November 26th, 2004
roast kraken: the revenge

After some further introspection and the loss of the buddha, Tourette went home. He wrote horrible things for a couple of hours, and drank a couple of high test rum and cokes, and when it was four in the morning, he found he still wasn't drunk enough to fall asleep.

He thought about phoning Chloe, but she was probably comatose, snoring beside her piece of plywood, and wouldn't much appreciate it. He thought about reading, but was having trouble concentrating on long paragraphs. After a few moments, he decided to write some more. But he was finished with writing long letters to old lovers that he would never post, so he opened a new page and titled it 'Roast Kraken' and laid into it.

He woke up at three in the afternoon, his hand stuck to an empty rocks glass and his forehead resting on the keyboard. His vision was a bit blurry. He wiped a spot of drool from his cheek and looked at the document he had been writing. He was nearly impressed. It was a one page plot outline, four pages of characters, and the first eleven pages of the most overhyped thriller-type script he could have hoped for, followed by a blank page with the following statement in the centre.

CUT TO:

MINGUS in his LONGJOHNS with a RUM & COKE, drunnk and passssed out. He pretends he is surrnounded by zulus, and diyng, and for a lark, he wirtes the word 'arrrggghhhhh' at the the end of his journal

arrrghgggggggggggggggggguyunjhy bhbgyt mjuynh 0000000000000000001




Tourette nodded with satisfaction. Two days later he mailed it to Xanadu. Three days later, they sat down to discuss it.

(to be continued...)


Postscript: Inept as his reputation may seem, Morrie made a very good point the other day when I was discussin Amazon with him, and what a chore it was to try to get the book on Amazon, and how it would be better if people ordered direct, though there had been no Amazon orders yet.

He asked, simply, if I'd posted links to the Amazon page. After a short review of the site, I realized I hadn't, probably because it is better if people order direct. But, for those who like Amazon, you can find the book here. The part of the package that I do like is the 'Search Inside the Book', which allows the browser to flip through the pages. It's actually quite cool, so check it out, and be the first to order Nunt at Amazon. Yup.

If you're wavering, by god, check out the updated review page. These will put you over the top.

November 25th, 2004
the unexpected buddha

After Xanadu shut the fuck up and paid for the drinks, Mingus wandered out into the darkness. The Buddha was waiting. They had not seen each other yet. They had barely talked at all since the summer.

He picked her up at the restaurant and asked if she wanted some coffee. They hugged, but she seemed uneasy. Mingus considered that it might just be her aura. Radiating. He had not seen it for some time. She seemed a bit plumper in the cheeks.

He thought, I am looking at her and she is radiating, but she is nervous, the way eastern European men get nervous when there is talk of serbs and muslims.

He took her out to see the ambulance, to show it off for her. She was complimentary, and nodded when he opened up the back doors for her. And she gurgled when he turned on the lights and spoke her name over the loudspeaker. RAE-ANNE! He helped her up into the cab, turned the engine over, and started to back up. For a laugh, he turned on the back up alarm, and it beeped furiously.

"I have met someone new," she said, suddenly.

And he stepped on the brake, harder than he intended. He looked at her, and she smiled faintly.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know how to say it in a letter."

And Tourette nodded and stared at the panel of lights. The back-up alarm continued its plaintive song.

"That is unfortunate," he said. "I had a lot of hope for this. For this winter."

"I don't know what to say. It's nothing, really."

"I suppose. And then there's nothing to say , I guess."

"Yes. Are you going to be all right?"

No, he thought. Rae-anne, no. I will not be all right. I have had enough of being all right. In fact, I think I'm not going to be all right for some months of long nights ahead, and I'm going to roll back into that friendly fucking abyss and spend some time chasing monsters, locking them up, and staring deep deep deep into their eyes, hoping for something to leak black-like out of their's and to effuse through my eyeballs and get in there and take the fuck over so I don't have to run the fucking show anymore.

Either that, or I'll just get drunk. Demons and demons, what's the difference.

See, cause Rae-anne, it's just that after this thing with Colette and her everlasting engagement and her gamesmanship and the foursome on the ambulance and the way Chloe and the fucking accountant are still ripping out my rib cage, i was hoping to worship at a freshly pressed temple with no illusions and butter up the belly and spend some nights eating hot rolls off each other and talking about nothing and everything in nothing and making winter love under layers of blankets and fuck the darkness of the outside world, we have our own darkness but it is warm and smells like thyme. Remember when i wrote an entire thesis on heat, girl? how everything we do is based on a quest for heat. a hundred pages on heat. exothermic endothermic. before the theory of cunt. No, you would not remember that. it was when i was young and psychotic instead of just old and crazy and now, how will you ever know. you'll be sharing that linen cave with someone else, and i'll be staring down the end of a blue bottle, looking for ice devils on the plains of charbydis over another winter of discontent.

spent dreaming of nothing, spent dreaming of that soft brown belly, covered in sweat and lovegrease

The back up alarm echoed off a nearby brick building. It seemed loud.

"Yes, I'll be all right," said Tourette. "Of course, I'm disappointed, but if you're happy, then it is good for you. This time is short. What time we have."

"It is short. "

"It is what it is."

fucking fuck around, thought Tourette. this time is short. it is what it is. spoke that like a zen prophet. like a man considering tea leaves. like someone who would nod sagely and measure diction when he is trying to tear the needle out of his fucking arm. yes, there it is again. truly the great wandering fool stepping lightly again through the gates of the city of Dis and onto the frosty tundra of hell.

yes, he thought. this will be a long winter.

November 24th, 2004
Roast Kraken

Tourette and Xanadu had been talking about selling words earlier.

"You won't make a dime off this poetry thing," Xanadu said. "It's for suckers. You'd be better off trying to peddle roast kraken to the homeless."

"Enough about your roast kraken," Tourette said. "What the fuck do you know about writing for money?"

"I know that poetry is bunk. Screenwriting. That's where the real money is. If I didn't suffer from my narrative disorder, that's what I'd be doing. And I tell you - if you write that thing up as a script, I'll get it sold. And not just for your poetic royalties that will never come in the door. Real money. Option money. International rights."

"I've been thinking about writing the story of the ambulance. And the tour."

"Whatever it is, God, don't write it as poetry. Write it as a script."

"Maybe it could be a script. "

"Something like Apocalypse Now, maybe. That would work."

"You mean like the Odyssey."

"No, like Apocalypse Now. I've never seen the Odyssey."

"It was a book," Tourette said.

"Never heard of it."

"Homer?"

"I've heard of him. On the tv show."

"The Greek."

"I think he's from Springfield," Xanadu said. "You know, I love the roast kraken idea. Have you ever written a disaster movie? Or a monster movie?"

"No. Though I have always wanted to write something on hippos, sort of a violent revisionist perspective. I even had a title - Koboko: Wrath of the Hippo."

Xanadu looked at him queerly.

"Hippos are friendly," Xanadu said.

"They're the most dangerous animal in the world. They kill more people every year than all the major African predators combined."

"Sounds like a stretch. Even if they were dangerous, it would never fly. They look like big cows. But the Kraken. Did you know that in 1965, a Soviet whaler watched a battle between a giant squid and a 40 ton sperm whale? When it was over, they found the whale dead, the squid's tentacles wrapped around its throat. And they found the squid's decapitated head in the whale's stomach."

"How the fuck is that a movie?"

"I'm just illustrating how dangerous they are. There's a lot of dramatic potential there."

"How? Are you going to name them?"

"Who?"

"The squid. And the sperm whale. How else are you going to have dramatic potential?"

"Well, they wouldn't fight each other in the movie. They'd fight humans."

"What, together? Like Batman and Robin?"

"No, just the Kraken. The squid. Don't be ridiculous."

"I don't know, it has potential. Jeffrey & Anders; a crimefighting sperm whale and his dynamic giant squid partner. With a homoerotic subtext, of course. Sounds perfect for a hundred million dollar Hollywood film. They could solve nutty capers."

"The point is, you've got to stop writing poetry. Screenwriting. That's where the bank is. If you put those five hundred words you write every night on that stupid web site of yours into a disaster movie, you could actually make some money. As a writer. And that's your goal, isn't it?"

Tourette paused as though he were about to say something profound, and then shut his mouth. He looked down at his gin. And there it was.

Roast Kraken, indeed.

November 23rd, 2004
The Candidate

In an unsurprising turn of events, Mingus watched the numbers pile up on the monitor and shrugged.

Good things had happened. The Liberals and the NDP had gained, E-Ville showed its admiration for balance, and at least one PC minister had lost his seat. In addition, Raj Pannu had crushed ass, and later on, so had Mingus.

The call arrived a few minutes before midnight. Brave tears were shed by a neophyte that no one expected to win. But the effort and the hope had been there, and it had been shattered. And at that point, all the candidate wanted was escape.

And so Mingus provided. He pulled up in front of headquarters in his ambulance with a basket of scotch, lubricants and a thirty-dollar plan. And she was game. And fifteen minutes later, they sucked liquor off each other and made the walls bark.

During a break, while the candidate was washing her face, Mingus reflected on his infiltration of the Conservative campaign. It had been a good experience to watch the machine from the inside. He had learned much about the mechanics, and the functioning hypocrisy. He had been surprised by the strength of it. As far as Mingus could tell, the party was packed with unbelievers and sexual deviants professing the right hand virtues of the fiscal year and a subtle, almighty god.

Mingus was a stone-cold liar, but he felt honest as a preacher amongst that crowd. And he could tell when the door was slipping open, when people were sliding off their public beliefs, and he knew when to push, and it had handed him the candidate's ass. And it had been easy. He took a long drag on his cigarette and thought that if a political party was a refuge for the insecure and the neurotic, certainly, a religion would be as bad, or worse. And most of them would be looking hard for that long fuck to walk around the corner.

And the epiphany appeared to him, as he was staring out the window and the candidate walked back into the room in a thin towel. Perhaps the political system was too easy - they were all lloyds at heart, after all. The church, however, might be a challenge. And the synagogue. And the temple.

Yes, the temple. For they could not refuse him, could they?

November 22nd, 2004
Happiness is Wetness

In late April, Tourette met a fellow who drank white zinfandel, wore light-tan linen suits and professed to be a talent manager. His name was Morrie Xanadu, and his reputation was based on the dubious possibility that he had managed Brad Pitt's affairs near Calgary while Pitt was shooting Legends of the Fall in 1994. It wasn't really that impressive an achievement, mostly because Brad Pitt looked pretty gay in that movie. As Pitt learned long ago, flowing blond hair is good for playing bisexual vampires, and nothing else. In addition, the movie came out a decade past, and Morrie had done nothing to top it. Still, he liked to call himself a movie producer, as well as a talent manager, and was quite good at buying drinks for possible proteges. Which, he liked to think, could include Mingus Tourette.

Of course, Tourette had always been quite good at burying himself and his career, and had no need for any help. However, Mingus never passed up a free drink, so the two of them found themselves sucking back gin after work on Friday evening. Tourette had a few hours to kill before midnight, when Rae-Anne was getting off shift. She had recently returned from the East and was working slightly upscale, washing dishes. They had not seen each other yet.

Morrie fancied himself a connoiseur of current events and the conversation weaved through the hockey strike and Nicolas Cage's unpredictable career choices. Mingus ignored most of the banter, concentrating on throwing back as many gin and tonics as he could before Morrie's inevitable pitch came. But before that happened, Morrie sidestepped and asked Mingus what he thought would happen with the election.

Mingus sucked lime from the bottom of the glass, and said, "My prediction is that the ding-dongs who typically vote for Klein will be as apathetic as Klein has been about getting re-elected, and the right wing nutters will siphon some of that vote to the Alliance and the communists will get nothing as usual, and just enough votes will swing to the left and my man Raj Pannu will get back in and start crushing some more ass."

Morrie nodded sagely

"And then what?" he said.

"And then Mingus will do what he does best - console failed Conservative candidate in the bathtub of the Strathcona hotel," said Mingus.

"And she'll agree to that?" said Morrie.

"Of course," said Mingus. "And she'll buy the first pitcher of beer after."

"That's rather bold of you," said Morrie.

"I'm a plank in her run for office," said Mingus. "I don't know if I mentioned it, but I've been campaigning for her for a couple of weeks, and we hit it off real good. And Monday's prom night, if you understand me. When she gets stood up, she's gonna need a shoulder to sob on. And a knob to bob on."

"You didn't mention it," said Morrie. "Doesn't that sort of run against your principles, with the Conservatives?"

"What principles," said Mingus. "Mostly, I just toss the signs in a dumpster, or bullshit on the phone with Gander or Ronnie. Or write love poems and keep quiet. Trust me, when you're juggling four bitches, you keep your goddamn mouth shut, or one of these days, you'll be staring down at a woman with bright white teeth, blood running down her chin and one of your testicles trailing out the right side of her mouth."

He snorted back the rest of the gin.

"That's lovely," said Morrie.

"Isn't it, though " said Mingus. "Now, what the fuck were you saying about getting me my movie rights sold?"

And the night sparkled with promise.

But What Happened Last Week? By God, Find Out Here!

Copyright © 2006 Mingus Tourette