the guitar man

fish is rumbling through a little box with photos he's found in a cabinet in the room behind the stairs I use as my office. sneaky little fucker, he's crawled up on the couch there, even brought his pint-sized teacup. I see him all cozy there, so I sigh and take my jacket off, hanging it over the doorhandle.

"you all right, fish?" he looks up, his puzzled face on.

"who's this?" he asks, holding up a picture of a man in a crumpled cowboy hat. I sigh again. "that's the guitar man, fish"

"what happened to him?" fish takes a sip from his lady grey. I sigh again and rub my eyes with both hands, tired and weary from a day trying to save the butts of my clients. I know he won't let go untill he gets his answer or he'll sulk for the rest of the night and will bang the pots and break a few plates while cooking my dinner.

"the guitar man was someone a looooong time ago. never figured that one out, though I allowed him to get a foot in my door and it shook me up quite a bit." I say and I can already feel a bit of a migraine oozing into my brain.

"huh." oh yeah, fish's really awesome with words at times.

I open the left drawer under my desk and take out a bottle of laphroaig, grab the two glasses conveniently stacked on a little tablet in the bookshelf and carry the lot over to the table by the couch. I pour each of us an inch and hand him a glass while pulling his legs up by the cuffs of his jeans, so I can sit down, place his feet over my lap and lean back. savour the first sip and close my eyes.

"you really have a knack of dragging my corpses back to light, dya know that, fish?"he chuckles mildly, snuggling deeper into the pillowhe's resting against, tasting the whiskey. we're just relaxing there on the couch for a while, both of us enjoying the drinks and I'm already counting down from 10 when he nudges my belly softly with his right foot.

"so, what happened with the guitar man?" fish just can't shut his mouth.

"well, we met and I thought it was rather good and then the guitar man started to play stupid games, and I just didn't have that kind of patience, so I let him play with himself and then he disappeared." I sigh some more, downing the rest in my glass down my throat. it burns. I remember the burn of the guitar man.

I turn to lookat fish. "is that sufficient?"

"may I have more whiskey please?" he's smacking his lips.

"sure thing." I reach over and pour us some more.

knockin' on my door

there's a constant knocking on my front door, in tie with a yelling and noise-making and it's damn annoying. been going on for about 20 minutes. fish goes downstairs to have a lookie-lookie through the blinds of the antechamber by the front of the house. he comes back after a moment.
"do we know anyone who looks slightly insane, about 6 feet tall, a bit of a belly, bit of a tan and a receiding hairline?"
I have to think. I could come up with a few answers to this, so I follow him back to that window to check out that eejit outside.
"uh-oh."
"huh," says fish "do you know that person?"
"person, that's saying a bit much."
I lean my chin on fish's shoulder and rub my nose against his ear.
"do something!" demands the fish.
"okayokay!"
I walk to the wardrobe in the hallway and grab the baseball bat my brother has given me for this exact type of moment, walk over to the front door and get said bat in position for a good slug.
"piss off!" I hiss at the eejit outside.
"but but but we're friiiiendssss!"
"naw, we ain't. we haven't been in a while. I got a life now and you piss off and annoy someone else!" I swing the baseball bat horizontally to his hip to try to drive him off the front porch. doesn't result in more than him stepping back a few steps.
I close the door and put the bat back into its wardrobe. walk into the kitchen and get myself a slosh of single malt. it's quiet for about a minute, then the banging on the door continues. fish leans against the doorframe of the kitchen, arms crossed in front of his chest, with a really unhappy look on his forlorn eyes.
"why won't he leave?"
"I don't know, fish. but he will any moment, trust me on that one"
I jump down the stairwell into the basement and open the strongbox with the toys my brother has asked me to keep safe for him there. there's a little safe next to it, which I open as well.
"fish? does it look more like a case for the 12-gauge or for the air rifle?" I call upstairs. I can hear him giggle. I shrug and grab a smallish box with the ammo and hang the 12-gauge over my left ellbow.
"you're joking, right?"
fish can ask an aweful lot of bull. course I'm not.
I stick the first round of slugs in and walk to the front door.
"now whatch this." I tell fish.
I open the door, pull the lever back and aim it right into the eejits face.
"how about you leave now, asshole?"
I can hear him gulp.
"go on, make my day, cunt" I grin. dirty harry, eat yer heart out.
10 seconds later, the front porch is deserted. the wind blows a bulk of prairie grass over the street outside.

I'm almost sorry I didn't shoot him in the face.

stuff in boxes

so we sit in the storm and wait. and wait. and then I got quite bored. bored and antsy and I needed to do something.
"come on fish, I'm bored. amuse me!" I nudge him. fish wiggles his arse on the floor next to me, always the same thing when he doesn't know what to say. "okay, we could... I dunno... get a start on your next tax returns?"
"are you out of your bloody mind! no way, fish. let's go explore the house. I'm bored and I haven't looked at all that shit in those moving boxes I never unpacked after I moved here." I suggest, so we get off the floor and started crawling up the stairs.

"missy, do you remember buying that barmixer set?" sighs fish with his head stuck inside a big box. "nah,"I say, "that used to belong to auntie elsie. that woman could drink rivers dry."

I remember elsie. sound woman, sick sense of humour. one time, when I was still a primary school kid, she was still half-asleep and hungover when packing our school lunch and one of her cats came into the kitchen with a dead mouth in its mouth. elsie pulled the cadaver out of the cat's mouth to pack it in my tupperware and gave the tuna sandwich to the cat instead.

we're through the second box each when I find a little indian wooden box with last winter's greenery stash in it. "fish, I think smoking pot gives you alzheimer's"
he gives me a sideways look "why's that, missy?"
"I totally forgot I had this still"
so I did. probably what with the different job and new house, I'd had a lot on my plate lately as it was. I hadn't even unpacked this last room of boxes.
"tell ya what, fish, let's go downstairs and smoke it."

blow me

tonight this post is brought to you by the first real storm of the year. I'm only waiting for trees crashing through the shutters and more sirens here and then I could finally have the mayhem I feel soooo comfortable with.

no, it isn't a reason to hide under the kitchen table. helloooo that's what news channels were invented for! if ya can't see land-under up north and trees having toppled over coz their roots didn't hold steady, life just doesn't give you that special warm fuzzy feeling of superiority towards people whose electricity has already been cut because some cords snapped.

blow me, if this isn't gale's humour ;-))

for queen and country

put fish up with a fishsitter and packed my bag. I'm off for a little vacation now and when I come back, services will be up and coming again what with all the relaxation I'm planning on getting ;)

hope y'all had a merry fucking christmas, and I really hope y'all slide well into the new year.

don't make any resolutions, it's a waste of time and good wishes xxx

the joy of painting

I haven't been able to sleep well in the past week or so. it's okay to go on little or no sleep for two or 3 days, but then I get cranky and start hallucinating from the inability to tell my brain to stfu and just get some rest. it's a bit like mental constipation. dreaming is like flushing one's mental toilet, after all...

so, whenever the going gets tough, there's a few little things I can rely on as a last resort to get thawed out, relax some and drift off into morpheus' arms. I usually start on a good dinner, a sixpack of beers, light a cigar and have a few tumblers of laphroaig and when I'm good and pissed and it's something like 1 am, there'll be a channel that has bob ross on painting the crap outta some canvas. for those poor souls who've never seen his '80ies show: he's this bloke with a deep soothing voice, afro 'do, full beard and he paints those incredibly kitchy landscapes that'll make you wish you chucked more acid when you were a kiddo.

the joy of painting. bob ross, if you're out there somewhere and you read this: you put me right to sleep and I really appreciate it.

oldie but goodie