The trials and tribulations of a pretentious, self-obsessed, lust-stricken twentysomething, as glimpsed through the throb of pop culture.

Truth be told, the last thing a fella expects of a mist-mangled morning in March is to wake up in a strange bed to find a strange man in a nappy weeping 'side a trash-can filled with burning vipers.

The hell's goin' on, a fella's liable to holler. The hell are you, and why you got all those snakes a-smokin in yonder peddle-bin?

"It's for the tonic, y'unnerstann, what the gypsy done said."

Ah, the gypsy. And back to sleep.

Assorted Recollections

Sat next the window in a café reeks o' Proust, notebook open on the table, and The Priest spittin' in my ear-holes.

"What's that shite, dare I ask? Loada pishy balls, I'd wager, loada half-cocked cock-rot."

What I tell The Priest is that it's the latest instalment of Pop Cult Mind Wax, provisionally titled; Thoughts I Thought All About Writing.

The Priest tuts, takes a swallow out the hip-flask. "You writers. Fuck forbid you should ever write about anything might be of interest to anyone else."

A "Shut your fuck-flaps", by way of rebuttal, and back to the scribbling and the jotting.

Reasons For Writing, it says, and a page or two all fouled-up thus;

"Waking up with a sentence burning on the back o' the tongue, no amount of nicotine or caffeine 'gon quell this rabid gnashing at the roots o' the brains. What can a man do if not race to the keyboard wi' the trousers at the ankles, screaming at the monitor; "Fuck you now, by the balls o' Kong I'll have these words torn out my psyche an carved six inches deep cross that tauntin' white, see if I don't!"

Who knows what these syllables relate to, who knows what freewheelin' narrative sits waiting for them, some senseless tale with legs akimbo and the promise of a sympathetic ear whistling out the hoo-hah.

Mayhaps a story doused in the multicolour spunk o' intrigue, some rant twisted round the wrists of The Political. Just as likely a mournful treatise on the state of a fella's filth-gland, possibly a highly incisive screed referencing unutterably chic cultural landmarks with an array of ever-more obscure punchlines.

Truth is, a fella never knows, every full-stop an' comma an' apostrophe swathed in mystery till such times as the Whole rises out this impenetrable verbal funk. With Miles Davis screechin' wah-wah ravaged horn upside the yap, with the rumble 'hind the eyes and the click-clackin' o' the keys, with the stomach hung in knots out the arse, with the smoke stingin' the retina, who has time to worry about what this might all relate to?

Only when it's been finished and saved and The Cellar Door Sessions done chewed themselves in five, only with Conor Oberst, sweet lovely Conor, whispering from the speakers either side, only then might a fella feel like lunging t'wards the legs of this towering beast all cloaked in vowels and consonants, this shuddering behemoth all foaming at the groin, take hold the fucker's ankles and watch it tumble to the ground, splitting its skull on the frost-kissed kerb, mangled sentences an' turns of phrase spewing out the crack in the brains.