#blognation - Chapter 12 done (Hitler Agonistes)

I've got it dn, I'll give you some feedback asap (though the content might be a tad esoteric for my American-educated sponge brain)!

This pleases me.

Knocked up another annotated chapter, mostly because I'm actively stuck rewriting the new shit.

docs.google.com/document/d/16rdN5pHJ0s9k_534vJuh6JpbnLz7bO54W_J5hghfKPw/edit?usp=sharing

BLARTISFRAT IV: THE QUEEF OF PISS

C8 redux: Post Mortem

Another rewrite. I think I'm getting closer to the edge now, I can see the shape the final draft of the chapter will take: improvements abound, I no longer hate the fucking thing.

Resolving the Briefcase Willie / Shitbag Billy character: as per the notes, I wasn't happy with the general aura of homophobia in the chapter. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with Prot being an irredeemable arsehole, it's entirely in character for him. But... Well, the attitude was starting to bleed through into the prose itself, it just felt super-saturated, everything was drenched in it to the detriment of the writing.

My initial instinct to wind it back (to restrict it to the Prot character – to have Gambit & his father possessed of a more charitable disposition) was only half right, but also felt somehow dishonest. If (god help me) the book is semi-autobiographical, then certain experiences and truths shouldn't be plastered over for fear of offence. Gambit's brother *was* possessed of a predatory disposition irl: that he was also gay ought to be moot.

The solution I came up with was to blend two irl people together; Keith was a prime candidate, because that cunt was absolutely indefensible.

I'm writing this offline, and will be posting it from work. so linking to the various shitshows that comprised the life of <REDACTED>'s Brother the fucking Gun Running Furry is currently beyond me: if there's interest, I'll post the receipts later. But this guy was a fucking crazy, bad, stupid mother-fucker. A dipshit of the highest order. Here, for posterity, is the life story of a fucking retard.

<REDACTED>'s brother (I can't keep calling him that... let's call him Furfag) was born under an inauspicious star to parents of questionable quality. The father was a school principle (and Furfag attended that self-same school – I imagine that might fuck you up a bit) and the mother was an alcoholic. Like, a weapons grade alcoholic: I have suspicions about some of the kids having fetal alcohol syndrome. Vodka for breakfast, that kind of alcoholic.

The father died young: he was one of those Scots who never got the memo about gingers avoiding the sun, and so spent the school holidays decked out in speedos in the back garden, turning his skin lobster-red beneath the rays of an unkind sun. He basically managed to speedrun skin cancer and died shortly thereafter.

This turned an already unstable family situation into a complete shitshow.

Brother #1 ran away, got married, and managed to live a life that wasn't a complete catastrophe. Brother #3 stayed home to look after his vodka-soaked mother, whilst simultaneously developing his own massive fucking alcohol habit. And Furfag...

Well, fucksake. It's not often someone I know fucks up hard enough to make the international press, but here we are.

We don't need to get into the ins-and-outs of furries here: I have already made my opinions on those members of the furry fandom abundantly (link) fucking clear (link). But this guy took it to the next level: after spending the first half of his life terminally online developing a series of increasingly implausible fictional personas, he took it to the next level entirely. Keith (fuck it, that was his name) saw the writing on the wall when his father died and his mother went A1 batshit insane and decided to fucking bail. But where does a young gay furfag with no money, no marketable skills (save sucking dog cock) and no education *go* to escape insanity and responsibility?

Easy. He goes to fucking Canada.

There are a few theories as to how he managed to become a citizen of that august nation state: the first is that Canada is just Israel for furfags, it's like the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion: you automatically get a green card in the post the first time you fuck the family Labrador.

The second (and most likely, imho) theory is that he met a woman online and the two set out to defraud each other. Keith befriended and seduced the woman online in order to get his citizenship: lavender marriage, &c. And the young innocent woman in question neglected to inform Keith that she was fucking nearly sixty years old.

El o El. Internet dating, am i rite?

Of course, there is a third option, and Keith just wasn't really all that fussy. G-milf and green card as a package deal: the fact that she lived on a farm was probably just icing on the cake.

And off the young furfag fucks into the wild wide world: what happened next we've pieced together from eye witnesses, RIP Keith threads on various furry forums, police reports, and the international fucking media. Keith never bothered to speak to his family in Scotland again, so that's what we've got.


1) Lies
Turns out young Keith was a very, very accomplished liar. As in, I doubt there was a sentence he uttered from the age of 13 onwards that wasn't at least 10% bullshit. Turns out that, once you've convinced yourself that you are a fox trapped inside a man's body, lying about everything else is piss easy.

The old argument: you can use the internet to escape from an unhappy life, and this is just harmless escapism. The truth: using IRC & ICQ to pretend to be somebody or something you are not is a very, *very* bad idea. Today, you are a fox-souled teenager in a piss-smelling ocean of fox-souled teenagers. Tomorrow, you are a Scottish veterinarian specializing in foxes, because that's more interesting. And then horses. Oh, god, the horses. Then, two years later, you tell someone you are a vet and they assume you mean Army Vet, and you just say "fuck it" and run with it.

Never underestimate the ability of stupid people to believe utter fucking bullshit. And never underestimate the ability of stupid people to believe their own fucking bullshit either.


2) Drugs
Addiction ran in Keith's family: his mother, on more than one occasion, got drunk on vodka at six in the morning and decided to go shopping for more vodka. She neglected to put any clothes on beforehand.

Honestly, considering what brother #3 went through, it's a miracle he's anything even close to adjusted. We can, perhaps, forgive his bi-monthly Jägermeister binge as a misguided attempt to bleach that shit clean out of his brain.

Not that Keith was around to see his mother waiting outside the Co-op with her minge out, of course; he was in Canada with his granny waifu and a stable of increasingly anxious horses. Granny Canada was obviously retired, and Keith had no fucking intention of getting a job either – as far as I know, he never had an actual paying job in his entire life. What he * have was a copy of photoshop he used to make a series of false veterinarian diplomas, and IRC contacts, and a toe dipped into the now growing dark web.

I imagine it started with selling weed on the Silk Road, or trafficking horseporn to other degenerates on IRC. Meth was booming amongst the gay clubs at the time as well, and Keith was very much a patron. Getting buttfucked wearing fox ears is great; getting buttfucked wearing fox ears whilst simultaneously high on meth is even better.

A normal man might have been satisfied with that; Keith, however, was no normal man. He was starting to believe his own bullshit; he has now moved from Army Vet to fucking Special Agent.

At some point he ran weed across the American border. Emboldened by how easy that was, Special Agent Keith fucking Bond began to dream bigger.

And it was at this point (we assume) that he met some very shady people.


3) Guns
Like most dumb motherfuckers with repressed insecurities about their massive mental retardation, Keith also got into guns at some point. Like, seriously into guns: whatever junky methlab he was running out next to the stables needed protection, after all. The problem with Canada is that the gun laws are surprisingly strict, at least compared to America, where you can buy a howitzer over the counter in walmart.

The solution to this was to just run a reverse smuggling gayop. Even better, Keith now knows some uniquely shady individuals who are buying his drugs: he doesn't even need to use *money*, Keith can buy a machine gun using *meth*.

And then the meth money runs out. With no meth to protect, Keith sells his machine gun, and realizes that machine gun money is much better than meth money.


4) Money
At this point Keith is an International Man of Mystery: never underestimate the ability of stupid people to hear a Scottish accent and assume you are distantly related to Sean fucking Connery, and not just a junky from a shithole 16 miles outside of Dundee. He's running guns and drugs and fuck knows what else all over the fucking place, meeting people IRL that he had only previously known online in his vet / Vet / dog mongler / drug smuggler persona. The motherfucker developed a *system*, for christsake: still terminally cheap, he would set up *appointments* with his online acquaintances rather than rent hotels. At least two Memorials turned up on furfag forums that were convinced that Keith was fucking engaged to them.

So we can add bigamist to his growing list of sins.

And then Brother #1 got a message about Keith for the first time in over ten years: The American authorities had confirmed that Keith was dead.


5) Finale
His murder is still unsolved. Someone shot him in the head and dumped his corpse in the ocean. The most likely scenario is that Keith was running guns into the Mexico and picking up drugs for the return trip and he rather severely underestimated the willingness of the cartels to put up with Special Agent Keith's usual bullshit. Perhaps his wife had gotten tired with his unrepentant bum-banditry; perhaps he tried to fuck Pablo Escobar's favorite zebra. We will never know, and regardless, Keith is dead.

And that's the end of it. No one normal gave much of a fuck about a dead junky mule; I don't think the brothers even bothered to tell their mother, she was so out of it. The whole thing was a mystery that got grim fast when you looked into it, and then when furfags started contacting the two brothers to find out what happened to their dearly beloved boyfriend / fiancé / crack dealer, things moved from fucking grim to absolutely WTF hysterical and grotesque in short order. I've heard of people living two lives: Keith was living at least six of them simultaneously, and now the dumb motherfucker isn't living any at all.

Rest in piss.


* * *

Well, I intended to write about the process / ideas behind fixing C8 tonight, but instead I ended up writing a eulogy for a fucked up retard. It's something I've been meaning to get out of my system for a while now – and I've doubtless forgotten more about the bastard than I've remembered – but yeah, that's the story of Keith the Drug & Gun Running Furry.

Integrating even a tenth of this into the character of Shitbag Billy is really beyond the scope of the novel; christ, the furthest it's gonna go is a godsdamned fursuit, and that's more of a Shining homage than anything else. But that was who the person who inspired and usurped the original version of Briefcase Willie in the novel was; like pretty much everyone else I've ever written about, I doubt he would thank me for my efforts.

Also why is my spellcheck broken fucksake

working on more tarot cards.

rough sketch potatophone shot #1



rough ink shot #2



Now it goes into macromedia freehand to vectorize it / make the tits the same fucking size / fix that goofy fucking face / embiggen the bottle of jack..

Chapter 9 complete. It's a short one... I split the original draft in half because corresponding the Hanged Man card with 10" Dave / Dante's wood of suicide is a no-brainer.

Onwards. If I can close up the year by finishing chapter 10 then that would be something of a win.

C1 annotated = drive.google.com/file/d/1NUU1Px6Tr0msFr4nG9wesen00Jwu1U55/view?usp=sharing

collated 12/12/23 = drive.google.com/file/d/117T8DZR-7Uoiq5k1OqqA3iBvsgkfAFhw/view?usp=sharing

Turns out that deciding to rewrite C10 in verse was a mistake and I regret it entirely.

First draft, have got halfway thru the damn thing before running out of fucking brain...


...womb / tomb dark / lark vodka / ha-ha...

Aye. This fucking ship of fools
sore piloted by Rhombus. Fuelled
by Scottish Special: brought to you
by Brewers Caledonia.
Beloved, accidental muse, and
intellectual / contrafoetal / intraceptual damager.

Let us join them, you and I,
as overhead the clouds peel wide
as buttons – fumbl'd onna alkie's spavver.
Let's go lap 'round cemeteries,
'round roads, and roads 'round council schemes;
see schemies scheme by town latrines
and Spraffer spraff.
See Cocky mutter, Rhombus dream
and hear God laugh.

...uppers / downers petroleum / vallium huff / puff munch / crunch...

Behind F. Rhombus: Fischer, Arson
(progeny of local parson).
Larboard9: Andrew-James' station,
Cocky wedged between said persons.
Navigating, Spraffer sits
and talks inconsequential shit
and talks and talks for hours
and hours and talks and talks
for hours; it soon
abrades abscesses into the brain.
But suffer through this psychic erosion,
for from this lap
is booze apportioned.

...watch the empties rise and fall / ignoring poor McGonagall...

Aye. Twenty-four were number'd tins
afore predation winnow'd them
and left the crate a hollow'd thing,
Scarce worth our time.
Harrow'd, hear the harrow'd ring:
—Time, gentlemen, time... (running empty?)

...rhyme / time tick / tock...

Time, gentleman time.
If we had world enough, and time...
To order all, and set to rights
the world – enough! – but... lacking time...

...pissed / mist drunkenness / unconsciousness...

To TESCO, then; our future set,
our destination: CIDER. Wrecked
in bodies, minds, on distant shores,
our souls and clothes and hands well soiled,..

...boast / toast beers / cheers...

So here's to TESCO, in Blairgowrie:
onion fraud, and Robbing Hoodies
looting shops of all they see;
to thieves and insobriety.
Here's to us – for who's like we?
Precious, damméd few. And so, we
payeth not, and booze for free:
—To thieves and insobriety!

...breathe / teethe tipple / nipple lay / pray...

We five within the cabin
have the foresight to restrain;
for blessed are those who belt themselves
lest from the road we stray.
But in the boot there languishes
the midget Ten Inch Dave:
the sixth of us who fled the shed
when Justice there was laid.

...head / dead stars / dark descend / amen...

The midget nestles in the dark; he gnaws upon a teat.
He swallows vodka – Vladivar's – and chews up ketamine.
In truth the dwarf-chile doesn't mind his time within the trunk:
This banishment to sightless realm – this hellish petrol sump.
Imagine then it serves him for an isolation tank:
A haven where one doesn't suffer jibes or glib remarks;
Away from Spraffer waxing forth on dwarves or lack of height,
And verbalizing ordinate coordinates of shite.
With bendzedrine and vodka darkened trunks can be endured:
Hallucinations better company than fucking Stewart.

...route / boot throttle / bottle...

We power down the Welton Road
but suddenly, F. Rhombus roars:

—AE FUCKKIN CAPERCAILLIE!

...and sets the universe to rights.

The bird explodes in chunks of gore
and feathers fly and block the road
from sight. Window wipers
Rhombus turns – clears away
the blasted foul; not before
disaster hoves25 and Arson's
pants are filled with shite.

...uppers / downers flying / falling flood / blood bloom / doom...

Now hurling along
As a force irresistible
Into the back of the object immovable
Bonnet impacts and explodes into shrapnel
As shattering glass shreds up faces and hands.

Seatbelts contract crushing ribcages whole
And the sudden whiplash fractures vertebrae bones
With an audible crack
from the base of your skull to the tips of your toes.

Vision grey-black from the collapse of arteries
Retina detached in the aqueous jelly
As blood in your ears hammers constantly constantly constantly –

So we belong dead. We ought to be dead.
And yet. Somehow. We live.
—Blessye thankit and Jesus be thankit and
God be ye thankit!
…
(Jesus be fuckit
furgot Ten Inch Dave)

...watch these bodies rise and fall / ignoring poor McGonagall...

Exiting, the men congeal
Around the mangled vehicle.
In trepidation, none approach
Unless by inches; inching closer,
'Til upon the metal frame
Reflections warped and half-insane
As horror turns to mangled laughing
Turned again to horror, passing
Fingers over eyes, we shun
Dread consequences...

For an emotion, dread suffices.
And for the occasion, dread will suffice.

...bang / bang bang / bang bang / bang...

Rhombus thumbs the lock: the frantic
hammering from deep within has slowed,
slowing; slowing down; it
slows unto a weak heart-beat.
Rhombus turns the lock: the boot flips
open, spewing noxious fumes into
our faces: toxic mix of
alcohol and petrol.

Chloroformed, we gasp, withdraw,
but not before our cortex stores
the sorry sight that lies within:
a midget mangled
on his side, curled foetally,
he's writhing, choking, choking, writhing
breathless retching eyeballs bulging wide.

His hands are wrapped around
his throat – rigid midget fingers –
Strangling, he chokes himself,
and I see blood between his fingers spill.

I see blood – thick clots of blood –
I watch the blood from digits oozing.
Words he chokes through slitted throat
amidst the shattered glass.
His croaking fades; his eyes turn glazed
as lifeblood drips away.
Red drizzles down beneath his palm
for fucked is Ten Inch Dave.

Chaos erupts upon the Welton Road.

Spraffer screaming: —Ambulance!
as Rhombus foot-to-foot does dance,
and Andrew-James and Noodle Chef
claw at each other:
—Get more pressure!
Pressurize the wound.

Rhombus wails, his thoughts consumed:
appliances soon summoned – blame
will once again
be heaped upon his coiffured head,
of this he's certain.

Ambulance alas begets constabulary;
constabulary alas begets judiciary:
judiciary begets Barlinnie...

and a century spent at her Majesty's pleasure:
sewing mail bags; slops aplenty;
getting raped by all and sundry;
arsehole hanging down in tatters.
Bumhole broken, prolapsed utterly,
penduluming between knees like a shopping bag
with the arse ripped out
that's spilling tins and groceries...

He ignores the plight of Ten Inch Dave,
favouring his skin to save:
Rhombus dives head-first into the ruins
of the Rhomulan.
Kleptomaniac from pocket pulls
a handkerchief, embroidered: DAVE:
des-per-ately wiping steering clean
of Rhombus DNA.

Meanwhile Dave is hoisted from the boot
and lain to rest on the embankment:
rigor dolor head-to-foot,
alive, but only slightly.

Broken words, he gutters
out; words, forced from choking lungs.
Spat through teeth that gape and chatter,
stainéd red, the violent taste of copper.

...pray / day save / Dave God / Dave God / save help / help help / Dave...
...and would we promise please tell parents love them..

Spraffer has ceased the flapping of arms,
the screaming of:
—Help! at no-one in particular.
Now, he walks like those infused anew
with purpose bloody-minded.

Belatedly, he pulls his Nokia out his trouser pocket.
Quaking digits – triple nine - he thumbs
and tolerates the queue
quite patiently. Until...

(page break?)

...finally, an operator answers.

—Ambulance, so sayeth Spraffer.
—Accident, he so informs her.
—Slitted throat; we're on the Welton Road...
...maybe a half-a-mile from TESCO?
No – fucksake! – he doesn’t know
if we are east or west of TESCO...
Please, you have to save
The man called Ten Inch Dave...

...east / west cold / crow fly / die...

Come. Bend your head to his,
and listen to those rattling breaths
and hear the words of his confession
body racked across the seven
sins: wanton, careless self-destruction,
alcohol and drug addiction,
unloved, save for masturbation;
impotent, save in aggression.
And inclined in pride
to verbalize in rhymes,
but use unmetered stanzas and thesaurus.
Uncounted are his crimes...

...sleep / keep wake / take...

Remove the lace from his left bootie.
Sting it up between your hands in preparation:
sighing soothing consolations,
wrestling with the tourniquet...

...stand across the poor man now,
eyes stare in horror abject,
let's garotte his head
clean off his fucking poetasterous shoulders.

There follows a brief argument between Spraffer
and the NHS 24, re: the wisdom of tying
a bootlace around someone’s neck
in order to staunch the flow of blood.

Medical training: non-existent.
Andrew-James, alas, insistent,
has seen injuries consistent;
Black Hawk Down
by Ridley Scott.
Cognizant a dirty finger rudely thrust
into a spewing artery
may dam the worst,
and cease the endless haemorrhaging
of systems circulatory.

...nee / naw nee / naw nee / naw...

Working away on chapter 11. Also, rough draft of the Temperance Card.

Yes