Yeti

I watch a clockwork ensemble gradually tick over, smiling Hanuman sets fire to a city made of ivory, fireworks pop and smoke in a three dimensional air matrix overhead. It is the winter fete and crowds have gathered around a wide selection of entertainment at Spinningfields Winter Experience. The ice rink is made of real ice. If you bite off the backs of slugs you can see their organs. There is a strong man competition. Gerrard Jones, 35, is one of the contenders and having come all the way from his home town of Earby, he's pretty eager to win. I ask him about his training.
“My method is hard soft.” he says.
“Which one?” I say.
“What do you mean?” he says.
“Is it hard or soft?”
“It's both.”
“Isn't hard and soft together just...normal?” I say.
“It goes hard, then soft. Hard soft.” he says. I thank him with a little bow. We both bow towards the stage then at each other, banging our foreheads. He clutches at his and howls.
“Don't bow at the same time. After one other.” he says. I bow towards him and when I lift my head manage to catch him on the chin. An official runs up to us.
“Are you boys ready for the weight lifting?” he says.
“Yes we are.” says Gerrard. I follow the twenty stone man to the back of the stage.

As Gerrard gets ready I peek through the curtain at the current champion getting ready to lift a block of ice.
“He must be cold.”
“Nevermind that, help me into this thing.” he says, gesturing toward a reindeer costume. He puts on the bottom half first, I help him put the giant cartoon reindeer head on.
“What about the top?” he says. I fetch the top part of the costume and try to pull it over the fake head.
“No, I need to take the head off first.” he says. I ignore him, climb onto a chair and begin to yank at the top of the costume. The chair slips from under me and I am left grabbing onto Gerrard, we stumble backwards and forwards, knocking over a table filled with sports drinks and then fall over.
“You idiot!” he says, voice muffled inside a fake reindeer head inside a fake reindeer torso.
“I'm sorry, I thought it went over your head.” I say. He begins to pull at it.
“It's stuck...help me get it off.” he says. I put a foot on each of his shoulders and begin to pull.
“Stop it...you're...hurting my neck.” he says. I shake my head and look around the backstage. There's a jar of vaseline. I begin to smear it onto the brown fur and around his neck, pushing big clumps of the yellow substance into him. I try again and this time it comes away easily, making me stumble backwards into the official. I wipe my hands on his jacket.
“Gerrard Jones?” he says at the body builder.
“Yes.” he says, face and hair smeared in vaseline. He goes out onto the stage, waves at the crowd then picks up the block of ice. Almost immediately it slips out of his grip and lands on his toe. He howls again, grabs at his toe and begins to start hopping around the stage until falling backwards through a curtain, managing to fall headfirst into the lubricated reindeer torso he had just escaped from. When he gets up he takes a few blind steps forward before stepping on a bottle of lucozade, making him slip out through the backstage and onto the ice rink. He begins to shout and howl as he slides across the rink, trying to pull the reindeer costume off his head. He finally manages to, then screams as he sees the wall ahead of him in which he bangs into at quite a pace. I run after him with some paper towels.
“Did you see that?” I say.
“I saw enough of it. Pass me a towel.” he says.
"I think you lost." I say, patting him on the back.

Christmas Cuckoo Land

The Manchester Christmas markets are nestled in St. Ann's square, just by the newly refurbished town hall and Manchester's only public toilet. At this market extravaganza one can sample the tastes of a Christmas that never was at faux-cabin retail stations that labyrinthiate the markets, selling goods such as vintage clothing, e-cigs, pork and ornaments to thousands of pedestrians moving along at a speed more akin to the dynamics of liquid rather than humanoid locomotion. There is a rustic bar which sells the finest arrangement of booze seen in the run-up to Christmas; mulled wine, German beer and American ale all can be bought at great cost whilst one relaxes against a post, admiring the other drinkers cluttering up the place. Enjoy the sound of children running around combined with the aroma of boiling wine. Sample at the arrangement of Mediterranean food for sale, treasuring the stone fruits as you peruse your recent purchases. Perhaps a hand-knitted mug warmer is resting in the paper bag, peeking from behind the corner of a block of smoked cheese made by Kurdish goat farmers on the slopes of Mount Strandzha. Maybe a piece of upcycled boat jewellery made of finest steel awaits a loved one, maybe even a chain-link owl to hang above your bathroom door. It is a truly magical place in which communities come together to enjoy Christmas, not to mention bringing in a decent revenue to local businesses and independent creatives. All of this is watched over by a fifty foot Father Christmas sat on top of the town hall like a psychedelic gargoyle, it's festiveness overpowering.

After arriving in the early hours of the morning and having to wait outside I took stock of winter in the city. In the history of painting there were many landscapes about the Earth being closer to the sun, yet there weren't many Classical paintings of cities beneath the frost. How did Manchester look five hundred years ago on the site of the Christmas markets? The Britons, Angles and Danes perhaps met on this very spot and traded goods under the midwinter sun, preparing for Pagan and Christian feasts. A ram would have been killed in the fog, it's freshly skinned head emerging from a hessian sack as a sacrifice to the Gods of Yule. Meanwhile the Britons would celebrate Saturnalia by doing the opposite of what was normal. War hardened soldiers would wear women's clothes and dogs would act like pigs, each gave presents and passed the berries of mistletoe by kissing one another. Bonfires would be lit and epic poems would be told of Norse ghosts made of mud and of the giants D'Frigga and Yol-M'nnstatr sleeping in the earth. Nowadays the city slowly begins to wake with the smell of Greggs and bus exhausts, commuters beginning to flow in from primate nests and jauntily begin to jog up and down the pavement jostling for a free copy of the Metro or a cup of hot java. The workers of the Christmas market begin to arrive wearing bubble vests and bobble hats, faces pinched red from the cold and stained with iron oxide. I walk across the cobbles like some kind of prehistoric bird, head swivelling from side to side as I admire the warez being offered.

The hours pass by with ease as I make my circuit, snorting down hotdogs and talking to the city folk about whether or not it was about to snow, mind frantic at the Christmas shopping opportunities around me. 8.3% of your life haunted by a festive holiday. 8.3% of the twentieth century, of television, of conversation. I begin to climb the walls of the town hall, shouting at the people below.
“Cease sublimation!” I cry, heaving my entire body up using my fingertips, carefully picking my way up the brickwork. Eventually I reach the enormous Father Christmas and look down at the shoppers below. Some are jeering, others call for me to get away from Father Christmas. I take the fictional man in my hands and begin to shake and pull at it, trying to dislodge it.
“Is Father Christmas just an elf?!” I bellow, managing to tear the festive sculpture free from the steel supports. With the groaning of metal it begins to tip down towards the crowd. There is an enormous crash as the Santa lands on top of the market. I look down, suddenly aware of what I had done.
“No...no!” I say. But it appears as if a Christmas miracle has happened! Father Christmas has been impaled through the head with a gigantic crucifix brought in by religious extremists. Everybody is saved! I jump for joy.
“Looks like the son of God didn't die in vain after all.” I say, unzipping my jacket. I am wearing a Big Face t-shirt with Nelson Mandela on it.
“Silent night, holy night,
Son of God
Watched at night.
Crowning angels are silent at bed.
Holy Mary, mother of grace.
Rest in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.” I sing beautifully.

Mamucium

Rainy Manchester. Rainy, god forsaken Manchester, with its glass towers and multiple football teams. With it's musical history that it clings onto like someone who used to be cool. With mile after mile of terrace and suburb surrounding a concrete nucleus in which nothing gets done. With its university fostering some of the most influential minds in recent history whilst also harboring a significant portion of average minds. Manchester sits snug in the borough of Greater Manchester, an egg inside an egg. Wigan, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Oldham, Tameside, Stockport, Trafford and Salford all circle the city like the moons of Jupiter, yet with less fantastical names. It has its own airport, street lights, public transport system and a rich sense of community through advertising. It is Manchester in which I first cut my teeth as a rookie reporter, writing up stories on traffic disasters and unnecessary surgeries, reviewing bands in dingy basements who didn't even know I was there. And like many others I had returned to the north of England, head empty and spine perforated. This was England post-recession, post 9-11, post-Diana, post-Thatcher, post-Industry. It was time to scry the zeitgeist from wi-fi hotspots, Bitstrips, competitive cooking shows and so on. Manchester was as good a place as any. London was expensive, Liverpool was cold, there never seemed to be enough light in Bristol, Birmingham was stuck in a perpetual state of 1979 due to factors known only to myself, Newcastle had poor drainage, I had been banned from Chelmsford, Durham and Sunderland, Bradford had disagreeable architecture, Belfast had it's own thing going on, and I couldn't seem to find a decent curry anywhere else save for Glasgow, but why would a high-tech media sociopathologist running a brain limb across the meme sphere want to move to Glasgow? So Manchester it was. Acid rain on an acid house.

And so I stride along the streets, twisting my neck to and fro, rummaging in bins for clues. A wizard, a psycho-geographer, a bum. I am none of these things. I am a metanoid thirsty for information, mouth glued to a hose connected to a car with a bomb in it. The year 2014 is nearly here, isn't it. The year in which the Queen dies. The year in which the internet is turned off in what is known as Intergate. The year in which China begins to populate the moon with annoying robots. Yet before all that must come January the first, New Years Day, a champagne and mephedrone binge. Probably. If not, why not? And why wait? This is winter and it is hot.

LAX

“and that's how I got to be the governor of Los Angeles.” said Arnold Schwarzenegger, taking a cigar from the ashtray and taking a big lungful of Cuban tobacco. I look over at his stunt double with a skin tight green lycra hood over his head wait to one side of the set while the green screen is sweeped of debris. We're on the set of Terminator 5 set for release next year. I have been trying to get this meeting since I'd arrived in Los Angeles and it seemed fitting for it to take place on my last day in the states. Arnold Schwarzenegger sits across from me in a wicker chair dressed in his signature leather jacket and jeans. Terminator make-up is applied to bits of his head and glints in the high noon sun thrown from a 1000w redhead.
“So tell me about this new Terminator flick.” I said.
“It's a reboot, but also a sequel. A paraquel. I play the role of a terminator sent back in time then is stuck in an alternative reality. The film flashes forward to the present day, where I have been aging. This is the first film where we really explore the philosophy of what it must mean to be a Terminator. It is a cybernetic organism yet has the ability to learn, a metal endoskeleton surrounded by living tissue. What are the differences and similairities between humans and machines? We hope to explore that in the next Terminator movie. That and time travel.”
“So what has the Terminator in this film been doing?”
“Since he saved Sarah Connor's parents he started a career in politics and is now lobbying for restrictions on research into robotics. This terminator is a member of a community. One day a terminator from his future is sent back in time in order to assassinate him and he has to try and keep himself safe whilst also trying to find out why the terminators will exist.”
“Is there action?”
“Let me tell you, the action in his movie will blow Terminator 3 out of the water! We have the director of Fast and Furious to come in to film, there's Tom Hardy playing the evil futuristic terminator, Emily Watson to play Terminator's wife, Justin Timberlake to play John Connor and Dwayne Johnson as a detective, who also turns out be to be a robot.”
“Sounds like that's an all star cast Mr. Schwarzenegger. What other projects do you have in the pipeline?” I said, watching the action taking place on stage. The stunt double rides a flaming car like it's a surf board before leaping off whilst 760 miniaturised cameras begin to take pictures.
“I'm also going to make a sequel to Pumping Iron.”
“Excellent.” I said. We chat a little more before Arnie is called back on set.
“I'll be right back.” he walks off. I can't help but feel disappointed he said 'right', missing an opportunity to deliver his famous catchphrase. I pack up my notes into my bag and go back out to the car.

I ask Bill to take a long route to the airport. We drive along Venice beach, through Little Ethiopia, down to gentrified Inglewood and San Pedro.
“Did you manage to find the edge of the city?”
“I don't think it exists.”
“That's a shame. It was fun anyway.”
“Remember when I released those wasps in the museum?” I said.
“I liked that day we drove all the way to San Diego and you were like 'Is this LA? Is this LA?'” laughed Bill.
“What was the name of those women we met?”
“Where?”
“At the art gallery.”
“Casandra and Jacqueline.” said Bill, smiling.
“That was a wild night. You remember dancing on the roof of the Aon centre?”
“You fell!”
“Nah, I had a parachute. What will you be doing after this?”
“I don't know. Go get something to eat. Go see my family.” said Bill. We drive along Mulholland and through Glendale, San Bernardino heights then Santa Monica. The Paul Getty Museum, Dodger Stadium, Hollywood Boulevard, the Chinese Theatre, City Hall, LAX. The car parks up outside the entrance.
“Thanks Bill. Take care of yourself.”
“You too.” he said. I get out, shutting the door behind me which rocks the car slightly. I go to knock on his window and he rolls it down.
“I left something on the back seat for you. Live long and prosper.” I say, throwing a peace sign before going towards the departure entrance. Bill looks over his shoulder, then goes in the back. Just where I'd been sitting I left a bag. He unfastens the latches on it and opens it up, inside is a dead dog with it's mouth stuffed with a roll of hundred dollar bills.

I took a window seat as the plane began to drive on the runway and reflected on my journey. The quest for the edge of Los Angeles. It had been a series of thrills and spills but in the end I learned a valuable lesson. I take out a copy of City Of Quartz and begin to read. Partway through I realised the plane was still driving on the runway. I turn to the seat next to me.
“Why haven't we set off yet?” I asked. There's no-one there. In fact, there's no-one on the whole plane. I put the book down and walk up the aisles. “Hello?” I said. The plane begins to turn and I look out of the window at LAX slowly rolling past, again. I go through First Class and pause at the pilot's door before knocking. I wait for a while and was about to go back to my seat when I heard the door being unlocked. I turned around. In the frame stands a naked man.
“Who...who are you?” I said. The man began to walk towards me. Behind him I can see the runway stretch ahead of us and the plane begins to accelerate. I back off slowly, watching as he advances towards me before setting off into a run.
“Who are you?” I shout, running down the aisles. But there is nowhere to go. The plane begins to take off and I scramble through the seats as the floor begins to dip, just about managing to sit down and fasten a belt across my lap. The man appeared from around the corner and stared at me, seemingly unaffected by the sudden increase in altitude.
“What do you want? Who's flying this plane?!” I said. He reached up to his face and began to pull at his top lip. With the engines screaming on both sides of us I watched as he began to unzip his skin. The human form peeled away to reveal an Untitled painting by Rothko. I sat in my chair convulsing as the plane finally takes off back towards England.

Baby Boomers; Late Bloomers Or Irrelevant Rumours?

I watch hour after hour of television pilots from the various networks, the blu-ray discs lay scattered around the glass coffee table of my penthouse apartment. I'm watching an extremely light detective show in which an elderly woman investigates teen crime at a local high school. I watch as she opens a door and is hit in the face with a cloud of smoke.
"Smells like my grandsons car!" she says. I scream at the television and throw a blu-ray as hard as I can at the screen. I throw it so hard it goes faster than the speed of light and momentarily, yet infinitely, exists at every point in space at the same time before recombining inches away from the camera lens on the set four weeks ago, flies another few feet before hitting the old woman in the nose. I then grab handfuls of the discs and throw them out of the window, letting it rain bullshit onto the streets.

There once was a time when teenagers were hip and every strand of marketing was directed at them. To get the 16-24 audience in a prime time slot was the dream of every television exec this side of Death Valley. Yet times were changing. Young people didn't watch television, downloaded all their favourite films and were slowly dwindling in a post-recession economic meltdown. Rather than hanging out at the hippest clubs you'd be more likely to find teens hanging out under bridges offering to sell themselves for a cup of coffee. And the people on the other end of this illicit barterdom? The elderly. They had more money than they knew what to do with and half of them didn't even remember that they had it. Kept alive with futuristic machines that turned back the clock, the vampire myth was becoming more of a reality each day, sometimes literally as children would have their blood swapped with that of centenarians in order to keep them alive.

With this in mind the future world of media has took a turn for the old. Rather than the ultra-violent non-linear post-modern slanged-up shows we're used to seeing grace our tv screens, networks are now focusing on a more slower paced form of entertainment. The shows are often populated by protagonists that are over sixty, the villains are young people, the plots amble along apparently aimlessly and climax in a snappy line delivered with a smile rather than an adrenaline roaring cliffhanger. And it's not only television that's acting old. Radio waves are now being filled with old time music, cinemas project movies twice as big for those with bad eyesight and social networks are now jammed with the elderly spewing racist nonsense every second. This problem won't go away overnight. In fact it will never go away. The population is getting increasingly old and will begin to outnumber the young. I took to the streets to find out what the public thought about it.

"It's a good thing I think, I mean, everyone gets old. Why not make more stuff for them?"
"My grandma watched Breaking Bad."
"Don't they already show repeats all the time?"
"I think it's a good idea."

So there you are. Four people said those things so therefore all public opinion must conform. Yet I couldn't help but feel as if the elderly were a growing problem. Before the decade is over, 1 in 4 people will be over the age of 80. That means one of these people will have to look after the geezer, another will have to tell them what to do and the other person will die of starvation. Is this a just world, or should we just lead the elderly to underground crypts and hope that they evolve some kind of subterranean civilization beneath our feet? Like most things, the correct answer is perhaps somewhere in the middle.

Dancing In Blood

A crystal interface is embedded into the plastic molded counter. Tablet computers secretly read your fingerprints and transmit them to large police organisations. I select the options and look at the rotating wire-frame humanoid begin to morph.
"It uses sixth generation DDR-RAM in a java environment, vintage-fitted to deliver an optimal end user experience." says Boff. I nod, face lit from below in a shade of blue. I look up at the OHP screen and see my creation come to life, Gene Roddenberry takes off his clothes and begins to slow bang Liza Minelli.
"What kind of algorithms are you running here?" I ask.
"A basic MySql hack modded onto Marionette. It's what Pixar uses."
"But..the chip set for this app must need...gigaquads" I say, turning away from the screen momentarily.
"Not so. It uses white space and a simple gaussian noise recombination. It's streaming data from the cloud auto-authed through a 16x DVD drive." he says. I turn back to the tablet and smear my fingers. Gene Roddenberry is replaced with Channing Tatum.
"I think I've seen enough." I say. We walk back outside and stand by the kidney bean shaped pool.
"There's still some bugs I need to grind out, but I think we'll be ready to go live Q3 2014."
"What gave you the inspiration?"
"Well, I started off wanting to make a really in depth cataloging system for porn. I'd spend hours watching clips, taking notes. I wanted to do it mostly for myself, I had quite specific tastes, but I thought it could be used by others. A truly in-depth search engine for any pornographic image or video ever recorded." he says, smoking an electronic cigarette. I look out towards the Hollywood hills.
"Then what happened?"
"Well, I checked the analytics of the search engine, looked to see what people were looking for and try and direct my analysis more towards trends. Turned out a lot of people were looking for actors I'd never heard the names of. Wasn't until I cross-referenced this with Facebook and made an infograph I worked out most people were searching for porn stars that had some kind of resemblance to someone they knew, consciously or not." he said. I shivered lightly.
"Creepy."
"I know. This data alone could predict porn, fashion, taste, style, whatever, it was like a weather report. I then thought of what to do next. Why not take the people out of the porn, make it more eco-friendly, more now? So I set about working on CGI porno where people could specify what exactly they'd want to see. That was the first prototype of that thing in there."
"Sure, makes sense. Make porn more family friendly by taking out the exploitation."
"Turns out equal rights are making a big resurgence, and people hate porn. But they also love porn. CGI porn makes it so anyone can watch it without feeling guilty."
"So what made you have it so you could change peoples faces?"
"Evolution. Why not watch Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon take turns on some robot? Even better, why not import some photos from your phone and watch your friends have sex?"
"Well...I dunno."
"Think about it. You could watch yourself having sex with anyone...without using your imagination!"
"Sounds like the future to me." I say, spitting into the pool.
"Hi-Def CGI dicks of any size fitting in any hole of any one. It's a cybersex future cumming at your screens!" he says, throwing his arms up in the air and laughing, his testicles vibrating like electric eggs. I kick them off before leaping from the balcony and running for a car.

The high speed chase begins in West L.A. and takes me bouncing over small humps in the road as I'm chased by jeeps. I swerve between traffic as an Asian man pops out of a sunroof and begins to shoot an Uzi. I do a hand-brake turn and the car scrapes through an alley at ninety miles per hour. I drive off a bridge and into the aquaduct, tyres spinning across the dry concrete. One of the jeeps hits a shopping trolley that gets caught under one of it's wheels. There is the sound of an engine revving down and I slowly turn around. Silently the jeep flips into the air, flips over twice and then hits a concrete barricade. As the metal and meat crash together loudly time and sound return to normal. I look in my rear view mirror momentarily and jam the car into a higher gear, taking a plywood ramp up out of the aquaduct, flying over a small house and back down onto the street. The other jeep hits the top of a palm tree and explodes. I drift around a corner, slam the brake on and manage to parallel park it between two other cars. As I get out the door falls off. A homeless man who has been watching the whole thing then looks down at the empty bottle of whiskey in a brown bag and raises his eyebrows.

I stand on stage with a punk band I had joined early in the week. I go up to the microphone.
"We are The Shit Wolves and we hate you!" I shout, hitting the strings of my guitar. The crowd starts to pogo as I shout into the microphone and the band plays around me.
"Come on join my frozen anarchy,
She said la la la
The police put you in jail
So they can fuck you
Ooh ooh
Oh oh woah-ho, ho!
Frozen anarchy across the states!
Frozen death blows across the states!
Oh, oh, oi, oi, whoa-woo awoo woah!" I sing.
Half an hour later we are backstage drinking warm beer. The band talk about whether it was punk to promote yourself using the internet.
"I still think we should send those cassettes to the radio station, with fuck you written on them." says the bassist, laughing at his own joke.
"We should go to Palestine and play to the soldiers fighting over there. It's like we're saying to Obama, we're a punk band playing in a war zone. You got a problem with it?" says the drummer.
"Well, I got my girlfriend to make the next poster anyway." says the keyboardist.
"Again? I thought we agreed to use that picture of that man who shot himself?"
"She already had 'em printed up man. They're pretty sweet."
"Yeah but that picture is fucking horrible." laughs the bassist. I take out a glass pipe and stuff it full of crystal meth.
"Boys...how about we make a Vine?" I say, lighting up.

Mondrian

Black shuffle steps, raw torn lips, purple and white skin, ottered onto once another like crow, rook, raven, a minnow swims in the lake and leaps onto rocks. Elastic monster masks are contained into DVD slip cases. Cops eat donuts and drink offal flavoured tequila wrung from the bloated tripe. Ash rained from the clouds made from the cigarette smoke from a thousand freelance radicals living in cardboard boxes by the Los Angeles bay. Vampires slide out from orange coffins as Kanye West announces the release of his new album broadcast on podcasts uploaded onto Raspberry Pi's sent over to Africa by clueless billionaires with soft, wet hearts. Failing hipsters smoulder in personal immuno-pods that traverse them around the city, a high centre of gravity and an ease of target lead the burning sputes to tumble down onto the grey destiny. Galileo lying in his bed with his eyes open and the sun coming up from the hills, leaping up from the straw mattress, Galilei writing down concepts of physics that would remain intrinsic to modern knowledge on falling. The reality of cream covered custard pies hit against the face with the plate and the force of an arm. The heel hitting a banana skin and propelling the person forward before the accelerating weight causes them to fall. Video tapes of Jeremy Beadle creeping up on people dressed as an authority figure. Trembling Mondrians.

With A Chance Of Meatballs

“Nobody can teach your grandma to suck eggs.”
“I know.” I said. Of course I knew, I tried when I was sixteen. Nevertheless I looked out of the window and let my eyes pour down onto the street, out onto the bay. I pictured myself surfing.
“So what do you want me to do about it?”
“I don't think it's that complex. I'm just looking for some standardized information, I thought this would be the place to find out.”
“But you're asking about something metaphysical. You aren't interested in the administrative districts recognized by law, or the actual geography of architecture.”
“Geoarchitecural analysis.” I corrected him.
“So what is it you want?”
“To know where the edge of the city is. I'm not asking about where the city finishes and outside of the city begins. But the actual edge. To visit the places on the map where the line is appears no different from any other potential point on the line, therefore it seems arbitary.”
“You're suggesting that borders are infinite?”
“What's the point in learning a different language if you don't have any social skills. Comprendez?”
“But you pass through this meridian as you leave the city. You must know what's not Los Angeles, if only for it to be another city, so maybe you should look at where Los Angeles isn't and begin walking until you re-enter the city.”
“Maybe.”
“Well maybe the area where the city is and isn't can be quite a large area. A mile deep ring on the fringes of Los Angeles, a place caught between two states.”
“Maybe if you organised borders to be gradients rather than lines? Different zones...different...vibes.” I noticed he had caught a constrained night dream onto his face via a large cut given in his sleep. Long fingernails.
“If you'd like to do that, you're free to.” he said.
“The thing is though...what's it matter?” I said leaning back.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Why do I care where it is. It doesn't matter.”
“You're the one who wanted to know.”
“Yeah whatever.” I said.

I leave city hall with a buck in my pocket and rash on my hand. I'd already spent the morning deciding on definitions of Los Angeles, California and all I found out was less than I thought I knew. So I decided to walk north. I went through the city and over the hills, eventually reaching city limits. The mountains around me were steep and glowed orange. I continued until there was no trace of anything made and started walking back. The sun was beginning to rise on the Mojave desert and I went back through the scrub and hill, back hot with sweat, red from the sun, and my shoes were rags and my eyes were shot with blood. Each step I took was the end. The cars went past and the trees were small and I want to drink but there was was to go back. Not all of the houses and structures were part of it, but they were a sign. I stood in the road and felt the air move and kept walking back and toward. There was a bit between city and nature. It was like seeing what wasn't there and if you turned or even blinked it'd go so you had to carry on staring to see it change and be real and that's what I did stood on the road looking at where the city was and wasn't til my eyes began to shake.

I revisited a diner on the edge of the city and began to fold the bit of bread they'd given me. Americans put sugar in everything they ate. I see a tall, heavy set man sat on his own in a booth by the window.
"Hello."
"Hey buddy." he says.
"You mind if I sit here?"
"Sure, why not." he says.
"You from New York?"
"Pittsburgh. You from England?"
"Yeah. I'm on holiday. I think you call it 'a vacation'."
"I know what a holiday is fella. So what brings you out here? You look like shit, pardon my French."
"De nada home boy. I've been walking."
"You looked like you walked through the desert."
"Didn't Christ return from the desert?"
"Lots of people did. What about our troops. You saying them mean sons of a bitches are like Jesus Christ I salute ya buddy." he says, biting into his grilled cheese.
"You know, I've been wondering who do I have to blow to get a drink round here. So I came over to you."
"What?"
"I said, will you buy me a drink. I only had enough for this piece of bread."
"Sure. You want a root beer?"
"Thanks." I say. He goes over to the waitress and grabs her by the arm and orders me a beverage as I munch on my bland meal. He comes back to the table. I gladly quaff the beverage before continuing; "You know, people say a lot about Americans. And one of those things is how friendly some of you are."
"No problem buddy. I used to be homeless, I know what it's like. You probably came over here from London hoping to be a big movie star, thinking that the streets were paved with gold. Turns out it's pretty hard after all, huh?"
"You got it."
"A lot of people come over. Be an actor, be a writer, whatever. It's not all it's cracked up to be."
"I met this girl the other day...she was also from England."
"That's what I'm saying." he said, nodding. I thank him again for the root beer and leave the diner, looking out at the city with blurred, fucked up vision. I laugh to myself and hid in the bed of a pickup truck, hiding beneath the dark blue cover sheet. Maybe I'd wake up in Los Vegas or on the beach. Maybe a thousand miles away with no phone or wallet, feasting on the dying around me.

Forever Triangle: Uncle Jupiter

I am standing outside a school holding a giant cheque which reads one hundred and sixty thousand dollars printed in a font that resembles handwriting, designed by a team of graphic artists and distributed across the Western coast of America. It was the font of choice for these kinds of events, though there was a wide selection of fake handwriting available to charities, government bodies and the media. A flash bulb goes off in front of my face. Who uses flash bulbs any more. My mouth is dry and I gulp the back of my tongue. The woman next to me talks to the dozen or so reporters but I can't concentrate on what she is saying. The enormous cheque begins to slide down a sweaty palm and I worry I will drop it. Somebody finally takes the cheque off me and the woman puts an arm around my shoulder and we smile as more flash bulbs go off and people shout questions.

I am left alone in a hallway and hear my name called out. Fire doors open inwards for me and I walk across the auditorium floor, the applause falling as quickly as it rose. The head of the board of governers and the headteacher are stood to one side. I look around for a podium or somewhere less exposed but find none.

“Hello. Good afternoon. I hope we're all going to have a good time today. I just donated one hundred and sixty thousand dollars to your school. A hundred and sixty thousand. It's a generous donation, so generous that not many people are even able to do it. But I am, because I care. I care about the little guy, hitting the books, trying to make himself smart. I don't care if you're a jock, cheerleader, class clown or goth, everyone deserves an education that is paid for through generous donations like the one I just gave. I suppose you're asking yourself, why, why would this British guy come over to my school and give me nearly two hundred thousand dollars? But you know what? You shouldn't be asking why. You should be asking how. How do I get to be that guy?” I say. I wonder how loudly I am speaking. How do I sound, blowing air in short bursts over a wet blob in my mouth. I think about the size of my tongue.
“It's economics, Salzebury, the Gideon knot, Keynes, mythology, survivalism, trigonometry zoology, fluid dynamics, pyramid schemes, zombies, Rudolph Hess, microscopy, an excel spreadsheet, ipads, gemstones, bus tickets, viruses, environmentalism, brain transplants, pacifism, The Odyssey, facetime, gin and tonic, new shoes, the conquest of Mexico, batman, zygotes, fountain pens, mints, Sigmund Frued, Futurism, the Amazonian Rainforest, golf, Ludwig van Beethoven, buicks, childhood, pataphysics, buddhism and cell phones," I explain. "You can't just get a college education by paying for it. You have to work hard. Then you have to carry on working hard once you've graduated. The only difference is you'll be working somewhere nicer than cleaning up piles of shit in a school like this. You want everyone laugh at you? Think that you're a fucking joke? No, didn't think so. Take the easy way, drive a hyundai to work, have an affair, earn the average wage. All of it will seem terrible but at least it won't actually be terrible. That's why getting an education is important. You think I just threw one hundred sixty at this place so you could paint the corridors, put a basketball court somewhere? Hell no. I just give you the opportunity for an education. Make yourselves smart and in doing so increase the competition for jobs in the future.” I said, smiling. I looked down and shook my head before looking back up.
“You don't even know what. This is basic economics, but they don't teach that shit at high school. Don't want everyone knowing how to make mad money, who they gonna make money off? Y'all punks need to be schooled on some left wing sheeeeyit.” I say. I have grown confident as I speak. I feel strong and powerful. I pop open the top button of my collar.
“Ch'all better recognize socialism. You probably thinking of Groucho if I say Marx. But guess what. I'm talking about a guy called Karl. And he invented Communism along with this dude called Engels. Say what? Motherfucker invented communism, ain't that a Russian thing? Hell yeah homie. So's space travel. You think it's a coincidence all them dudes on the enterprise are chill?” I say.
“Anyway, I've donated almost a billion dollars to schools in Los Angeles. Y'all going to get a sweet education for gratis. Might seem fun now, but wait til you leave college. Everyone around you's gonna have been at the same college. I made this whole city totally fucked!” I say, miming smearing my hands across a dome. I laugh and walk out, starting to run through the empty corridors. It is a labyrinth of plastic, every door seems as same as the last. This is the place shootings happen. Eventually I reach the outside and have to lie in the car park, coughing. What have I done? There's no load game in real life! Everything had repercussions, from breakfast to noon. I sat up and started to run again, down streets populated by cars, veins bulging on my forehead. Nine hundred and thirty two thousand six hundred and twenty three dollars of company funds given away in the space of a day. I wondered for a moment if I would have to claim bankruptcy then laughed. Of course not. I still had things to do. I rang Bill and he picked me up.
“Take me back to the hotel.” I say.
“Sure. Are you okay?” he says. I begin to take off my clothes.
“Yes.”

OK Coral

Thousands of miles of bone covered by a coloured skin, slowly turning the bleached whiteness of death. The sky screamed infernally overhead burning deeper and deeper through the ancient reef. It was the time. Unknowing, each mouth kissed the sea, releasing motes out from their stomachs that drifted into the ongoing storm happening beneath the foam. The cells that caught one another began to change, drifting down far from where they began onto a sheet of rock. The polyp grew a mouth and began to grow another, attached by a tiny membrane. And these copies would go on to grow another copy. With identical mouths they snared plankton, reaching upwards on a limestone skeleton towards the shifting sky.

In it's eight thousand year existence, the coral reef could sense that a change was coming. Death. It's life was many orders of magnitude slower than any other animal and so it's death appeared to be relatively quick. Parts of it starved or were broken off, others were above the water, forever caught in the frantic strobing of the star. On it's borders there was a creature making it's way through the crumbling towers, crawling with an affray of spikes. The huge starfish the colour of dusk crept across the reef, pushing their stomachs onto it and taking away a soup of sea water and digested coral. They moved slowly across the outermost layer, leaving nothing behind but blank stone. It gorged itself on mile after mile on an animal that didn't even know it existed.

The reef waited. Over towards where the sun rose it felt a strangeness in the water, a rotating churn. In moments huge areas of the reef were torn away, obliterated by moving air, ripping polyps off bone, tearing them to wet shreds. The crabs and fishes that lived amongst it's structures began to dwindle, living hard lives amongst the barren stone. Black, oily shit was poured over acres of the reef, drowning the mouths beneath an avalanche of waste. But it continued to wait.

On the reef lived a variety of different species of coral, and each species had colonies numbering the billions. They grew over decades, attacking other corals in their territory, capitalising on empty space, slowly exploring the fringe of the reef which itself transformed faster than the coral could manifest it's destiny. In the caves and over the mountains swam sea snakes, slugs, worms, fish, octopuses and turtles. More closely related to hard coral are the gorgonians, fractal sheets of living polyp that stretch into the water like enormous leaves. Similarly the jellyfish float through the water like the ghosts of bells, catching light in thin membranes from the setting star, colouring them crimson. All of this looked the same as it had for many epochs.Empires of colour rose and fell over the centuries, more dramatic and complex than any that could happen on the land. Yet it what was happening on the land that would bring an end to the Cambrian frontier.

Soft five pointed animals climbed into the metallic things across the ocean. They wore their skeletons on the inside, the only signs of hardness were white crescents set in the holes atop their necks. The holes moved up and down, making dry sounds in the air. The metal rays began to soar through the sky with their reflections caught on the brine beneath, on each wing of the things were long, hard tubes with fins coming off of the side and their ends painted in yellow and red. The bigger pieces of metal seemed to grow little clouds around them with a booming noise and from then they moved silently over the water, their echo taking time to catch up. As the moon gyrated on the other side of the planet it pulled the water away, exposing parts of the dead reef up towards the silent metallic things. They passed above, going towards the land, before making elliptical orbits back over the reef in the crystal water. The metal cylinders on each wing was dropped, one, two, three, four, down towards the water. When they hit they made indents into the sea as the surface struggled to keep, yet in they went anyway, plummeting down towards the reef, crashing through the coral and throwing up silt which threw up a brown fog. And nothing happened.

The light rose again. The soft animals wore black skins and plastic around their faces as they travelled through the water, down towards the eight cylinders. Already starfish and crabs had begun to explore the strange new hardness which had fallen from above. The soft animals swam towards each of the things, leaving behind little mounds of plastic before disappearing. And then the bombs went off. An underwater fire bloomed outward, roaring across the coral, shattering it's bones. The entire ocean pressed against this sudden bubble of heat, the water clapping together and then surging upwards, throwing pieces of death in the air. A shockwave continued over the reef eviscerating any soft flesh. The reef disappeared beneath a cloud of blood and sand and when it cleared nothing was left.

The coral did not feel anything. It had lived a long life unknowing anything but itself, it's purpose was simple. It had no choice. It was unaware at the beauty in which it created, the systems of life it supported, even of the corals surrounding it. In the black silence of it's existence it felt a hunger that lasted a thousand years. It wouldn't be able to comprehend the manner in which it's life was ended. But then again, neither could we.

I Am The CEO

I cruised over the rocky outcrop with a cigarette pinched between my teeth, it was a recessed type of filter used by machine gun artists in the second world war. The All Terrain Vehicle came to a purring stop as I parked on the mountain side, looking at the city through my field goggles. I had been in Los Angeles a long time. And I hadn't learned nothing. Don't get a McJob, be a Steve Jobs. I had integrated myself into a large non-profit company and worked it from the inside out, sabotaging my co-workers, setting up chains of events so that they would find themselves destroyed. I was the puppet master. I was the Royal Tenenbaum. I was CEO, earning eighty thousand dollars a year just to go wine and dine chumps in order to secure investment. I sat across from gorgons eating expensive salad and drinking white wine. Success? I'd made the American Dream a reality. I was a semi-state fictional character starring in my own film before being made into life. Was this box office blockbuster going to bombasticate the socio-cultural landscape of Los Angeles? I was in the mouth of the world, my whispers being projected across multiple wi-fi dimensions directly into high definition big detail corporate monosynths. I lowered the binocs and dialled my assistant on my cell phone.
“Organise a board meeting, stat.” I whisper through cut teeth.

The limousine slinks it's way through the streets of Hollywood with me in the back, reclining on Swedish leather. Deep warbling world music swells in the speakers around me as a single tear coagulates on my bottom eye lid and captures the reflection of the street lights as they zip overhead.
“It's all so...beautiful.”
The limousine pulls up to a traffic light. I look over into the car next to me and see a young couple. The one driving looks like Danzig. His girlfriend looks over to me then says something to her partner. They both laugh. I turn back to watching the stop light and put my hands on the wheel. I rev the engine. The couple return the challenge. We are both revving our engines, the pitch of the valves increasing as explosions rapidly accelerate. The light goes green. I slam the stick shift of my ATV into Drive and begin flying down the length of the limousine. The racer next to me flies past, I can see his expression of concentration increase through the flicking windows. I hear a horn ahead of me and look up. The seven forty express train coming from Pasadena is on a collision course with me and the driver next to me. And he's slowly catching up. I flick the stick shift into it's race gear setting and begin to pull away. The train's horn toots again just as the front of the limousine smashes through the barrier across the tracks. I look over once more at the couple. He is frantic, eyes bulging, heads pressed against the wind shield. She looks over at me and winks. I push the ATV to it's limit and with a jump narrowly escape along with the rest of the limo. The other car meanwhile isn't so lucky. It's passengers are ejected two hundred feet in the air whilst the car is crushed beneath American railroad legacy. I come to a skidding stop just before the driver's compartment. A little window opens.
“Any problems boss?”
“Guess they had a train to catch.” I say to Bill.

The limousine finally pulls up on the very bottom section of the underground car park. I enter a set of steel doors and plod wearily through the benign corridors. I enter the board room and see it's members sat around a long oak table. A fire blazes in the heath, throwing shifting shapes across the little bald men. Silently I walk to the head of the table and put my seven thousand dollar Dolce briefcase on the table.
“Gentlemen of the board. Any acknowledgements?” I say.
“What are we here for?”
“I gathered you here today...for a presentation.” I say. “Just a few weeks ago the world's entire supply of titanium was bought out. All the mines, processing plants and country stockpiles were purchased overnight.” I take out a lump of titanium from my pocket and throw it onto the table.
“Gentlemen...welcome to the titanium business.”

I ascend the spiral staircase up into the tower. Printers continually churn out stock market prices, high energy business people talk to themselves on headsets, sometimes a basketball is thrown about in order to decide who's making coffee. I stand at a cubicle in which a long haired lawyer rests his feet on the desk as he makes a yo-yo bounce up and down, speaking Portuguese into a cordless phone. He notices me and puts the phone down.
“How's it hangin, hot shot?” I say, leaning against a thin wood.
“Long, loose and full of juice padre. How was the board meeting?”
“You knew about that?”
“Anybody whose anybody heard your business deal. You've transformed a non-profit law firm into the world's one and only source for titanium.”
“Walk with me.” I say, walking off. He follows.
“So what's next?”
“How much does a kilo of titanium cost at the moment?”
“Seven hundred and sixty five dollars.”
“But how much are we selling?”
“None.”
“Exactly. By the time we finished this conversation the world will value titanium twenty bucks more than it did when we started.”
“What's the game plan though here ?”
“What do you know about titanium?”
“Well...it's strong. And it's light.”
“That it?”
“I don't mine it, I buy it.”
“It's used in the manufacture of aerospace parts, sporting goods, surgical instruments and the storage of nuclear waste. It can also be processed into a white dye used in teeth whitening. But I'm going to do something else with it.”
“What?” said the lawyer. I exit the office and stand on a balcony overlooking the Los Angeles skyline as dusk settles in, walking over to the short wall seperating myself and a sixty foot drop. The lawyer grabs hold of the door and nods.
“You're not afraid of heights are you?” I say.
“Yes.”
“I thought so. You know what else titanium can do?”
“What?” he whispers, lips turning blue.
“It can turn a man invisible.” I say, taking a potion from my pocket and drinking it's contents. I watch the lawyer look directly at me in astonishment.
“Padre? Padre?” he says. I creep towards him. “Where've you gone man?” I grab him by both wrists and begin to pull him. He yells. “Stop! Stop!” I pull him towards the balcony and begin to climb over.
“See you in hell!” I scream as I pull him over the edge.

A History Of Hollywood

The city streets were shape shifting, caught in a transmorphing temporal wormhole of culture generated through the Hollywoodland media cluster. The combination of population density, money, technology, crime, topology and cinema had made Los Angeles transcend from reality into a metaphor, exemplifying humanity's utter present, using the city as canvas. It's architecture a continuous set for the people acting out potentials, the asphalt and concrete and glass and metal sprawling outwards, increasing in citymass hour by hour. There are times in the year when stood at precise points across the city that its entirety reflects back at you and you are caught in the composite eye of Los Angeles and it burns you with a million reflections from windows in high rise buildings, the shafts of light are caught against your retinas then stabbed into your brain, the concentrated beam melting through your neurons like satan's lasers.

The city of Los Angeles. Home to Hollywoodland, built in 1902 by the Warner Brothers. The Hollywood sign now rests on the side of mountain, an old ad gimmick, white letters arranged amongst rocks and scrub land. It is a kitsch icon, a set of modernist erected fonts each as tall as a building that further went on to dub it's surroundings as Hollywood in 1947. Hollywood is home to several film studios, including the empty sets of the olden days you may have seen in pictures at your local cinema. All of the Hollywood executives ride around in expensive cars and they wear nice suits, they have the final say in the taste in style as they're the ones that decide which film is going to be made! The producers often have big piles of money stacked up on their desk, ready to give to the best director. The director then takes the money away and begins to hire writers, camera crew and actors to be in his picture. These stars and starlets of Hollywood are as follows: Johnny Depp, Simon Agby, Brad Pitt, Joanna Lumley, Sarah Jessica Parker, Justin Timberlake, Will Smith, Johnny Knoxville, Angela Carter, Channing Tatum, Harrison Ford, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, John Travolta, Courtney Cox, Nicholas Cage and Michael Cera. The film executives often spend a few hours a day looking through glossy black and white photos of potential actors for their films, muttering to themselves whilst smoking cigars. Meanwhile back on the sets of Universal Studios the film will begin to be made whilst the marketing gurus begin to advertise the picture, using social media, alternative reality games, merchandise, trailers, the web, billboards, newspaper articles, events and a word of mouth campaign. The film will be broken down into its basic components before being reconstructed by CGI. All of the best films nowadays are 3D and shown on cinemas around the globe, with 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound and comfortable chairs. Some cinemas even offer popcorn to munch throughout the movie viewing experience as you whisper to your friends;
“This movie rocks!”
“I don't know what to say, I love it.”
“The ending...it's a killer!”
“That was one seriously funny movie.”
Viewers are then persuaded to go home and think about the film as they lie in bed, unable to get to sleep. They can't stop thinking about it! For the next few days it will be all they will be able to talk about, often stopping people in public, physically restraining them by the shoulders, and telling them about the film. They would speak immensely quickly and sometimes get their words jumbled up, often being pushed to the ground by other people due to the enthusiasm they display in talking about the movie. There bodies would begin to convulse and blood begin to leak from the ears, nose and throat, muffling their voices in the sticky iron redness. The eyeballs would melt out of their sockets and the face would begin to turn inside out, the roof of the mouth being pushed out of the lips as the entire skull cracks. The organs begin to dissolve the skin and tissue surrounding them, displaying a bed of human entrails sitting in the body cavity that thump and twitch along to the rapidly beating heart and everything begins to bleed and rip itself open and scream. The director walks in front of the camera and yells 'Cut! That's a wrap.'
The actor sits up in his prosthetic latex suit.“How did I do?”
“You were great!” says the camera man. The crew begins to clap and the actor looks around, smiling.

Fifty Shades Of Grey Movie Discussion And Dinner

“The problem is, both actors are blonde. In the book they're brunettes. This movie's gonna flop big time.” she said. I nod nonchalantly. She continues; “And another thing, Charlie Hunnam just isn't Christian Grey, the guy looks like a total cretin. I mean hello, he's in that awful Sons of Anarchy show, always has cuts and bruises on him. It should have been Robert Pattinson or Ian Somerhalder.”
“And Anastasia Steele?”
“Kristen Stewart.”
“Of course. Hold on a second.” I say, taking off my sock and shoe.
“What are you doing?”
“I'm taking a picture of my foot. I've noticed it's been changing shape recently, I need to make a proper record of it.” I say, snapping a foot picture with my instagram. I am sat in a restaurant across from Sabby, the main blogger on ohfifty.com, the #1 Fifty Shades Of Grey fan-site. We are discussing the upcoming Fifty Shades Of Grey film to be released in August next year. I put my sock back on, though the heel section is now at my instep. I swear under my breath, angry at myself for misaligning the sock.
“Is everything alright?”
“Yes, yes. Everything's fine. It's just...I put my sock on wrong.” I say. Our gaze meets across the table, there is a certain electricity in the air I can't help but feel amidst the aroma of the two huge portions of white veal I have ordered. The waiter arrives with another bottle of champagne and pours out two glasses.
“Merci, garcon.” I say to him as he walks away.
“Do you speak French?” she says.
“Oui. Est-ce que ca vous plait? Tes yeux sont comme des fosses." I murmur. She giggles.
"What does that mean?"
"I'll tell you later. First, I want to hear more about the movie."

The Fifty Shades Of Grey trilogy written by E.L James has been one of the best selling books of the century. The plot involves a billionaire seducing his secretary, having sex with her and eventually they both fall in love and get married. As one flicked through the pages of this grumble book you could almost hear movie execs in Los Angeles scramble to secure the film rights. But what would this film look like? On almost every page there is a lewd sex act taking place, whether it's Anastasia being tied down and whipped across the chest or Christian ejaculating into a cup and drinking it, the sex isn't just a straight forward bit of how's your father but intricately designed BDSM conquests that spiral into abstraction as the books progress.
"How do you think they'll handle the sex element in the films? I can't remember when I last saw a dick or a bit of vag in mainstream cinema since maybe...Basic Instinct."
"Exactly. Any moment Anastasia's Inner Goddess is revealed the camera isn't going to show it. The blowjobs, the dildos, the fisting."
"I'm curious to see how they're going to show that bit where Christian presses his cock and balls between those two panes of glass. Or the infamous shit eating scene."
"A significant section of the fans were hoping that the film would be picked up by a porn studio, but do it tastefully, you know? Stay true to the source material."
"I don't see any problem with a porn film being released in mainstream theaters. Have they forgotten how successful Deep Throat was? Behind the Green Door?" I say. I can feel my foot changing shape inside my shoe.
"Don't get me wrong, it's not just the naughty bits that I like in the books. I like the romance too." she says.
"Of course." I say.
"Like the part where Christian announces his love for Anastasia? After they have sex in that public toilet?"
"Or that bit where he hires a new secretary and she's like, a total bitch. But he still loves Anastasia...right?" I say.
"Yeah...I think so." she says.

The meal continues, course after course is brought out. Braised beef, deep fried prawns, sweet breads with tomato chutney, tandoori chicken and pilau rice. The conversation switches from film adaptations to other kinds of adaptations.
"Do you think if they gave a dolphin legs it would be better than a horse?" I ask.
"You mean to ride or just...better?"
"Mostly better, but also to ride."
"Well dolphins are quite noble creatures. How would they breathe though?"
"Just stick some water bottles over it's gills." I say.
"Dolphins don't have gills, they breathe through that blow hole at the top."
"Really? Even better then. A tube filled with water can be fitted more easily." I suggest. The desserts are brought out, savoury ice cream served on a bed of cake crumbs.
"What about the legs?" she asks me, playing with her spoon.
"Robots." I reply angrily. We eat the rest of the dessert in silence.

"Well it was lovely to meet you." says Sabby. We are standing outside the restaurant.
"It was good to meet you to. Maybe we should go for drinks sometime...maybe brainstorm a petition to get the film cast right."
"Yeah, yeah, that'd be good. The studios will have to listen to the fans." she says. I stand there with my hands in my pockets, unsure of what to do. Do we embrace? Kiss? Or do I just walk away? "Well, I'm going now."
"Goodbye." I say, watching her flag down a taxi and step in. She waves at me through the glass and I am left alone outside the restaurant, wondering what to do next. Then all of a sudden I get an idea.

A few hours later I am sat between two computer monitors, editing together my own version of Fifty Shades Of Grey. I'm using footage from Twilight, Secretary, Water For Elephants, Cosmopolis and six or so different hardcore porn films. The Fifty Shades books are scattered around me, I read out the dialogue and dub it over the newly edited film.
"Because I’m fifty shades of fucked-up, Anastasia." I read in my best Robert Pattinson impression. I relight a cigarette from the overflowing ashtray.
"Because I’m fifty shades of fucked-up, Anastasia." I repeat. I cut out a section of Leather Teen Angels 2 in which an actress has a speculum inserted, splicing it between the baseball scene from Twilight. Over the actresses head I've placed Kristen Stewart. It doesn't look too realistic but I'm hoping to enhance it with CGI later. I check my foot again. It is now swollen to almost twice it's usual size.
“I want your world to begin and end with me." I say in my Pattinson voice. I cough as both monitors show huge stretched out versions of Robert Pattinson's head.

Fun Day Out At La Brea Tar Pits

The La Brea tar pits have been excavated for the last one hundred years, the black bones of animals are dredged from the deep using a series of chains attached to a crane. Tar divers doggy paddle in the molten blackness, helping ease out the skulls of giant wolves onto the shore for visitors to see. The pits reside in Hancock Park, halfway down the Miracle Mile, next door to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The odour of the tar pits hangs in the air like an ancient death, the ever grave churns beneath the boiling sun. I finish my coke and hurl the can onto the heavy oil before walking towards the Page Museum. It's quite busy, families run backwards and forwards between the exhibits, the children point excitedly at the hundreds of bones scattered around. Teenagers chill out radically around an enormous woolly mammoth, repeating internet catchphrases to each other or swapping e-mail addresses. Retired people are ushered around and they look thoughtfully at the great condor, magnificent in it's quiet existence. Museum attendants are constantly smiling, eyelids as far back as they will go, hundreds of teeth shown, well moisturised hands ready to touch people on the shoulder as they are pointed in the right direction. I see my contact, Vernon Chavéz, gazing at the ribcage of a camel.
“Vernon?” I say. He turns around, face sweating and chemically thin. We shake hands and begin walking through the museum, passing an animatronic sabre tooth cat that jerkily nudges a sort of bear.

We enter the restroom. Vernon checks beneath the stalls and once sure nobody else is there he puts his briefcase on the side of the sink.
“You got the money?” he asks. I put my own briefcase on the side. “Let me check.” I pop open the lid and show him sixty thousand dollars in unmarked bills.
“Now you show me.” I say. He checks the door before opening the clasps on his case. Inside the aubergine coloured interior are three jars of wasps.
“Impressive. Most impressive.” I say. He takes my briefcase and I stand in the bathroom, watching the wasps waiting in each jar. I take out a pair of ear defenders from my pocket and put them on.

I pass an enormous puppet built by the Jim Henson's creature workshop, Smilodon Fatalis, It is accompanied by a smaller puppet, Nibbles. An old man plays a harmonica. A girl lets go of a balloon. A young couple kiss each other. Faces flash by. I crouch down onto the cold floor and open up the suitcase, taking out each jar carefully. Some movement catches my eye, I look up to see a security guard wearing a khaki shirt running towards me, although I am unable to hear his shouts. People are beginning to move away. I take one of the large jars and open the lid, pouring the wasps out. They begin to fly away before hitting the floor. I do the same with the other two jars and then begin to make my way through the crowd of people around me. The wasps meanwhile begin to search for food genetically installed into insect brains. For those wasps each ear is like a flower for a bee, a fruitful canal for them was a valuable source of protein. They flew from ear to ear, their thumb-sized bodies clinging onto the earlobe as they carefully fed on the people around them. Panic gripped the entire museum, people clutching at their heads as they ran full pelt through the corridors, others were caught in the swarm of wasps and crouched close to the ground, faces contorted into strange grimaces. In the confusion I made my way towards the Research and Collections area.

There are thousands of boxes, each containing a fossil pulled from the tar pit. I make my way quickly past the bones of rodents, dogs, giant birds and lizards, the preserved shells of the invertebrates and into the flora section. It takes me a few minutes but I have quickly filled my pockets with the preserved seeds of almost fifty species of prehistoric plants. I would need to send them to Korea to be processed properly. I make my way back into the museum, it's corridors empty now save for the constant flight of wasps.

Anxiety

I walk down the long concrete corridor, all gray and lit yellow from fluorescent lights contained inside cages. A guard is walking a few steps ahead of me, unlocking heavy security doors as we make our way deeper into the prison. He stops at a cell door and looks through the window before turning to me.
“I'll be waiting outside if there's any problems.” he said.
“I'll be fine.” I say, my voice a high falsetto. I am dressed as a woman. Two inch black Gucci heels bend awkwardly around my large feet, my unshaven legs hidden inside a pair of trousers that cling tight to my waist with the aid of a crocodile skin belt. My Yves blazer has large shoulders that jut out slightly awkwardly, it's slightly too small against my frame and is particularly tight on my scapula, though beneath this I'm wearing a two-tone silk shirt that is quite cool in the Los Angeles heat. I debated waxing my top lip for the occasion but decided to shave instead, though the perfume slightly stings my face now and then. With a well manicured hand I push open the cell door.

A woman is sat behind a steel table bolted to the floor. She looks up as I enter, her wide head supported by a long neck. Her mannerisms are somewhat birdlike. I sit down and clear my throat.
“Hello Ms. Lowfield.”
“Who are you?”
“I'm your lawyer, appointed by the court to-”
“You're not my lawyer.” she says coldly. She had me. It was a longshot, hoping that she had forgotten who her lawyer was, but I'd come this far.
“My name's Melissa Clark, I'm doing my PhD and I was wondering if I could ask you some questions for my thesis?” I said.
“What's it about?”
“The impact of gender roles and the progress of human civilization. I am trying to see what impact sexism has had in the development of the sciences with a focus on technological advancement.”
“How can you measure that?” she asked.
“I am comparing data of patents, number of scientists, doctors, lawyers and so on with gender, then postulating backward over the last one thousand years. It is my belief that humanity has more or less halved it's potential through centuries of sexism.”
“So you're studying economics?”
“Anthropology.”
“I see. And what kind of answers would I be able to tell you based on the sorts of questions needed for your thesis?”
“Your role as a member of The Fifth Wave is intriguing, what your...group is active in is particularly interesting.” I said, taking out a tape recorder. This was just for effect, I couldn't find any tapes, but it added a sense of atmosphere.
“What would you like to know?” she said, leaning towards the tape recorder.

The Fifth Wave, who the press have taken to calling 'The Pink Panthers', are a contemporary terrorist group operating out of America. Their members are all women who believe that an oncoming civil war is about to occur and they are taking preventative measures beforehand.
“Do you really think that there will be a war of woman versus man?”
“Of course. It's been happening for thousands of years. It's a cold war, though the casualties are in the millions. Mothers beaten, daughters raped, the violence continues today all across the world. We are fighting back, striking back at our enemy.”
“By cutting off men's dicks?”
“Yes. Some men would rather die than lose their penis. Most beg as we begin to flay the skin.”
“So it's true you skin the penises?”
“We start by fastening the penis into a sort of vice with a blade on each side. As we screw the vice shut, it shears off the skin and muscle leaving us with the bare urethra. We then use a pair of bolt cutters to remove the glans and each testicle one by one.”
“That sounds painful.”
“We use anesthetic. It is more shocking for the man to watch as we leave him with his urethra dangling between his legs and a bottle of painkillers.” she says.
“What happens after that?”
“It's up to them.”
“Why this form of assault?”
“In the early days we attacked them in a less organized manner. I feel the castration method is more effective as it breeds an element of fear, though I've experimented with different surgeries, such as just removing the penis or testicles, peeling back the corpus cavernosum so that it resembles a lily, subincision as par for course and a wide variety of other urological transfigurations. Atrocity is best realized through the voice of a victim.”
“Surely this fear also breeds anger? Some would say you're inciting more violence through your actions.”
“A civil war is going to happen Melissa. And we will win.”
“Gynarchy!”
“Like the Iroquois or Hopi. Did you know the Hopi often retreated to a kiva, a type of underground chamber, in order to be close to their ancestors? I suppose this prison is my kiva.” she said, her dark eyes reflecting the light wetly.
“Are you recruiting prisoners?”
“Of course. Our numbers will swell into the thousands. Every man will go to bed wondering if he'll be attacked in the night and stripped of what he thinks makes him a man.” she says, smiling to herself. I nod. It sounds reasonable enough to me. I thank her for answering my questions and make my way back through the corridors of the Central California Women's facility. In the distance I can hear shouting and the stamping of feet.

Extracting The Verge: Lessons In Urban Biwheeled Transport

I entered the shopping complex with my wallet brimming with counterfeit money. I had George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Franklin in my pocket, multiple times, faces pressed against faces, moolah, cheddar, scrilla, dosh, cash, greenbacks, sawbucks, dollars, pockets full of that cheese. Eager to enter some of the world's most cheapest shops I duck into the first one I pass, it turns out to be a knife store. A store that only dealt in knives or knife related paraphenalia. I grab two hundred dollars worth of gear off the walls and place it in front of the clerk before taking my wallet out of my pocket and pluck bills from it, letting them drop down onto the register whilst I shake my head from side to side.
“That's how we do it though.” I say slowly.
I take the knives down to a fountain with me and begin to drop them in the water amongst the coins and milk teeth.
“Say mister, why you throwing knives in the fountain?” said a smart ass kid. I turn over my shoulder and flashed my eyebrows.
“What's it look like I'm doing kid? Cooking a pot roast?” I say.

I am in the car with Bill. We are searching for a parking space.
“How's your family Bill?”
“Not bad. Eldest just got a job in a Subway.”
“You know, I always wanted to know why Subway is such a big franchise. Like, they only make sandwiches. Why not other breads...other spreads?”
“I can't find a place to park.”
“Just park there. Over there by that palm tree.” I say. The car is parked and I look around. It was strange to think that I was there at that moment in time, unknown to anyone outside of that space, as if my existence at that point was neither here, nor there, yet in a state of flux, as is the shape, of space and time. I measure my pulse. Ninety seven. I take out my cell phone and access it's apps (programmes), viewing a three dimensional rotating image of myself. I upload data.
“What you doing over there?”
“I'm using apps. Want to look?” I say. Bill looks over my shoulder and whistles.
“That's a killer app you got there.”
“Take a look at this, I designed this one myself. It tells you if a celebrity is dead or alive.”
“Cool!” says Bill. We turn to each other and smile.

The nightclub was hot enough to make me sweat, dancing to minimalist house in the dark. Green lights rotate inside mirrors, flashing the faces of drugged Americans. A woman reaches out to me and starts shouting in my ear. I shout something back and we dance. I signalled I was going to the bar to get a drink, my feet sticking to the dance floor. Pushing my way through I bump into people, leaning on them for comfort. The teenager behind the bar is wearing yellow framed sunglasses and a leopard skin Sumo suit. By the time she reaches me I have forgotten what I wanted to drink.
“You wanna beer?”
“No...no...water. I need water.” I said, eyes rolling in my head. She passed me a warm plastic bottle and I stagger away, pouring the water over my head, down my back. There's no vomit left once I heave. For a moment the entire world seems to tip upwards and I realised that I had perhaps had enough. I nearly collapse into someone, pushed away as I stumble towards the exit. I need to be outside. I feel like I can't breathe.

I was running down a road in the night. Fat insects flew around the glow from street lights and parked cars, sometimes smacking against the floor. I climbed over a low wall and begin to try and cross the interstate, eyeing up the traffic for too long. A fog had rolled in off the Pacific, making everything a fuzzy blur, the gaps seemed impossible to judge. I ran.

“How's your search going? For the edge of L.A?” said Bill.
“I don't think I found it yet.”
“Want me to drive round the outskirts, see what you can find?”
“Yeah, why not? I doubt I'll find the edge at the actual edge, but you never know. Maybe it's there all along.” I said. We took the 405 north, the slightly elevated interstate a constant artery of tarmac and metal. The evening was drawing in just as we drove onto the Antelope Valley Freeway.
“We just left Los Angeles a moment ago.” said Bill. I tell him to circle back around so I can get out. The air smells warm, there is the faint aroma of cannabis somewhere nearby. Besides the road everything is bumpy, the rock raising up covered in dirt and scrub. Bill is lit in the soft blue from his new iphone, yammering about how this spot was in Los Angeles and this spot was Santa Clarita.
“This is what I mean though. Does this feel like the edge of Los Angeles? Does this feel like the edge of anywhere?”
“Well, there ain't nothing else here.”
“Exactly. Where's the tipping point? There's no lines in the ground, no sense of the binary. This is just a little road that could be anywhere.”
“I guess. Want to drive back?”
“Not yet. Let's follow the border for a little while, see where we end up.”

We spend the next few hours carefully driving as close as we can to the Los Angeles city limits, I occasionally get out to get a sense of whether or not I have found the certain edge. The city of Los Angeles. The county of Los Angeles. The state of California. The state of America. It seemed anytime I tried to find the edge of civilization it split, forming more bubbles of civilization, more motes of L.A. Floating in the agar-like continuum of reality. Motels, bars, strip clubs, diners, car parks, industrial units, houses, forests, mountains, highways, freeways, interstates, parks, hospitals, abandoned buildings, factories, beaches. I could tell for certain when I wasn't in Los Angeles and when I was, but never exactly where these two points met. I didn't believe that there was a gradient as such, that Los Angeles would simply fade into not-Los Angeles. We'd been driving for hours, fueled by roadside meats and gatorade. Bill watched as I stumbled around in the dark, kicking the detritus of people around; food packaging, used needles, dirty nappies, cigarette butts, discarded clothing, rotten plastic, clumps of human hair. Would I even know when I had found the edge? I questioned my practice as I looked into the shadows, pupils fully dilated, spit drying on both sides of my mouth. Now and then Bill would ask if we'd found it yet.
“No, no. Not yet. We need to go further.” I would say, beginning to suspect that Bill may be leading me on a wild goose chase. Nevertheless we traversed the outer orbit of the city, San Fernando, Verdugos, San Gabriel, Pomona, down to the Harbour and up along the coast. As dawn started to break I sat in the rolling surf on Santa Monica beach, watching my shoes fill with sand.
“Want to go home?” said Bill.
“Yeah.” I said, dragging myself up. It appeared as though I wouldn't find the edge of Los Angeles by going around it. I would need to employ some other methods.

The next day I went to a motorbike rental place and loaned a Suzuki SFV650 Gladius. I hadn't much experience riding motorbikes but after half an hour at a nearby parking lot I decided I was ready. I'd had an idea sitting on Santa Monica beach. Perhaps I wouldn't find the edge in such a careful, controlled manner, but experience it amongst the uncontrollable chaos life occasionally threw at you. I huffed a significant amount of nitrous oxide and set up my bike partway along Venice Boulevard.
“De fumo in flammam.” I mutter to myself before engaging the clutch. The bike lurches forward at first, but I quickly work out the gears. Before I know it I am already hurtling down the boulevard at sixty miles an hour. I feel the wind in my hair as I keep spinning the throttle, laughing madly to myself, lost in the wind. Cars and trucks speed by at a blur. Eighty miles an hour. I fly through an intersection, narrowly avoiding a BMW. The engine is screaming in protest between my legs as I quickly flick through the gears. Once I can see the beach I'm doing a good hundred and ten miles an hour. People, cars, road signs all become a violent rainbow streak as I propel myself closer and closer towards the sea. All around me are the honking of horns and the screams of people as the Gladius reaches its top speed, propelling me ever-quicker towards the coast, I'm unable to breathe. My head is thrown backwards so much so I struggle to see what's in front of me. With a spine twisting bump I feel I've hit the sand, the bike hurtling at one hundred and fifty miles an hour down the beach. Just before I hit the water I feel something.

Time seems to have stopped. I look around at my surroundings and see a whole crowd is on the beach behind me, faces locked in a slow motion scream of horror at the biker that has passed them all at such ludicrous speed. In the distance I think I can hear some kind of choir, the holy sounds of seraphim. The water beneath me is such a beautiful blue, I'm aware of the constantly shifting currents underwater of oxygen and hydrogen reflecting the pure, brilliant sky above me. Seams of gold appear on every corner, as if the world is just a door to heaven. Had I been successful? Was this indeed the edge of Los Angeles? The true edge of civilization? Before I can truly answer the question time seems to speed up again. The bike appears to bounce on the waves once or twice before it shoots out from beneath me like some kind of strange insect steed, it begins to flip and somersault itself apart until sinking below the surface of the water. I myself am miraculously unhurt, though for the second time in less than six hours my shoes are full of sand. I turn back to the beach and wave.
“Don't worry everyone. I'm fine. I think I experienced the true edge of Los Angeles, but you'll have to read my blog for a more detailed description.” I say. In the distance I can hear sirens, the type on top of police cars rather than the mythological kind. I consider my experience as I swim away, wondering if that was indeed the edge, or if it was instead what one experienced when driving at high speeds on a motorbike heading towards the ocean. Could it be replicated somehow? Was there more than one edge, or more than one way of experiencing it? I'd have to continue my search regardless. Yet after the night of disappointment the high speed seaside crash had exhilarated me more so than any simple tour of the city. As I floundered onto the shore just beneath the pier I decided I would try harder to substantiate that which was and not was Los Angeles.

Jim Bischotti And The Case Of The Missing Cat

San Dimas, San Gabriel County. You can hear the 210 roaring away to the north, the acoustics of the mountains reflecting everything back as it had done since the landmass was formed. Maybe on a quiet day you could still hear the echo of sound waves repeating themselves for the last one hundred years. Bill had dropped me off in the middle of the suburbs before going to visit his family, leaving my afternoon free to meet with one of San Dimas' more notable people; Jim Bischotti. I stroll along the white sidewalk, admiring the pre-WW2 era suburb. San Dimas felt like a small town somewhere else in America, though off towards the East I could make out the twitching reflection of Central Los Angeles. Two women went past me, power walking and lifting one kilo weights. We exchanged smiles and I walked a little further up the street, my bowels requiring me that I drop my trousers and evacuate into a drain. As I did so I couldn't help but be reminded of the film 'Bill And Ted's Bogus Journey' that was set in the quaint little town. Perhaps there would be a themed restaurant somewhere, where I could play air guitar and say 'Excellent!', guaranteed for some big laughs. I myself began to giggle at the thought.
“Excellent!” I said. But nobody had heard me. I continued walking.

Jim Bischotti lived on East Juanita Avenue in a beige bungalow. There was a well kept garden outside in which a Black Willow grew in it's centre, shading his house in the midday sun. I knocked on the door and it was answered quickly, almost as if he had been waiting behind the door for me.
“Come in, come in.” he said. We shook hands and I entered. His home was impeccably tidy yet there was the odour of dog hair faintly, catching the back of my throat when I took a deep breath.
“Can I get you a soda?” he said. I accept and make myself comfortable on the sofa, looking at my blurred reflection in the fifty inch television across from me. Jim returns with a large bottle of Dr. Pepper and two glasses, pouring out the two drinks then sitting in a leather recliner facing the window. The shadow of the Black Willow branches cut across his face like camouflage.
“So tell me about your detective agency.” I ask after sipping the over-carbonated beverage. Jim laughs, waggling his eyebrows about.
“It all started off when I was out of high school, looking for work. I was desperate for money, couldn't even get a job delivering pizza. But as I was walking round I noticed all these lost pet posters. Cats, dogs, a parrot or two. Some of these had big money rewards, especially towards Hollywood, you know? And I was walking round so much I ended up seeing half these pets, so I started returning them to their owners. In a month I'd claimed nearly two thousand dollars in pet bounty.” he said.
“So that's when you started to do it full time?”
“Sure. My papa was in the rangers, he taught me how to track animals and that kind of thing. I combined that knowledge with a good work ethic and found I had a knack for it.”
“How many pets would you say you've found since you started?”
“Oh, I'd say...maybe...five hundred or so? Mostly cats, but plenty of dogs and then there's the exotic animals. Snakes, ferrets, even a few turtles.”
“Could I come along with you, see how you work?”
“Sure.”

We are driving in Jim Bischotti's van as he explains to me his most recent case.
“American shorthair, two years old, owner lives on West 2nd Street. Cats are natural explorers, sometimes they get lost by accident, especially the young ones. But I take the time to go round the owner's house, see if there's any evidence that might lead me to wonder if the cat's lost or if it left home, you know what I mean?”
“Sure. Cat's are dicks.”
“Well, no, not really. Out of all the animals cats are the least domesticated. They have a lot of pride. Sometimes they don't like the cleanliness of their home or if the owner got a baby, a new pet, that kinda thing.”
“Don't a lot just get run over?”
“That's sad, but true. I only charge half my fee if I find a pet has been R.K'ed...that's roadkill.”
“Got it.”
“I'm in touch with the police and sanitation guys, they let me know if they find something. I even go and collect unidentified animals, keep them in a freezer at home in case anyone calls up. Anyway, here we are.” he says, pulling up outside a house. I follow him as he walks around the side of the house and stands in the yard.
“Aren't we going in?”
“No, I already went in. I'm scrying at the moment.” he says, breathing in heavily and closing his eyes. He murmurs to himself. “Overflowing trash can...barbecue...road nearby, busy...fifteen cats on this street...”
“What are you doing?”
“I'm scrying...I'm accessing my memory for pet information and comparing it to present variables, like maybe it's hot so the kitty can smell someone cooking barbecue down the street.”
“Yeah, or maybe because it's September the cat is lonely.”
“Exactly. Anyway, I got a feel, now to do the leg work.” says Jim. He walks to the end of the yard and climbs the fence. I follow.

For the next two hours I follow Jim Bischotti as he climbs over fences, walls, crawls under bushes, sniffs at the soil, asks people questions. It's quite exhausting work, not to mention embarassing. All the while Jim keeps giving me titbits of information about his work:
“Sometimes pet's are kidnapped. We had a gang operating in this area last year, taking dogs and holding them ransom. I worked with the sheriff's department on that one.”
“You know, missing pet posters are so outdated? I encourage people to e-mail their neighbours nowadays, everyone has smart phones so...”
“I once went down in the sewers to look for a puppy. All I found was human shit.”
“Now and then the pets don't want to go home. They attack me, they run away again. It's so sad when that happens.”
“I'm a virgin. I'm not ashamed of it either, too many people are having sex nowadays.”
“It's amazing some of the stuff I've found whilst searching around. I thought about setting up a side business of just finding anything, but that's too big a piece of pie for me too chew on. I'll show you my treasures when we get back to my house if you want.”
“At midnight after crawling around in the dirt for fifteen hours I call it a day. Sometimes a pet just doesn't want to be found.”
“I usually carry round a bit of raw meat in my pockets to attract all sorts of animals. I'm lucky now and then.”
"I love cats."

Surprisingly we come across the missing cat, having only taken us the better portion of the afternoon. Jim holds out a hand to stop me.
“Wait here partner. This is where it can get messy.” he says. I nod, leaning against a chain-link fence and tapping a cigarette out of the packet. I watch as he slowly crouches down and begins to talk in a high pitch voice as he moves towards the cat.
“Hey Atticus, come here boy. Come here. Come here Atticus, that's a good boy. Come here. Come here. Come on, hey there, hey, come on, come on. That's a good boy. Good boy Atticus. Come here. Come here. Come here. Good boy. Oh, who's a good boy? Come here, come on.” he says. The cat stared at him. It begins to walk away but the teenager pounces on the cat, immediately it shrieks and hisses, clawing at him. Jim tucks his chin into his neck and the sides of his mouth right down as he struggles clutching the mammal close to his chest as he runs back towards his van. The cat is now howling and moaning as Jim clutches it by the scruff of the neck, opens a side panel on the van and tries to push the cat in, all the while it hissing and scratching him. Eventually it's in.
“Wow...that looks to be quite stressful.” I say.
“Yeah, sometimes they come easy, sometimes not. But I found him, and that's the main thing.” says Jim, checking the cuts all over his arms. He lifts up his shirt to reveal even more cuts all over his torso, some look to be quite deep.
“Are you okay?”
“This? This is nothing. If you think this is bad, you should see it when I try to catch a dog.” says Jim. There are tears in the corner of his eyes.
“Don't vets usually have like...a stick with a rope on the end?”
“Oh those aren't humane. I think this way is the best.” says Jim. The cat is still howling in the back of the van as we get in and drive back to it's home, I wait in the cab whilst he manoeuvres the cat into a cardboard box. After giving it back to the owner he returns with twenty dollars clutched between his thumb and forefinger.
“Cha-ching! Come on, let's go to Taco Bell and celebrate.” he says.

As we sit in Taco Bell I ask Jim a question that's been on my mind since I met him.
“Why don't you just get a normal job? It seems like this is quite stressful and you don't get paid much.”
“That one didn't pay too much, no. But some of them do. And it's not just the money, I'm reuniting pets with their owners. The look on that woman's face as I brought her cat back well...nothing quite comes close to it.” says Jim. I look at him to see if he's bullshitting, but he seems to believe himself. Covered from head to toe in dirt, the cuts all over his body occasionally bleeding still, the slightly vacant expression on his face as he stares out of the window whilst eating a burrito. He was an idiot. But perhaps we needed more idiots in this world. I wished Jim Bischotti good luck as I left, hoping that he would continue to search for missing pets for the rest of his life.

Anniversary

9/11. Never forget. How could we, it happens every year? Yet the incident in question, the terrorist attack on the world trade centre and the pentagon almost 12 years ago to this day, still haunts the cultural mindscape of America, their very own Dia de Muertos. As traumatic as going on a family day out and watching your father be savagely beaten by a vagrant, the West was shocked to a standstill all those years ago. Can we help but feel anything other than guilt as we wake up each morning wondering if there would be any news as big as a terrorist attack on symbolic buildings in America? And for all those people that died in the towers, and all the people that received fatal doses of carcinogenic dust, and all the people that died in the ongoing wars, I can't help but feel as if somehow I cannot fully comprehend the nature of the attack and it's butterfly effect into the new century. Every generation has a defining moment on which morals can be projected in some way. From the Axis and Ally war from 39-44 to the counter-culture movement and Vietnam battles of the sixties, the World Trade Centre attack is the monolith of destruction needed for this generations anguish. Yet what is it's opposite? Good and evil, peace and war, terrorism and? I hit the streets to find out.

It is a patriotic day in Los Angeles. Everywhere you go the president delivers memorial speeches through high definition televisions, trucks drive past honking the star spangled banner. I see an entire family decked out in stars and stripes, marching down the road with dour grins on their faces as they wave miniature flags in pudgy white fists. A fat drunk sits outside a bar constantly shouting 'America! America!' until he is hoarse. Attractive girls look up to the sky with tears in their eyes, the touching moment caught by amateur photographers eager to document their questionable sadness. Others act normally as if the memorial day somehow doesn't affect them, yet I can read in the minuscule movements of their bodies that they will go home later and ask each other 'Where were you twelve years ago?'. I take a taxi to Longbeach.

My driver's a heavy set ex-pugilist with a baseball cap on back to front, his white t-shirt sticks to his back with a mixture of sweat and cheap aftershave.
“We will not negotiate with terrorists.” I say, doing an impression of George W. Bush.
“What was that pal?”
“We can not misunderestimate the entire power of the Iraqi people.” I continue my shpiel.
“Oh yeah, Bush.” he says.
“What do you think about the murder of Osama Bin Laden?” I ask, breaking character for a moment.
“Murder? I'm glad they killed the towel head.”
“Yeah, they should just nuke the entire middle east, right? I mean, why not?”
“Exactly pal. America is number one.” he says. I start to laugh and set fire to the seat next to me before clambering out of the window. I'm unsure where I am exactly, but can see the Pacific isn't too far away so begin to walk, admiring the pageantry all around me. Stars and stripes, eagles, the world trade centre, even a few religious icons all flutter in the wind. Car horns continue to honk away now and then, a citywide brass band to play the dirge for the deaths which occurred last decade. The sun is too warm, the noises too loud, the toxic street smells too pungent. I swallow vomit and duck into a bar, hoping for some semblance of peace.

The mood in the bar is jovial, people making toasts regularly whilst the news plays on television screens dotted around. John Kerry continues to make his plea for an invasion of Syria. I hand the barman a ten dollar bill and buy a drink for the woman standing next to me.
“What is the opposite of terrorism?” I ask her.
“Freedom?”
“Freedom includes the freedom to commit terror.”
“But terror like, squashes freedom.”
“You know they treat arachnophobics by showing them spiders? Through becoming desensitised to their own feelings of dread, they become free.”
“What?”
“Have you seen Monkey Shines: An Experiment In Fear?”
“No.”
“Well it doesn't matter then.” I say, raising my drink. “Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light...” I begin to sing. Gradually more and more people join me in singing the anthem. People out on the street stop what they're doing and all face some unseen point, singing. Workers stop what they're doing and put a hand over their heart. An old man stands by his grandson and both sing. A soldier in a distant country sings quietly to himself. The song finally finishes and I leave, the bitter taste of other people's tears sting my mouth like bile.

I am stood at the beach, gazing at the waves. I am wearing more clothes than anyone else on the beach, the sweat drips off me in rivers and stains the sand black around my feet. What was it about America, particularly Los Angeles and New York, that people got so emotional about? I expected it from Americans, yet the terrorist attacks themselves were quite American in scope. When fighting Americans one should be careful not to become American themselves. I wondered what the Truthers were doing today. Probably sifting through imagined rubble, rewatching youtube videos, jacking off into each other's faces. It was funny how much they believed in the power of their country.
“9/11 was faked!” I shout at a man flying a kite. “And the government was responsible for everything that has ever happened to this country. The world trade centre was rigged with twenty parcels of C4. The pentagon was attacked by an experimental rocket launched from the pentagon. The government are recording everything I am thinking and broadcasting it through commercials.” I babble. Nobody turned around. Nobody cared. I built two towers out of sand and threw paper aeroplanes at them until they collapsed.
“Hey buddy, show a little respect.” says a passer-by.
“Chillax bro. Is this any less respectful than war?” I say, spitting a blob of phlegm down at my feet. It is marbled with blood. A shivering wisp of a man emerges from the sand.
“I'm not disputing that, but you are just as bad as those people. The victims of any violence are still victims regardless of any action that takes place afterwards, it doesn't matter if you view those actions as justified, tasteless, cruel or necessary. Why not treat them with the respect they deserve?”
“I'm not making fun of the victims, rather the reaction.” I say, making another paper aeroplane.
“But who are you to say if a reaction is good or bad? Who are you to-” he begins. I throw the paper aeroplane as hard as I can at his head, puncturing his eyeball.
“All there is is blackness.” I say, before walking back towards the city.