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.
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This is the voice of the mysterons
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Always The Bridesmaid
"...hello?"
Hello?
"D?"
Yes, who is this please?
"Its Emma."
Ah, hello Emma. Congratulations.
"Thanks. You didn't come."
No, I was busy.
"You didn't RSVP"
My handwriting is awful these days.
"There was an email address you could have used."
I lost the invitation.
"We had a seat set aside for you at the top table. Evan mentioned you in his speech as the reason we got together in the first place."
That's nice.
"Why didn't you want to come?"
To be honest? I really don't know.
"Would you like to come visit us? We've just bought a house together."
No, thank you.
"Stop being such an asshole."
Goodbye Emma.
Health And Safety
I charmed my way through the initial phone interview, aced the face to face and cleared the bar with no less than three top notch references, including one from the boss I was leaving to go and work for the Institute for Disaster Research when normally I would have expected him to be quite sour over losing me.
So it was on a dreary Monday morning, with my head still somewhat fuzzy from the leaving drinks on Friday that had finally ended on Sunday, that I drove carefully up the long winding drive to the isolated Institute. I parked in a space reserved for "Product Testing", my new department, and headed into the lobby. Above the entrance was the institute's crest and the motto errare humanum erk!
The receptionist looked like she'd done ten rounds with Mike Tyson before accompanying him home for more of the same without the protection of gloves or a referee. She snapped a tooth from her gum before giving me a piano keyboard smile.
"Good morning Sir, how may I help?"
There was a deafening explosion from outside and as I ducked down I spotted several flaming tires roll past the glass doors and trundle off down the driveway. They looked suspiciously familiar.
"What in the name of Lisa-Marie Presley was that?"
The receptionist consulted a large date book.
"Product testing. The Personal Disasters team were experimenting to see how disastrous it would be if someone were to fill up their car with napalm instead of petrol."
She closed the date book and I saw that the cover was embossed in gold lettering with Recipes for Disaster. I suddenly had a deep sense of foreboding about this new job.
Gumming Up The Works
By moving in with someone I have inherited a number of long-term problems that my beloved has never before really had to deal with. First there was the fridge with broken icebox door. I would spend the occasional Sunday morning using a kitchen knife as stress relief on the overgrown stalactites and stalagmites that had bonded the few frozen foods together in the darkest icy depths, until I finally bought a new fridge.
Then there was the dishwasher which was used beyond the point of endurance and signalled it was giving up on us by emitting a small cloud of smoke from the control panel in a Disney-esque robotic death (ie; no screaming and no blood) I spent every other night washing dishes by hand until I finally bought a new dishwasher.
Then the hot water combo boiler stopped working and I think you, as clever readers who are able to spot patterns as they appear, will be able to guess what happened next.
So, this week the washing machine gave up. Refused to drain. Hoarded our soggy clothes and the dirty water it had just extracted from them together inside the drum. We had to crack the door open just a millimetre with a square bucket (now how fortunate was it that we had a bucket with a straight edge, eh?) held underneath to catch the water and then rinsed all the clothes by hand, wringing them out. Very Little House on the Prairie if you ask me.
I've spent the morning looking at new washing machines. 1200 rpm, 1400 rpm, 1600 rpm. 5kg loads, 7 kgs loads, 10.4 kg loads (for people with very fat clothes) Energy efficiency ratings, washing efficiency, centrifugal efficiency, and of course the most important aspect for all household appliances that I buy; that it be in silver of aluminium.
Being completely lost about whether these ratings would be an improvement upon our existing washing machine I looked up the web about our current model and found the following piece of advice across numerous messageboards;
blow down evacuation hose, empty machine then remove front cover (4 screws along the bottom of the panel) pump is located in the bottom right corner, inside that you will find a plastic filter, remove sock from filter, clean under the tap and re-assemble everything
Moral of the story; invest in a good screwdriver and wear thick socks
Behind The Scenes
Here at Acerbia Corp there are some decisions that the readership are not aware of. Marketing decisions are made by the marketing department and their strategy is usually kept top secret until the final reveal. Sometimes it works and sometimes we all cock our heads and go "huh?" (see the most recent beetroot-pink kitten ads in the London Underground for example, none of us were consulted on that one)
Writing decisions are usually led by me, as head writer and the content assignments are staffed out as appropriate. William handles the cutesy ones where little furry animals are involved, Abigail takes care of all ordinance and military hardware thanks to her ties with Jane's. Roger and Crespin can usually be relied upon to bring the funny, although there was the dark patch over the summer of 2003 where they didn't have a funny bone between them and I came so close to firing them both.
Some decisions are made by consensus, some are made out of necessity. Design changes are led by the aesthetics department and as majority shareholder I have power of veto. You should have seen the color schemes that were being proposed before this most recent change, Andy Shepherd and his crew were trying to work in the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums without taking into account that current day monitors can't display them.
And of course there's the executive producer and main source of funds behind the whole endeavour; Lewis Rothschild, who keeps us afloat with donations from his family fortune and hasn't once tried to stage a hostile takeover during a boardmeeting. No, he's tried it six times. Powermongering dwarf. Still he brings the magic when we need the spiritual boost.
So it seems pretty strange, when I have all these other people involved that when I'm looking for inspiration not one of them is anywhere to be found and I'm sitting here on my own in front of a blinking cursor, cursing.
An interesting footnote that I feel I ought to include; due to the unique way in which Acerbia is funded, when you read the posts on the .com site you don't get any of the advertising. When you read a syndicated piece though the adverts actually add 25% more reading time to the whole piece so it takes longer to read.
The Surgery of Modern Warfare
I fanned out the five cards in my hands, keeping my fingers tightly laced across the backs to not provide any clues to my opponents. The knave of flames, the six of canes, the three of canes, the node of rubies and a wild magus looked back at me. Richmond dealt out the last of the round and set the remainder of the deck down before turning over the top card; deuce of canes. God damn it.
"Starting with sixty" said Holborn two places to my right and tossed in a small pile of blue chips.
"Follow" said Angel and paid her ante by sacrificing a card onto the discard pile; nine of rubies.
Immediately I dropped the node and collected Holborn's chips before drawing a replacement card; a wild Kalku. Not bad for a first round. I tried to contain my excitement at the possibility of a pilgrimage in the next few rounds and tipped my eyes towards Morden who paused and looked me over. Could he tell? Was I flushing, was I breathing faster? Did he suspect? Was he sounding me out?
I did a mental check and reboot, visualising a lame hand of cards in my mind's eye and reacting as if that was what was spread in my hand before me. The intention was to convince even myself that I had been imagining the Magus and Kalku. It must have worked as Morden pushed 200 worth of chips into the middle of the table.
"Raise"
Richmond looked down at the pile of chips and at the node which had reset the discard pile. He was free to lead the way if he liked, pay his ante with a sacrifice or fold his hand. He slowly drew the middle card from his hand and put it down on the discard pile. The Ace of flames. If Morden had been bluffing then Richmond was as good as calling him on it; to discard the Ace of flames must mean that he had a killer hand. Or... was he responding to Morden's bluff with another, even bigger bluff?
"Follow" said Richmond. Holborn followed suit but paused after counting out his own 200.
"Raise" he said with such determination that we all watched in stunned silence as he pushed all of his chips into the pot.
"Follow" said Angel and discarded a second card, the only one that could prevent her from having to ante up all her own chips; the wandering star. Then she turned over the top card of the deck and I nearly died on the spot; a wild Ęsir.
With the Ęsir, the Magus and the Kalku I had three wise men following a wandering star, the best hand in the game, absolutely unbeatable and at odds of 4,221,490,729 to 1 against four London underground stations. Unheard of.
Dialogue For a Movie
"How did you know it was love?"
"Shiroi Kage"
"Huh?"
"Shiroi Kage"
"Is this like Keyser Soze from The Usual Suspects or Rollo Tomasi from L.A. Confidential?"
"Are you going to shoot me when I reveal the truth?"
"I might."
"For four years I spoke almost every day to a woman, We'd speak about everything and nothing, and one day we were talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the bomb. Her husband was working at White Sands on improving the bomb and I had been reading Alan Moore's Watchmen.
We started talking about the shadows that were burned onto the walls of the buildings left standing by Fat Man and Little Boy. Human beings evaporated into nothing but outlines of ash. She said there was a name for those shadows but she couldn't remember it. We lost touch eventually and went about our own seperate lives.
Then I met a girl, fell head over heels, couldn't get enough of her, never wanted it to end. She was into the bomb and I brought up the subject of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima shadows, and you know what she said?"
"Shiroi Kage"
"Are you going to shoot me now?"
"Yes."
Portentous
Henry was the pitcher on our softball team. He couldn't run for toffee but he had a solid underarm slow pitch that he could vary the speed and angle of pretty well and one other thing going for him; his "game on" face.
Stick Henry fifty feet in front of any batter and his face took on the kind of impassive expression that really psyched the opposition out. John's arm, my speed and Deborah's catching glove were all advantages sure, but Henry's face was a showstopper. I once asked him what he was thinking about when he was pitching and he replied;
"Nuthin' man, just... nuthin'."
And then one day the wind changed during a pitch. We called time out and gathered at the mound, watching Henry as he prodded at his cheeks and tried to relax his face from the "game on" expression. His brow seemed to have become heavy as lead, his cheeks gaunt and sunken, and his eyes burned with emotive intensity and everything he said had a funereal quality like it was the end of the world.
"I can't smile" he said and several women burst into tears for no apparent reason. After a sombre silence we conceded the match.
Nobody spoke in the minivan on the ride home. I sat in the passenger seat and saw a tear trickle down Deborah's face before she took hold of the wheel and looked about to wrench it to one side as we crossed the Zimmerman bridge. I grabbed the wheel and kept it steady.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
"I can't take it! He's stuck like that forever, just like my mother warned me! He's just so serious!"
They were divorced within a month on grounds of irreconcilable facial expressions. You couldn't tell how Henry felt about the whole thing because he still had that austere, sober expression etched into his face. And then one day we introduced him to Poker-faced Patty and things started to look up.
Eccentric Eddie
Eccentric Eddie was, as his name would suggest it, pretty crazy. He had these ideas that most people would have dismissed as just pure idiocy, but Eddie was convinced that only he could see the genius behind the lunacy.
I remember when he got the sponsorship deal with Heineken, on not entirely truthful terms; he promised to make them the first beer drunk on the moon. He didn't exactly detail how he was going to do it and when the first truck delivery arrived and was unloaded in his back garden we were invited round to help empty a few crates.
They were delivered in those solid plastic reinforced crates that hold like thirty bottles each. As we finished each one Eddie would stack one on top of the next.
When we were five crates in Eddie climbed on top of the stack and after that we started to pass him each successive empty crate as we emptied them.
It became apparent to those of us on the ground that our bodies couldn't hold all this beer by ourselves so we put a sign in Eddie's front lawn that said "Free beer!" When the local kids saw that they came in droves. Pretty soon Eddie was gaining altitude at a phenomenal rate, using a piece of rope to hoist the next empty crate up there.
So here was the situation, you had a guy on a tall thin stack of crates, nicely drunk and pretty crazy to begin with gradually gaining height and down on the ground were a few hundred drunken idiots falling over and throwing up all over his back yard, dizzy and staggeringm swaying about and bumping into one another.
Can you guess what happened?
Well no you can't, cause he was hit by a passing albatross and fell to his death. None of us saw that coming until he hit the patio at terminal velocity.
Skip A Beat
I scratch my head and chew the end of my pen. What rhymes with "repent"? I scribble a few lines down and scratch one or two out. I've got four verses down and another two to do, working to some bastardised iambic pentameter that probably breaks the Halle-Keyser rules. Does it scan? I read it to myself and it does. Sort of.
Am I treading the hallowed verses of Kerouac and Ginsberg? Or am I looking to pull a Mike Myersesque absurdist performance of non-sensical sequitors a la Married an Axe Murderer?
I think of my past experiences in front of rooms full of people expecting to be entertained. My karaoke nightmares on machines that refuse to show the lyrics I know, performing Hamlet in a foreign language in front of native speakers just because I fancied Ophelia, my childhood performances in front of scores of unforgiving classmates. What on earth have I let myself in for?
Let me put it this way; I can guarantee you good value for money one way or another.
D will be appearing whether he likes it not on stage at 20x2 later this month.