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God is in the details

When I worked at a geriatric hospital I heard about a senile out-patient who tried to cook frozen food on his electric bar fire. How his face must have glowed orange like a setting sun in the darkened flat, as he knelt on arthritic knees to reverentially proffer a single stiffened string bean to the softly groaning unit. How delicately formed that first bead of condensation on the tip of the bean, swelling and shining, and finally falling down onto the glowing coils, expiring in a single spark, the bean yielding nature's kiss to man's crude artifice, the droplet merging with the wires, a god in the machine.

Or maybe it was a Chicken Dippa. I dunno.

It pays to increase your word power #2

It pays to increase your word power. But you must prune the deadwood before the shrub of your vocabulary can grow.

"It goes without saying that...": Let your flimsy generalisations rot in paralepsis.

"It's what I like to call...": Don't pollute my impressionable mind with your radical world view.

"...do you know what I mean?": No, I do not know what you mean by making the blandest and least provocative statement I have ever heard, and then following it up with that phrase which is an echo of the universal and futile yearning for recognition and security, like blind Hamm calling out for Clov, or Edward Furlong or-hor-hordering Arnie not to go-ho, or a mental patient waiting for the therapist's indulgent nod. Don't talk like a Sphinx with Down's syndrome. Cut out all the rote, all the scripted, all the bits you know by heart but only feel by art. Do not droop on the crutches of your stock favourite intimations, like a dead, dusty Dali. Do not wear your gimmicks on your sleeve, like a Brownie. "I have my Pals with Idlewild Badge"; "I have my Daddy Touched Me Badge"; "I have my Rude Piercing Badge"; "I made a peg doll". Unpick all your badges and discover the bits in between (or even better, underneath). You'll be surprised at how popular you become. The bits in between often include listening, and asking non-rhetorical questions. Bo-oring!

kill your darlings

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

So spake Blake in his Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The Marriage of Heaven and Earth spawned Kronos, deity of Time. Kronos devoured his sons so that they could not dethrone him. Try it. Keep your friends close, your animus closer. Thorough mastication encourages good digestion(1). Boil and bin the bones that choke you so, and drink their salubrious stock.

You always think that Darling looks like a little baby in the mornings, don't you? Nurse unacted desires. Whatever should you do if someone would try and take Darling away from you? Follow the cricetid example(2). It will be an act of mercy. Look at Darling, curled up next to you like a little plucked quail. You chew Darling's ear off every day; why not go the whole hog? You flush expensive gin down your throat like the physic it is. On your birthday, you have your cake and eat it. You stoke it into your face like a force-feeding foie gras fowl. You spine-snap and skip to the end of your new book. You smoke your last fag long before you want it. No, do not kiss your baby Darling, your only love born from your only hate. Do not go gentle. The greatest pleasures are bornfrom conquered repugnances. Perform love's deepest sacrament. Fetch the cruet. Eat the cruel, to be kind(3). Kill your Darlings.

(1) Handbook for Nursery Nurses (Second Edition) Meering (1953)
(2) See Smokey's extended works on Infanticide, Incarceration and the Wheel of Life.
(3) Also Eat your Makeup (1968, John Waters)