Tuesday 17 March 2009

Sarlog Homs: InterTIMEnsional Detective

I'm here!
Typing at your blue eyes with this, my keyboard of truth, and these, my fingers of facts.

I've recently been training Kalim Gerald Barkleton Twing to do sit ups. Something no other dog has achieved in the history of mankind. Or so I'm assuming, I haven't actually taken any time to look it up.
He nearly got it today when I held his front paws between my teeth while rooting his hind quarters to the floor with my mitts. There was blood drawn on both sides of course, but it was all in good humour and we were all but there. Another couple of days and I'm sure he'll have cracked it. Maybe I could invent some sort of dog rowing machine, it might improve the correct muscles for sit ups (I'm guessing, I've not looked into it).

One thing I have been looking into is time travel. I was quite the student of time travel, once upon a year, and recently my passion for it has been rekindled. It was through a documentary on television about the loss of the old ways, the iPod generation, death of the druids and so forth and it got me thinking. Why don't I just go back in time and get them back and put them in this time which I am now in.
I made up my mind, there and then, to buy a time machine.
There seem to be no working examples of time machines in England today. All the models I could lay my crumbling hands on were aged relics, the most recent dating from yesteryear, the oldest going all the way back to days of yore. One or two from a bygone age too but nothing really to speak of.
Besides, none of those marvelous men and their time machines were to be bought or sold, even when I offered them in excess of £17, so I took a few notes, one or two photograms and decided to build my own. With my superintelligence and my good looks and my supposed drink problem how hard could it be?
Needless to say I used the generic formulas, "Tigh's Thighs", Kindlemix, "The Constorum Pollantiar Therfour", you know, the basics, nothing too flashy. Besides, my intention was to get this chap up and gyrating betimes. That and the fact that Wells' Bells are particularly difficult to get hold of in these backwards modern times, limiting any time travel made in the obvious way.
It was one week later when the machine was finished.
It didn't look like much admittedly. (picture provided)
It's quite a simple cross section but I believe all the important things have been included.

I immediately took the thing for a test run, deciding to go back in time FOURTEEN MINUTES. With this in mind I typed in the appropriate time and date and in no time at all (literally) I was 'back in time'.
I actually arrived back just in time to see myself feed Kalim Gerald Barkleton Twing.
"Stop!" I cried, and my previous body turned with astonishment towards my being, "That food will make him sick all over the wall!"
But it was too late. As the words came galloping out of my larynx a stream of dog tummy juice frothed against the new paintwork.
"Ah," I said, as the present me, not the old me "if only I'd made it fifteen minutes."
"Don't fret," I said, the old me this time,"when I do a test run I'll make it fifteen minutes!"
Sure enough, fourteen minutes later, the old me stepped into the time machine and typed in FIFTEEN MINUTES. Before he pressed the button, we shared a poignant look. A tear fell from his eye, and by definition mine, although it wasn't actually my body, although really it was.
"What's the future like?" he asked.
"Sorry," I said, "I only got this far."
And with a final sob he activated the machine.
I never saw him again.

All I can assume is that the machine didn't work and the test run failed. He might be seven hundred years in the past by now, or fifty thousand years in the future.
"What's the future like?" he asked.
Such poignance.
Such poingance.

Sunday 1 March 2009

A Week of Homs

Feb 23rd

Dear Diary,
why do you never write back? Why is it always me who must constantly be jotting down his exotic scrawlings without you ever putting your pen to my willing paper. For years I have longed to feel your ink gushing through my pages as my eyes thrash back and forth, back and forth across the line. I want to read you!


Feb 24th

Dear Diary,
sorry about yesterday. Feel I might have stepped over the line somewhat. I assure you I am quite happy with our current arrangement and have no desire to change the situation. Maybe I had been drinking. Of course I am more than happy for us to remain in this platonic relationship. Perhaps, in future, we should talk about other things. like what's been happening in my day of life.
For example, today I saw a group of deer. One of the little idiots was called Giacomo. What a stupid name for a deer. What's wrong with Custard or Quackles or Crispin or other sensible names like that? He thinks a lot of himself, I thought, and I'll be quite surprised if he isn't dead by the end of the day.

Sure enough he was.
See, that was pretty good, huh? More of the same tomorrow!


Feb 25th

Dear Diary,
A woman telephoned my residence to ask for my help in a little detection work. I said I had no idea what she was talking about (you never know) and insisted that she was a forty seven year old man. Of course I knew she was nothing of the sort but it's all part of the game.
After two or three hours I phoned her back and offered my services to her. She said she needed help finding out just where her husband was. Apparently he said he was going to the Karakum desert to look for some sort of mythical giraffe who breathes murcury and possibly is made of tungsten.
I set off for Turkmenistan tomorrow!


Feb 26th

Dear Diary,
started out on my journey to Turkmenistan. Commandeered plane enroute to Peru. Passengers not happy. Arrived at 17:46 (local) by which time it was rather too late to walk out into the desert, so instead I started a fight with a local man about his dog.


Feb 27th

Dear Diary,
went out into the desert with my new dog - his name is Kalim Gerald Barkleton Twing. He is a faithful companion and forgot about his dead former master in no time at all. We walked for some time, enjoying the scorching heat and deadly lack of water, before spotting a man lying not too far away. As we approached it was clear the man was dead, died of thirst or starvation or trampling from a Giraffe made of tungsten (possibly). So when we finally arrived at the place where he was it was quite a surprise to see him alive and well. He said his good-days and we said ours and I asked him if he had a wife who might want him looked for. He said no and that the man I was looking for was dead. At which pont he motioned to a man lying on the ground next to him who was dead.
The man explained that recently he had been dressing up as a titanium giraffe and had accidentally breathed murcury all over the fellow. I asked the fellow if he owed me £17.
He said he didn't.


Feb 28th

Dear Diary,
flew home. Brought Kalim Gerald Barkleton Twing back with me. He doesn't get on too well with my old dog, Isambard. Phoned woman. Informed her of dead husband. Asked for fourteen thousand pounds.


Feb 29th

Dear Diary,
mmmmmmmm! Sunday lunch today! Isambard was delicious.