Welcome to Acerbia; population: π
This is the archive of the many and fabulous adventures of . Like a hard-bitten son of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius taught to write by William S. Burroughs; continually reincarnated, debated over by intellectuals and literati at cocktail parties the author can't get invited to, the target of scorn and ire from women everywhere, frequently mistaken for a former member of the Warsaw pact, named after the Italian explorer Giuseppe Acerbi, slowly rewriting the Book of Cataclysm, this is postmodern fiction at its most playful and creative.
Yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi
I think the beginning of the end for Acerbia Heavy Industries (AHI) really was when we lost the contract to supply Georgia with light personnel carriers. Eduard said it was nothing personal and that it was more a political decision based on social changes but it hit us hard. A good portion of the workforce became demoralized by that and we had our first round of layoffs in the company's history.
While some of our best sellers like the Wyvern 155mm self-propelled artillery unit and the Sea Sprite interceptor gunship languished in warehouses across the globe we weren't renewing any contracts. Mullah Omar apologized and said that he had no need for conventional weapons anymore, that the face of warfare was shifting more to the squad and individual level. He suggested we start producing dirty bombs in Samsonite suitcases or Louis Vuitton patterns to keep up with demand but I just couldn't see us retooling the factory floor for small arms production. Also none of the crews had any experience with plutonium.
A spate of bad publicity continued as with each conflict we came out further behind than before, either by consistently backing the loser or by supplying to both sides.
There once was a time when a tank wouldn't roll through our factory doors and out onto the transports unless we had christened it and added the company logo under a saucy depiction of a babe astride a large projectile. CNN would always pan in on the burning shell of the vehicle and there would be our logo, emblazoned out with tritium-enriched paints that glowed in the dark, a feature our competitors never copied.
And then finally things went from bad to worse when my partner signed the multi-million dollar contract to supply the world's video gaming companies with virtual tanks...
The Winter of the Roman Empire
In the run up to the release of Star Wars Episode 3: Suicidal Despair of the Screenwriter I watched Episode 1: The Phantom Blue Screen of Death and Episode 2: Attack of the Largely Not There Scenery. Walking out of the cinema led to a fit of deep depression that I had a hard time shaking. The only thing that kept me going was that I now had a very good reason to watch the original trilogy all over again and this was done in a marathon run yesterday. All three movies, parts 4 through 6.
The topic of this post of course isn't an original observation; people have been querying it for twenty years now, as to how the Ewoks could defeat an entire legion of the Empire's best troops. Isn't this somewhat akin to the Roman Empire falling to the most ridiculous of reasons?
Rome: 476 A.D.
Praetorian Commander Maximus Hurtius awaits the arrival of an envoy from the legions of the north. The envoy has been delayed for two weeks now and no news of the Germanic barbarian hordes has been received. The northern frontier may be on the verge of collapse and Titus has been occupied with the installation of the most recent puppet emperor; Spurius Commentatus and backroom dealings with the Senate to ensure an increase in military spending next year. A servant arrives to announce Titus Labius-Assius.
Maximus Hurtius: Ave, Titus Labius-Assius.
Titus Labius-Assius: Ave, Maximus Hurtius.
Maximus Hurtius: What news of the north?
Titus Labius-Assius: Great leader, we are lost. Our empire shall crumble from within. Our northern army has been defeated. Routed, smashed and exterminated.
Maximus Hurtius: In Minerva's name how?
Titus Labius-Assius: Otters, millions of them.
Maximus Hurtius: ... otters...
Titus Labius-Assius: The Carnivora order of the Latra Latra family, otherwise known as the European otter.
Maximus Hurtius: Riiiight... and just how have otters defeated an entire legion of our best troops?
Titus Labius-Assius: Morale, sir. We just can't stop them. We've tried tortoise formations, speared phalanxes, even driving wedges but the bastard things get in amongst the men and chitter away with those cute little otter noses and scratchy claws. We're helpless against them!
Maximus Hurtius: I see... and has anyone pointed out to you that you're not actually supposed to be fighting the otters and instead dealing with the heavily armed barbarians who want to destroy Rome?
Titus Labius-Assius: Ignore them sir? But they're just so cute!
Maximus Hurtius: Listen, you can either go back there and ignore the bloody things or I'll send your head back on a pilum as a warning to the rest of the legion to stop taking the piss. Elephants were understandable, but you're stretching it with otters.
Titus Labius-Assius: I'll do my best, sir.
Maximus Hurtius: And you'd better have everything in order for the Emperor's visit; he wants to inspect the Death Fort and ensure it's fully operational before the rebels attack. I don't want there to be a single otter within sight of the place.
Rainbow Fish
I had spent a wonderful day at the London Aquarium but it was finally time for bed so I curled up and went to sleep.
I awoke with a start to see three dark silhouettes towering over my bed. Each was over eight feet tall and tappered towards the floor. The air smelled of salt and brine and there was a whiff of rotting fish. A floppy wet fin wrapped around my throat and I was pulled face first towards two crescents of razor-sharp teeth, three rows deep.
"What's the big idea buster?!"
I made a noise like a kitten wetting itself as the shark barked its question and I saw down into the gaping black maw of its gullet. It couldn't hold my throat, shout at me and see me all at once due to its eyes being on either side of its prominent snout so I was thrown back against the pillows roughly and a black beady accusatory eye glared at me.
"You tell him Zippy!" cheered one of the other dark torpedo silhouettes around the bed.
"Yeah, how would you like it if we tapped on your glass tank endlessly?"
"Uh... George... he's not in a glass tank; he's in some soft squishy thing like a sponge."
The three sharks looked down at my bed quizzically.
"Well fillet me with a fishfork and drench me in lemonjuice. So he is..."
"Here, Bungle, we could just poke at the soft squishy thing the human is trying to sleep in, that'll teach him."
The foolish creatures proceded to poke at the mattress for the next few hours with the points of their wet fins and I promptly fell back asleep. Amazing that the species isn't extinct by now...
Sandwich Filler
Oh God, its been so dull around here that I haven't had anything worth writing about. Well, apart from defeating the invasion of the molemen. But you don't want to hear about that, it would just bore you to tears. You'd yawn your way through the initial shocking findings of the British scientist who, contrary to all common sense thought he'd be better off informing me than the government. Maybe I just exude an anti-molemen aura or something.
And of course there was the meteor strike in the back garden, with the glowing tentacled bug-eyed blob that emerged and carried my girlfriend off across Hampstead Heath. You'd just roll your eyes when I started telling you about fashioning a space suit out of aluminium foil and dashing after the globulous Martian creature to save my sweet from certain tentacling and a sticky end.
I already know that you'd be rather claw out your own eyes in despair rather than have me drone on about the political machinations and backroom dealings that went on between myself and a variety of agents from the world's most top-secret security forces and the blood pact that was sworn there and then across the blackened charred remains of the boardroom table in a haunted west end hotel.
Hearing about the seduction and tumultuous affair I conducted behind my girlfriend's back with not one, not two, but three of Hollywood's leading actresses without any of them being aware of the others, I already know isn't your cup of tea. That I managed to juggle my life around their busy schedules, cramming in cocktail parties in Manhattan, premieres in Cannes and bridal showers in the Hollywood hills and yet still managing to be at work on time and always have a convincing excuse for my darling wouldn't keep you interested for even a minute.
I won't mention the dross and dull secret Nazi formula for immortality I uncovered hidden behind a recording of Edith Piaf's Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, recorded some 15 years after the fall of the Third Reich or how it led me to the clues in the Musée d'Orsay and the subsequent high-speed chases through the dark cobbled streets of Paris, the escape on the TGV Atlantique or the final confrontation with Herr Klinkhasselhoffmeister in the secret lair of the Fifth Reich beneath the abandonned copper mine in northern Portugal, cause I mean, quite frankly, I'm putting myself to sleep just apologising for how boring my life has recently become.
I did however eat a very good cheese sandwich the other night. Sure it gave me nightmares and then the resultant lack of sleep caused me to trigger the zombie infestation of central London you may have heard about on the news (although Michael Jackson's trial seemed to get more coverage) but the sandwich itself was delicious.