Aww, yeah, my psychiatrist just diagnosed me with an acute case of Bookmania! Another one put to bed, a long-ass thirteen hour day. The store smells of poo-gas and this time it wasn't me, it was some kind of sewage problem. Camillio treated me to an ass-kicking cheeseburger at Longhorn Steakhouse. I'm still on the search for Shorthorn Vealhouse. I went in there, sat down and went totally fucking cookie monster on that burger. When it was all said and well-done I think I had some ketchup on my forehead.
The boy called me on the way home and wanted the new Angry Whopper from Burger King. I was talking to the former wife on the cellphone when I ordered the Angry Whopper. The guy said it was $4.57. I said, "It better be pissed for $4.57!" (For my foreign friends, in America, pissed means really angry, not really drunk).
So the guy at the counter said, "What?"
And I said, "I said it better be pissed for $4.57!"
And then the former wife said, "What? It better be what?"
And I said, "Pissed."
And she said, "Why?"
And I said, "Because it's the Angry Whopper," and by this time I was just wishing that the joke would finally be over so I could go home and think about my regrets.
The boy said it was the best Whopper he's ever had, possibly because he didn't have to hear that joke four times. (For my foreign friends, in America, we really do eat nothing but burgers.)
New Stuff! My latest story, "A Spork in the Road," is available for your optic digestion in issue #128 of Antipodean SF. Check it out. Now, for some reason every instance of a hyphen in the story was replaced by a question mark, which makes the story seem even more confusing and surreal than it was meant to be. You'll notice the divorce and my shitty life was on my mind when I wrote it. Click on my name for a special bio. Enjoy!
It's so weird the different takes "pissed" has on either side of the pond. (Australia doesn't count, as always.) Boot and Bonnet I can get around, Saloon I at least know to ask about (although I treasure the idea of a mobile saloon.) But "pissed" and "fag" are just too loaded one way or the other.
ReplyDeleteYank: I was so pissed when my boss fired me.
Brit: Serves you right then, donnit?
Yank: WTF?
Brit: Easy! Here, have a fag. It'll calm you down.
Yank: WTF!!!?!
As an Antipodean* who likes SF, I liked your story. The embedded question marks seemed strangely appropriate...
ReplyDelete*Am I really Antipodean? Well, I'm not PROpodean. I'm fairly ambivalent about podean issues in general.
Are you guys pissed or what?
ReplyDeleteI was, but then I had a fag :)
ReplyDeleteI only read the first line and was instantly confused. Was that a real question mark or one posing as a dash mark? I'm sure I'll get the hang of it and look forward to reading it!
ReplyDeleteThere are supposed to be hyphens in three places: micro-synthesized, ex-wife and belly-itcher. All the other question marks are supposed to be there.
ReplyDelete