in which I gain, and lose, psychic powers
I suddenly had a desire to penetrate the melon that has been sitting in our kitchen for the last four months or so. From the outside, it did not look rotten; it barely looked ripe. So Dave hacked into it with a cleaver.
And it was fine. I've encountered many worse melons. Dave shrank from it, muttering something about 'that disease you get from gone-off melons', but I was unstoppable, slicing lumps off it with the sharp knife and biting into them, juice dribbling grotesquely down my chin. In doing so I apparently became a legend on Facebook; a lot of people have been asking me about my melon.
After I'd finished Dave discovered on the internet definite links between melons and e. coli. This gave me a few uncomfortable moments during the night, waiting for a real or imagined stomach ache to develop into something worse. But the only effect of the melon was to make me psychic. The very next day I was out the back at work thinking about the Guillemots song Get Over It. I turned the radio on. The song was just starting.
(What I was thinking about the Guillemots song was that the cheery interjection 'get over it' would work very well if inserted into a lot of other songs - especially Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis.)
My psychic status was confirmed the day after that when, watching Deal Or No Deal, I just knew that the contestant chosen to play that day would be Big Ron. This is not quite enough to build a TV career on, I agree. Yet can anyone fail to be astounded by these extraordinary facts?
On Saturday night we went out for Hannah's 25th birthday. We ate at Prezzo's where, despite my aversion to peas, I ordered something that contained petit pois. Naively, I had imagined that petit pois were nothing like real peas. In the event they overwhelmed me with their greenness, their numerousness, and their comparative size. I was forced, cravenly, to avoid them as I ate. It was like the opposite of the melon experience. I immediately lost all my psychic powers.
Afterwards we were in the Slug and Lettuce. Everyone had gone home or gone to Sam's except me, Dave and Mat. We sat round a table in the coldest part of the pub (by the door), arms folded, like bitter old men, grumbling about young people and their inappropriate attire. Having compared himself - at some length - to a turd, Mat talked about his forthcoming masterwork, a 17-hour animated adaptation of The Illuminatus Trilogy in which all the characters are robots (for the sound artistic reason that Mat doesn't know any voice actors, and, in order to complete his masterpiece, he does not wish to have to leave the house.) He doesn't - he also said - want it to be too good.
As we left the pub I imagined that this would be the last time I'd see Mat for twenty years or so, as he went into hiding to complete (and, indeed, begin) his great work - only to destroy it, in 2028, in a sudden fit of rage ('It's too perfect!')
In fact, he stayed the night at our place and was still there in the morning. My psychic powers had definitively failed - usurped, so it seemed, by the weathermen, who had once again correctly predicted snow.
And it was fine. I've encountered many worse melons. Dave shrank from it, muttering something about 'that disease you get from gone-off melons', but I was unstoppable, slicing lumps off it with the sharp knife and biting into them, juice dribbling grotesquely down my chin. In doing so I apparently became a legend on Facebook; a lot of people have been asking me about my melon.
After I'd finished Dave discovered on the internet definite links between melons and e. coli. This gave me a few uncomfortable moments during the night, waiting for a real or imagined stomach ache to develop into something worse. But the only effect of the melon was to make me psychic. The very next day I was out the back at work thinking about the Guillemots song Get Over It. I turned the radio on. The song was just starting.
(What I was thinking about the Guillemots song was that the cheery interjection 'get over it' would work very well if inserted into a lot of other songs - especially Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis.)
My psychic status was confirmed the day after that when, watching Deal Or No Deal, I just knew that the contestant chosen to play that day would be Big Ron. This is not quite enough to build a TV career on, I agree. Yet can anyone fail to be astounded by these extraordinary facts?
On Saturday night we went out for Hannah's 25th birthday. We ate at Prezzo's where, despite my aversion to peas, I ordered something that contained petit pois. Naively, I had imagined that petit pois were nothing like real peas. In the event they overwhelmed me with their greenness, their numerousness, and their comparative size. I was forced, cravenly, to avoid them as I ate. It was like the opposite of the melon experience. I immediately lost all my psychic powers.
Afterwards we were in the Slug and Lettuce. Everyone had gone home or gone to Sam's except me, Dave and Mat. We sat round a table in the coldest part of the pub (by the door), arms folded, like bitter old men, grumbling about young people and their inappropriate attire. Having compared himself - at some length - to a turd, Mat talked about his forthcoming masterwork, a 17-hour animated adaptation of The Illuminatus Trilogy in which all the characters are robots (for the sound artistic reason that Mat doesn't know any voice actors, and, in order to complete his masterpiece, he does not wish to have to leave the house.) He doesn't - he also said - want it to be too good.
As we left the pub I imagined that this would be the last time I'd see Mat for twenty years or so, as he went into hiding to complete (and, indeed, begin) his great work - only to destroy it, in 2028, in a sudden fit of rage ('It's too perfect!')
In fact, he stayed the night at our place and was still there in the morning. My psychic powers had definitively failed - usurped, so it seemed, by the weathermen, who had once again correctly predicted snow.
posted by martin at 12:30 PM
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