The Point

The point clearly should have it’s obituary in every newspaper when you consider just how missed it is. However this coming incoherent ramble is not about that point at all, rather the point of a rather rusty spear in the Museum of Very Rusty things, which. at the time of writing, is about to drop off.

It is tired, you see, of being unappreciated. Once it was looked after in a careful and considerate manner, its owner appreciating the fact that it stopped angry men with other weapons from making unwanted introductions. Then it had been carefully kept in tip-top tip condition, and was not just left to gently rust in a museum that no one, not even the curator, visited. The suit of armour it lent against pointed out that it too was hardly looked after – the shoulder in particular having almost rusted into nothingness, but that was besides the point.

In final frustration it decided that, despite being so rusty as to be unable to slice air without difficulty, it would do it’s best to kill the next human to come near it, settling on tetanus as the most likely option. Dropping of the shaft should get it picked up, it decided, and then it has a chance – minuscule as it is – of getting something into the unsuspecting humans bloodstream.

All it has to do then is wait for someone to actually come to the Museum of Very Rusty Things.

Writers Block

It’s a bit like this,

Hummingbirds

They hum. It’s in the name. They also are, despite what one may think, birds. This is yet another case where the description is spot-on, unlike anywhere where metaphor has laid its dirty hands; there things get more complex.

White elephants can be white elephants, but do not have to be. Elephants in the room rarely are, and people blowing their own trumpet do not have to be deafening you with their self-heralding. Also, trumpet players, even those in orchestras, are likely very modest.

But back to hummingbirds; what sort of metaphor could they be? Small, delicate and nectar-drinking, they have been unfairly discarded in favour of butterflies, and this is likely to lead to war at somepoint.

Imagine, if you will, the phalanxes of AK-47 toting hummingbirds, fur caps emblazoned with red stars (why not?) advancing on the terrified butterflies who have yet to work out what on earth is going on. They never really have a chance, being mowed down in their millions by the furiously humming hummingbirds who show no mercy, and achieve a stunning and total victory, the butterflies cocooned lifestyle meaning they have no idea how to survive danger. However the results are not quite what the hummingbirds envisioned; true, the offending metaphor slowly dies, butterflies are not replaced with hummingbirds; for these are now synonymous with brutality and slaughter.

More nonsense by Severely Odd is available on Amazon to buy or read with kindle unlimited. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Severely-Odd/e/B00OB4006U

Welcome to the world

“Welcome to the world. we hope you will enjoy your stay, but if you don’t we will happily give you a refund. To the left you will see the bottomless pits of despair, which can also been seen on the right. Beyond that there is little else worth seeing; a little smidgen of joy which has escaped the joy-snuffers perhaps; however you wouldn’t want to see that.

The main inhabitants are grossly deformed four-appendaged beings of uncertain temperament. They certainly have been killing a lot lately, as you will have noticed when the last three of our party disappeared in a rather unfetching red mist. This is somewhat of a recent advance over their former make-holes-in-it-until you’ve-broken-enough approach. Refunds can also be claimed by next of kin, incidentally.

I hate it when they get the whole group. “

Editing

Sometimes, a thing you write needs a really good edit, cutting away all the extraneous stuff that’s just in there to bulk it up.

Dribbing and Drabbing

The great oddness with trying to write is the subjects will just not come all too often. With this sad fact, it is to be acknowledged that it often comes in dribs and drabs, and at that often rather drab dribs.

Take the inspiring idea of a megalomaniac eggplant. Why this wonderful basis for a novel has not previously occurred to me is a mystery; one that perhaps only the scanty plot details and potential word-count can answer. But surely Tolstoy would not have been stumped by such a prospect? Look at the length of War and Peace – if half of that great tome is about peace he’s literally written thousand of words about nothing. The other half – no doubt full of mutilations, atom-bombs and other such enjoyable subjects – being something even the most pedestrian of authors can write about, albeit with more exclamation marks. But I digress, and this drib is over.

Evening, and a horrible thing occurs

Waking up to discover the whole world had been destroyed is a horrible way to do so. Balanced precariously on a rocky remnant of what once had been earth, you wonder ‘where has it all gone?’ for the brief moment of terror that it takes for the lack of atmosphere to get to.

This is pretty much how things occurred to Martin Happenstance one fine evening. Well, it was an evening in any case. Or would have been, if not for the bulk of earth, usually so convenient for filtering out the sun and ensuring that evening occurs hadn’t been scattered around in little chunks.

There was a small part of him, beneath all the terror, that thought ‘this can’t possibly be happening’. It was wrong, and he another small part of him which suddenly realised that he’d also forgotten to fill in his tax returns All in all, it was a horrible evening. Luckily, only very briefly.

Severely Odd is an author of absurdist fiction. It most certainly is absurd, but the jury is still out if that’s in a good way or not. he occasionally goes into a sulk.

Title

Blog posts need titles. Books need titles. Noblemen need titles. Deeds can be titles. Words are better than deeds. Words can be titles.

This blogpost is Sir Blogpost of internet.

Randomness

Random things happen randomly. Take the conquest of Rotovia, where what started off as a complaint to the management ended up in the enslavement of millions. Or the marriage of Princess Ellin of Dource to a wardrobe thanks to a misfiring neuron. But our tale here presented consists of so many mind-boggling coincidences that you would believe it fiction if not for it appearing here.

It begins with a very small marmoset, which is, for reasons only known to itself, setting up a letterpress edition of the complete works of Shakespeare. It ends, much to our dismay, with the tragic suicide of a star-crossed lover via woodchopper, and consists in the middle of an accident involving dominoes, fourteen minor chance events, and a squash. In truth it was all the squash’s fault, but at least publication made it as far as Hamlet.

How it all adds up is so simple that I scarcly need to tell you more than the fact that the tragic hero could read.

Now that was a coincidence alright.

Echo

It is an empty night and the shout echoes through it like the hollowness inside the bystander, who is very empty indeed.

But not, you understand, as empty as the howler. It’s cry of rage and grief and utter despair speaks to every miserable thing in the near-empty night, and a thousand small creatures attempt to reach oblivion. And then it cries out again, in a voice so terrible as to inspire a whole new cult:

WHY CAN’T I SELL ANY BOOKS?

And then he shuffles back inside to carry on writing.

If you are wondering about the cult, is a very dark one, involving horrible rituals with human victims, and word counts.