?” screamed the old man, wheezing.

“Wha- wait, have you been living under a rock?” Dave asked, baffled “The sickness? The biters?”

John gave the couple a really sardonic look, the best he could muster. “I know about all of that,” hacking, coughing and then catching his breath “but don’t you idiots know you’re supposed to burn these bodies?” Lumpy would have been proud, that is, if he wasn’t a sock monkey.

Macy gave Dave a nudge and whispered “I told you so”.

Dave would have come up with a witty retort, but fell short. Instead he said “Hey, look, we can take you to other survivors, we’ve got a whole building just 3 blocks ahead”

The old man looked at Lumpy, then back at Dave and Macy and nodded in agreement, too busy coughing to say anything. Dave and Macy helped John move his shopping cart and took Lumpy and John to the survivor’s building, coughing all the way.

Tastes pretty good, no?

Big Mike.

How to Write about Africa.

Something I found, spread it.

Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means Africans who are not black, while ‘The People’ means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.

Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.

Throughout the book, adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone. Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can’t live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.

Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with. The Loyal Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always involving you in his complex domestic dramas. The Ancient Wise Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona). He has rheumy eyes and is close to the Earth. The Modern African is a fat man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. He is an enemy of development, always using his government job to make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set up NGOs or Legal Conservation Areas. Or he is an Oxford-educated intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row suit. He is a cannibal who likes Cristal champagne, and his mother is a rich witch-doctor who really runs the country.

Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. Her children have flies on their eyelids and pot bellies, and her breasts are flat and empty. She must look utterly helpless. She can have no past, no history; such diversions ruin the dramatic moment. Moans are good. She must never say anything about herself in the dialogue except to speak of her (unspeakable) suffering. Also be sure to include a warm and motherly woman who has a rolling laugh and who is concerned for your well-being. Just call her Mama. Her children are all delinquent. These characters should buzz around your main hero, making him look good. Your hero can teach them, bathe them, feed them; he carries lots of babies and has seen Death. Your hero is you (if reportage), or a beautiful, tragic international celebrity/aristocrat who now cares for animals (if fiction).

Bad Western characters may include children of Tory cabinet ministers, Afrikaners, employees of the World Bank. When talking about exploitation by foreigners mention the Chinese and Indian traders. Blame the West for Africa's situation. But do not be too specific.

Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the African characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them illuminate something about Europe or America in Africa. African characters should be colourful, exotic, larger than life—but empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause.

Describe, in detail, naked breasts (young, old, conservative, recently raped, big, small) or mutilated genitals, or enhanced genitals. Or any kind of genitals. And dead bodies. Or, better, naked dead bodies. And especially rotting naked dead bodies. Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable will be referred to as the ‘real Africa’, and you want that on your dust jacket. Do not feel queasy about this: you are trying to help them to get aid from the West. The biggest taboo in writing about Africa is to describe or show dead or suffering white people.

Animals, on the other hand, must be treated as well rounded, complex characters. They speak (or grunt while tossing their manes proudly) and have names, ambitions and desires. They also have family values: see how lions teach their children? Elephants are caring, and are good feminists or dignified patriarchs. So are gorillas. Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla. Elephants may attack people’s property, destroy their crops, and even kill them. Always take the side of the elephant. Big cats have public-school accents. Hyenas are fair game and have vaguely Middle Eastern accents. Any short Africans who live in the jungle or desert may be portrayed with good humour (unless they are in conflict with an elephant or chimpanzee or gorilla, in which case they are pure evil).

After celebrity activists and aid workers, conservationists are Africa’s most important people. Do not offend them. You need them to invite you to their 30,000-acre game ranch or ‘conservation area’, and this is the only way you will get to interview the celebrity activist. Often a book cover with a heroic-looking conservationist on it works magic for sales. Anybody white, tanned and wearing khaki who once had a pet antelope or a farm is a conservationist, one who is preserving Africa’s rich heritage. When interviewing him or her, do not ask how much funding they have; do not ask how much money they make off their game. Never ask how much they pay their employees.

Readers will be put off if you don’t mention the light in Africa. And sunsets, the African sunset is a must. It is always big and red. There is always a big sky. Wide empty spaces and game are critical—Africa is the Land of Wide Empty Spaces. When writing about the plight of flora and fauna, make sure you mention that Africa is overpopulated. When your main character is in a desert or jungle living with indigenous peoples (anybody short) it is okay to mention that Africa has been severely depopulated by Aids and War (use caps).

You’ll also need a nightclub called Tropicana, where mercenaries, evil nouveau riche Africans and prostitutes and guerrillas and expats hang out.

Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.

~ Binyavanga Wainaina

The air came in as would a reddish sky

At long last, it is time for another vacation. To think, I've been grudging and dragging through a pit of underpaid misery for two years already!

Time for a four day music festival filled with music I hardly like and women I'd hardly like, but plan on fucking. A vastness of white hippies, hipsters, and the peppered in black guy who will get asked for drugs constantly because he...looks the part.

I mean really? All these jerk offs are the kind of people who would jump right at the "Oh I'm not racist!" bullshit, yet continue to keep themselves blind to the fact that the only idea of black people they have are the ones they see as entertainers or drug dealers.

Take for example, 80% of the people I've ever hung out with will assume I'm there to either entertain them, or sell them  drugs, in some which way. Of the 20% that don't fall into that example, 95% of them, I discover eventually, see me as their "black friend."

"But Xavier, you are their bla..." No, I'm their friend. You should get why that's dumb. Man, no ONE group is the stereotype, ever. Stop being so weak and cowardly as to latch onto knuckle dragging level theorems like "Well everyone I've met that looks like that has acted a certain way" or "Thats what I was told."

This went far from its original point.

Vacation. There will be a festival of debauchery. I will be at said festival of debauchery. I will debauch.

~Xavier R.

p.s. I'm not retarded, I'm just big boned.

A vacant parking lot

I almost convinced myself to listen to Prince, but instead ended up with some Bassnectar. Clear out your skull.

Wait, I forgot what I was doing. Um. Glad you're well.

~Xavier R.

p.s. Hey Mike, email me you douche bag.

You suck

 

Don't come to my gas station (or my state for that matter) if you can't pump gas. I will not pump it for you, you overly self entitled little bitch.

That is all

Big Mike.

Why Damien Hirst can eat my shit

Preserving animals in formaldehyde or encrusting a skull with valuable gems isn't art. Or at least it shouldn't be art. He is merely a namesake, who quite honestly doesn't even need to put forth any sort of energy into creating, beyond minor lessons learned in school.



"If you're so smart, why don't you..."



Stop right there. Firstly, he has vast amounts of resources available to him, where as I do not. Secondly, he, along with the rest of that dumb Young British Artists movement, somehow are hip enough to do things like poop in a bucket, call it "Poop in a bucket" and sell it for millions of pounds. That isn't art. That is people declaring it so, so they can buy it up and show off how little their cocks truly are.



Stop ruining everything.



Just stop.



~Xavier R.