When in doubt pathologise!

Doctors study long and hard
how not to get themselves disbarred

Med school's where they learn their trade
some specialise in getting laid

and on the day they graduate
they take some time to celebrate

they sally forth, they boldly go
to make a name and pots of dough

always keeping front of mind
the foremost lesson of their kind:

"If you're uncertain or unwise
when in doubt, pathologise!"

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eBooks by Cosmic Rapture
(for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader.)

NIGHTMERRIES: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF DARKNESS. This so-called "book" will chew you up, spit you out, and leave you twitching and frothing on the carpet. More than 60 dark and feculent fictions (read ‘em and weep) copiously and grotesquely illustrated.

AWAREWOLF & OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY (Vot could be Verse?). We all hate poetry, right? But we might make an exception for this sick and twisted stuff. This devil's banquet of adults-only offal features more than 50 satanic sonnets, vitriolic verses and odious odes.

MANIC MEMES & OTHER MINDSPACE INVADERS. A disturbing repository of quirky quotes, sayings, proverbs, maxims, ponderances, adages and aphorisms. This menagerie holds no fewer than 184 memes from eight meme-species perfectly adapted to their respective environments.

MASTRESS & OTHER TWISTED TAILS. An unholy corpus of oddities, strangelings, bizarritudes and peculiaritisms, including but not limited to barbaric episodes of herring-flinging and kipper-kissing. A cacklingly bizarre read that may induce fatal hysteria. Not Recommended!

FIENDS & FREAKS and serpents, dragons, devils, lobsters, anguished spirits, hungry ghosts, hell-beings, zombies, organ-grinders, anti-gods, gods and other horse-thieves you wouldn't want to meet in a dark cosmos. Immature Content! Adults Maybe.

HAGS TO HAGGIS. An obnoxious folio featuring a puke of whiskey-soaked war-nags, witches, maniacs, manticores and escapegoats. Not to mention (please don't!) debottlenecking and desilofication, illustrated. Take your brain for a walk on the wild side. Leave your guts behind.

Escapegoat

57 Chevy Goat Head limited giclee print. 5"x 7" on a black 8" x 10" matt board. By Zachary Prior.

His name was Godfrey. His prison nickname was “Goat”. He yearned for a normal life, but had never Toad the line for long enough to settle down.

He’d been arrested on a Poultry charge of Storking, which would have meant a non-custodial sentence had he not been caught Badgering a witness. Six months into his jail-time, Goat had taken the opportunity to escape. Since then he’d been on the Lamb, Pigs Dogging his every move.

It was raining heavily as Goat made his way to where his girlfriend Gwyneth lived. He knocked on the door. No response. Standing in the rain, he knocked again. Still nothing. He smelled a Rat. It was all very Fishy but what choice did he have?

Goat shouted himself Horse. Finally, the door opened.

Come in out of the Reindeer,” said Gwyneth.

“Hey Gwin, what kept ya?” said Goat, “I was starting to suspect Fowl play.”

Divine Masturbation

Long, long ago at the dawn of time
even before the primordial slime
when stretching ahead were all the millennia
in which quite a lot, if not more, even many a
tragic mistake or foul evil plot
lay in the future but not at year dot.

Right at the top of history’s first page
when many an era and aeon and age
loomed far ahead to the greatest extent
was writ a uniquely dramatic event
that some call the Bang that was huge if not big
(please pass me my drink and light me a cig).

It wasn’t just huge, the bang was gigantic
God had felt mellow and flirty, romantic
sultry and horny and steamy and loose
in the mood to create not just reproduce
it’s really not strange, unusual or odd
to find thoughts of love in the mind of a god.

Dreamtime: the De-flattening (wild turkey dreaming)

Supposedly the biggest monolithic rock on the planet, "Uluru, ... also known as Ayers Rock ... is a large sandstone rock formation in ... central Australia. ... Kata Tjuta, also called Mount Olga or the Olgas, lies 25 km (16 mi) west of Uluru." (Wikipedia, 2 Dec. 2016)
Animation combines photograph of Uluru by Mark Gray (markgray dot com dot au) and bark painting of rainbow serpent by John Mawurndjul.

In the Dreamtime before time and space the Great Serpent Koniara slithered and thrashed mightily, creating the Land of Oz, the Sky above, and the Sea that washed its shores. And when his mighty slithering was done, Koniara called a great Corroboree to honour his creation.

Among those who came to the Corroboree was the scaly crocodile, Gumungung, who spake unto Koniara, saying, “O Great One, what thee or thou have wrought is awesome and immense, but there is no colour, no excitement, no magic or joy in the Land. As far as the eye can see, all is red and brown and flat as a toenail. And that’s more dull and boring than a pub with no beer. And newsflash: it’s also way too frickin’ hot!”

“My sacred doings be not to thy satisfaction,” quoth Koniara unto Gumungung, “and yet I made the whole ball of wax in just two days not six, and I didn’t need to chuck a sickie on the seventh neither.”

“More elbow grease maybe, that might have helped,” quoth Kuruku the Kookaburra, whose laughter rang out long and loud in the dry and beerless air.

The Legend of the Dog-faced Woman

Animation based on detail from Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, painted by Hans Memling c. 1485

Every year there is a date
on which all parents hold a feast
they eat and drink and celebrate
a certain hairy, monstrous beast
who growls as bad kids meet their fate
so listen up as I relate...
the Legend of the Dog-faced Woman.

Once two kids of Satan's spawn
an evil boy, the girl a bitch
came upon a magic thorn
with which they pricked a sad old witch
and that was when the curse was sworn
and thus it was that then was born...
the Legend of the Dog-faced Woman.

When children disrespect their mums
or fail to listen to their dads
when kids forget to wipe their bums
or won't switch channels in the ads
or scream or sulk or suck their thumbs
tell them a tale, and here it comes...
The Legend of the Dog-faced Woman.

View from a shit-stained boulder

Lost, thirst-maddened, flyblown and with feet burnt black, the Seeker wondered the endless desert. Tongue grotesquely swollen, he climbed the highest mountain. Eyes horribly bulging, he swam the deepest sea.

For untold aeons he searched and looked hither and thither, high and low... driven by the primeval, urgent, elemental urge to Seek. Seek what? Doesn’t matter. Shaddup.

Lost, the Seeker sought.

Out of time, outside of time, high upon a craggy crag the Seeker encountered an elderly guru of dubious provenance, indeterminate gender and reproachable demeanour. Gnarled and nut-brown ze wast, perched cross-legged upon a shit-stained boulder, the smell of an oily rag emanating from zer ambiguous loins.

Jubilation rose within the Seeker’s throbberous heart. Humbly on chafed knees approached he the Nut-brown. Then eyes downcast spake he demurely, saying:

The Sound of One Hand Slapping

The Seeker asks the Mastress: “How may this humble supplicant who kneeleth before thee become enlightened? How doth One enjoin with the All, or is it predestinated forevermore to tread the cyclic wheel of existence, hamster-like, until the wrathful deities take pity on the crusading pilgrim's benighted soul?”

The Mastress — a nut-brown, gnarled and ancient guru of indeterminate gender and reproachable demeanour — respondeth imperturbably saying, “Ask the next six people you meet; perhaps you may find the answers you say you seek.”

“What the fricking flaming biscuit!” exclaimeth the Seeker, on hearing these mysterious words.

Loincloth wafting on a stealthy breeze, the Nut-brown maketh the smile of one lip curling. The visage of the guru wears a veil of inscrutability as profound as the deepest depths of inner space.

Dissatisfied and disgruntled, the Seeker taketh his leave of the Gnarly One and sets his footlings on the path that leadeth to the Inn of the Flowering Beetle, formerly The Queen’s Moustache. On the way he encountereth the first of six respondents — an aged washerwoman squatting phlegmatically in the shade of a cinnabar tree.

“How do you do, O Gentle Crone?” enquireth the Seeker courteously.

“Get lost asshole!” quoth the Crone, waxing wrathful, “or I’ll box thy poxy earhole in the blink of a newt’s eyelid!”

Shall I Sing to Thee of Hatred?

DOJO OF ABS, oil on stretched canvas 39.75 cm x 50.25 cm. A horrible work, don't like it at all.

Shall I sing to thee of hatred
whilst the rancid wine-red moon
lies plump upon a sullen sky, beloved?
Or doth thy internecine inclinations
bereft of paradigmatic meaninglessness
assert thy drolly wrothful commands?

As you feed the gentle drops of blood
caress your cheeks like crimson tears, my love
calling forth sweet morphogenetic memories
of all the times we’ve slain together
the line of carcasses stretching to eternity
death-lily delineating forevermore.

Shall I woo thee with insurance
until the gibbous enormity patronises
the very longitude of marsupial afterbirth, dollface?
Or would’st thou engrave betwixt delinquent carnage
thrice-flailing widdershins encircling
sublunary solemnity’s crepuscular astrolabe?

Forsooth! And whence thy infinitesimals
thy gaping quiescence incarnadine
fistula-festooned but buttery, sweet cheeks?
Or durst thee verily impignorate
thy carious kynodontic blandishments
whence fulsome gadzookery ...

... Continues in AWAREWOLF & OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader. We all hate poetry, right? (Vot could be Verse?). But we might make an exception for this sick and twisted stuff. This devil's banquet of adults-only offal features more than 50 satanic sonnets, vitriolic verses and odious odes.

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Ninja-boy and the clouds

In the dead of the day the ninja crept like a wounded hyena toward its prey. No clouds crossed the sky; the ninja wondered why. He had always wondered where the clouds go to die: a practice that had cost him dear over the years. The times, for instance, when as a boy he had turned to his father and plaintively enquired, "Oh where do the clouds go to die, daddy-san?" only to receive a swift box about the earhole, and the stern rebuke, "What the crap are you bleating now, shit-fer-brains? Jus' eat your rice and shut the fuck up!"

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The Bindu of a Naked Numbskull

Portrait of Thomas Aquinas painted by Carlo Crivelli, 1476

"How many angels can dance on the point of a pin?" is a question first asked by such truth-seekers as Aquinas in the glorious age of scholasticism, when metaphysical nitpicking, hair-splitting and name-calling were the order of the day.

Counting angels is not easy when they’re standing still, let alone jitterbugging on emptiness. And if the dimensionless point at the end of a pin were as infinitely rich in potential as the bindu of Hindu metaphysics, to count the angels you'd need some really tight air traffic control.

But if the point were a dome, and the angels were very thin, how many could dance on the head of a bald man?

Becoming bald is a process involving a diminishing number of hairs. But let's get specific. At the loss of which hair, precisely, can the label "bald" validly be applied? Or, if you're loading straw onto the back of a camel, what is the number of the straw that breaks the camel’s back?

Most if not all questions about moving from one state to another involve a paradox. According to the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno, motion is an illusion, and yet he sat on many stools. Paradoxes are like boogeymen: they seem scary and threatening but when you look closely they lack substance. Most if not all paradoxes emerge from the inherent limitations of human thought and language. Resolving them is simply a matter of accurate definition.

For instance, baldness could be defined as the mean headhairiness density of 0-2 hairs per square centimetre across more than 94.2% of naked numbskull.

Alternatively, we could apply a reductive definition paradigm based on recursion theory. If a full head of hair comprises, say, a million hairs, baldness could be defined as the phase transition marked by the loss of hair #999,678, and absolutely and totally bald, as the end-state marked by the loss of hair #1, i.e. the ultimate hair (hair #2 is the penultimate).

Similar methods can be applied to counting straws and camels.

Now if there’s no bijection, this post can draw to an ignominious close.

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On the outside

Pacing the icy hallways and crystal corridors of the Fortress of Solitude, Superman pondered the meaning and purpose of his life. Frozen tears sparkled on his super-cheeks, for the steel-trap mind of the man of steel was corroded and tarnished with self-pity.

Alone. Sad. Tired. He ventured forth seldom those days into so-called civilisation. Alienated and profoundly depressed, he no longer sought to wreak justice upon the wrongdoer. Apparently indifferent to the plight of the undefended innocent, seemingly unaware of the cataclysmic disasters besetting a helpless world, the superhero disgruntedly trundled the polar passages, ruminating on the ingratitude of those for whom he had laboured long and mightily to protect.

And for what? The people of Earth had never been overly generous towards their saviours. Crucifixion for example seemed about as rewarding as a jab to the eye with a sharp piece of kryptonite. Which was why he'd been forced to keep his true identity a secret.

Resentment and bitterness permeated his super-soul. He felt used, dirty, discarded. Well, he would show them. No longer would he hide behind mild-mannered reporters. He would openly express his pride. He would come clean.

He would wear his underpants on the outside.

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The Plughole of Nothingness

Mastress, a gnarled and nut-brown guru of indeterminate gender

“Uncanny, Mastress is it not, how the processes of consciousness conspire to emerge unwittingly, unknowingly and unknowably behind the Curtains of Myness on the Stage of Solipsism in the Life Drama now playing at the Theatre of Self,” said the Novice to the Guru, a gnarled and nut-brown mendicant of indeterminate extraction and inherence, naked but for a dubious loincloth in the early years of retirement.

Having spoken informally, in a cringingly nervous and offputting attempt at the easy badinage of one learned colleague with another, the Novice flinched then winced then cowered behind the large laundry basket that doubled as a small laundry basket on top of another.

“If that’s what you’ve derived from the Teachings,” quoth the aged Guru, imperturbably eating a banana,” then you have derived yourself. Ex nihilo nihil fit. As it is written, so shall it be...”

“But Mastress, if I am not for myself, who is?” implored the Novice piteously, “and if not now, then when?”

“Nobody, never. Or everybody always. Now go sweep the stair. Perhaps you’ll meet a man who isn’t there. If only he were you,” grumbled the Nut-brown querulously, dugs flapping mysteriously in a windless breeze.

Global warming's habit-forming

Detail from Hungry Ghosts Scroll, late 12th century, Kyoto National Museum, Japan. You don't have to be Buddhist (or even human) to feel that life is pain and misery. But some lives are more painful and miserable than others. One of six lifeforms available to humans for reincarnation purposes, hungry ghosts (aka anguished spirits) can never satisfy their monstrous appetites.

If humans were to go away
Would nice terrestrials stay and play?

Were we to leave for outer space
Who'd stand and say we're in disgrace?

Fish don't know its paradoxic
Waste is food and food is toxic

No birds there be, or bees, or trees
Who realize we spread disease

We'd like to say with deep remorse
We're very sorry, yes of course

But where's the mailbox on the moon
To send the Earth a Get-Well-Soon?

To tenderize a tough old bird
Just cook her longer, so I’ve heard

But like revenge, or so I’m told
The Earth is better eaten cold.

Published in AWAREWOLF & OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader. We all hate poetry, right? But we might make an exception for this twisted stuff, a devil's banquet of adults-only offal featuring more than 50 satanic sonnets, vitriolic verses and odious odes.

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Mysterious doctors treat peculiar diseases

The Reward of Cruelty, an engraving by William Hogarth, (1697–1764)

Oh, you’ll know them when you see them. Mysterious doctors have sinister laughs, and they rub their hands together in glee a lot. Sometimes they wear white coats, other times blue.

They say things like “mmmmm” and “tsk, tsk” and “tut, tut” and “say Ahh” and “what have we here”. They use words ending in “itis”.

They grow goatees to cover their pimply chins. Their eyes bulge. They have lots of hair growing in their nostrils. They have very bad breath.

Mysterious doctors treat mysterious ailments and peculiar diseases, including Housemaid’s Knee, Nutcracker’s Jaw, Wanker’s Wrist, Wondering Nipple, Quackenburger’s Dropsy, Hog-snout Syndrome, Thrush, Sparrow and of course virulent Monday-itis. Not to mention Ankylosing Spondylitis, Myasthenia Gravis and Sixth Nerve Palsy.

Mysterious doctors are adept at removing mysterious organs, and frequently recommend slicing the brain into disconnected halves (very callous, colossal corpses) — a sinister procedure requiring great dexterity.

For mysterious ailments mysterious doctors prescribe mysterious treatments, including but not limited to moxibustion, hirudotherapy and maggot debridement therapy (MDT).

Tomb-Sweeping Day

Five coloured papers placed on the mound of a grave in Bukit Brown Cemetery, Singapore, during Qingming Festival. There is a shrine to the Earth Deity (土地公 Tǔ Dì Gōng), also known as 后土 (Hòu Tǔ; "Backing of the Land"), on the left of the gravestone. Photo by wikipedia User:Jacklee.

Thursday 4 April 2002 was a very busy day. It was Children's Day, Tomb-Sweeping day, and the Death of President Chiang Kai Shek Day.

According to Wikipedia: "The Qingming or Ching Ming Festival, also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day in English, is a traditional Chinese festival on the first day of the fifth solar term of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar. This makes it the 15th day after the Spring Equinox, either 4 or 5 April in a given year. ...

"Qingming has been regularly observed as a statutory public holiday in China. In Taiwan, the public holiday is now always observed on 5 April to honor the death of Chiang Kai-shek on that day in 1975. It became a public holiday in mainland China in 2008."

My diary says it's celebrated in Taiwan on the 4th April, but Wikipedia is probably right about it being the 5th.

I know it's unworthy of me, but I can't help but imagine a "bizarro-world" in which the festival of Tomb-Messing Day is celebrated. On that day, everyone has to go to the nearest tomb and mess it up -- throw garbage at it, or dead leaves, or evil sandwiches. It's also known as "Disrespecting Your Ancestors Day".

Homo the sap pronks no more

Once upon a fatuous time, when dark desires eloped with virgin pixies, and antelopes no longer pronked stotted or sprinked upon the veldt... when no more cantaloupes in fruity embrace with swarthy greengrocers did entwine... when all the zombies in the world laid end to end---an undead chain twenty six thousand miles long---did girt the Earth, and werewolves with gingivitis growled and grimaced in a hundred thousand dentists' chairs across the land...

'Twas a time of sorrow, when all was lost or drawn and braggarts and liars and con-persons were the order of the day... A sorry time, I say, a sad and sordid time, when durance oppressive pressed and weighed upon the minds of most such that those on whom the pressure was the least, enslaved their fellow-jerkwads, thus kindly hastening the end...

In those times, in those ways, at that cost, a specious species egregiously declined; the will of the sapient ones was sapped, and personkind into the All was gathered, once and for all. Thank Christ!

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Many many tickle a parson

The Hand-Writing upon the Wall (1803), James Gillray's caricature of Napoleon as Belshazzar, King of Babylon. Napoleon, Josephine, French soldiers and women are at the feast-table. Napoleon looks in horror at Jehovah pointing to words in the sky. In the Biblical story, on a wall in Belshazzar's palace god's hand writes the message: mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. Daniel interprets for the King: "God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. You have been weighed and found wanting. The kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." In 539 BCE the Persian conqueror Cyrus the Great invades Babylon.

In Babylon flowed the rivers of wine
'Til one fateful day god wrote up a sign

The anger of god was writ on a wall
But Belshazzar didn't get it at all

The King's main pursuits were eating and drinking
But the words on the wall really got him to thinking

He couldn't make sense of what god had in mind
So turning to Daniel said “please be so kind

as to look at that writing and try and explain
the words on the wall that are hurting my brain”

Now Daniel was sober, he had a clear head
He knew what to say and here's what he said:

“The finger that writes having writ then moves on
Here come the Medes and the Persians: you're gone!

”God's taken your measure, and weighed and divided
Regarding your fate, it's all been decided

“He's run out of patience, he really can't wait
He's given your kingdom to Cyrus the Great

“So don't ask a priest or even a parson
Too mene mene and tekel upharsin

“For as it is written and so shall it be
Jehovah is jealous and wrathful you see

“He'll smite you and bite you and strike without warning
So swallow ten tablets and call in the morning!”

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Not published in AWAREWOLF and Other Chrymes Against Humanity for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader.

The Evil Sandwich

Once upon a brunch I bought a Sandwich from a gnarled and rustic seller ensconced quite gaily in a gaudy booth one inauspicious day.

‘Twas ham and cheese: I remember it well, as if ‘twere but this very toothsome morn itself that I reluctantly but expectantly forked over six clinking dollarim — sponduleks if you will — to that aged and curly purveyor within zir gaudy booth that foul and fractious day.

And though the absence of tomato hinted at the manifestation of dark forces as repulsive as a botched cosmological constant, still I remained initially at least unaware if not absent-minded as to the true and fundamental nature of the Sandwich.

The Riddler

Audio composed and performed by SRS

The Riddlee asked the Riddler,
"Oh won't you riddle me?
that I may pass from hence to thence
upon the Count of Three?"

"Just one riddle," the Riddlee said,
"no less nor even more
that I may move along the groove
that leads to the Earl of Four."

Quoth the Riddler to the Riddlee
“A riddle I’ll contrive
that you may travel across this gravel
towards the Duke of Five.”

“For Fuck’s sake,” quoth the Riddlee
“Quit your stupid tricks
time is fleeting; I’m late for my meeting
with the Marquis at Six!”

The Riddler grinned an evil grin
and counted to eleven
but all four nought: he stopped three short
upon Viscount of Seven.

The Riddlee pondered for a while
then said “I’ll tell you straight:
just add one, now I must run
to meet the Baron Eight.”

the pact

Once upon a Frosty Friday
In the merry month of May
Seven sisters swore a secret pact
To bind them night and day

They packed the pact up tight and good
Within a pact-box made of wood
Seven sisters thought that that was that
Or so they thought they understood

Each went about her daily life
In which misogyny was rife
Forgotten was the deadly pact
Until the first became a wife

Their tragic story must be told
Six sisters bought but one was sold ...