Wednesday, January the 21st, 2004

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Dobsoniana

News has reached us that Dobson, that indefatigable and infamous pamphleteer, is at work on his autobiography. Telephone calls, faxes and emails requesting further details went unanswered, so we sent the Tatterdemalion Hobbledehoy to ransack Dobson's shed under the cover of a pitch black night when no stars were visible a-twinkling in the firmament. He managed to retrieve these four perplexing excerpts:

My mother's brooch was blue. She took me to the lake and punched my jaw. She threw my breakfast into a pond. I banged my head against a barge the day she showed me the canal.

There were massive shutters in that room, and I had never left it. Ah, I had brilliantine in my hair. There were roses, there were lockets, I was lacking something, so unnerved—but for my hatred she'd've seen it, even eaten it, got it on her eyelash, crushed it, broken it, eked it out of someone's purse or loved it, lusted after it. So here's my signifier—you can read it, you can keep it. You're so fucking thick you don't even know what to do with it. Well … eyebrows, hair, my pastels, then breakfast and a lover. Oh come on, you must be guessing. Or maybe you're just so fetching. I'm done with fleshing out my lying. My hair is in a tangle and I haven't paid the rent. But I had brilliantine in my hair, and yours were better shutters. Damn it, I couldn't even see your rubbish, but I had brilliantine in my hair.

When I stood at the edge of the lake, when I stood on the bridge, when I looked at the water, when I saw the broken fountain, when I broke my neck, when I lay awake all night, when I couldn't see a thing, when my mind began to snap, when I was spoon-fed cocoa, when what I said went askew, when they proffered me jam, when my tongue was hanging out, when I loitered in Ülm, when the diving-board cracked beneath me, when I fell into a pond, when I was all washed up, when I ate too much chocolate, when nothing broke my spirit, when I hosted a TV chat-show, when I went to a wedding, when I broke down in tears, when I was in despair, when bracken snagged my socks, when illness cast a shadow, when death appeared lascivious, when sadness crushed my feelings, when I was struck by lightning, when all I did was worry, when I threw in the towel, when I was scorched in deserts, when no one gave me biscuits, when all I had was breathing, when my gas bill sent me bonkers, when you told me that I'd had it, all I wanted was [illegible]

When the tiny Mexican house on stilts was revealed, behind such rich brocade curtains, and we fell in love, Captain Snap's wooden leg was rammed between us. He was a brutish man, vengeful, hirsute and lewd, prone to piss in vinegar jars and to take our clocks to bits. I remember how he left the parts—dial, hands, cogs and springs—littered about our flat, smeared with marmalade, peppered with talc, and reeking of his dubbin. We walked on either side of him, mouthing words of ire and loathing, as he limped—stump-clunk, stump-clunk, stump-clunk—by the wharf, jabbering and shouting. Oh, he never made any sense. Captain Snap's wooden leg was rammed between us. I took a hunting rifle and shot him through the head.Then we were together, darling, and he was good and dead.