Last week Gotham put the gangsters/Gordon forward and the episode was great. This week had Barbara, Catwoman, Nygma, and Bruce Wayne’s school life and suffered for it (Actually I did like Wayne beating up Tommy Elliot/Baby Hush)
As usual the Gordon/Bullock stuff was great, and the two characters/actors are showing a lot of chemistry that makes watching them the best part of the show.
The show would benefit from focusing on Gordon’s story without the goofier elements (Nygma), pointless elements (Barbara, Catwoman), and sending Bruce Wayne off to train with Lady Shiva and Ducard for a season or two.
I can imagine this episode and it’s silly villain will get a lot of flak from reviewers, but I really enjoyed it. The show continues to find its feet and I still have faith that there will be an episode that pulls it all together. Barbara, Gordon’s love interest, is a badly-written, waste of time. She just walks around the apartment looking glamorous while vaguely distrusting Gordon but never really committing to it. I really like Sean Pertwee’s Alfred. He’s playing it well and definitely seems like a man who could be talked into going along with Bruce’s eventual crusade.
The character analysis of the Doctor continues as he and Clara have their last hurrah. After the last episode I was expecting a Clara-less episode, but instead got the Doctor Who equivalent of a break-up date but with a mummy, Frank Skinner (who was killing it as The Doctor’s makeshift companion) and a space train. A nice touch was the jelly baby cigarette case.
I was shocked by the ending as I expected Clara to leave and we would get a mopey solo adventure but, no, she’s just as addicted as the Doctor is. Danny is going to be pissed.
Ug the Giant likes these rat lollipops. Ug, a giant of simple tastes, he like Rat Lollipops and Road Kill Surprise Pops. New flavours make Ug sad. Ug no like fancy flavours like Possum Pops and Marsupial Munches. Ug’s girlfriend, Ag, vegetarian so she eats icky Green pops. Icky Green pops make Ug sad. Ag say they good for Ug health.
Ug’s father, Eg, talk about Human Pops. Human Pops all the rage but no more. Now humans have stabby spears and fire throwers. They no easy to make into pops anymore.
**Last night I watched the movie Tracks for Audienceseverywhere.net. I woke up this morning, wrote my review of it and decided to try and do a Friday Fictioneers in one sitting. I would look at the picture and then write and just see what came out. Tracks is a movie about a woman who walks from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean (2,700 KM). I think the movie might have lingered, causing me to write something about walking for this Friday Fictioneers. So here is The Knocker, something a little bleak and dark for your delectation.**
The Knocker walked along the beach. Every ten steps he saw a dying animal. He raised his club and brought it down, smashing the animal’s skull with a single practised motion. He walked. The club, the knocking stick, tapped against his leg as he walked. The tide came in and washed the blood from the tip of the club. The sun, dark in the sky since the Flash, stared down on him like a malevolent, black eye. The Knocker heard the choking groans of something up ahead. He sighed and raised his club.
William Hartnell, the First Doctor, had the unenviable role of being the Doctor before anyone knew who the Doctor was. Throughout his run most of the tropes we associate with the show were not in place like having two hearts, Gallifrey, or even being called a Time Lord. He is simply an alien travelling the galaxy with his granddaughter. Originally planned by producers to be more villainous, Hartnell’s innate warmth and high-pitched giggle ensured that the character became so popular and well-liked.
Though the earlier of the first Doctor’s episodes were actually quite boring they vastly improved towards the end.
100 Bullets is possibly my favourite comic book series. It is 100 issues/13 books long and I think I have read it from beginning to end at least three times. Brian Azzarello has such a way with dialogue that he sucks you in and before you know it you’ve read five issues and are hooked.
The premise starts simple: What if a man came to you with a briefcase and said within are 100 untraceable bullets and the name of the person (with unquestionable proof) who ruined your life.
Then all the mirrors seemed to lose their minds. They would show reflections of the room at the wrong time of the day. I would stand before the mirror in the sunny afternoon and see a darkened room full of moonlight and silence. The mirror downstairs showed my reflection as a child, screaming for my parents. The bathroom mirror was blank.
I smashed them all but they healed themselves.
I look in them now and I don’t recognise the person staring back, but it’s clear that he’s trying to get out.
Blackfish is an incredible documentary that cements a long held opinion of mine that people are dicks. It also proves that the acts of dickish people will turn marine animals into straight-up psycho killers. I’ve never been to SeaWorld and, after viewing this film, never will.
It tells the story of Tilikum, an orca that, because of mistreatment, keeps killing people. The movie is full of interviews of former SeaWorld trainers who open up about some of the shadier elements of the waterpark.
Sometimes hard to watch, it is a shocking indictment of the people who mistreat animals for entertainment.
The second episode of Capaldi’s Doctor was actually quite disappointing. I feel like we’re still getting used to this Doctor and something a little more character building might have worked better. Matt Smith’s first post-regeneration episode (The Beast Below) did a lot to establish his character and relationship with his companion. This episode gave us a taste of The Doctor’s new darker, more callous side but I didn’t feel like it was done in a particularly exciting way (The Doctor being compared to a Dalek has been done before, and better).
Positives: Danny Pink has potential and Clara’s killing it.
In order to will a house into existence one must first eat a hardy breakfast. The exertion of imagining walls that can hold up ceilings will drain you until you are staring at the reflection of a low-toner photocopy version of your face.
Windows are especially tricky. You can close your eyes, make fists and eat lots of fiber, but the idea of imagining into being a surface that can be seen through will cause nosebleeds and whiten your hair.
Stairs, floors are easy. And creating a house out of nothing is easier than assembling flat-pack furniture. So there’s that.
Dale the dentist, his heart broken like a cracked incisor, watched the ship leave.
On the deck Sheila waved to the people on the pier, and Dale knew which teeth she showed when she was truly happy. They shone in the dawn light.
He had told her not to leave and to floss regularly. She had said the job opportunity on the mainland was too good and that she tried but it was hard to build up a flossing routine.
Dale closed the blinds and took a hit from the laughing gas tank. He giggled/sobbed as the ship’s horn blew.
As I entered the hall of the Dire-Man I looked over my shoulder at the slowly closing door. Dawn light tried to shine through, but was halted at the threshold as though scared that if it tried to penetrate the darkness, the darkness would fight back.
The hall was lit with fat, foul-smelling candles the colour of jaundiced skin.
Every part of me wanted to just turn back, to run from the hall and down the hill and back to my home.
I thought of my son’s severed fingers on the path and carried on forward, deeper into the hall.
Things I Can’t Live Without
The Internet.
Beer.
Chocolate.
Doctor Who.
Sandwiches.
Books.
Trips abroad.
Puns.
The feeling of sitting back in a chair and seeing something you wrote and then just thinking, “Yeah, I did that.”
Movies.
Waking up on Saturday morning.
The works of Alan Moore, Wes Anderson and The Smiths.
Long walks.
Giant steaks.
That scene in The Godfather where Clemenza teaches Michael how to make spaghetti.
A constant stream of good ideas.
A constant stream of bad ideas.
The ability to differentiate between the two.
Breakfast in bed.
Breakfast at a table.
Breakfast at a restaurant.
Tea.
Coffee.
My wife.
Veins.
A servant of the Dire-Man met me at the door to his hall.
He beckoned me closer. ‘Your son?’ He said with a leer.
‘Where is he?’ I said, my fists tightened at my sides.
He tossed two fingers onto the path in front of me. ‘Here is part of him.’
I ran forward and grabbed his arms. Instead of feeling muscle or bone, my hands squeezed him and he began to melt in my grip. His face moved and ran down his ragged jacket like thick candle wax until he was nothing but a giggling puddle at my feet.
He kept his helmet on at all times, just in case the water level rose again and we were submerged. He only ate fish, every bite being like a little chewy victory, he said.
When Co-President Guppy came on the telly he would throw his hands up in despair, ‘We’re just giving the world away to the fin-backs!’ and my mum would shush him.
‘We’re at peace with them now, George, set a good example for the kids.’
‘You’re a goddamn fish-ist, woman!’ He would say around a mouthful of cod.
Earlier parts of The Dire-Man can be found here:One – Two – Three – Four – Five
To reach the house of the Dire-Man I climbed a hill, crossed a stream and eventually entered a forest.
The forest had waited for me. A path revealed itself as I approached.
Gnarled branches rose from the ground like ancient, grabbing fingers. Sound bled from the boughs of the trees. The weeping of my wife as she tried to find a photograph of our child to give to the police and the high-pitched squealing of my son, along with the sound of a knife cutting through flesh and bone.
And a voice reminding me that this was all my fault.
My son awoke in a cage. His hand roared with dull pain. His head felt clogged up like a blocked pipe. The air smelt like burnt hair and neglect. The floor he lay on was covered in stains and scratches where former occupants of the cage had tried, and failed, to burrow out of their prison.
My son cried for a while and then stood up. His head bumped the top of the cage when he stood up straight.
He put his fingers through the holes in the cage and realised he was missing two fingers on his right hand.
‘The Dire-Man waits in his house on the hill,’ said the girl with no eyes and sharp teeth.
‘His house is on the beach,’ I said, shaking my head.
‘You’ve been away for a long time,’ said the boy with no eyes and a forked tongue. ‘Things change. People change. We changed because the Dire-Man changed us.’
‘Your boy will change too,’ said the girl, a tear of blood falling from her empty eye socket. ‘If you don’t find him soon.’
I looked up at the dilapidated buildings on the hill, and when I looked back the children were gone.
When the police left, and my wife had put the other children back to bed, I set off for the beach. The sun was rising, and the light it cast felt incomplete as I crossed the Barkley Bridge towards the shore.
The stream on my right burbled and purred quietly, as though respecting the fact that it was still early and people were still sleeping.
I stepped off the bridge and saw a boy and a girl, holding hands, their eyes black holes in bloody faces.
They said, ‘When the Dire-Man is done with him, you can have him back.’
Thought I’d try something a bit different and use a couple of week’s worth of Friday Fictioneers to make a longer story.
The challenge will be molding each picture to the larger narrative, but everyone loves a challenge right?
Okay, disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the first part of The Dire-Man.
The Dire-Man (pt 1)
When I was growing up, the house on the beach was where the Dire-Man lived. We never saw him, but our parents and older siblings would tell us that he stole children from their beds on full moons and took them to his red house. The house, three battered red walls and no roof, sat atop a rock on the edge of the surf.
When I returned to my family home years later, I told the stories to my children and soothed their fears and thought nothing of my parental cruelty.
‘Let’s all calm down, now,’ said Tim, the gift shop manager, elbowing his way through the crowd until he stood at Butler’s side.
Butler didn’t look at him but said, ‘Citizen, get back into the crowd now.’
Tim puffed out his chest and said, ‘Now, Mr Butler, that is no way to address me, I am-‘
‘Nobody.’ Captain Butler turned to face him. ‘You are nobody and you will refer to me as captain or I will put a bullet in your knee cap and drag you to the brig myself. Am I understood?’
Peg marched the two privates back towards the fort. In one hand she held a pistol and in the other she held Bea’s hand.
The big gates opened and Captain Butler strode out. A few of the other citizens of the fort crowded around him, while at the same time they gave him reverant space.
‘What?’ He said.
Flames rose high behind Peg and the heat stopped her shivering in the cold. She said nothing and kept her gun pointed forward.
‘She isn’t sick,’ said Peg.
‘But you are, doctor,’ said Butler. He drew his own gun from its holster.
I should give some context to this photo. I live in Istanbul and very often me and my hot new wife (My wife was very happy with that description, Ted) will go exploring. One of our favourite places is near Galata Tower.
Around the tower are a labyrinth of streets, side-streets and side-side-streets, and on a Sunday afternoon it can be really fun to go exploring these awesome Turkish passageways. On one of our trips we stumbled upon this broken mannequin and I said to Fiona, ‘Get a pic of that, I think it’ll be a good Fictioneers prompt.’ and, after reading the other stories posted from the prompt, I was definitely right.
So here’s my effort:
Swap
When I grew tired of my looks I swapped my head for that of a mannequin. People said I had chiseled good looks and perfect hair, but I couldn’t speak, or laugh, or cry.
I got rid of my chicken legs and acquired some sculpted legs fit for a runner or a Greek God. But I couldn’t walk on them. Girls whistled and called me over but I could only stand there and watch them leave.
I swapped out my beer belly for a six pack and pecs you could bounce a penny off. Then died because I couldn’t breathe.
Madison Woods has released an anthology of 100 word stories all based upon the same photo prompt. Inside are 50 (plus an editor’s choice) stories and one of those stories is by me.
Yes, a book that is on Amazon contains content by ME. Awesome!
Go to Amazon and buy it, it costs 77 pence in the UK and I’m not sure about the US. Click on the cover picture to go get it!
If you ever find yourself trapped in a music shop atop a high tower, break the nearest piano.
Grab the keys and see if one of them works in the lock.
If not, grab a guitar and strum a few chords. Tie these together and climb out of the window.
If there are no windows, find a drum kit and see if you can interpret the secret meaning of the cymbals.
Or, if all else fails, maybe you can play a note on the keyboard and hope someone reads it and learns where you are and comes to rescue you.
I bought a ruby necklace from the jewelry counter and boarded the train. An hour into the journey the train derailed, killing everyone on board except for myself.
In the hospital the necklace told me that it was ancient and evil and that it had cursed me by making the train crash.
‘But,’ I said, ‘I survived. So you’re more like a good luck charm.’
It was quiet for a long time, the ruby blushing brightly. Eventually, it said, pretty unsurely, that survivor’s guilt would be my curse.
I shrugged and dropped it in the wastebasket on my way out.
I’m so glad you could join us here today for my last sermon. As you’ve probably read, the Atheists have won. God is dead.
It is with a heavy heart that I give this final address but, hey, it’s not all bad. We had some ups and downs. The Dark Ages were a low point and that pesky Inquisition is a tad embarrassing in hindsight but think of the good religion has done, not in a real, physical sense, but the spiritual good.
Now, as the collection basket goes around, please, be generous, it is my retirement fund after all.
Bea kicked at the wooden door but it wouldn’t give. The inside of the hut was illuminated by the rising flames. She screamed for help but heard nothing but the crackling fire.
And then she heard a voice, a lady’s voice giving out commands.
Then more voices and arguing and then the crack of a gunshot.
The door collapsed inwards as someone kicked it in on the other side. Two men hurried into the room, grabbed her and dragged her out into the cold.
The doctor lady stood there, gun in her hand and a dead body at her feet.
They need to be planted in rich, loamy soil where they’ll get direct sunlight. Cultivated properly a car tree will grow quickly and after a few months they will sprout affordable family cars.
The cars must be picked soon after they have ripened though because their weight will pull the tree out of its roots.
The cars can be driven as soon as they are picked and each will have a rich pine throughout.
Once you have picked your car be sure to check for woodpeckers under the seats and behind the radio.
Joe stood on the walls watching the privates douse the storage hut with gasoline. A huge smile halved his face. ‘Finally,’ he muttered. ‘Something worth watching.’
The privates circled the hut splashing its walls and roof until their cans were empty. They tossed them into the snow and Sergeant Pride removed a Zippo lighter from his pocket.
Over the cold, biting wind Joe strained to hear the screams and shouts coming from within the hut.
Pride lit his lighter and shielded the flame against the wind. Joe saw him say something that he couldn’t hear before he lit the gasoline.
I got dressed for my game of psychedelic golf and climbed into the piano.
I fell for a thousand years and landed on a marshmallow the size of a flatbed truck.
I was helped down by wood nymphs, land-maids (like mermaids but fish on top, woman on bottom) and goat men.
They pointed me in the direction of the spiral tree forest and gave me a map printed on the back of a 10 Euro note.
I got lost and asked some evil hypnotists for help.
They entranced me and took my nine iron.
When I awoke they were gone.
——————————————————————————————————–
TECHNIQUES
In order to play Rachmaninoff’s Sonata No. 2 a pianist must have 14 fingers.
To play Mozart’s unpublished Mega Requiem the player must first forsake his earthly belongings and besmirch his wife in public.
J.S. Bach, for fun, often composed pieces that only suited for players who played with their feet submerged in a mixture of ground up corn cobs, milk and suet.
Prokiev’s Vanya and the Duck must be performed while being stalked by wolves in tuxedos.
Beethoven wrote a piece in his later years that can only be played correctly from inside the piano, while wearing checked trousers.
When God was young his parents built him a playroom that was the size of the universe. In this room there was a toy chest that contained everything that had ever existed or did exist or would exist.
God’s favourite game was to take some of the varied animal parts from the toy chest and rearrange them on his play mat. Some days it would be an elephant with bat wings or a shark with a lizard’s tongue and sometimes, when he was really bored, he would smoosh together five or six different animal parts just to freak people out.
The man fell in love with the city on the day that he arrived.
He wrote the city love letters and dropped them down drains. He got no replies but assumed it was the city being shy.
He told his friends about the city and when one of them said that sometimes the city smelt of hot garbage he punched his friend in the face to defend the city’s honour.
He bought it gifts and left them on the street. He hung dresses from buildings and told the building that, no, that dress does not make your lobby look fat.
There’s a store on main street that caters solely for narcissists. It sells huge mirrors to hang on your walls and an in-house artist who, for a fee, will paint an elaborate portrait of you. Their best seller though is a payphone that you can install in your home. It looks like one on the street but with a few tweaks. Firstly, you don’t have to put coins in and secondly, there’s only the speaking part of the receiver so you can call whomever you want and talk and talk and never have to listen to a word they say.
In the next town over from where you are right now is A Bar.
And it is the A Bar, as in ‘A horse walks into A Bar and the barman says “why the long face?”’
When you enter, the patrons give you the once over. You recognise some of the regulars. The pope and the rabbi in the corner booth. The tiny pianist playing the blues. The bear with the big paws. The giraffe lying on the floor. The woman with the duck under her arm.
You order an over-priced drink and listen to them tell bad knock-knock jokes.
Bea awoke to a harsh smell that felt like someone was pulling out her nose hairs. She jumped from her blankets and ran to the door. She scattered the Fort Wednesday lunchboxes that the soldiers delivered her food in and which she had piled by the door, awaiting their removal. The door had a small hole in it and served as Bea’s primary source of light. She peered through it and saw three soldiers dousing her pathetic little home with liquid from red cans.
The farmer watched the horse watering his fields by itself and beamed. All of his training was paying off. The chickens laid their eggs and delivered them to the farmhouse now and the sheep had, with some difficulty, been taught to shear themselves. The pigs dutifully fattened themselves up and then, upon reaching a nice, plump size, killed themselves by clutching a knife between their trotters and then falling upon it like porcine Mark Antonys.
The farmer smoked his clay pipe and rubbed his stomach and smiled the content smile of a farmer who had never read any George Orwell.
Butler had the doctor removed from his tent against her violent protests.
‘Doctor,’ called Butler, ‘Walk away from this. Go back to your wife and you can say you tried but don’t interfere any further or you’ll sleep in the brig.’
‘You can’t do this, Butler!’ Scream Peg.
‘Yes I can. We voted on it. In a few hours this will be a memory. Go find Kat, I’m sure she can’t be too far away.’
Peg stopped struggling with the privates who were escorting her away, ‘How did you know about Kat?’
He had built a car out of bits and bobs and rocked around town singing at the top of his voice because the radio was broken.
When he stopped, he got out and stood on cardboard shoes looking around.
He wore a suit made out of catalogue pages bearing images of square-jawed men wearing suits made out of fabric.
His glasses were constructed from bent wire and had cling film for lenses.
He walked down the road talking about recycling and clean living and had a smile for everyone he saw even though his false teeth were made from marbles.
Butler summoned his sergeant to a meeting in his quarters, which was a tent pitched with the other soldiers’ tents that were based away from the civilians.
The sergeant, Pride, stood at attention in the entrance to the tent
‘At ease, Pride,’ said Butler. He pointed to a stool in the tent and the sergeant sat down. ‘Today we will terminate the infected subject currently residing outside our walls. You will choose two privates and at eight hundred hours you go out of the walls and burn the subject’s dwelling to the ground with it inside. Understood?’
I looked at this picture and got a few weird little ideas and tried to write each one but got nowhere so in a spark of genius threw them all together to make a little story about a house you should probably avoid.
HODGE PODGE
The King of America lives in a dilapidated farm house somewhere upstate.
In his barn he keeps a three headed dog and the plans to a space ship.
In the basement of the house is a vampire who tells tall tales about when he worked in movies with Jack Warner and his brother.
The attic is full of monkeys on iPads trying to write the great American novel but so far they’re all stuck for a title.
The kitchen is stocked with beans and the fridge full of severed fingers (rings attached).
Captain Butler awoke at dawn and stepped from his cot onto the cold wooden floor. He made fists with his toes and arched his back until it made a satisfying cracking noise. He dropped the to the floor and performed one hundred push ups before flipping onto his back for one hundred sit ups.
He stood up, a fine sheen on sweat on his face but his heart rate steady and his eyes alert. ‘Better than a cup of coffee,’ he said as he made a mental list of the tasks he had for the day.
Sean Fallon 