. . .

Tiny Obscene Florist, Page 79.

An ad for cigars appears in 100,000 newspapers; sales of that brand increase by 3% for a short time thereafter.

A new play receives a viciously negative review in a theatrical journal that prints 500 copies; the playwright shoots himself.

Who's the better writer?

Ultrasound : "Floodlit World".

It's a Polaroid instant.
Pure.
Electric.
Painful joy.

Stare at the mess.
Take in the awful,
guilt-ridden,
decaying debris.

Must get a cleaner,
Or a kleenex.

Tomorrow is another day.

Sheffield Suddenly Found Its Feet Moving, Its Arms Flailing.

It was dancing all right, but what with Thatcher and everything, it honestly seemed to be dancing to destruction.

Destroyed By Gods

Mantras, Issue 26.

'I recall the smell of soot and iron. The sound of mud larks screaming obscenities at each other. I recall a horse dying one hot summer's day. Dropping where it stood. I recall chimneys. I recall a girl without a jaw.'

Personally, I Lack Any Sort Of Self-Loathing.

And I fucking hate that about myself.

. . .

Urban Logics, Page 97.

'Across the mad Sierra of the brain.'

Pipe For Arsenic, Afterword.

Where do stories come from? All I know is that when they do come, it's smart to get out of their way.

. . .

Stephen Fry's Letter To Himself.

Dearest absurd child :

I hope you are well. I know you are not. As it happens you wrote in 1973 a letter to your future self and it is high time that your future self had the decency to write back. You declared in that letter (reproduced in your 1997 autobiography Moab Is My Washpot) that "everything I feel now as an adolescent is true". You went on to affirm that if ever you dared in later life to repudiate, deny or mock your 16-year-old self it would be a lie, a traducing, treasonable lie, a crime against adolescence. "This is who I am," you wrote. "Each day that passes I grow away from my true self. Every inch I take towards adulthood is a betrayal."

Oh, lord love you, Stephen. How I admire your arrogance and rage and misery. How pure and righteous they are and how passionately storm-drenched was your adolescence. How filled with true feeling, fury, despair, joy, anxiety, shame, pride and above all, supremely above all, how overpowered it was by love. My eyes fill with tears just to think of you. Of me. Tears splash on to my keyboard now. I am perhaps happier now than I have ever been and yet I cannot but recognise that I would trade all that I am to be you, the eternally unhappy, nervous, wild, wondering and despairing 16-year-old Stephen: angry, angst-ridden and awkward but alive. Because you know how to feel, and knowing how to feel is more important than how you feel. Deadness of soul is the only unpardonable crime, and if there is one thing happiness can do it is mask deadness of soul.

You poor dear, dear thing. Look at you weltering in your misery. The extraordinary truth is that you want to stay there. Unlike so many of the young, you do not yearn for adulthood, pubs and car keys. You want to stay where you are, in the Republic of Pubescence, where feeling has primacy and pain is beautiful. And you know what...?

I think you are right.

The Guardian

You Thought It Was Funny, Writing The Letter "G" On The Back Of A Pieces Of Ikea Cardboard.

On the way out, the steering column shattered, and you grinned, like an idiot.

"Huh," was all you could say.

In a narrow-stare, you grabbed a parachute and kicked in the windshield, imagining you were important.

The car flipped off the cliff. No explosion.

But she let herself go ten minutes ago, let you go. And she was glad to finally be rid of you.

Face it.