Amazon bills it as a “tragicomedy novel about 22 years of a man’s life in the middle of Ohio… Dark, weird, and funny.”

My short review goes like this: “Veins is an utterly crushing, depressing snapshot of the life of a mentally ill man somewhere in Hell, U.S.A.” Drew writes excellent webcomics that are free and funny, and I’m going to need a solid evening of reading them because this book has made me feel really bad about myself and humanity in general.

Anyway, I finally bought the book (Kindle edition). Now, never, ever buy a fucking kindle edition of anything unless you have a kindle. Amazon makes you download the fucking kindle application which is a big piece of shit and it will just make you mad. If you are forced to use this thing, make sure you go to Tools > Options > Annotations and untick “Popular Highlights” because who gives a shit if twenty-two people on the internet highlighted some sentence about a dog being man’s best friend? It didn’t have anything to do with the rest of the book (thankfully) so the only purpose it served was to inform me that people from the internet like domesticated animals. I’m not retarded.

Which brings me to the “protagonist” of Veins. [ I wrote a bunch of stuff in here but none of it was worth your time reading.]

If you think it’s funny when sad, helpless, socially inept man-babies get crushed by everyone else in their pitiful lives, then this is the “tragicomedy” for you.

Anyway, one of my favourite tracks of late has been Hey Ma by Cam’ron.

I feel like if you read this blog you don’t need instructions on how to gather the source material for this lesson.

This song came out when I was too musically immature to appreciate the genius so I’m making up for it now.

I’m going to focus on Juelz Santana’s verse (verse 1). Before we start, here are the lyrics for the chorus:

Hey ma, what’s up, lets slide, all right, all right
And we get it on tonight
You smoke, I smoke, I drink, me too, well good
Cause we gon get high tonight
Got drops, got Coups, got Trucks, got juice, all right
Cause we gon take a ride tonight
So ma, what’s up, let’s slide, all right, all right
And we gon get it on tonight

Or something – then Mr. Santana comes in. He’s letting us in on this night he had at the club where there was this girl with whom he was trying it on. She starts with “You’s a baby, right?” and he counters by saying he’s young but his life is crazy etc. Then he says: “I know what ladies like / Need a man that’s polite, listens and takes advice / I could be all three…” From this we understand that even though he may be into some wild stuff (crazy wild, maybe?) he knows that girls basically want someone they can connect with not only in the bedroom (but he insists he can bring that too: “Plus I can lay the pipe.”) but out at a restaurant or at her friends’ places. He’s got that right, I guess.

Then ten seconds later (0:56) he’s all: “Get in the car / And don’t touch nothing / Sit in the car / Let’s discuss somethin’ / Either we lovin’ or I’ll see you tomorrow…” Something has happened that we aren’t shown. There is no change in the beat or production or whatever to indicate the change in mood from playful talk in the club to the forceful “get in the car”. There’s a bit of the night cut out of this song. “What happened?” You ask. Here we go:

Juelz could be smashed enough to be losing memory (hope not, because he’s driving in about twenty seconds) but I don’t think so. I think he gets up to get a drink or something and while he’s gone one of her friends leans over and is like: “Oh, my god. Do you know who that is? That’s Juelz Santana. He’s on this song by Cam’ron called Hey Ma.” And the chick is like: “Oh, my god. I had no idea. I’m totally going to – ohshitherehecomes!” Then she goes totally groupie on him and he starts treating her like a piece of meat because he’s famous and shit and she is just a hoe: “Either we lovin’ or I’ll see you tomorrow…” Means: “We’re fucking or I’ll never see you again and tonight will be the night you almost slept with someone famous.”

This idea is backed up by Cam’ron himself in the next verse (verse 2). It’s sort of hard to tell but Cam’ron’s verse is about going to chill (or something) with his ex-girlfriend. Aside from having Gucci nails and linen, one of his reasons for going back to her is that “…this my down girl too / Ain’t no groupie deal.” Is Cam’ron having a little dig at Juelz for being shallow? According to Wikipedia, Cam’ron’s first release was 1998 and Santana’s was 2002. Cam’ron is also five years Santana’s senior and in 2001 (when Hey Ma was recorded) the former was twenty-five (Juelz was twenty! “Eighteen and live a crazy life” my ass) and perhaps was getting tired of the groupie scene. I guess he’d probably only been in it for a few years but twenty-five is heaps different from twenty (I asked my flatmate about this) and Juelz was totally new to the game. Cam’ron’s verse gives you a small insight into his character. Perhaps his hit-it-and-quit-it days are over? Oh wait, he leaves her and rings “L”? (L from Death Note?) “Plus dome / Say word / And we got it on tonight.” Oh, I guess not.

Hamish.

Kim.

You cried in the departure lounge, a thin sound split by whimpers; you sat by me on the plane and picked at the safety card until it tore. At 30,000 feet thin streams of snot ran down your face, and you made me put the window shade down. You constantly hounded the stewardesses for lollies and reassurances; you demanded to be close to the exit row. The landing was rough and you cracked a bone in my finger. Sometimes I find it very hard to love you.

It’s a bit shit but on the upside it is actually 87 words. Unlike YOURS. Tch tch tch.

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Further, the financial statements have been
prepared at the request of,
and for the purposes of,
our clients only and neither we nor any of;
our employees accept responsibility on any ground whatsoever,
including liability in negligence to any other person.

FUCK
FUCK FUCK
FUCK FUCK FUCK
FUCK FUCK FUCK

By BB and the IRD

The first centre of influence was her sometimes-friend, Ames. Ames was basically one giant mood swing wrapped in a six-foot-tall body. She wore her hair in a pony tail everyday and she could cut a person in half with a glance. Lucy was very aware of how delicately Ames would need to be treated. Once Ames was on board, Lucy could do largely what she pleased.

The second centre of influence was Jake. Jake was a very simple boy who had reached the apex of his life, the climax of his being in his last year of high school. Right now he was untouchable but in two years he would just be some stupid jock and in ten, discarded and forgotten. As the alpha-male around school, Jake commanded a formidable army of like-minded morons. Lucy knew she would have to fuck and suck her way through at least a few of them before she gained the key to the top of the heirarchy.

The third centre of influence was the common room. This was the proving-grounds where all social decisions were finalised by the council. Like an exam, there was little one could do once in the common room to change their fate. All alliances and favours would be worked out elsewhere. Currently Ames reigned supreme but Lucy knew that within a few cold weeks, a month at the most, she could get that Cleopatra to lie at her feet. How? Well, she was going to start by lying at the other’s feet and looking up her skirt.

***

Lucy thought her scalp was going to separate from her head and cover the bed in blood as Ames yanked the pole around which her hair was tied. Being treated like a dog on a leash was fine, as far as Lucy was concerned but why was her owner being such a bitch? She’d cut fine lines in her tighs and dripped wax on her, as ordered, and now this? Fuck this shit, it’s time for reaction.

Bent on all fours, as she was, Lucy could feel Ames’ bent leg crouched and press against her bruised hip. In one fluid motion she grabbed for the leg and pulled. Fists of red rained down upon her scalp as Ames fell back still holding onto the pole. Lucy whipped around and slapped Ames across the face. Ames stopped moving and stared. On command, Ames opened her mouth and allowed Lucy’s spit to enter her. Ames opened her mouth again when she felt Lucy enter.

***

Of the three centres, Ames had been the hardest, and the most important, to convince. The three guys she’d had to fuck to get her mouth on Jake’s crotch were different shades of boring flavoured, respectively, with big, stupid and violent. Once she’d completed these politi-sexual manuvers the common room had gravitated to her red lips and slender fingers.

And now she was here she was going to throw it all away.

***

He’d responded fairly non-commitally to her advance but his message on her phone read had narrowed down the options very quickly. They would meet in his bedroom and when he was finished she would leave. Lucy allowed herself a small smile. She would leave, and she would take something to remind her of the time she’d spent climbing.

His door swung slowly open at Lucy’s pressure. It had been left ajar, no doubt Jake wanted to know when his guest set foot on the stairs. Jake had turned the lights down an was listening to what sounded like R-Kelly over a facial compilation. Cumpilation? Only a sad jerk-off would know that and here he was. Naked, reclining on a mound of pillows, holding his ruddy dick in his hand right down near his balls and grinning. He was the horny version of fighting strangers.

***

She felt the razor-blade in the garter of her stocking when he was trying his best to choke her with his dick. It was all the same, same set up, same porn, same boring line, same sexual aggression. This lame dick was exactly how Ames painted him: brutal and cocksure. He’d hit her early on when she wouldn’t fuck to the porn he’d put on just for her and that was all she needed.

He lay her over the side of the bed and thrusted his cock into her face. In this position, not only could she see his asshole, she could reach the tranquilizer in her bag. She’d rather have stuck it in his neck, but there was no reaching that. Crumpled in a heap on the floor, needle sticking out of his buttock, he looked pathetic. Not as pathetic as he would look in years to come, but for now it was a good start.

Lucy removed the needle from Jake’s body and the razorblade from her garter. Moving with care, she rolled Jake onto his back. He was still hard through the sedative so she had to act quickly. She took the razorblade and applied it just under the head of his dick. She had to push quite hard to cut all the way through and she’d neglected to improvise a chopping board. As such, not only had she cut off the head of his penis she’d cut into his stomach. Unintended, sure, but there were more important matters at hand.

***

She walked out to the Velvet Underground. The speakers crooned to the soaking carpet.

So why? Why had the iron fist fallen on him as he had flung an arm on to the grass and pulled himself from the clifface? Surely there was not another who had taken such care to tread so dilligently on the bright path, on the way of his forefathers?

Minal lay twisted in the honest mud at the foot of her house.
“Fanatic.”
“Lunatic.”
“Cultist.”
“Maniac.”
“Menace.”
It stings, he thought, feeling down to his stomach.

To Be Continued…

The windshield was a broken winter footpath and their breath steamed the mountain air. Not awkward, not forced, not hollow, her head fit into his shoulder and he didn’t feel ashamed to have his eyes opened or closed. Even when his friends weren’t around he didn’t know which to do but now he couldn’t be wrong.

As one they opened their mouths:
“I’ve fallen for you.”
“I’m cheating on you.”

Keep it locked up in the dirtiest cell nearest the AIDS clinic. That freakish being can roar and rage as much as it wants because it knows that if we stop giving it the vaccine it’ll drop to the wet floor and breathe out its final hours in a red haze. Whatever it might face in the afterlife is going to be worse than stuck in a little cell with little food and us little people running around tormenting it.

Lucky we bred them to be so superstitious. Those silly, primative apes.

To Be Continued…

***

They ran before me. They fell over each other in their efforts to escape. The effrontery of it all was what filled me full of murder. I swear it now. I swore it then, too but I had little time to tell this to them in between opening the gates.

That mushy pink force boundary. The gates and advanced genetic surgery had given us the edge over the cybernetic advancements of the other countries. We rose out of the sea a blinding light over a crimson algae bloom.

***

“Leave the oceans alone. Leave the deeps to us,” we said but their prying claws and pseudoscience were too much. Work resumed on the ancient weapons and a strong proto-nationalism swept through the hormone systems most closely associated with politics in our race.

***

“You and your skeletal mystery child fantasy will be the death of us all. Stay away from the hangar doors, stay away from what’s mine and I’ll keep wide berth of what you and yours call home.” and I opened a gate in front of the screen. Two children were close enough to begin the disintergration and their particles gravitated rapidly toward my gate as the screams rose around me.

To Be Continued…

This makes me happy
I don’t own a dog
But I own a thousand plastic bags
And the goverment pays me
To sing a little song about it
As I do it
As I gather the excrement
Some fresh, some old
Bury the dead in the shit of your pets.

To Be Continued…

Filled with vigour he came into the palm of his right hand. Left-handed masturbation was something he had developed to the point where his ambidexterity rendered either hand indistinguishable. Back at base this topic was sure to raise some eyebrows with the boys. At least, eyebrows before shirts, anyway. What was he doing out here? Why couldn’t he jerk off all day in a spa bath? Why this horrible desert?

To Be Continued…

If you can’t be bothered reading this blog the gist of it is Randall Munroe discussing the way men select urinals related to the proximity of other men. These pictures should give you the gist of the post:

My point at the speech was that one can be as creative with math as with painting and I believe this blog post is a great example.