Filed under: Arty-Type Stuff, Diatribes and Debates, SCIENCE!, Writing | Tags: Book, Books, Comparisons, E-readers, Gibberish, Kindle, Love, Reality, sci-fi, Wordy Nonsense
(Also available on my Tumblr.)
I’m one of those lucky people who owns a Kindle.
It was a Christmas gift, which I tell you only to impress you by continuing ‘I’ve only had to charge it once since I received it.’ Stand-by battery life is just shy of a month and a half, which impressed me at least.
Anyway, I’ve given it a fair amount of use over these two months; downloaded a number of ‘books’, checked out the note-writing system and all that jazz. It’s a beautifully designed device and system, very intuitive. One qualm I have is the page-turning buttons on the sides. Both sides of the device are adorned with a large ‘>’ marked button beneath a smaller ‘<’ marked one. At first I found myself hitting the right hand ‘>’ (or ‘next page’) button to turn, predictably, forward in the book and the left hand ‘>’ in an attempt to flip back a page, which led to some small confusion. It’s a small annoyance, and I adjusted quickly enough. In fact the dual-sided controls are proving to be a wonderful idea as I find myself doing other things while reading.
The screen is excellent. It’s virtually glare-free, so reading in bright sunlight isn’t the rage inducing shit-fest that a phone or tablet screen would tend to be (without accoutrements, anyway).
This is because of the ‘E-Ink’ system, which uses microcapsules of negatively-charged black pigment and positively-charged white pigment which can be arranged an re-arranged according to the whims of two electrode layers above and below.
Here’s a picture that I stole from Wikipedia of the microcapsules in question.
Research tells me a colour version has been available since 2010 that is capable of displaying 4096 colours alongside 16 shades of grey. That’s a real headfuck when you think about the science behind it.
Enough of the technical details, though, let’s talk about the experience:
Reading the Kindle is not unlike reading a ‘book’. Presumably that’s what the creators were going for. The display looks like paper for the most part, which gives you a little jolt when you spot a blinking cursor moving about on it because a part of your mind screams “BUT PAPER IS A STATIC OBJECT! GOD HELP US ALL!” for a split second.
The most striking thing I’ve noticed, though, is right up at the top in the title; I’m not reading any ‘books’ right now.
I of course mean that in the literal sense, I’m a voracious reader and tend to have at least three ‘books’ on the go simultaneously, which I do right now except all of them are virtual.
There was no change-over anxiety, there was no jarring sense of loss (or gain), there wasn’t even any recognition of the fact until just before I started writing this. I simply hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t using physical ‘books’ any more.
That’s not to say I won’t from now on; I love ‘books’. I love the way they feel, look, sound and smell. ‘Books’ appeal to me both aesthetically and in terms of their content, like I’m some sort of lovelorn fool besotted with some intelligent, beautiful, perfect woman.
All I’m saying is her, referring to physical ‘books’ as a singular feminine entity for the purposes of this metaphor (keep up), younger and sleeker sister, meaning virtual ‘books’ on an e-reader like the Kindle (Still with me?), is equally attractive. Or is that ‘are equally attractive’? I’ve ruined my own metaphor there.
It’s very helpful to a style of reader like myself who when travelling would normally pack a couple of oft chunky, frequently fairly weighty ‘books’ into a bag to the detriment of other, possibly more important, items. Like food, bug-spray or an anti-wild-animal knife. Having the ability to dip into roughly 1000 ‘books’ (according to the marketing spiel) on a device no larger than a couple of take-away menus stacked together is a life-saver. Not having to remember page numbers or find lost bookmarks is good too; when you close (leave? quit?) a ‘book’ on the Kindle it helpfully remembers exactly what page you were on, for every single ‘book’.
By the way, I’m putting ‘book’ in inverted commas because this whole experience has rocked the paradigm and now I’m unsure what to call either of these items. If a physical object with paper pages and printed ink is a ‘book’, then the virtual, ones-and-zeros, differentially-charged microcapsules type almost needs to be something else. The trouble with that is I find the term ‘e-book’ slightly demeaning. It’s the same content, compared side-by-side, and ‘e-book’ reminds me of some terribly formatted, childishly written guide to making bombs from bleach and tinfoil.
So basically they are both ‘books’ until I can adjust my brain into thinking of them both as just books.
Apropos of all this, here’s my view:
I felt strangely about e-readers when they first made an appearance on the market, because my love of physical ‘books’ set me at odds with the idea that one could transition without some gargantuan effort. I felt like switching would have a huge impact on a part of my life that I love dearly.
It has not.
If anything it has merely extended the ways in which I enjoy the written word, which is really all ‘books’ are for anyway, despite all my posturing and declarations of love for the objects themselves the content is what drives anyone’s love of reading.
So this isn’t the end of physical ‘books’ as far as I can see, not for some long time at least, but it isn’t a failed experimental attempt at sci-fi futurism either. It’s a system that works, and it works really bloody well.
It’s not a replacement, it’s an augmentation.
Plus, I just really like it.
I love ‘books’. Doesn’t matter how I read them.
Filed under: Gibberish, People, Writing | Tags: Bullshit, Celeb, For the love of god please wake up, Radio, Riots, Wake up
Christopher was sitting at the kitchen table when the announcement came.
A tinny voice from the cheap portable radio next to his bowl of boring cereal that came in a rainbow-hued box covered in flashing LEDs said that the rioters had breached the barricades and the police had fallen back. Christopher stared into the constantly flickering, ever changing nano-ads in the gossip-paper, not really seeing, just listening.
The riots had started a few weeks ago and grown in both number of participants and targeted brutality. Christopher once noted to a colleague that they were less like riots and more like an organised movement. To what end, he didn’t have the words to speculate.
The riots had started when the libraries had been made to burn all their useless books and replace them with vid-files. The riots had worsened when schools had started adding ‘Celebrity Studies’ to the curriculum. The riots had reached fever pitch when the TV channels stopped playing the news.
Christopher stirred his beige, tasteless breakfast, wondering if the rioters would come to his street. Whether he would be dragged from his bed and pontificated at, like his colleagues-cousins-friends-brother had been. The people on TV had never explained what ‘pontificate’ meant, but Christopher thought it sounded bad.
The rioters had adopted a name, ‘The Learned Minority’. Christopher and his colleagues had a good chuckle over this, at least when the boss wasn’t in the voice-chat.
“Honestly,” one had begun, “How can they claim to be so ‘learned’ when all they ever do is read old, stuffy books and never switch on the TV?”
Christopher nodded. Then and now, responding and remembering, respectively.
For a second his eye was caught by an ad for a new radio. This one had a bigger power-button than his current model, more lights too and a second liquid-crystal display so he could keep up on the gossip that was happening on channels he wasn’t tuned to. For only £500 a month, this struck Christopher as a good deal. He’d wait, though, until he knew what the Celebs thought of it.
It was around now that Christopher heard the first window smash. They were on his street now. No doubt they would be here soon. Christopher turned up the volume on his radio and tuned to CelebGoss FM. He had to know if he should be afraid.
“I can’t get enough of those slogans they have!” A voice drawled, excitably. “I’m going to mix a few into a new track and play it loud!” Hearing the popular singer’s catchphrase comforted Christopher. He allowed himself a small grin as he returned to his breakfast.
They were coming closer all the time, though, and apprehension reared its ugly head as Christopher checked the bolt on the door. He returned to the table just as something heavy and brown shattered his kitchen window, landing right on the radio set and sending the cracked plastic and still-flashing LEDs careening across the floor. It was a book. It had landed open on a list of words. ‘Pontificate; to speak in a pompous or dogmatic manner.’
Talking? Christopher didn’t know how dogs were involved, but he was pretty sure he could handle people talking at him. They weren’t Celebrities; he didn’t have to listen. He sat back down just as the bolt of his front door gave and people began pouring into his flat.
If they were just going to talk at him he’d just listen to his iPod instead. He was going to drown them out, he thought with a little smile, he was going to play it loud!
Filed under: Gibberish, Writing | Tags: blah, boring, Huddersfield, Night, Stuff, Wind, Windy
Despite the howling wind the click of the lock is cannon fire in the empty street.
I light a cigarette and pull my coat closer around me, setting off for home.
Save for the occasional car rushing by I’m alone, I take a drag on my smoke, really only to keep my fingers warm.
A torn plastic bag blows by with a hiss before getting caught, ragged, on a dull railing.
An alarm is wailing, but nobody is coming to stop it.
A small man in an ill-fitting suit passes, head bowed against the incessant drizzle, and shoots me a look; half confusion, half camaraderie. ‘Why are you out? Why am I out, at that.’
I am chased through the centre of town by sirens, distant but becoming less so, past the club staff setting out the smoking area. They talk in subdued tones, it’s hard work and they’re not going to be making much money on a night like this.
Stamping my feet, waiting for a bus I hear an argument from a nearby street. Some disagreement over money or love or both. It’s never anything else.
The bus arrives, flourescent lighting and a musty smell my companions as we pass through alternating pools of orange light that only serve to make the darkness around them darker. I disembark on a pitch black road, deafened by the wind which gains that much more power this high up and unhindered by buildings, and make the journey to my home.
I flop into a chair and wonder why I’m still here. Not long now.
Huddersfield at night.
Filed under: Arty-Type Stuff, Diatribes and Debates, Writing | Tags: block, frustration, self-indulgent nonsense, write, writer's block, writers, writing
‘Writer’s block’ is a term that almost everyone has heard and a state that a good many people have experienced.
It is the name given to a feeling or belief that one is simply ‘unable’ to write experienced over a period of time, anything from a day or two up to years at a time.
But what is it?
Some people believe that it does not exist. Acclaimed author Warren Ellis, the man behind the seminal comic Transmetropolitan, has stated “… [Someone with ‘writer’s block’] isn’t a fucking writer anymore. The job is getting up in the morning and fucking writing.”
This, while harsh, is a fairly erudite explanation of how it feels to be ‘afflicted’.
I’m of the opinion, seeing as I have a lot of time to think about this kind of thing, that writer’s block can be classified as a very mild psychological breakdown.
Let me tell you my experience(s) with this particular ailment:
I’ve run into writer’s block a couple of times and it has a very distinct feeling about it. It’s not even remotely similar to what one might feel in school, say, when faced with an essay or exam and cannot think what to write next. That’s a momentary frustration that can be overcome by remembering that you do in fact know the answer to the question.
Writer’s block is more insidious than that. It’s a slithery, slimy bastard that sneaks into your mind and squats there, nibbling on your brain every now and then when it gets bored. It’s sneaky, in that it makes you want to write, then stops you from doing it.
Now, I say ‘stops you’; there’s actually nothing physically stopping you from putting words on the page. There isn’t even anything hindering your vocabulary or fiddling with the way you write. It just feels like there is.
That’s why I’ve come to the conclusion that this situation is, or at least is caused by, a very low-lying crisis of confidence or even an existential one. I’ve gone to write something and caught myself thinking ‘What’s the point?’ or ‘Why even bother?’ The belief that you could write something, but it would ultimately be terrible, unreadable drivel is a prime factor of writer’s block.
I’m forcing myself to write this through a hefty bought of it, and I can tell you that the horrible little gremlin in my head is telling me to delete every word and start over. I can also tell you that if I did delete every word the gremlin would then tell me there’s no point in starting again, and I’d probably abandon the piece altogether.
It’s that aspect that is the most interesting to me, and I wonder if people who don’t suffer from writer’s block are simply happier, more enthusiastic, more optimistic people.
It conjures the image of the tortured artist, slashing yesterday’s paintings in a fit of rage because they are ‘awful’, even after a gallery has offered to buy them. As cliché as that seems, that’s roughly what one can expect to be going on in a writer’s head when they tell you they have this malady. It’s very cyclic, to the point that it’s almost bipolar.
As I said; it comes in waves. There are periods of time where, at least for me, I feel like everything I write is gold dust and I can’t put a word wrong. There are others where I feel like every single idea I have is shit or stolen or stupid or a stupid, shitty idea that I stole. It’s so hard to fight through that and produce something, because even if you do part of you still thinks ‘This is awful. I must destroy all evidence of its existence.’
There are vast novels floating in the void or filling the shelves of Deaths library with my name on the cover because I’ve written something then immediately confined it to oblivion. (I like to think destroyed literature ends up somewhere).
There are ways around it, however. Forcing oneself to write something, anything, is one way, as long as you can convince yourself to keep going and then not to delete it upon completion. That’s part of the reason I like writing in notebooks; it’s not as easy to delete a physical object. There are exercises you can find in books and online that claim to help with writer’s block. Any and all writers will give you no end of various kinds of advice, some of it useful, some of it not.
The trouble is it’s a very personal problem. The prevailing feeling is that you know you can’t write right now, even though people tell you that you can. The truth of the matter, however, is that those people are right. You can still do it, you just feel like if you try to you’ll produce something sub-par.
Maybe you will, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fix it. Or write something else.
Writer’s block is as personal as writing itself, in that you may have certain music you like to listen to as you write, or certain sounds or sights that completely throw you off kilter and stop you being able to think straight.
As though to provide evidence to myself, I’m really struggling to write this last paragraph. Something in my head is screaming that this is all self-indulgent nonsense and to get rid of it immediately, but I refuse to give in.
That’s really all one can do in this situation. Dig in your heels, bite down on a stick and force yourself forwards. Of course you can still write; you just need to remember that.
J Bov.
Filed under: Writing | Tags: 'rodes, all, cyberpunk, fiction, future, lead, roam, sci-fi, technology, to, writing
This is a big ugly link back to part 1.
Cadejo was pacing. Cadejo always paced. You could tell how agitated he was by the amount of steps he took between each about-face and I often wondered if there was a way to annoy him enough that he’d spin in place like he was in a microwave oven. I imagine he’d turn a similar colour in both situations, too.
I sat in one of his uncomfortable foam office chairs, watching him skitter back and forth like I was watching a game of tennis, and waited. My hand was in my coat pocket, nervously fingering the ‘board Jackson had given me before I got called to the office.
“It’s those darn kids, again.” He finally spluttered, mercifully dropping into his own comfortable-looking leather chair and sighing. “They really stepped in the dog-doo this time.”
‘Just fucking swear, Sarge, it’s good for you!’ I didn’t say. What I did say was, “Kids?”
He leaned forward, elbows on his desk and sat back in the chair again in one swift movement. Only Tec-Sec’s Sergeant Eddie Cadejo could find a way to pace while sitting down.
“Those punk kids, the Gamers, they hack private networks to play their stupid little games. Well now they’re in real trouble.” He seemed genuinely excited at the prospect. Fully aware of what ‘those punk kids’ did for fun, I just stared at him until he continued.
“This time they jacked the internal service network of Remus Tech.” He got up and began pacing again, but this time he was smiling. If he was more inclined to the theatrical like Jackson I imagine he’d be literally wringing his hands with glee.
“We never catch them, though.” I chose to address his quartz paperweight rather than follow him around the room with my head this time. “Why is this time any different?”
He stopped, turned, regarded me and then practically skipped back to his desk to point at his computer screen.
“Because they just logged in! Remus Golems noticed them immediately and called it in.”
I stopped messing around with my semi-legal new ‘board and pulled my rolling gear from my pocket. As I rolled I asked him the question I knew he wanted me to ask.
“Why,” I licked the gum strip on the paper and tapped the cigarette on his desk, “would Remus Tech’s own Golems not shut them down immediately?”
They wanted us to catch these kids. They wanted them in the cells until they could sue them properly. So they gave them a wide berth on the network and called us, hoping we’d get there in time. That’s what Cadejo was saying, significant slower than I had thought it. They were sending out a clean-up crew, including me.
“You’re sending me because I need to get my footwork hours in, for my promotion.” I gave up playing twenty questions. I already knew all this.
“We’re sending you, too, because you…” He trailed off and gave me an annoyed look. I lit my cigarette and focussed on the paperweight. “Fine. Go to the bays now.” He began a wider path in his pacing, more relaxed now he’d palmed this one off on me. I set off for the parking bays.
—
On the drive to Remus Technologies’ enormous and ornate headquarters I thought about what was about to happen. I liked these kids. I’m part of the reason we’d never caught them. What can I say? Good adversaries are hard to find over the Grid, and this group were the best in The City. Only one had ever beaten me in a game before, but they put up a good fight.
One grunt nudged the identical aerogel armour of the one to his right and gestured my way. A wordless ‘what’s his deal?’ I payed no attention, I was decking in with my *Roam™ powered portable Grid-visor™*. Checking on Remus’ Golems.
Every major company has Golems. They patrol the networks night and day looking for intruders and kicking them out, sometimes with severe penalties. Since Remus Tech controlled the Roam™ system their Golems even had the power to ban you from being online at all, at least on all Remus owned services. Unfortunately that included the Grid; the fate of the internet of old, after Remus got their grubby mitts all over it, and ‘nothing happens off the Grid’ as the ads scream proudly. You had to be particularly malicious and stupid to get caught and full-service Hammered though. It didn’t happen often.
Using my Tec-Sec ID code I forced the Golems to give up the exact coordinates of the intruders, which I relayed to the captain of the little crew of officers. Then, using a little Remus ID I hacked up, I also forced them to leave me alone for a little while. I had to warn my adversaries in time for them to log out and scarper; it wouldn’t do to let them feel the full brunt of Remus’ legal team. Or teams, as it were.
“Hands off your tackle and eyes open. We’re here.” The captain called as the van rolled to a gentle stop.
Shit.
Filed under: Gibberish | Tags: Creme, Creme Egg, Egg, Life, Special, Stars, Universe
I just found a Creme Egg in my pocket! (Link for anyone who may not know of them. Just in case.)
“Over reacting a little aren’t you, J Bov?”
Let me tell you something;
When you glance at the night sky on occasion, you see the beautiful points of light, shimmering in the firmament, and you pause.
You are staring up into the light from a billion other suns. There are stars so large if you replaced our star with them they would reach the furthest point of the orbit of Jupiter. We can see whole other galaxies, hundreds of billions of suns spiralling in space, with the naked eye.
Our planet is a tiny rock, spinning in the dark. We’ve discovered a little over five hundred others through the years, none of them Earth-like. I will almost definately never set foot on Mars, or even our own moon, I’ll probably never leave this one insignificant mote of dust.
Small comforts are rarely afforded in this dark, lonesome universe.
But I exist. You exist. A ridiculously long, twisted line of history has led to chance meetings, from which sprung one of almost infinite possible new lives, who met someone else and did it again. This decreases the odds of my or your ancestors even meeting to incredibly low. More chance meetings and eventually, one of millions of sperm meets one of millions of eggs and from a huge range of possible expressions of that meeting it’s you. Wonderful, miraculous you and me.
Every molecule in your body can be traced to cosmic phenomena; you and I are swirling masses of space stuff that coalesces for an instant as us, then moves along. The odds of these things are so small as to be essentially zero, but here we are.
All this means that, against astronomical odds, you were born from the heart of a star. I was too. So too was the person, who I will never meet, who thought up Creme Eggs.
I could have been anywhere, at any time and it could have been anything that I’d forgotten I had, but it wasn’t.
So from all this mad, swirling, chaotic mess we can condence down to a single, shining moment wherein I find something in my pocket and tell you about it.
This very moment when I found a Creme Egg and it made me smile
and that, Sir or Madam,
that is very special.
Filed under: Diatribes and Debates, Philosophical Bollocks, SCIENCE!, Writing | Tags: 2010, 2011, hope, humanity, learned, learning, new year
So 2010 is almost over, the starting point of a new decade grinds slowly into the middle. What have we learned this year?
Nothing we didn’t know already, basically. Tories are evil, Lib Dems are spineless and Labour are practically useless.
We’ve learned that charges will be dug up out of nowhere so America can get somebody they think has wronged them ( Support Assange).
We’ve learned that some people fear science while others fear religion, with both sides willing to call for genecide.
We’ve also learned that protesting doesn’t work and neither does rioting. It’s impossible to change someone else’s mind for them.
We’ve learned that snow get’s boring very quickly and that here in England we still can’t deal with it.
On top of these things, we’ve learned that TV will continue to aim for the lowest common denominator and succeed in making stars out of preening idiot nobodies.
We’ve learned that the music industry is far from dead, but it is senile now.
Is it all bad? Looks that way, but when evil rushed from the box there was one thing left inside. Quivering in the corner right at the bottom, cold and naked, was hope.
We’ve learned that privately funded space flight is not just theoretically possible; it’s a viable option and probably the only way the layman will get off this rock. That’s exciting.
We’ve learned that a cure for HIV is closer than ever. So too, cancer.
We’ve learned that stem cells are essentially magic cures for almost any genetic defect, if only people would take the research seriously.
We’ve learned that at least some people care what happens to them and others.
We’ve learned that there are always voices from the dark telling us that we’re cared for and that we’ll be okay if we just hang in there.
We’ve learned that there are whole nations committed to making sure this planet doesn’t become a burned out, inhospitable Venus clone.
We’ve seen pictures of the Earth taken from the window of the ISS.
We’ve witnessed changing attitudes towards race and sexuality.
We’ve seen people seriously considering the medical and economic benefits of legalizing a substance that is only illegal in the first place because a man who hated Mexicans wanted to monopolize the paper industry.
We’ve seen great art created and people engaging with it.
We’ve seen kids becoming genuinely excited about reading books. Sure, shit books, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Personally I’ve learned something quite important. It’s the same as it ever was. We go around and around again and every time it gets a little bit better, we care a little bit more about people instead of things, everything gets a little bit easier.
We can have frank discussions about controversial subjects and we can research controversial topics with less incoherent, uneducated screaming.
So yes, 2010 is drawing ever closer to being an entry in history books. But despite how it may look right now, I think we’re going to be okay. If we just hang in there, we’ll be okay.
Filed under: Angry Slurred Shouting, Diatribes and Debates, Gibberish, People, Writing | Tags: apocalypse, armageddon, Cameron, Clegg, dream, dreams, end of the world, horror, nightmare, politics, rage
I’d always assumed that when the world ended I’d be with my friends and family in a meadow on a hill, watching a city crumble in the distance. The sunset would paint the sky purple and red and orange, Sigur Ros would be playing from somewhere in the background and we’d talk about the good times.
As the end drew near we’d exchange our goodbyes, crack some jokes and then there would be quiet and peace; drawing comfort from the futility of worrying about anything. A bitter-sweet ending, an idealized finale.
That’s why last nights dream struck me to my soul.
The world was ending, but my friends and family weren’t there. They were away on some exotic beach, being massaged by supermodels and chuckling to themselves, this I knew. Nor was I in a meadow. Instead I was on a bus, surrounded by knobheads, the reek of urine ruining my journey.
Occasionally someone would flick the back of my head and when I turned to glare at them I missed the crumbling city behind me, turning around in time to see just settling dust, a horrible grey in the garish yellow midday sunlight. The bus was now parked, but nobody got off.
From the window I could see the panic, hear the running feet. Here and there was looting, I saw a group of children repeatedly stabbing an elderly shopkeeper for a mars bar.
Over the din I could hear Jedward being played from some invisible speakers.
Then, projected enormously against the wreckage, began an endlessly looping video of David Cameron violently robbing a poor, old woman. Perhaps because it was projected onto an uneven ruin, perhaps not, he had taken on the aspect of a six-limbed monster bedecked in hideous spines and scale-like plates. From between two of the plates grew the constantly, sickly grinning face of Nick Clegg, like a tumor.
I could see both Milibands and the rest of Labour springing to and fro, wearing signs which read “the end is nigh!” While I couldn’t question the validity of their warning, I also couldn’t shake the feeling that they were slightly late to this party.
Suddenly I was on my feet; I grabbed and shook madly the nearest person to me.
I continued to shake him as I heard myself screaming; “No! This can’t be the end! It can’t all end like this, can it!? We worked harder than this, didn’t we!? DIDN’T WE!?”
His face remained impassive, staring straight ahead rather than watching the world fall apart around him.
He squinted at me through the pudgy rolls of flab around his eyes, unblinking, and without a word he put another handful of fries into his idiot mouth.
I began to yell incoherently, a wordlessly protest that any sane person would echo. I yelled alone. The insistent sound of a siren began then.
I awoke with a start, drenched in cold sweat, slapping my alarm to stop its wailing. I looked about myself; everything was as it should be, from my window I could see a thin mist, rising quickly in the bright but gentle morning light.
I breathed a sigh of relief and after my morning ministrations I made a cup of tea. I lit my first cigarette of the day and, mug in hand, waited for my jangled nerves to calm.
Sufficiently relaxed and now assured that what I had seen was only a terrible dream, I turned on the television. Eventually, bored of sitcoms, I made a huge mistake; I switched to the news.
I haven’t stopped screaming since.
Filed under: Writing | Tags: drink, fun with words, ink, poem, Poetry, printer, rhyme, writing
Mikey Pinter, son of a printer,
Had a great fondness for ink,
Cyan or magenta, it just didn’t enter,
His head that it wasn’t a drink.
It was early one morning,
As Friday was dawning,
That Mikey first started to run.
“It does barely tickle,
And it’s only a trickle,
But I’ll tell you, it isn’t much fun!“
A great, beefy man,
With a pie-vending van,
Met Mikey at that Summers Fayre.
“Well, you are what you eat!“
Cried the man with the meat,
But there was only a stick figure there.
Mikey Pinter, son of a printer,
Had a great fondness for ink.
His life must be boring,
Stuck as a drawing,
All thanks to a poor taste in drink.
