Jag gjorde det igår och jag gör det igen idag: ber om er hjälp. Supertrökigt spammande, jag vet, men omröstningen om vem som blir SFs nya recensent för sommaren är på blodigt allvar. Och jag står precis på gränsen till att bryta mig in på den efterlängtade topp tio.

http://www.biosommar.se/entry.php?entryid=311

Att rösta tar i runda slängar 15 sekunder, men ni får så klart jättegärna ta en titt på videon, som i all ärlighet är ganska jävla bra, även om den slängts ihop väldigt hastigt. Vill ni vara helt otroligt jävla hjälpsamma kan ni dessutom rösta en gång per enhet och webbläsare, samt en gång per dag. Detta skulle uppskattas så mycket att jag nästan fått en stroke.

Omröstningen avslutas på söndag och därefter lovar jag att sluta tjata.

Jag återupplivar den här bloggen av en enda anledning: att fullständigt sälja min själ för en vinst. Det pågår just nu en omröstning som kommer avgöra vem som har chansen att bli filmrecensent för SF i sommar och efter att ha kommit in sent har jag klättrat från plats 311 till plats 14. Men jag behöver ta mig in i topp tio. Och jag behöver DIN hjälp.

http://www.biosommar.se/entry.php?entryid=311

Att rösta tar i runda slängar femton sekunder. Man kan rösta en gång per enhet/webbläsare och en gång om dagen. Ni behöver så klart inte gå så långt, men en röst hade varit väldigt fint och gjort mig alldeles förbannat jävla glad. Och SF också för den delen, för ärligt talat är de andra bidragen ganska... kassa.

Så. Det här var jag som gjorde skamlös reklam och pissade på allt vad integritet heter. Men så får det bli ibland. När man är desperat.

Här är den nu, den färdiga novellen. Fast uppdelad i två.

The reason for Stalking Elk är en mörkt komisk historia skriven som ett "stream of consciousness". Detta gör att den ibland kan ta lite... udda svängar.

Ge gärna kritik (men inte för hård, då blir jag ledsen) och kommentera eventuella språkliga missar (utnyttja sina läsare? Jajamänsan!) Ni får försöka överleva GR:s fullständiga oförmåga att hantera indrag.

Now we're two. Me and Charlie. Charlie was kidnapped. Kidnapped and tied to a chair. He'd been here for about a week. Sometimes he had been free of course. He'd eaten. Been to the bathroom. Then back to the chair. I have to ask him. "Why does Mr. Cheerful-as-Fuck do this?" "Why?" He laughs. It's a deep fisherman kind of laugh. Like they used to laugh. Back in the days. Whenever that was. "Yeah." I say. "Why?" "You didn't ask him, did you?" I flash him a smile covered in blood, and he laughs some more. He has a strange sense of humour. He is also a very practical person. I can tell. He gets to business right away. He paces the room, searching the walls, looking for something. Very MacGyver. But the room offers little. Not even the parts for a miniature rocket launcher, or some sort of escape pod. There is a pipe. Nothing bad about pipes, we would be where we are right now without pipes. Of course, me and Charlie would rather not be where we are right now, but you get the point. Point is pipes are good, only they might prove somewhat insufficient in the situation at hand. But Charlie seems pleased. So we set of. "Stay behind me" he says. I'm not one to argue. Maybe his body will stop most of the bullets. I don't have anything against him, really, but I'd rather see him dead, than me. We push the cabinet away, and walk back the way I came. Slowly. Carefully. Listening for the squeaky shoes. Not a sound. Soon we're back in the larger room. The vomit smells disgusting. We take the left path. The one leading out. It turns. It turns again. There are doors here and there leading of to the sides. But we figure forward is our best shot. Until the corridor splits in two. Right and left. "Where to now?" I say. "Where to now?" He says. "Yes, where to now" Mr. Captor says.

What happened next? A stop-motion short has between four and two pictures a second. That's six or twelve frames per picture, using the European system. The American system is different. I learnt this at a bar. A guy from Germany was in town working on some movie. He cursed at the American system. Called it idiotic. Or the German equivalent of idiotic. How Charlie died was like a stop-motion short with too few shots. Like a stop-motion short missing a third of the frames. It was something like this: Charlie shouts "FREEDOM" like in that movie starring a long haired Mel Gibson. And he shouts, and he runs. "FREEDOM." The pipe in his hands is a mediaeval spear and Charlie plans to run Mr. Prime Ribs through like a BBQ. BBQ and FREEDOM. But the man sidesteps. Just as he is to become grill dish he sidesteps. FREEDOM? Charlie gets this look on his face, he is so surprised. And then there is a gun. I have to admit to not being man enough to identify what kind of gun. Mark and model is to me as foreign as brain surgery or penis weightlifting. But it is a gun. Of the "trigger-cock-spark-bang-slug-dead" kind. FREEDOM, and then there is a gun. And BANG. And Charlie is dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. And dead. And never more alive. And curtain. Only we're both still there. Me and Mr. Porky. So I run.

I might not have been able to identify the gun, but I knew enough to see that it was not a six-shooter. This was a modern gun. And that meant, what? Ten bullets? That's nine more bullets to outrun. And then he might reload. I choose a right turn. Right can't be wrong, I have time to think. Another shot. A miss. Eight. In school I could do a hundred yards in twelve seconds. I remember this as being quite fast. I haven't run in seven years. Another corner just as he comes around the last. Another shot. And another. Another miss. And another. Seven. Six. They don't run a hundred yards in the Olympics. They use the Metric System. I choose not to acknowledge the Metric System. I'd choose not to acknowledge the French at all if I could. But they do this one hell of a potato dish. With every step the distance between us increases. My lungs press on my broken ribs. My left arm hurts with each move. I taste blood. But the distance is increasing. Mr. Pork Chop back there seems not to have run since school either. And in School I doubt he ran a hundred yards in twelve seconds. He is wheezing. Another corner and I'm stuck. Stuck. Stuck. Stuck. Fuck. There is no way onward and upward. Dead end. No more corners and still six bullets to go. At minimum. I press flat against the wall just beyond the corner. Hear the wheezing. My grandma once had a dog who wheezed. It was blind, and ugly and wheezing. It loved to sleep in my bed whenever I stayed over. And it wheezed all night. Oh, and it smelt. Like garbage and piss. I remember not being all to upset when it died. I wait. My heart is a frightened animal in a cage. Desperately trying to scratch a way out. My brain enters over-drive. Pictures of mutilation and death. My own death. My own mutilated body. Hello cracked skull. Hello there splintered bones and ruptured intestines. If the acid from inside your stomach escapes you start digesting yourself. There is a subtle squeaking from his shoes. He comes closer. Closer. Squeak. I am a ninja. I am a fierce cheetah ready to pounce. Or something like that. Squeak. I fly up, sink my fist into his fleshy gut. Grab him around the wrist, and turn his gun away. He blind-fires once into the floor. Five. And once into the wall. Four. He wrestles back and fires a shot dangerously close to my head. I wrestle back, and he fires a shot dangerously close to my crouch. Three, two. Another blind-fire. One. I head butt the bridge of his nose. My already smacked-up head screams in protest, but it has the desired effect. He goes limp in my arms. It is just then I realized what we just did was the fucking Tango. I take his gun, and he falls to the floor.

He just lays there. He is not dead, he is still breathing. The best way to survive a grizzly attack is to play dead. Grizzlies and black bears inhabit the same area. They look the same; only the grizzly has smaller ears and a neck hump. If you try playing dead with a black bear it might rip you to shreds out of pure curiosity. They don't teach this in school. This is because in school, they don't educate survivors. They don't educate hunters. They educate prey. They want us scared. Today you're either a producer or a consumer. I'm not a hunter. I'm a tax-payer. I pay taxes so that someone will build roads for cars to run on, so that the oil companies can sell gas. And I pay taxes so that someone will build weapons of mass destruction in case The Russian attacks. I'm not a hunter. I've never stalked elk or gutted a fish. I've never had to hunt my own food and I have never skinned anything in my life. I pay taxes. And I pay the insurance company. In case a black bear rips me to shreds my loved ones get two hundred grand. But I have no loved ones. No father and no son. It's not about the money. My life insurance is a reminder: you are going to die. A reminder so that death does not come as a surprise. Every month I get an insurance bill. This is really a letter. The letter says "you are going to die". I have no father and I have no son. I am a generation without past or future. A generation tied to no one, and nothing. Except my wide screen LCD-TV. It was really expensive. I have insurance for that too. Mr. Late Night Snack stirs. I'll have to do something about that. "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever" Orson Welles wrote. God I hope it is not so. Because what I do to him looks really fucking painful. I leave him, a bleeding heap. He is still breathing though. Breathing with an awful, gurgling sound, making bubbles of blood and saliva in the corners of his mouth. I turn my back against him, and walk towards the exit. His gun is in my hand. His gun with one last bullet. He coughs. I look over my shoulder, but don't slow down. His gun is in my hand. I am god. He rolls over on his side. Coughs. Spits out a mouthful of something. His teeth. I turn my eyes away. Time to leave. "Wait!" Is he weeping? "Wait!" Is that crying? No, that's not crying. He's not weeping. He's- "You have a choice." No. He can't be. "A choice." Wheezing breath. He is. I can't believe it. "You can walk away-" He is giggling. "Or you can stay, and find out what you really want to know." That fucking giggle. I stop. "Find out why..." I stop. I stop and I turn. Slowly. "Why did I do it?" "Why did you do it?" "Nobody dies a virgin, life fucks us all." He says. "Why did I do it?" Where could he have kept another gun? I beat him, kicked him. I felt no other gun. And I drop mine. "Why" Giggle. "Did I" Giggle. "Do it?" Giggle. Blood fills my lungs. There is a hole the size pinkie in my chest and a hole the size of a tangerine in my back, yet my lungs flood. Should they not be emptying? Wheezing breath. Not his. Mine. "James. James, James, James. Have you learnt nothing?" That awful fucking giggle. "Why did you do it?" Wheezing breath. "Why did I do it?" "Why did you do it?" "I'll tell you why..." Giggle.

Här är den nu, den färdiga novellen. Fast uppdelad i två.

The reason for Stalking Elk är en mörkt komisk historia skriven som ett "stream of consciousness". Detta gör att den ibland kan ta lite... udda svängar.

Ge gärna kritik (men inte för hård, då blir jag ledsen) och kommentera eventuella språkliga missar (utnyttja sina läsare? Jajamänsan!) Ni får försöka överleva GR:s fullständiga oförmåga att hantera indrag.

Dangling by the waist fifteen feet off of the ground one cannot but reflect a bit. Would I rather land on my legs and get impaled by my own splintered shins, but hopefully survive, or land on my head and end it quickly? Snap, whoosh, splat. "Hello there Jimbo!" He is a rather stout man in his late sixties. How he had managed to string me up here is a mystery. "How's it hanging?" The smile on his face and nervous chuckle is laced with relief. You can tell he has practiced this line in his head and is pleased to have succeeded in delivering it. This ridiculous man had kidnapped me? "Get me down from here!" It is hard to make a serious and angry impression when strung up like fish in a smokehouse. "In due time, Jimmy-boy!" "Why- why have you done this?" Mr. Stout, who had been pacing a slow semi-circle, stop dead in his tracks, and looks at me with an amused expression on his reddish face. "That's the problem with people of today, don't you think?" He chuckles and continues his walk. "Always ‘why?'. We have to know. 'Why?' Never just accepting our faith. ‘Why'." He stops by a lever on the wall. "I'll tell you why..." He puts his hand on the lever. "BECAUSE!" He pulls, and I fall.

Gravity is not a force like the other forces of nature, but is instead a curvature of space-time near large masses. Einstein thought that one up. Apparently makes one hell of a different when playing around with numbers and trying to calculate the universe. When falling fifteen feet, however, it is all the same. "You can open your eyes now, James." I pant heavily. This is, under the circumstances, a doubtlessly positive thing. Then my head split open. I open my eyes. I am dangling a mere two feet from the ground. My vision is blurred. My left arm yanked out of the socket. Like one of those Lego robots. Plop! But it seems I am alive. From what I gather, once you're dead you're not supposed to feel so much like shit you'll want to commit suicide. In suicide, are you victim or perpetrator? "I'm sorry about that. I was just going to give you a scare, but it seems I pulled the lever a bit too slow." Make that a murder-suicide. "You'll live, but you did get one hell of a smack on that head of yours." He is bent over, and smiles at me with mock-regret. "I should have thought it over, known to pull earlier. But that's what happens if you upset me, Jimmy." His face turns into a grotesque parody of a mother telling her son not to pull the cat by its tail. "For your sake I'd recommend you not to upset me again." "Fuck you." The two words hurt to say. I cough and taste blood. I feel it on my lips, but trying to lick it off I only makes it worse. How many ribs have I cracked? Oh my beautiful ribs. "Ha-ha, you've sure got balls" he smiles "Now quit it before I change that." The smile drains from his face. He walks, whistling, over to the lever on the wall and begin hoisting me back up. His whistling goes from "flight of the bumblebee" to "I've been working on the railroad" as I slowly ascended. Seven feet up, he suddenly stops, and so do I. After standing quietly, apparently trying to make out a sound from an adjacent room, he locks the lever in position. He looks up at me, and chuckles. No, not chuckles. He didn't chuckle. The son of a bitch giggled. "Seems we've got company!" This is my chance. "Now, I can't have you screaming your lungs out trying to get rescued. I want there to be some juice left in you later, when I puncture your eyeballs." Another fit of the giggles. "So I'll save you some trouble. The man at the door is named Mr. Higgins. Mr. Higgins is 83 years old. His hearing aid has been broken for quite a while; he has auditory hallucinations ranging back to his service in WW2 and severe dementia. I wouldn't put all my chips on that card." And giggle. And he leaves me.

Of course I scream. At first. Escaping a hostage situation 1-0-1: Do NOT take the kidnappers word for something. He seems to have told the truth. And the pain of screaming makes me vomit. A foamy and red blot on the floor, splattered across maybe fifteen square feet. Slowly being absorbed by the white broadloom. What kind of room has fifteen feet ceiling and broadloom? Where the fuck am I? My left arm, the useless one, the one ripped from its socket, has ended up in an awkward position between my aching ribs and the rope. I have to move it. Just a bit. I once took a class in how to block pain using guided meditation. Something about doors and chakras and caves and power animals. Lah-di-dah, fuck me raw. The teacher was this crew-cut, new age, twenty-something, free spirited douche bag. Once I get out of here I'll string the fucker up by the waist and crack his ribs. This kind of thinking is called "negative energy". Suddenly my left arm slips out from under me. And not only that, it slips out of the noose. My left arm, the useless one, the one ripped from its socket, is free. Mr. Stout, Mr. Giggles-to-much, Mr. kidnapping scumbag, has made sure to tie the rope tight around my waist and arms. But one arm free, means no more tight rope, means-- Again, I fall. The ground is hard. Still. This time the fall is shorter, but this time I am already roughed up, and this time I have to take the full force of the fall. No rope. The wind against my face. Or well, not wind. Wind is a massive scale movement of gas. I am inside; the gas isn't moving very much at all. But I move, and the air brushes my face, and it is freedom. Total freedom. For a second. Then there is broadloom and pain. And vomit. I try to brace myself with my arms, or well my right arm, the only one working, to save my head. But the vomit-saturated carpet makes my hand slip away. I sit up, trying not to cry from the pain. I vomit some more. Because of the pain, and because the vomit from the floor has made its way into my mouth. I gag, I cough and then ball of red mucus leave my mouth. It must look like in the movies. In movies they always vomit a small, concentrated ball of vomit. This is because they don't really vomit. They only spit out something vomit-looking they've just put in their mouths. You can only keep so much in your mouth. Movie vomit is mainly instant oatmeal, like the one from your every day convenience store, and water, with food colouring. Green or yellow. You can add breakfast cereal for chunkiness. You'll notice they always have at least one cut between a character talking and the same character vomiting. CGI can make gunfights in outer space possible, but you still can't talk with fake vomit in your mouth. I get up. Pain. PAIN! Pain. Vicodin. Katadolon. Neurontin. A candy-bowl of Biorphen. How I wish. I vomit some more. Nothing comes. Only bile. Mucus. When did I last eat? I'd kill for a hot dog. That reminds me. Better get going, or I'd be the one getting killed. I am strongly against getting killed. He had gone left, had he not? That meant left was the way out. It also meant left was the way I would get caught. Could I over-power him? I could hardly get up from the floor. And he might be armed. What kind of kidnapper is unarmed? Then again, what kind of kidnapper ties you up and hauls you up in the air? Right it is. I brace myself against the wall. After a while I am able to step up the pace, and semi-jog. My mother used to jog. Then she died. I didn't cry at her funeral. Now I jog. Wonder who won't cry at my funeral? After all, it might not be that far away. Who will even come? No parents, no girlfriend. I have a brother. He hates me. Friends? "This is upsetting me James!" echo off the walls. And we're back in the moment. So what if nobody shows at my funeral. I'll live. Hah. Mr. Flabby back there won't have any problem knowing what route I've taken. I've left large messy handprints of bloody vomit. It's fair to assume he'll be on my tale any second now. "I though I made it clear" He says. He says "I thought I made it clear." "Made it clear, that getting me upset is not in your favour." He says. He is after me. In the same corridor. But he walks slowly. Talking. He is calm. This is a bad thing. This means there is no way out at the end of this corridor. It means the large double doors emerging ahead of me are either securely locked, or only leading towards an adjacent room. Or both. I don't think I thought this next move through. I turn into a steamroller. Hollywood style, I fly against the door. No locked door is going to keep me out. Shoulder first, I am a rocket ship, a wrecking ball, Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme, the muscles from Brussels. Full speed, my entire weight behind the crash. The door is unlocked. It flies open, and I power through, completely perplexed by the lack of resistance. I trip, fall. Brace myself with outstretched arms. A burning flash of pain, and a surreal plopping sensation. My left arm is back in its socket. I scream. My brain screams. Everything is a flurry of adrenaline. A haze. I get up and shut the door. I am dizzy. There is no lock on the door, but there is a filing cabinet beside it. It'll work. And I'm alone, I think, at least for now. "Is that you, you fucking pervert, you god damn dog molester? I'll make potpourri out of you, once I get loose!" He is tied to a chair. In the middle of the room. I must've run just past him. There is a bag over his head. I remove it carefully, as if it was the last piece in a round of "Operations". "Who are you?" he demands when his eyes have stopped tearing from the, I presume, excruciatingly bright light of the naked bulb. "James." "Tells me jack-shit, James, but hello to ya. I'm Charlie." He is bald. Looks like a really mean rodent. Small, but evil to the core. "Now would you kindly untie me." At that moment, the moment before I decide weather or not to let rodent-boy here join the party, Mr. Kidnaper bangs on the door. This decides for me. I start untying. "Jimbo?" He asks cheerfully. "Charlie?" Bang. Bang. "James?" Bang. "We're not in right now, so leave your name and number and go French the active end of a chainsaw wontcha?" I wish I had that kind of wit in pressured situations. Well, I can be happy Charlie's here to speak for me. "You're a regular Andy Kaufman, aren't you?" that uncanny fucking cheeriness will haunt me. He shoulder the door, makes a sound of mild annoyance, and the walks whistling away.

Nu var det ett tag sedan jag skrev här. Gameplayer tar upp min tid. Jag hoppas ni läser!

Men ni kommer i alla fall vara först med att ta del av min Engelsknovell när den blir klar. Den har lämnat skolvärlden och blivit ett litet privat projekt.

Och ikväll får ni en försmak!

What happen next? A stop-motion short has between four and two pictures a second. That's six or twelve frames using the European system. The American system is different. I learnt this at a bar. A guy from France was in town working on some movie. He cursed at the American system. Called it idiotic. Or the French equivalent of idiotic. How Charlie died was like a stop-motion short with too few shots. Like a stop-motion short missing a third of the frames. It was something like this: Charlie shouts "FREEDOM" like in that movie starring a long haired Mel Gibson. And he shouts, and he runs. "FREEDOM." The pipe in his hands is a mediaeval spear and Charlie plans to run our captor through like a BBQ. BBQ and FREEDOM. But the man sidesteps. Just as he is to become grill dish he sidesteps. FREEDOM? Charlie gets this look on his face, he is so surprised. And then there is a gun. I have to admit to not being man enough to identify what kind of gun. Mark and model is to me as foreign as brain surgery or penis weightlifting. But it is a gun. Of the "trigger-cock-spark-bang-slug-dead" kind. FREEDOM, and then there is a gun. And BANG. And Charlie is dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. And dead. And never more alive. And curtain. Only we're both still there. Me and the captor. So I ran.

Överlag tror jag att jag använder Fuck någon gång för mycket för att min engelsklärarinna (som gick katolsk flickskola i sin ungdom) ska uppskatta det.