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.
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes Felisis?
Right, so it starts off with somebody murdering The Catmedian by throwing him off the top of a building. Two of his former back-alley crime fighting buddies The Night Meowl and Rorschat begin to investigate. They ask all around the other super-powered cats in the neighborhood including Dr Mancattan and Adrian Svelte, the former Fuzzymandias.
Rorschat's investigations cause Dr Mancattan to teleport to Mars when his lover Silky goes off with Night Meowl and the U.S. is left without its ultimate weapon. Nuclear war beckons and Rorschat is captured and taken to the local pound.
Night Meowl and Silky break Rorschat out of the pound and head for Fuzzymandias' northern retreat but Silky vanishes to Mars due to Dr Mancattan's interference. On Mars Dr Mancattan and Silky debate the worth of a cat and whether the species is worth saving.
Convinced that Fuzzymandias is behind the Catmedian's death and the whole plot to murder super-cats Night Meowl and Rorschat attack him but he manages to neutralise them as well as Dr Mancattan and Silky when they arrive. Fuzzymandias then reveals that he has instigated and successfully executed a plan that reunites all of felinekind together. The heroes are trapped, unable to reveal the truth for fear it would break the peace.
"hmmm" said Alan Moore as he stroked his beard before taking a sip of his pint "I like it... but suppose... suppose instead of cats the plot revolved around people?"
At that point I stood up and left The Old Green Man pub, disgusted that he would wish to pervert my idea so. That was over twenty years ago now, and I now wish that I'd listened to his sage advice.
Fester
I've often wondered about those moments when someone has said "the thought kept me awake all night". I've rarely suffered from insomnia, and in those cases it was just inability to sleep rather than mental preoccupation, however yesterday someone played some mind games with me, giving me a few clues and then leaving me hanging.
My brain must have continued to squirrel away at the thought process because at about half three (thats fucking dead of night o'clock for everyone else) it suddenly went "oh hold on now!" and presented me with the only logical answer. And it was not a good one.
There are probably similar realisations in life that begin with "I wonder why Rob wears the same perfume as my wife" or "why does my son look like James Hewitt?" that lead to the kind of horrible realisation that struck me in those wee small hours of the morn.
Suffice to say I didn't get back to sleep and instead went through the various shades of despair to finally arrive at hopeless resignation that the die is cast and nothing more can be done. I feel quite trapped and ineffectual at moments like that and I can't release the frustration in any way.
Why does life tip from simple and happy to difficult and complicated like this? In one moment, everything can change.
Woof!
Rusty and I were already in the park when Ben arrived. Ben had brought a tennis ball with him. He threw his arm back and swung it in an arc, releasing the tennis ball at the apogee, sending it soaring up into the wide blue sky.
"Fetch!" he said but Rusty didn't move.
"Play dead" I said and Rusty obeyed.
Ben walked across the park and retrieved his tennis ball. He returned with a large stick. He waggled the stick in front of Rusty's nose before throwing it like an axe. It scythed through the sky and fell some distance away.
"Fetch god damn you! Fetch!" he said but Rusty still didn't move.
"Stay" I said and Rusty obeyed.
"Roll over you stupid mutt!" shouted Ben but Rusty didn't move.
"Lie" I said and Rusty obeyed.
"Walkies!" shouted Ben as he moved to run, but Rusty didn't move.
"Heel" I said and Rusty obeyed.
Eventually when Ben had gone home I picked Rusty up and took him home, before putting him back into the freezer.
First Post!
For the foreseeable future you can get daily bite-sized doses of Acerbia and other leading-brand fiction writers from 100 Words or Les Nessman. Since I don't have the first clue who Les Nessman was I'm at a disadvantage, a disadvantage compensated by being in an earlier timezone to the rest of the players.
Estudentia
The drive back from Mikatonic U to Boston took a turn for the worse when we decided to drive back via the coast and through Kingsport instead of the more direct route through Beverly and Salem. Not only did the coastal road twist and wind along the cliffs of Massachusetts but when the fog rolled in from the sea it became almost impossible to follow.
Beth had been in the passenger seat for most of the afternoon telling me about her Hyperborean studies and how convinced she was that Professor Marsh never actually took a breath when he spoke, joking that he must have hidden gills or something. Katie was asleep on the back seat.
Katie had been in trouble at school for playing with a box cutter and carving a pentagram into the arm of a classmate; something we suspected was the influence of those blasted Harry Potter books she liked to read. I had driven up to collect Beth for the weekend so we could spend it together as a family but now we were hopelessly lost on a road that seemed to be going nowhere.
"Legend has it that the populace fled Commoriom when the White Sybil of Polarion foretold of its destruction..."
I nodded as Beth continued her monologue, reeling off all that she had learned at Miskatonic, oblivious to the fact that Katie needed the positive influence of her mother's presence and I was working overtime at my firm as it was to finance her studies. Katie was spending more time with her nanny, Eusapia Brewster, than either of us.
Eusapia gave me the creeps every time I came home late and Katie would be asleep in her lap with all of the house lights off. I had snuck in late one night to hear her talking to Katie in some strange tongue that sounded like she was speaking with a wet squid in her mouth, Romanian or something I guess. After that I'd catch her winking at Katie and Katie winking back as if they were keeping some secret I wasn't meant to know. I wished that Beth had involved me in the interview process; I'd never have hired Eusapia.
From out of nowhere an albatross or some such winged creature flew past the windshield out of the fog and I slammed on the brakes. We skidded to a halt by the roadside and I slowly let go of the wheel. Beth was staring at me wildly as I looked round to check that Katie was okay; she was still asleep with her arms wrapped around Binky, her albino penguin plush.
"Hon, what the hell?!"
I shook my head and asked her if she would mind driving for a while as I was tense and could still feel the adrenaline coursing through my body. We traded places, Beth took the wheel and hit the accelerator so hard there was a squeal from the tyres and the smell of burning rubber. Beth didn't usually drive so fast but suddenly she seemed to be Steve McQueen.
As the car broke through the crash barriers and sailed out over the cliffs, arcing down towards the cold embrace of the Atlantic she turned to me and I saw her green eyes flicker and glow brightly. Behind me Katie asked through a mouthful of squid if we were almost home and in Hyperborean Beth replied "Soon baby, soon."
Borgne Again
Christ knows why I went along for the audition, I didn't have any previous experience and I certainly didn't need the money. I guess I just wanted to gawk at the other participants and maybe have a laugh.
"Read the first line please" said one of the panel. I looked down at the pencil scribblings on the yellow legal pad, they looked like they'd been written by a twelve year old.
Ooh, yeah. Yeah, baby. Oh, that's it, yeah. Yeah, that's it, baby.
"Thank you. You already pass the first round since you can read. You wouldn't believe how many people we have to refuse simply because they just can't read the script."
From what I'd scanned ahead it didn't look like this was really the kind of gig you couldn't just improvise for if you had to, but I didn't argue.
"If you'd like to proceed into the next room we'll be pairing you off with a partner."
I headed through the swing doors emblazoned with the logo of "The XXX Factor" and shook my head at the awfulness of the whole situation. The carpet tiles seemed to be wedged into place with cigarette butts. The tables and chairs looked like they'd been stolen from the local village hall. The refreshments table reeked of blackcurrant juice and orange slices.
As I entered the second room 29 eyes looked back at me. Two of them belonged to the instructor who motionned for me to take the empty seat. I did so quickly with the bashful expression of someone who has a front row ticket and has arrived late halfway through "When shall we three meet again?" The girl beside me only had one eye. She was the only person waiting for a partner.
"Hi."
Hi, I replied and focused on her lovely chin. Chin. Chin. Chin, lips, nose, oh God don't go any higher! My eyes resettled on her chin before I forced my head to turn back towards the instructor at the front of the class.
"If you've all got your scripts we'll start some of the scenes. Would you like to go first?"
I looked round at the couple behind me and back at the instructor as she waited patiently for me to acknowledge her request.
"Yes you" she prompted as I pointed at myself.
The two of us took to the stage and I flipped furiously through the pages of the script hoping to see that it was not in fact for a cheap porno but rather a scene from West Side Story or perhaps Chicago.
The curtain pulled back and there was a double bed with plastic sheets over it, I could only imagine why. The girl with one eye slowly began to undress and the rest of the potentials leaned forward to take it all in as the instructor mimed taking my clothes off. She gave me a wink and suddenly I felt nauseous.
Its me Nono, small robot you know...
Something occured to me as I was transferring video data onto the memory stick of my Playstation Portable from my iPod via the Dell desktop machine I use here at work just before I answered a text message on my Motorola V3 RAZR...
I've become a fucking cyborg!
The devices may not be permanently affixed to me but they may as well be. As soon as somebody comes up with a portable 240v power supply that recharges on... I dunno, body odor or sweat or something that's it, we'll all become Borg.
Of course the irony that I then go and blog about this is not lost on me.
Cereal Fiction
Our office has free milk. As much milk as you can drink. If you want to take the time to turn it into butter or cheese then you have to do that outside of office hours, but it would then be free butter or cheese for you to consume. You could quite possibly consume so much free milk, butter and cheese of your own creation that you would explode, leaving a very pink, raw, mass of flesh with spikey bones.
Most people use it for their cereal in the mornings, as do I. A big white bowl from Ikea, the rim a good three and a half inches from the base and sides curving down makes this one big breakfast cereal bowl. So of course as the milk is free I over-fill the bowl with milk and when the cereal is all but gone I have an ocean of milk with the last surviving krispies floating their existence away.
Krispies; being watched from the timeless depths of my office. Watched as the microscopic creatures that make up the krispie swarm and multiply in their ocean of milk. Few of them would believe that there is life outside of the cereal bowl and yet, through the manipulation of a spoon, a mind so devious and cunning is plotting their downfall.
Some of the krispies cling to the edges of the bowl where the milk raises slightly against the edge in a concave fashion. Mercury is the only liquid to bulge within a container, giving it a convex slightly domed surface. This is due to cohesive and adhesive forces within the liquids, but the krispies don't know about capillary action and they've never been to Mercury.
In my mind I measure how many times I would have to dip the spoon into the milk to capture the last of the krispies and realise that the effort involved would outweight the calorie intake, turning breakfast into exercise. I leave them to soak in their glorious bovine lactations. Later they'll be washed away down a plughole. Enjoy it while you can krispies, this is as good as it gets, this was your raison d'être.