Cheif Bridesman Speech 1.0

The speech i gave at the wedding was the Beta, and as threatened, here is the Alpha.

"Hi everyone, I had to bully Fro and Kat into this, but in retrospect, I’m 33, no kids and happily single, what the hell do I know about marriage?

But I guess I’m a scientist, so I’ll talk to you today about glass.

Glass is a fantastic crystalline structure, made of two alternating substances. In that way it’s molecularly perfect, whenever one atom looks to its left or its right, it’s companion will be there, holding them up as equals and constant allies.

Glass has a sharp edge, in some places a molecule thick. It’s a dangerous material and its cousin obsidian is used by surgeons because it keeps its edge better then steel. Yes, it’s sharp and deadly, yet if put under pressure the wrong way it’s brittle and can shatter into a million pieces.

It’s beautiful, reflecting the light shone into it into a thousand dazzling colours. Showing everyone around them the best of what they put into it.

And if it is layered, side by side, glass can stop bullets.

So what can I say about Kat and Frodo? These beautiful, fragile, and sometimes dangerous people…

I can say that they are together now, they’ll look to the left and the right and they’ll always find their companion there.

The world is a harsh and sometimes cruel place, but two of my oldest friends are together now, and side by side, hand in hand as a family, they can stop bullets.

Thank you."

Short Fiction: The Mask of the Red Death

Again we return to Jay’s short fiction corner in anticipation of Halloween.

Through filtered layers of a tale told and re-told over countless generations a few things remain the same.

There was a plague, one that marked the skin a ruddy shade of red, slowly at first, but each hour let the red plague claim more and more of your skin, until the eyes wept blood,  the muscles became taught, the pain became great, and in sympathy for the suffering the heart would stop. All that remained was a crippled, blood drenched, crimson corpse; doubled over in the pain of its final moments.

The ‘Red Death’ knew no class distinction, it took the pauper and the prince, the beggar and the merchant, the old and the young, the sinner and the saint. Gripping the land in its crimson fist as whole communities were culled, quarantined and left to die, still the plague continued. The road became empty, the harvests rotted in the fields and the streets became choked with the dead when there were no longer enough living to bury them. The gutters flooded with filth and decay, and the rats ruled the cities as kings of carrion.

The tale tells of the Lord of the land, seeing his kingdom fall into ruin as he drew in the few privileged and powerful he could into the mighty stone walls of his keep, hording all the remaining food and declaring a masked ball would be held for the most privileged to enjoy, hiding behind the stone walls, the rich food, and of course the porcelain masks, while the plague swept through the common folk.

As the rich and the mighty wined and dined, their people starved and suffered. The banquet tables stayed full, fed by the servants who were too terrified of the deathly plague outside the keep to voice their objections. The days melded together, night and day inseparable as they became lost in endless dancing and drinking and the continued music from the over-worked musicians.

The story ends when for the first time in the endless days and nights, the music started to falter, the dancing slowing, the hall falling still and silent. All faces turned to a red-robed figure, seeming to drift slowly across the hall in measured footsteps in time with the fading music. Their mask stark white and flawless, save the long streaks of crimson tears falling form the eyes. The crowd’s hush soon turned into an angry murmur, crying out against the poor taste of the hidden noble, decrying them and threatening to eject them from the ball to face the plague they mocked.

Thus the unknown noble raised their velvet gloved hand gently grasped their mask, lowering it gently to reveal their face.

And the story does not end…

On all hallows eve the keeps gates open, and the terrified survivors of the Red Death will enter and discover what is left of the masquerade, and finish the masked ball.

And then, the story will end.

Depression.

Depression’s gonna be a tough one to write about, it’s one of the reasons I’ve been putting it off. Not because of some kind of weird personal drama, although I suppose that could be the case, rather it’s that depression is like cancer in that it’s touched almost everybody’s lives at some point, if not personally, then through a loved one. As such, my usual dismissive, callous and snarky writing style may not be appropriate, as it's going to be a very personal topic for a lot of people. But what the hell! You knew the risks when you clicked the link!

The cancer analogy is actually fairly apt when I think about it, depression is self-feeding, it draws your strength away to make itself grow, it’s often something that causes alienation from those around you, and it’s often over-simplified when in fact it can be very complex and nuanced. It can also be fatal, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

For those who wonder what it’s like to be a depressive, let me elaborate for you:

You wake up.
Consider this to be a small tragedy, idly wish you’d died in the night.

Manage to get out of bed, curtains are all drawn as you don’t like to be seen, your house is a tip anyway, you haven’t found the energy to clean up and the herculean task it now represents makes you feel even more like a useless piece of shit.

Enter the bathroom, look in the mirror. A worn out, wasted, useless sack of shit stares back at you. You don’t hate or pity them though, they aren’t worth such strong emotions, you just wish they’d go away. You look at the bleach on the floor and wonder if you should just drink it.

You get in the shower, wonder what it feels like to drown, wash and brush and towel yourself off. Go and get dressed, depending on who you need to fool that you’re fine and normal today, you pick out your wardrobe accordingly. You don’t dress for yourself, you dress for others. In a way this is a mercy, nobody can judge you on your own poor choices if you’re dressing for them. Nothing you ever do, no choice you ever make will be good enough. As you wait for the bus you contemplate throwing yourself into traffic, the only thing stopping you is the massive disappointment that will make you to your family.
You get to work, you force yourself to be as normal as you can, smile your hollow smile and pretend or force yourself to eat, even though you’ve lost your appetite. Maybe later you’ll get home, realise you’re hungry and eat a tonne of junk food, and then hate yourself even more because you’re turning into a fat piece of shit.
You get home and eat junk food and feel like a fat piece of shit. You look at your filthy surroundings but find that you can’t even think how to begin cleaning. You waste your evening doing things that distracted you for a little bit, but as soon as they are over you feel like your pathetic for wasting your time when you have so much to do.

You drink heavily before bed, you’ve started drinking more and more now, it’s a useful distraction.
You lie in bed and review everything in your life that has ever made you feel small, pathetic and worthless and decide that you are small, pathetic and worthless.
You sleep.

You do the same again tomorrow.

Brutal huh? Like I said, not much to make light of, the worst part about depression is it’s your own mind telling you this, and even though the dim view of yourself is never usually true, it’s real to you, because you’re not used to your own brain lying to you.
Depression gets its strength by convincing it’s victims they are weak, and every set-back is proof of it, and every triumph is measured against the collective achievements of the world and dismissed as pathetic.

So how do you fight something like that? The annoying but often most accurate answer is “slowly.”
Re-training your brain is the work of a lifetime, and a seemingly Sisyphean task to somebody with depression. It’s trying every day to do a small thing that you have to force yourself to do, and build on that. It’s never really seeing any progress, until years later you look back at where you were and see how the journey of a tiny step every day has taken you. It can be helped by meds and therapy, but ultimately the person has to want to get better, which can be very, very tough.

Y’see depression, especially long-term depression starts to form a core part of a person’s identity, and if they start to leave it behind they begin to panic, because they feel they are no longer themselves, they are “faking it” or pretending to be something they are not. The siren’s call to simply let everything crumble and fall back into depressions toxic arms gets stronger and stronger the longer you stay away, and the fear grows that you’ll becomes somebody different, a pretend-person who isn’t really who you are. After all, the voice telling you that you’re a worthless piece of shit is your own, why wouldn’t you listen to yourself?
But the thing is, leaving that person behind is a good thing, re-building yourself takes time, and it feels difficult for a reason, but you will love the person you are building more than the person you leave behind if you stick with it, but ultimately nobody can change yourself but you.

It’s pretty dark stuff, and dangerous and deadly too. I think it’s often misunderstood, and very-often misdiagnosed (especially when people self-diagnose). But as time goes on it gets more and more into the mainstream, and hopefully one day we can trait the underlying cause instead of the symptoms. After all, it’s becoming more and more common in our society, so we’re obviously doing something wrong.

What your sexual fantasies say about you!

Sex sells! And I can make clickbait titles as well as the next man!

So, you want me to reach into your bonce and fiddle around with what tickles your libido? Well you’ll have to take a number and get in line! (ho-ho-ho I can keep this up all day, yay! Sex jokes!)

Okayokayokay, in all seriousness. Sex being the taboo subject it is in polite society, people generally don’t talk about their sexual fantasies, or if they do it’s sort of “approved” kinks, “I’d love a threesome. I’d love to be tied down. I’d love to watch a porno with you.” Not to say this stuff isn’t kinky, or even taboo in its way, but it’s stuff people are expected to say when they reveal their kinky secrets, because even the taboo has little social scripts we all follow.

So let me tell you a little bit about “Intrusive thoughts.” We all have them, it’s the part of your brain that says ridiculous things that you would never act on but you can’t help thinking them. Like “I could steal that baby carriage now and nobody would notice!” or “I bet I could push him and he’s fall down that escalator backwards, it would be so funny!” Weird borderline psychopath thoughts that we would never do! But for some reason our brain pokes them into our heads. Of course we’d never act on them otherwise society would collapse pretty fast, but we also don’t really talk about it because it’s VERY socially unacceptable to admit you just considered the possibility that you could totally spit on that guy from up here and nobody would find out!

Now let’s talk about reverse psychology, something I am sure you’re all familiar with. There is no greater lure then the forbidden and the guaranteed way of making somebody want something is to tell them they can’t have it.

So what does this mean in the context of sexual fantasies? Well, often in the grip of raging libido’s humans may have odd little intrusive thoughts, stuff that normally may repulse or disgust them all of a sudden pops into their heads, stuff that they’d never consider acting out but is entertained as a fantasy because it’s been conjured up by your intrusive thoughts and paraded around by the part of your brain that craves the forbidden. An example would be a lot of women admit to liking lesbian pornography, despite actually being turned off by the idea of being with another woman. It’s the lure of the forbidden and the vicarious enjoyment of a fantasy without needing it to be a reality.

So what do your fantasies say about you? Well… nothing. Seriously they say nothing. Just because it’s popped into your head it doesn’t make you a pervert, well no more than anyone else. We honestly can’t help what our primal brains throw at us. We all have fantasies of the sexual and non-sexual kind but very rarely do people act on them (as demonstrated by the lack of workplace homicidal rampages). So really all your fantasies say about you is “you like fantasies”. Boring I know, but not all psychology can be sensational headline grabbing bullshit… except maybe the title of this entry.

Fantasies are mostly harmless, and sadly the tiny, tiny number of people who indulge these fantasies are the ones who get paraded around as examples of why THOUGHTS ARE DANGEROUS CITIZEN! CRIMETHINK! REPORT TO THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH FOR APPROVED THOUGHT PATTERNS! But honestly? Just because somebody used their fantasies as fuel for psychosis, doesn’t mean that fantasies themselves are dangerous, any more then owning a gun is.

Short Fiction 2: Tales from the Reclamation Zone.

Tales from the Reclamation Zone.

[This takes place before the events of the Student Nationals game]

The wretched figure sits crumpled in the scant shelter of a shattered storefront, the ever-present aroma of human waste hanging heavy in the air. He’s being very still but that is likely something to do with the two guns trained on his hunched form.
‘Tell us how you know that name.’
‘Bullshit, you’ll shoot me.’
‘We won’t, but even if we do, you got nothing to lose by talking, so talk.’

The figure sits up and raise an arm to shield his vision, the wrist ending with jagged bones and poorly healed tissue, infection is almost certain.

‘It was a while back, before that thing in central station. Me and my guys, we had a good thing goin’ horded all that gas during the riots, and Larry made working flamethrowers, aint nothin’, no spook, or man was gonna mess with that much firepower.’

A low chuckle echo’s through the store, sending rats, roaches and other vermin scuttling to the shadows. ‘You’re the firemen? Shit, I thought you were all dead.’

The figure sniffs and then spits out the result at the feet of the two men standing before him. ‘Yeah, we are, we played our game y’know? People waned protecting, they had to pay. We took whatever we wanted man, we lived like kings! I could eat what I liked, fucked who I liked, didn’t matter if they wanted me or not, we’d just burn ‘um to nothin’ if they crossed us, and they knew it. Aint no worse than the others around here, we didn’t deserve what happened!’

The air remains still, the man on the floor falling silent, expecting a bullet, but nothing comes.

‘What happened?’

Now it’s his turn to laugh, a low gurgling followed by a racking cough. ‘She came… first we thought she was just another runt, short black hair, that freaky white-lookin’ eye, come in to offer her body for whatever she could get, got plenty of them around. But as soon as she got close, I knew that she wasn’t some whore. She just looked us up and down with eyes that cut right through ya, said we could hand over the gas, and walk away. That’s the best deal she’d give us.’

The pair exchange a glance ‘You laughed, huh?’

‘Damn right we did. She didn’t even have a fucking gun! Where’d she get off, we had a half dozen flamers trained on her, and there she was sayin’ she’d give us a deal.’ The slumped figure shakes his head, dislodging a spattering of dirt and insects. ‘Larry finished laughin’ and said “Rape this bitch until she forgets her name.”’
The silence falls down again, a low breeze filters through the shop, caressing half-burned mannequins and empty shelves.

‘It was the fuckin’ wrong thing to say! She jus’ starts this low screamin’ like she’s already bein’ fucked over by the guys, only now it’s not screamin’ it’s  this low crazy growlin’ and her skin just tears off like it’s paper to grow all this fuckin’ muscle and all of a sudden it’s like somethin’ out of a nightmare! All bones, blood, claws, and teeth! Larry screamin’ to us to kill ‘er and all six flamers light the bitch up like the fourth of fuckin’ july…’

The image seems to shake the trio, all of them casting nervous glances around them, the two standing men habitually letting their hands check the safeties on their weapons.

‘You don’t know what its like man, jus’ watching that thing come through the flames, all fury and fire and death. She jus… reached out and killed.’ He pauses to make a plucking gesture with his good hand. ‘Like a fuckin’ bad dream, your standin’ there pourin’ burning gas onto it and she jus’ dun’ die! She’s faster than a snake, and every time she moves there’s more blood n’ screams, tearing people in half like it’s nothin’, how’d you think I lost this damned hand!’ The mutilated wrist is brandished almost defiantly to the two men, who manage not to flinch away.

‘Like… maybe ten seconds... ten seconds of this fucking nightmare, but it felt like an hour. Watchin’ her slashin’ everyone apart. I’m lyin’ there tryin’ to not fuckin’ die wonderin’ where my hand is, and all of sudden the beast is gone, and there is jus’ this little fuckin’ girl again. She wanders over cool as you like her clothes all bloody rags now. Looks at me with that creepy eye and says that she aint got no name, and that her new one aint ever gonna be taken by guys like me.

The two men share a glance and then the taller of the two tilts his head ‘So how’d you find out her name?’

The man glares and then spits again, ‘Big fella came in and jus’ walks in, tosses her a set o’ clothes cool as you like, sayin’ “Snow, why’d you always give them a chance, you big softie.” Like it’s the most normal fuckin’ thing in the world!’ He pauses and lets out a low wheezing sigh. ‘So this is my life now, one hand, dead friends, and some crazy little bitch called “Snow”. I got nothin’ left to live for other than findin’ her and killin’ that whore for what she did. But now you’re gonna kill me aren’t you?’

A brief shake of the head from the taller of the two men seems to answer, but before he can speak another voice whispers gently out of the darkness.

‘They won’t kill you, they’re saving you for me.’
And a small girl walked out of the shadows, with short black hair, and a milky white eye...