HOW NOT TO BE STEPHEN KING
This is the silly first chapter from my third comedy book, "The Really Incredible Amazing Silly Thing"
(Full book available here)
I believe it was the most erudite and very eloquent Thomas Jefferson who once said “There is little of more virtue and worth than days of hard toil, overalls with soil, sweat and work, time spent nagging WINZ to give you enough money for a playstation and heaps of mean-as games, totally bro, get with the times don’t be a loser and hook us up with enough cash for some Macca’s and K-Fry as well, yeah nah fair dink, drongo.”
It is Jeffery Sienfeld’s inspirational quote that has inspired me to invest in a new writing crash helmet with visor, some Goretex writing gloves and jacket, a new writing bathtub, some inflatable writing bath toys and hot new lycra writing shorts, a writing playstation and two superdozens of the best writing beer I could find in my neighbour’s house. Despite Jefferson D’Arcy’s command to get a PS4, use a PS4, become one with a PS4, harden up and get G.T.A. 5 or Bloodborne instead of one of the easy games, I have decided to discipline myself into drinking a few of these writing beers and keyboarding some gnarly blah blah onto the internet, or maybe even just onto some paper like a real old school writer, like Stephen King.
My mates came into my room, and saw me in all my new writing gear.
“You don’t have to always be writing” they said, splitting their infinitives without even caring about the craft. “You’re not still trying to be the next Stephen King, are you?”
I didn’t want to face what they may have meant with such a comment. With shaking hands I took a long, sobering swig of Stephen King brand coffee, and put my mug that was inlaid with a picture of Stephen King’s face on the table inlaid with a picture of Stephen King’s face. I looked at the Stephen King false passport I had had specially made, and wondered if the pretend deeds to Steven Kyng’s house would work according to plan. I checked out my Stephen King skin graft in the mirror and felt the extra plastic vertebrae one of my tradie mates had hammered into my back. “I sort of am Stephen King, a bit” I said, a bit.
But it didn’t feel quite right and I wasn’t sure if it was an open, honest direction in Lifey McLifeyballs for me. I was sure I would abandon it. The surgeries had been expensive and tiresome, and though I looked like Stephen King, I still didn’t have any bestsellers out there bestselling. My books had taken an opposing style, I believe it due to some geographical hemispheric factor, that I in the southern part of earth had not taken into account. Some anomaly no doubt related to the magnetism of our planet meant that my books almost appeared to be competing amongst themselves for position of worstseller, while Stephen King from the northern hemisphere seemed to be enjoying book sales flying home for all seasons. I wondered if perhaps I needed some kind of reverse magnetic advertising-and-money-charger on each of my books in order to counterbalance the poor sales that were obviously caused by the strange geomancies of the southern hemisphere and totally not by an improper or unprofessional ratio of writing beers to writing skill.
“Dude, can you hurry up so we can party?” my mates asked.
I switched gears to proofreading one of my more autobiographical pieces focussed on how much I’ve matured over the years. Like a superb and resonant champagne, I’ve improved with time. This essay was a testament to my own emotional growth and the dignified gentleman I’ve gradually become. I needed to finish it quickly because me and my mates were in a hurry getting to town so we could get really wasted and vandalise everything.
It would no doubt take my mind off a debilitating sadness caused by a horrendous tragedy. My old friend Albert of the Royal New Zealand Army had recently become unemployed and dead at the same time when he was fired from his job as cannon safety supervisor, when he was fired from his cannon.
To help, my friends asked me how my current writing was going. I told them that some of my characters were in a difficult situation because of plot complexities and incoherencies. I thanked them for offering to help me out with story structure. I was almost tempted to take the dark path, and plagiarize, but they held me back. As a principled man, upholding the most honorable whateverish beery blah blah of writing, I must not plagiarize.
“Can I just swipe most of a wicked gun fighting scene or something out of someone else’s work, and just change it up a little?” I asked them. “You CANNOT do that” my mates said, emphatic in their stance. Still, I thought it would have been cool to put my creative writing lessons to work and shoot all my characters out of a cannot.
We wanted to party. To save petrol, we took my canoe into town. To save beer, we drank the petrol. We all had issues with various addictions. A problem for many years had been our alcoholism; as well as our propensity to squeeze into tight places, our co-holeism as we called it. We also ranted and raved nonstop about religion and politics, all fifteen of us trying to convince each other of the one real truth, or all fifteen contradicting versions of it. This constant nagging was a strenuous issue for us, this belligerent cajolism.
Naturally I was a little worried about overuce. We all peer pressured and beer pressured each other into the tight space of the canoe, where we were so sweaty and smelly and so close to our kin we said oooo.
It had been such an ordeal getting my beautiful canoe road legal. The bureaucracy had made almost all of my savings, and my spare time, sail away. They really oar me down. I told them they just about starb’d me to death. I mean the frustration almost keeled me. I sure won’t be boating for them next election year, not even Grant Rowboatson. They’re really nauty. It took so many years out of my life, I felt I may as well maritime.
My friends weren’t much help on the trip to town. While they fought passionately over which great songs to play over the canoe speakers, they would not stop arguing and preaching to me their philosophical and political beliefs about rectifying societal ills via mainstream as well as rather obscure and probably debunked ‘-isms’, and there was a lot of confusion and din, as well as stopping and starting songs and arguments as I had to tell them to stop rocking the boat while they rocked the boat.
By the time we arrived at our favourite bar it was very late and the party had hit a lull. I proudly announced to an excited crowd and entourage, a full bar of dancing people, that because I was so happy to be there, I would buy a drink for everyone at the bar. This was received with great applause and enthusiasm, and the party began again in full swing as I readied my plastic. However, a heated argument erupted and we were thrown out once I began explaining that what I had actually meant – which was perfectly clear from what I had said – was that I would buy ONE drink which everyone could share, provided there were enough straws to keep things hygienic and people lined up politely. My offer was rejected, and I don’t mean to sound paranoid but I did think for a second that the party sounded almost more fun from outside when my entourage left the bar. Perhaps because our debates on making the world a happier, more peaceful place were becoming domineering and almost violent, and were drowning out the funky dance music.
My canoe could not accommodate the beer cans, beer breath and beer-guts of fifteen drunkards, and even though I was very sober, my driving ability was compromised by one night’s wear and tear on the suspension. The Kluon ombyoppity was festering a good 3 ml. out of line from the rudder-view mirror, and some crow had built a nest under the brake pedal. It also turned out that my plodge had run out of hee-haw rods.
Police appeared. My mates of course tried to capitalize on this, invoking police power to remove political problems, yet this failed to get off the ground for two reasons. The first being that all of my friends had changed their philosophies this night, deeming another’s point of view more logical, more worthy, more convincing and sensible than their own; though as individuals they still contradicted each other and could come to no agreement. This gave the police conflicting information on potential corruptions of leadership. My friends’ desire to convert others to their way of thinking had backfired, as each was converted to the belief of the person they were attempting to convert – all my friends, it seemed, were better suited to arguing on the defensive. The second reason was because I sounded drunk when I asked the plod for a spare plodge.
I explained to the police that we were sensible gentlemen even though there had been a slight confusion on the drive through town to the next bar featuring our choice of music. While simultaneously arguing over various speed metal bands and discussing the intricacies of New Zealand’s road rules I had for a few intersections confused 240 bass drum beats per minute – b.p.m. – with kilometres per hour – k.p.h., a mistake easily made by a person involved in heated multiple conversations while driving under the influence of politics and thrash metal. I was only driving on the footpath because previously I had been holidaying in Asia and had brought back to New Zealand some of the more ambitious, assertive driving styles reminiscent of Kuala Lumpur and Saigon. Perhaps it could be argued, I argued, that while the police were correct about the speeding and had the radar records to prove it, correct about the driving on the footpath and had eye witness testimony to prove that; was all this attention to detail, evidence-gathering and requirement for psychiatric assessment not simply police correctness gone mad?
The police dragged me out of the canoe, which ruptured my snug fit amongst the bloated beergut air inside with my friends still burping their slurred, bleary opinions, and I felt like I was being dribbled out of a cannon.
My instant fear of the police completely ruined the peaceful post-holiday aftermath I had as a result of also visiting my mate’s new-age healing bakery, where he had kneaded my doughy muscles and rolled my mind free through his grinding mental mills, in Arizona where the rock strata tower so high. I was so serene and calm after he literally kibbled me out of his canyon.
But now, that was gone. I didn’t like it when the policeman called me bro, I thought it was unprofessional. I actually took him to court for police brotality. They also implied I was fat, which was really hurtful. I told them I had glandular and sugar metabolism problems caused by the last time they beat me up. I told my lawyer they gave me dire beaties.
The judge reprimanded me for my ill health, refusing to believe my claim that it was actually the police’s fault: because I’d been arrested so many times, I was suffering from copper poisoning. Because of the damage done to my canoe, I set my lawyer on getting some repair rations. “I’m traumatized because the police violently shot me out of my canoein’ your honour” I told the judge.
In court telling my side of the story I could barely keep my composure, or what us death metal musos have, my decomposure. My mates picked me up outside court. The canoe was confiscated and we took a taxi back to my place for shenanigans and recuperation. My mates argued politics and philosophy all the way back; it turned out they had all seen the light of their original positions; and convinced by arguments they themselves had espoused previously they had gone back to being adherents of that which they originally believed. In terms of the evolution of belief, growth had been totally circular.
Somehow it all reminded me of my ex-uncle Jim Allaflamestrong, twice removed, who was twice removed when he forgot to let go throwing away his rubbish and accidentally incinerated himself; then in accord with his will and his fastidious lawyer’s insistence, we cremated him.
(Full book available here)
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