Nerv Erf

The Van Dyke crystal had a mind of its own, like it didn't want to give away too much.

"Trouble is, the Gods not only believe in natural selection but have been religiously practising it for billions of years. Likewise, no single God has ever subscribed to so-called Creationist theory.
On the contrary, natural selection is creationism. Sex is creationism. Procreationism. Without sex, no birth. No birth, no life. Without life, no death. And without death, there is no sex."

So transfixed, Abbie watched the rhythmic, vertical dancing of insects caught in a shaft of late afternoon sun.

At that very moment, Pasha kissed the elbow of the control panel and set off an enormous explosion outside the laboratory.

"I'm not dead yet," growled Kimbell as he slowly got to his feet. The control room was empty, the air a toxic haze which sent his skin burning. He reached for Gasman and feebly put on the mask one handed. The other hand, dangling helplessly at his side, was incommunicado.
As consciousness faded, Kimbell swallowed the almost certain fact that, in the event, Pasha had caused a chain reaction in the earth's atmosphere which even then, as he drew his last breath, was undoubtedly engulfing the planet at the rate of several miles per second.

*

Facing north from the back lawn, the Van Dykes watched the great dark churning mass of cloud come rolling across the horizon devouring all in its path with a terrifying haste.

Strangely, a moment after their annihilation, the entire family found themselves aboard a six foot wide metallic tea saucer floating six feet above the gravel farm road towards the woolshed.

*

Abbie snatched the bug off some slender trunk and put it between her teeth. The bug all the time made its ritual croaking sound.  She haunched down over Kimbell.
"You still alive, mister husband, or you just one less cicada in this world?"
Kimbell was on some other kind of planet. Abigail began slowly crunching on the bug.
To see your burned up, half-dead naked husband was of no consequence. Some cup too fulla karma. Half-dead nakedness was itself some religious proposition Abbie hadn't yet got to the bottom of. Clothes? As far as she knew, there were three schools of thought. Clothes either died along with the corpse (The Naked Theory) or were themselves raised from the dead along with the body (this theory had no name) or otherwise, when dead, everyone got new clothes (The White Garment Theory). Without any rational solution, Abbie fashioned a litter out of branches and fern fronds she found nearby and dragged the body by its feet to the cliffs.

*

Kimbell lay on the floor of the cave. Bending over him, Abigail tentatively admired the rash covering most of his body. Kimbell was gonna die properly. So much for Gasman. Was he a good man when every stick of evidence pointed the other way?
"It's no use," Kimbell moaned.
"Looks like you been taken over by some poysniss plant," observed Abbie. "I guess life's a speramint," she added. "See who comes out on top."

In the absence of any new trash masterpiece, I'm gonna write a tragic story myself. It'll be a badly spelt, children's thriller. As they say, if you want to do anything in this world…
The story's theme will revolve around the ineffable, inscrutable and implausible subject of marbles.
In order to begin immediately I will commandeer most of the characters from Kevin Mitchell's collection of short stories "Someone Hyphen Mommy." These are as follows:

Latch                                    The limbless car salesman
Abigail                                  The beautiful assassin
Sarah                                    The goosefarmer's daughter
Dimitri                                  An alcoholic astronaut
Vladimir                               The fairy hunting cop
The Corpse                          A dead woman
Hone Heke                           A savage ahead of his time
Mike                                      The man who misplaced his wife
Bill                                         A vegetable bomber
Mrs Tenfold                         A farmer
Senseless Johnson               Another farmer

Perhaps I will introduce some other characters in time.

And because this is a blog, I will need to write it backwards.

It ends like this:

(see next post)
 

All is vanity.

Ah ha! That's what happens when you forget to turn the spam filter on!
So nearly flattened by the fake freight train of fame! Phew!

Well well well (three holes in the ground)! So many comments, so little time!  It's hard to believe the number of you posting your thoughts on this blog. We're simply amazed! Although we can't guarantee we'll be able to answer any specific queries… and anyway, like we've said before, that as all the comments seem to be relating to someone else's website, we are now convinced that someone is playing an enormous joke, and to answer any one comment would be to simply fall into the trap.
We really have no idea why someone would do this to us. Why gang up on an innocent little website like that?
Either way, we feel suitably humbled.
But onward and upward. Or is that downward? Should we now suddenly have something to say to reward the fictional tsunami of visitors. About what exactly? Surely we had more to say when no one was reading? Perhaps this moment could have been anticipated. Some inspired treatise on the subject of 'subjects' could have been kept aside in perfect readiness.

The subject used to be temperance.
The subject used not to be the drug but happiness.
The subject was a drug. A drug for temperance.

So did Faust say "In the beginning was the deed."

Maybe we could run a competition for the saddest poem?

In the meantime, try listening to Bruce Springsteen's version of Woody Guthrie's "I Ain't Got No Home".

So far, so male. Well, we would like to be able to share with you the works of female musicians, poets, artists too.. and as luck would have it, we can! I refer of course to The Random Idiots, the female duo from another troposphere, i.e. the year 2003. So, with their permission (which, as we're living in the future, we don't have and don't need) we will shortly be uploading their debut demo "They're All Related" for your listening pleasure.

On top of that, LCR has discovered a literary gargantuaness, the poet Linda Van Turnhout. While annoyingly poetic in every way and possessing a straight right second to none, Linda's poetry is nonetheless too depressing to be published on a family website. Hence we are inaugurating a special D-rated section of Laughing Cloud Records whereby the truly depressing can be heard, admired, smelt, digested. Look out for that.

Lastly, LCR now has on its books the gospel singer Ames Luce. While Ames is patently masculine (a modern day Sid Vicious if you will, but born again), LCR sincerely hopes his upcoming gospel album will at least include some choral backing from the fairer sex.

We bide our time.
We have too long to wait for the next poppadom (and we hope there's not another poem).
We have nothing to say and we know that we have said it.
The truth of our insincerity is plain – in return we receive spam from florists in Pakistan.
We want this new kind of yellowness.
Thereby we forge a shortcut to nothing.
Our wives, our pets, our husbands interrupt us for good reason.
We seek solitude in the queues of those expecting something.
We walk barefoot to the tops of obvious hills to see if our thoughts will be lighter.
We are the same and refuse to accept it.
We drown at the idyllic beach of certainty.
Fame beckons… the recluse, the martyr, the ordinary.