rUminaTiOns of A ConstiPatEd cOW

my apologies to any cow lovers out there who are insulted by the title. i do not intend to besmirch the reputation, glory and exaltedness of cows. cows are co0o0o0ol. i just named this the way i did coz, well, i kinda couldn't think of anything else. the intensity of thought that goes into the near-fugue cows enter when they ruminate is something i've always found enthralling in its entirety. if people would sit (or stand, or lie down, or kneel, or walk, or run - though the last two could cause some degree of discomfort - or hang upside down from monkey-bars - this one as well i reckon - and, well, i think you get it by now even if you don't have a brain or yours went on strike or melted due to the intense radiation caused by being on your mobile phone all the bleeping while or quit...or if you had a lobotomy for that matter. i wonder if you'd actually be reading this if you had a lobotomy. even if you were reading this i wonder if you could comprehend anything. interesting...i think i'll have to research the effects of lobotomies on ppl. o i'll save that for later, so lets close this thing, it seems to be getting too damn long and i'm not exactly helping by typing in all this :D) and do that. cough up food of various degrees of undigestedness and chew on it all the while just thinkin of stuff. what stuff? you know, just stuff, stuff that matters to us as a whole. who knows? maybe cows could be thinking of stuff like quantum mechanics and gateways to parallel dimensions or the cure for aids or metaphysics or god or meybe even the ultimate question ('o0o what does this button do?!?'). i dare not speak of it, that's why i put it in parantheses. so some ppl who might actually read this will think that its the editor who has shoved it in there to serve his own self-centred, heartless, incomprehensive nature.

so i was just sitting there and doing this very thing, ruminating, minus the actual coughing up of stuff. my stomach was comparable to the fuel tank indicator being all the way upto full on the negative side. so there i was, just sitting there, feeling sleepy and ruminating. just then the worst thing that could happen did happen. a face that to me was eerily reminiscent of ye olde tapioca pudding walked in and demanded our absolute attention. the rest was a blur, an absolute blur. no, i did not give it my attention, duh! i was ruminating - and i think something actually did come up from my tummy tum tum heh heh...yea you got that bleeping-a right. it was that damn sickening.

o woe is me to have to have gone through that. the cow got me through it...i was in the same dire need as an extremely constipated cow who, unfortunately, has nothing to think about and whose sphincter needed some form of relief (cows can't cough up stuff when they have nothing to think about, sadly). fortunately, like the all-knowing, mighty and eternal cow, something did come to my mind to make me cough up something and finally get to think of something else...

all hail the cow!!! (constipated or not)

bleeeeee....ad infinitum...eeeeeep

prologue

why doncha just bleepin look up the word bleep eh?!? ;)



post-prologue:

yea, THAT was the prologue...



whatever:

ok this is not supposed to make sense. this does not have a point. if you're lookin for one, here's a hint - or a coupla dozen - split, amscray, vamoose, gitouttahea, exit: stage left (ah i'm gettin tired o this). o0ok so where was i? nowhere i guess...now let me start. ahem! after a long, hard, tortuous, exhausting, ultra-boring, nonsensical, fucked up - et. al - day, i got home and turned on my computer. expectation, numbness, anticipation, thirst, were some of the feelings that flooded through my um...eerily vacant cranium? yea that's it! (i digested my brain, by the way) there it was, i opened my gmail account - after drinkin some appy fizz, so i was technically no longer thirsty, i'm just stating this for the record :P.

then...

'bleeeeep! this can't be bleeping right!!! bleeping hell, what the bleeping bleep do these bleeping bleeps of bleeps think they're bleeping upto? why the bleeping hell does this have to bleeping happen to me? my poor poor bleeping inbox. oh, bleep! bleep you! bleep me! bleep the world! bleep bleep bleep bleepity bleep!!! waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah (bleep!) i want my bleeping bleep...'

ah, that felt so good. i exaggerated a little bit, of course, but i need to let it all out, don't i? yea, you understand, nice...ok so here is what BASICALLY happened. i checked my mail and was feelin quite happy when the 'spam' folder came into view. the number next to it read 39. i clean up my spam everyday. i opened it, and it was the usual. viagra, vixagra, and almost each and every single pill related to erectile dysfunction and/or libido enhancement (or 'not having a good erecxsction' as those bleeping bleeps of bleeps prefer to bleeping put it). after the day that i had just had, this wasn't very amusing, as you can very well figure out. what's that? you don't understand? want me to flood YOUR inbox with these messages? BLEEP!!! was chatting and scrapping a few ppls later. i checked my inbox again and lo! and bleeping behold! 3 new spam messages...

let's hypothesize now...if i had actually bought and consumed that much whatever-you-may-call-it, i would probably have populated a few billion galaxies and my libido would have drawn every living being in existence closer to me and the universe boundary would probably look like my face. o0o now there's a scary thought. it'd prolly have imploded then and there :D

heh heh, all joking and hypotheses aside, its really really really irritating innit? ppl are eVil! darn, who am i to complain about that? so am i...oh bleep! why can't they bleeping send me ads about computer games or even bleeping toilet seats. but not bleeping this...anything but bleeping this...i'm feelin so bored, and evil, and my spam folder is empty for the first time in aeons. i think i'll start forwarding the messages i do get from now on >:)



epilogue:

PSYCH!!!

oh bleep! another one!!! bleep bleep bleep bleep bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!

it!

this is prolly something i should've done a long time ago...doin it now anyways. its something i wrote and got published in quirk. kinda one of the high points of my life coz its the first thing i wrote that got published :) here goes nothing. i titled it

Marty

It was raining in the decrepit tenements of nowhere. The staccato tap of raindrops on a rusted tin roof permeated the air, already saturated with a blatant sense of wrong. A candle flickered, casting occasional light on the unholy darkness, momentarily revealing a figure ensconced within it...a face, devoid of emotion, eyes hinting at an eerie malevolence, revealing zilch.

Marty was back...Marty, his pal, his teacher, his lover; Marty, who he hadn’t seen since his childhood days. It felt so damn good, after all these years.

‘Where ya bin, Mart?’

‘Bin around, kid...bin around...’

Images buried long ago flickered into view. Memories long forgotten came back...Marty...He had been eight years old. He had a new dad. At last, a person he could count on; a person who he could call his friend, even if he did smell funny at times. Sure, Marty was there all the time. But he was scared of him, plenty scared. He was afraid Marty might hurt him. Mama had told him so, and he believed mama. He loved mama more than anything else in the whole world. And mama seemed to fall down quite a lot after she met dad. Maybe love did this to you.

‘Come here, weirdo...’

‘Leave him alone’

‘You stay out of this, bitch!’

‘No, you can’t do this to him’

‘Screw you, you can’t tell me what I can or can’t do’

‘Get out of my house. Out, out, out!!!’

‘Why you...’

He had run away then. Mama wasn’t falling down, it was a lie. Dad smelled worse than ever now. He ran into the kitchen, and there was Marty. He turned away, afraid to look into those eyes, afraid of the leer that seemed to be on his face perpetually, teeth glinting in the light. He found his gaze being slowly riveted towards Marty. They were face to face. Amazingly, there was concern in those eyes. The wicked grimace seemed to be an understanding smile. At that moment, he fell in love. Marty was there. He would take care of him, as long as he was alive. He felt safer than he had ever felt before. He smiled back – he, who had, until that moment, never expressed any sort of emotion. For those few moments, he was beautiful.

‘Your dad again, huh?’

‘Yeah’

‘I’m sorry, dog’

‘...’

The silence had been shattered by screams of agony; and then, more silence. They had rushed into the room. She lay on the floor, bleeding, motionless, at his feet. Dad was taking a huge swig from a bottle. The smell...he turned towards her. His eyes said it all. Marty had stepped in. Mom would have died had it not been for Marty. He watched as Marty took care of business. Then, weak, he had rushed to his mom. She was unconscious.

‘Is she dead?’

‘No, she’s breathing...barely’

‘I can feel a pulse’

He had laid her on the sofa and called an ambulance. ‘She’s gonna be ok, son’ the doctors said, and he believed them. Doctors wouldn’t lie, they healed people. He went back home to get her something to eat. There was a lot of blood. He had cleaned up and then left.

Mom had been in the hospital for a week. When they got back home, Marty was nowhere to be seen. He had asked his mom about him. She said Marty had gone away to live with his family.

‘Will he be back, mom?’

‘No, I don’t think he will’

‘Why not?’

‘He’s happier living with his family’

He had gone up to his room and wept, not eating until it became painful. But it didn’t bring Marty back...

***

1984. Graduation day was around the corner. He was top of his class, as usual. He was walking towards his class, ignoring the outstretched legs in the hallway, ignoring the sneers and the mock-acting. This was nothing new. It happened every day of his miserable school life. ‘Vomit’ entered the classroom to loud, unconcealed imitations of someone puking. The teacher wasn’t in the class as yet; they wouldn’t dare do that while she was around. The hatred in the air was so thick it was like walking through tar. But he was used to it.

‘Hey shitface’

That was Brad, the most popular guy in college; but not because anybody liked him. Like isn’t a term you’d associate with a feeling towards a guy who was 6’4”, 290 pounds, and let you know it.

‘We got somethin’ to settle, man...c’mon guys...’escort’ vomit over here to the bathroom where we can get some privacy’

‘Stop it, Brad! I’m warning you...’

That was Helen, the most popular girl in college, the love of his life. She hadn’t looked twice at him before the day she first told Brad to leave him alone. He had smiled and thanked her. At that moment, they fell in love. He because he hadn’t imagined anyone would do such a thing; her because she had never seen anyone as beautiful as him, when he smiled.

***

He saw Marty again, in a bargain basement. Marty looked as though he had been through it all. He paid the bill. Together, they went back to what was left of his old home.

***

He and Helen were to be married the next day. He decided to drop by Helen’s place after work. He climbed up the stairs to her apartment. He took out his key and stopped.

‘Babe, you don’t want him, you want a real man.’

‘You’re drunk, Brad’

‘I’ve loved you ever since I first saw you. You know that’

‘This conversation is over, Brad. Now get out of my apartment before I call the police’

‘You bitch! If I can’t have you, I’ll make sure no one can’

THUD

He crashed through the door, too disoriented with rage. There she lay, bleeding, motionless. Brad was standing over her, barely, eyes glazed over. His knuckles hit solid bone just as Brad was about to turn around. He collapsed in a heap, with only the rise and fall of his chest to show he was alive, just about. He took him back to his house – to Marty. It was late when he got there. He dragged Brad’s body out of the car and took him to the kitchen. Some water would wake him...he kicked him in the face.

***

Brad woke up to blood filling his windpipe. Coughing and sputtering, he sat up, spraying blood all over the kitchen floor. He looked around him; he was in some sort of condemned building, looked like. He sat there, surrounded by detritus, trying to figure out where the hell he was, when he heard someone coming. He turned towards the footsteps and froze. It was him – he hadn’t even bothered to remember his name – and he had a kitchen knife in his hand, gleaming in the moonlight that filtered in through the rusted tin roof. He was talking to it, calling it Marty.

‘There he is, Marty...just as I said. You’ll take care of him, Marty? Sure, you go ahead and do that. You took care of dad, didn’t you? He never came back again. I didn’t thank you for that, Marty. Mom could’ve died if you weren’t there. I love you Marty. I’m glad I found you again. Now you can be my best man tomorrow, Marty. Isn’t that great?’

Brad was scared, shit scared, more so after hearing this bizarre dialogue. He was still talking to the knife; it was too low for him to hear. But his eyes said it all, glittering maliciously in the light of the candle. He was insane, and insane and a kitchen knife didn’t mix well – hell they didn’t mix at all. He had to get away, but he couldn’t. That knock on the head had seen to that. He did the only thing he could do...he prayed. He prayed that it wouldn’t be too painful. He prayed that he’d die quickly. One look at him told him otherwise. At that point he would have sold his soul to the devil to be somewhere else. Fool, the devil was already there, and he was in no mood to grant wishes.

He felt a white hot stab of pain in his back. Tears stung his eyes. He made to wipe them off, but he couldn’t move his hands. It had begun...he found his hands and feet being tied up.

‘Whatcha gonna do, Marty?’

His clothes were torn off him. Lightning flashed above. He could make out the faint patter of the first raindrops on the roof. A cold wind rattled through the building, making him conscious of his nudity.

The blade cut his ankle first, tearing through flesh and vein. ‘Marty’ was soaked in his blood. There was no pain then, amazingly. Nobody was there to hear the screams anyway. He would bleed to death in this anechoic shithole.

‘I wanna see the bone, Marty. I’ve never seen one before’

Then the pain struck him. He screamed like he had never screamed before, the blade cutting through tendons, exposing his ankle,. The veins on his neck were straining to break through his skin.

‘Can a knife scratch bone, Marty? ’

The screams turned into muted moans of sheer agony. The bone was wrenched out of its socket with a dull popping sound. Awareness struck him when the blade got to his knee. It was shoved in behind his kneecap, where it got stuck. It wouldn’t budge. Brad felt the knife being kicked out of his knee. He was beyond pain at that point. The moans kept growing in intensity. He could do nothing else. Then all was black.

***

It was done with. ’So that’s what a spleen looks like...EW...’ He stared down at Brad’s severed head, mouth twisted in a rictus of pain. Marty was sticking out of an eye-socket. He pulled him out; it barely required any effort. It was raining hard. The precipitation was a sort of baptism, cleansing Brad’s sins. God was with him. The blood, mixed with the rain water was starting to flow out through the doorway. Marty had blood all over him. He wiped him on Brad’s clothes. He performed the last rites. The candle had burned out long ago. The door was closed, slammed by the wind. He opened it and stepped out. He was smiling as he closed the door.

’C’mon, Marty, let’s go to your new home...’

bugger!

heh heh, i think i wanna remember this one. its a lil message session i had with a buddy on me mob late last night. it being a weekend and both of us being bored, well, you kin i guess...it all started with a message that read

"hi, where are u now?
-so many blank lines that the scroll bar was barely distinguishable as a dot-
if you replied to this message, you're a FOOL. send it to your friends and see how many of them reply...its fun, try it!!! (or something of that sort...i kinda guessed when i saw the scroll bar *grin!* its such an old trick na?)"

ok its kinda hard to go on without a name. since obscenely short codewords seem to be the norm, lets use a not-so-obscenely-short name. hm, on second thought, not-so-short will do >:D let's call him/her/it (muahahaha i'm lovin this. i hope he - damn! - doesn't read this tho :P) plum-pudding-face bananahead jelly-arse. i was just kidding about makin it short so lets just call him/her/it pbj (o0o i'm lovin this even more, i dunno why...i'm weird! - NO slang)

me: home...u?
-the usual amount of spaces *grin!*-
get a life, dude. who the hell do you think i am to fall for THIS?!? sheez!

pbj: FOOL!

me: you're mistaken, bro...scroll down and read MY message now *grin!*

pbj: -after a delay- yea i was replyin to your question down there...you asked who the hell i thought you were right (me think: clever i gotto admit)

me: heh heh i didn't even scroll down to the bottom of your message and you SO obviously did. who's the fool now?

pbj: -no reply- (me think: heh heh! lets bug him a bit *evil grin!*)

me: i'm insane dude, but i'm no fool

pbj: o yea, sorry

me: no probs bro...

pbj: you thought i actually let you win?!? fat chance. gotohell

me: nah, i was waiting to see what took you so long to reply *grin!*

pbj: don't you have anything to do?

me: not really...don't you?

pbj: i have to go find something to do. this is gonna drive me mad

me: yea my lil problem is contagious heh heh

me: hey, i've got an idea...why not chase cars on the highway? i do that all the time, though i wear my rabid clown suit. its fun, give it a shot...

pbj: please feed me poison...i wanna die...a couple more of messages like that last one would do as well

me: naw, i don't let ppl die that easily. i like extremely slow, painful, horrific and tortuous deaths...

pbj: *pic showing a kid at his wits' end*

me: *tongue out animation*

me: aw man, and i was just gettin started...o well, bug ya l8r then...good night dude.

pbj: (just as i was about to send that last message) please, leave me alone...

me: ah, then why didn't you just say that in the first place? i would have done that then and there...moron!

needless to say there was no reply. i felt so nice yesterday night. got a good night's sleep until i was woken up by a bloody power failure in the morning. damn that was a good series of messages, dontcha think? ya think i should initiate the next chain? >:) mwahahaha i'm evil, i know...

(sarc.) o boy!

don't even ask...this is something i wrote when i was screwed up. even i don't get it

Asterisk

A dark, plaintive room dimly lit by an overhead lamp, dominated by a dusty table with medium-sized stacks of paper and a dusty desktop computer, and by it is *, sitting there with his face buried in his hands, the three-day stubble on his face like a thousand pinpricks against his palms – people almost always prefer working in confined, ill-lit spaces and complaining about them, don’t they? To all appearance this posture would have signified dejection or frustration of some sort wouldn’t it? Then our assumptions are thwarted and actuality is driven into our guts like a double-edged sword, making a dull slurping sound, and as we stand there, utterly out of breath, he takes a sheaf of papers and blows the dust off them, sneezing as the dust balls disintegrate and move into his nose.

This day is not like any other day, on which he would have been wandering about aimlessly - with an affected air of purpose – through the sections of his office – we shall call it that, regardless of what it might actually be. It wouldn’t make any kind of significant difference if we called it that so we shall permit this cloud of ambiguity to be sifted through, to our liking – and talking to people he hardly knew or to whom people hardly talked to simply to assure that he was there. Assure whom, you ask? That is a question we do not presume to answer. On this day, * is given a deadline, in the resolution of which he played a part. On this day, he is given ‘purpose’.

While we were absorbed in all this reflection, * has tried deciphering the script. He ‘tsk-tsks’ and we then hear the shrill beep as his computer boots up. He drums his fingers on his table as his antediluvian system runs his OS files and we almost expect his to clap his hands and whistle when the interface does come up, but we know better. Let’s go get some water, shall we? This might take a little while, I guess.

A while later, the staccato ‘tappity tap’ of the keyboard comes drifting out of the room and we go back in. We go and stand behind his chair as he transcribes the content of the sheaves, blaspheming all the while – no, he cannot see us. If he could he’d be the rigid perfectionist he wants to be, or at least attempt to. As we see him doing all this, the inevitable question enters our thoughts; – why? Because...that’s it...’because’ – what? Remarks pour out like un-hardened jelly from an upside down mould that has just been lifted just a wee bit, ‘because it’s his job.’ Well, now, is it really? To understand that, we must know what his job is, shouldn’t we? Simply put, it is to type in vast amounts of unfiltered data (ambiguity is key, here), making changes where necessary. Data is after all data so we needn’t mention that it is imperative to retain the ultimate point.

Let us now digress – for comprehension’s sake - and take a little trip into the not too distant past, the very same not too distant past where our character, we shall call him, was just like many others, clueless and of no importance. Popularity was there, yes, but still, unimportant. Down-to-earth, he was, but dependable, we do not know. Then occurred a series of events that helped in boosting his image, his cred, his ego, his head – ah! Rhyme in reason...suddenly, his centre of gravity was raised a little bit and became higher than all of ours, than all the ‘others’. Its funny how inevitability and circumstance are misinterpreted as, what shall we say, him/her/it self by the person. We should, of course, think that this chain of thought would be abandoned especially since he was just an actor in a sitcom, performing rehearsed manoeuvres with the occasional ad-libbing. But no, it is not only hot air that fills his head now, its also subjective objectified falsehood.

Ok so where were we? The point, right, so let’s continue...I need not have mentioned that the data was someone else’s but I guess I just did and now I’m too lazy to go back and change it. What IS the point here? A pseudo-solipsist who went horribly astray and ended up confined in a sanctum walled by nihilistic delusions? An idiot who fails to realise his non-purpose? An extremely intelligent person corrupted? Here, we fail to come to a conclusion. We cease to exist and ‘I’ crops in. I for me, I for irony..

hm...

damn, something's happening...arg! i'm losing touch with my wacky side. i'm gettin more and more pensive. the best i've been able to come up with was my orkut profile. waaaaaaaah! i want my stuffed rabid clown!!! sniff, this is so freakin unbearable. ok, breathe in, breathe out. that's it buddy. whoosh, hsooow! ah, that feels a whole lot better. its weird. suddenly you have all sortsa creatures in abundance inside your head. purple elephants with forked tongues and whole species and genera and classes and phylums and what not. one day you seek inspiration from the story of blinky the sloth who was too lazy to do anything but - yea, you guessed it right - blink; he enrolled himself in therapy and is now a counsellor for ppl who can't blink properly. what a success story eh? - and the next day, you don't.

no, on a more serious note, i happened to come across a couple of my old english papers somewhere in my room, and the stuff on there was so hilariously funny. i couldn't imagine me writing any of that. damn, what is happening to me? what is doing this to me? i've always been a critic of ppl who can't see the light side of anything. have i transmuted into something so far apart from myself? i don't wanna change that, it was one thing that let me have a hold on sanity as i saw it. maybe its just a phase, maybe its just a mood swing. ah, i sure hope it is because i don't think i could stand myself if the worst had(/s) actually happened. hope is there i guess, hope is always there. hopefully you'll see something relieving soon...hopefully...