Owner: The Boy Who Could But Didn't URL:http://benleto.com/blog Join Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:26:49 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: The literary struggle of a lazy part-time genius. Site statistics:Click here
The Sound of Buzzing 2007-07-24 00:28:47 Three wasps. Three.
They were waiting for me when I went back to my room. Earlier I'd been sitting working in the front room when one flew in through the window and started buzzing angrily around the lamp. It took all of my courage to approach it, stick a glass over it and take it outside. I hate killing things. Detest it in fact. Almost as much as I detest wasps.
But there were three in my room. Which is half the size.
What was somehow more unnerving was that they weren't flying around most of the time. They were crawling quite casually (if there is indeed a nonchalance to how wasps move) over my bookcase near the door. First I thought there was one, having heard it buzzing as I went to shut the window, and retrieved my recently commended wasp-catcher beaker and newspaper to snare it back outside. Then, as I crept closer to it with the glass upturned, I heard another flitting irritably around the inside of my lampshade. And I ran away. I think there was even a small degree of gi Read more:Sound
Text message from wrong number 2007-07-22 17:19:00 Mum do u know what i can take for runny stools? It's really bad and i've got a sore bum.
Owed 2007-07-22 15:23:00 Last Thursday was another one of those bipolar sort of days I'm now starting to get used to. AC/DC Thursday, where life is nothing but an alternating current of opportunities and chance, and you're just an electron at the whim of whichever way the flow of things moves you. But this has nothing to do with brain chemistry. This isn't the familiar 'buzzing in your head, waking up in bed with someone you'd rather shoot, walking down the road against hard and cold molecules pushing against your every step' sort of thing. This is the world itself gone cyclothymic. And you can tell by the weather. Thursday started with the usual way all my days have started recently.
Blind panic. Terror.
There were the usual three, maybe five seconds of insidious bliss between waking from a fitful sleep in the cuddly warmth of my own bed, and then the sledgehammer on my chest as I remember. As it all comes back to me with the heaviest heartbeat I've ever felt. As my heart beats faster and faster and
Mercury well and truly back in retrograde 2007-06-22 09:42:38 For sale: One burnt out type 3 novelist: Leto model. No longer remotely top of the range but these models are proving increasingly popular with collectors, and is still just about functional at benchmark level. Details below.
HARDWARE:
Base unit: Mesomorphic with interchangeable trichological fascias.
Memory: About 512k.
Respiratory capacity: Can push a marble up a slight incline in under three hours.
Hepatic status: Dangerously exciting. (Current bidders include Sarsons and The Fat Duck. Eugene Victor Tooms politely declined to make an offer on account of having given up junk food).
Memory: About 5... 12... something.
Battery status: Poor. Unable to function for extended periods without external support.
FIRMWARE AND ADDITIONAL DETAILS:
Compatibility with other models: Motherboard completely burnt out. Currently held together with motheaten nostalgia and fuzzy feelgood scenes from arthouse films. Adaptive flirtation coprocessors (hardly used).
Interface: Built in sarcasm. WAR Read more:Mercury
, truly
And the space between the seconds 2007-08-08 20:19:50 When I first read the following it profoundly affected me.
There are times, such as now, when I still pick it up and read it, over and over. It's surely one of the most bleak and horrific letters ever written. But why do the words bring a sort of comfort, albeit damp and gnawing? Maybe comfort is the wrong word.
Perhaps it's simply the frustration, the hopelessness, and yet the indefatigable effort to do something about it, even if it is ominously final and fatal. Perhaps it's the familiarity of each line, bleak and plain though they may be, and their struggle to give form and expression to a mind that has become incapable of it. Perhaps it's simply because in her attempt to explain her hopelessness, the very act of writing it is a sort of manifestation of hope.
Putting order to chaos is, fundamentally, a very human endeavour. Yet all human endeavour can only come to one thing. That's the tragedy of it all, and the brilliance at the same time, because every day is a stance
The Literary Slushpile Literally Beckons 2007-08-12 12:47:18 I'm clearly a proper writer now.
Having so far totted up two whole rejection letters in as many months (with another six no doubt on the way after tomorrow's trip to the post office) I am now receiving what appears to be personally targeted spam. Twice in fact.
Aside from the tiny oversight that I don't actually live in the US (though I did once enjoy a very pleasant breakfast there), my Wotalotov Detector started sounding when I looked up the sender's domain and found only a parking page. In Spanish. I then looked up the link that was subtly suggested throughout the email (actually it was about as subtle as a BNP Party Political Broadcast) and was naturally astounded to discover there was no contact address, phone number or even email offered. Anywhere. Just a lot of very encouraging suggestions to part with $125 for their excellent service.
A quick Google revealed this from an apparently similarly minded cynic. But scroll down and you receive a post singing its praises. More c Read more:Literary
Only in Japan 2007-08-14 09:36:50 Or so they say. I remember Roger Mellie inventing one of these years ago on Tomorrow's World. If you're a bit perplexed as to what this is, then it does become more obvious the further down you scroll.
My only question is, as usual, why? Why? Is this for the congenitally lazy or the impossibly busy? Either way I'll add it to my list of reasons for why I remain eternally perplexed by self-loving rich wankers. Read more:Japan
My London Face 2007-08-30 07:56:21
Back only five minutes, I kick over another mound without realising, trampling the crazy paving of the undone. The Road to Hell. The half-finished, half-started journal entries and half-read books. Unfinished chapters and half eaten plates of food; plates and chapters staling together in the gardenshed air. This is London, where I could just as easily have kicked over an old woman. I stare at thy which has not been done, and my bed like a whore on tap perched despotically above it all. Slow sad breath.
This is a war.
It all looks exactly like the peoplechaos I encountered when I stepped off the train. An Asti bubble bursting into the bigger bubble of the surface. The world. Broken bubbles puffing air at the universe. London is more anonymous than ever.
People scream across its paving with silent heavy footsteps. Not Tom, Dick, Harry or Harriet. Just people. Just Tomdickandharry. A sea where everyone is sludged together. A boiling pot of coffee, custard, beef, liquorice, bean spro
Shinbo 2007-09-18 17:39:16 Applied to go on the dole today. Why not? I either hear nothing back from recruitment agencies at all, or get a rejection email on the same day. It's not like I'm not trying, you know. I just have 'not enough experience'. Not enough. Experience. Did you see the bit in my CV and my covering letter? The bit where I indicated quite clearly how much experience I had that was relevant to the job? How much more experience does one need to answer a telephone? Do you know where I could purchase some experience as I seem unable to get any without any.
Remains to be seen if the dole application will even be processed. The small print (was very small) on their website said that you can only use a Windows computer and Internet Explorer to fill in the forms. Ludicrous. Lazy programming. No excuse. Bloody minded - filled it out anyway. It was either that or not do it at all. At all. Because I'm going agoraphobic. It's a choice. I haven't left the flat in five days now. Why should I? Where co
Aether 2007-09-17 07:15:45 Sit in space and stare into terror. Is this it? Is this as good as it gets? Blank lifeless faces stare back at me from the order that surrounds, wordless mouths pulled into self-conscious smiles. What is it they're saying that I am not? What is it I'm saying that they are not? I used to have a brain. Now I just have grey sludge leached out by sweetness into grey dishwater, grey bathwater. Grey, grey, grey and they see it as colours. Come splash around in my grey colour, I'm just like you. You're nothing like me. No, I'm nothing like you, so I'll cut you - let's take another colour, bright red this time. It's another grey day and the cold is creeping under the door, through the window, clutching my knuckles that clutch my knees and grasping my elbows in its firm icy clasp. Winter is coming, and what have you saved? Air. So clutch your precious nothing and sit tight. Sit in space and stare into terror. Into terror. Into terror. This is it. This is all it is. There is nothing else
Epitaph or epithet? 2007-09-15 19:41:27 JOB
not writing
computer
rubbish friends
Just found the above sitting in the drafts folder of my Gmail account, written just under a year ago. This is either a peculiar attempt at three syllable tanka, an horrific summation of my life (bar the friends bit, who are all priceless), or both.
Either way, it's depressing to know that much of what was apparently troubling me a year ago is still headlining at the chapel.
The Secret to a Starving Artist's Failure... 2007-09-12 10:31:21 Hi
Firstly please accept my apologies for not getting back to you all sooner, it has taken me a lot longer than I thought to read everything. I received a lot of excellent short stories and poems and I'm no expert but there wasn't a bad one amongst them. It has been a very hard decision and to everyone who's receiving this email today I regret to say you haven't been chosen. We decided in the end to go with just one writer who's work seemed to fit perfectly with Hiroshi's art. I mentioned before that this project may take a while to be fully realised but once it is finished, and if it's successful we hope to then look at another one.
Thank you all once again for your time and effort. Read more:Artist
, Starving
Little Gestures 2007-09-27 16:58:06 I'm going to tell you a secret.
It's a very big secret...
...
... Although I probably shouldn't.
You see, if someone tells you a secret, you shouldn't tell anyone else. Ever. Even if you're bursting to tell someone, as I am bursting to tell you now. The only reason I'm telling you is... well, I'll tell you that later too.
Okay, here's my secret.
I'm going to tell you about the Little-Gestures
. Have you heard of them before? I didn't think so. Hardly anyone has. But there's a reason for this. And I'm going to tell you that now too.
The Little-Gestures are a family of tiny tiny faeries who live in Highgate Wood in North London. No one knows how long they've lived there, but I would imagine it is a very long time. If you want to work out how long, take Wendy Richard and multiply her by twelve, then keep adding six for every time Jim Davidson isn't funny.
I did say it was a very long time.
Everyone knows faeries live in woods. A few even rent on Hampstead Heath. B
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