This isn’t really a story. I had an idea for one though, it’s about a creature. The creature breaks into your house.
I was lying in bed and imagined a break in scenario where I am eating some strange object, like cutlery, and on being spotted say something like “Yeah, that’s me, I bet you’re wondering how I got here… well it’s kind of a funny story…”
Which I think is funny. A funny idea.
I don’t know what movie that’s from, the line, about Yeah that’s me… a comedy, some animation… it’s American though. I know that. That’s the voice of the joke.
I’ve met a few new people recently and they’ve all asked me if I’m American. I’m not. I have never been to the United States. I’m English, I’ve lived in Leicester, Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland, and now I live back in Bristol.
It’s because of how my voice sounds. I have a ranging accent and some of my words I inflect with a transatlantic twang that I assume comes from how much I hear Americans.
I have ADHD, one possible effect of which is easy, unconscious adoption of code switching mimicry, mirroring of behaviour, speech and the like. My colleague from Birmingham speaks to me my reply, unintentionally, has a Brummie intonation.
When I search for what my real voice sounds like, I freak out. Repeat things in many different accents. Until I (rarely) find what I figure is underneath all that, the intonations of the voice I picked up in Leicester as a kid. That at least feels natural but it never sticks. I’m like a gluestick or something.
Leicester, for all that it is known, is well known in the UK as a multicultural city. Multicultural has meant, in the UK’s own brand of racial understanding, not English. I grew up in a suburb mostly of Indian and Pakistani families.
At primary school I went to a school just outside the city, which had a whiter demographic. In secondary school I went to one inside the city suburb. It was one my mother said she wasn’t allowed to go to because of it being for ‘brown’ kids. My Grandfather, one of those who’d said that, was from a family of Russian Jews who had fled during a racial pogrom in the 19th century.
I’ve found my own family, throughout my life, being racist. And me as well, unintentionally, without believing any of that shit, and yet it being able to eat me, especially when I forget my own whiteness in situations.
The first racist joke I remember being told directly, was by a girl my age, her background Indian, age 9 or 10, about killing Muslims. The nature of that joke was very ‘British’ in its racism.
Two kids locked into the culture of genocide…
I listen to North American voices constantly, on podcasts, game streams, in movies and such. It’s usually white American men in their 30s. It’s a weird development in my life.
In the past ten years I consciously disengaged from a lot of art made in the UK because of both associations with abuse in my life, and being pissed off at its middle class leaning, and the political state of that being an ever increasing right wing, nationalist, racist and transphobic mass news and entertainment media. Which mainly means, I don’t watch television made here, often don’t find new things here interesting. I don’t think I can ever really find the middle class cunts who get to dictate british popular media charming, it’s too late.
But it’s now the case that I’m even more fluent in an imaginary that is hardly connected to my daily life at all.
I don’t like America.
The USA is a settler colony that must be prevented from the continuing capitalist exploitation of the world, its ecological devastation, and the funding and strategising of the genocide of Palestinians through Israel. All of these things the UK does and has done too.
Yet I’ve become more comfortable with America. Comfortable with the idea that I might do horrible things and say something like ‘uh… that’s all folks’ or ‘schwinnnng badda badda’ or ‘frankly my dear I don’t give a damn’ or ‘I’M WALKIN HERE’ or ‘I coulda been something, I coulda been a contendah’ or ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we got him’
or ‘Mission Accomplished’ or ‘another plane has hit the Chuck E Cheese’ or ‘IN N OUT BURGER’ OR ‘FLAVOUR BLASTED DEEZ NUTS’ OR ‘LOCK HER UP’ OR ‘FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO’ or ‘the white bronco that OJ Simpson was driving’ or ‘the grassy knoll’ or ‘strangling Bart’ or ‘alan dershowitz’ or ‘AREA 51’ or ‘Fire Hydrants’ or ‘Bodega cats’ or ‘the Washington Monument’ or ‘Key Battleground State’ or ‘the primaries’ or ‘those little fucking, the little, the things, twinkys’ or ‘God Save America’ or ‘the interstate’ or ‘times square’ or ‘the chrysler building’ or ‘the rockies’ or ‘the apalachians’ or ‘rocky balboa’ or ‘philly cheese steak’ or ‘blame canada’ or ‘hawk tuah’ or ‘the sexuality of popstar Billie Eilish’ or ‘Sex and the City’ or ‘now streaming on Disney plus’ or ‘hulu’ or ‘hbo max’ or ‘apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts’ or ‘Ira Glass’ or ‘the new york Mets’ or the ‘Boston Red Sox’ or ‘The Big Apple’ or ‘the windy city’ or ‘Nighthawks by Edward Hopper’ or ‘the crack in the liberty bell’ or ‘paul rudd as Ant Man’ or ‘The British Are Coming’ or ‘Life Is Like A Box of Chocolates’ or ‘The Death of a Salesman’ or ‘The Crucible’ or ‘The Da Vinci Code’ or ‘Mulder and Scully’ or ‘Columbo’ or ‘call 9-1-1’ or ‘Joker’ or ‘Start pounding Joker’ or ‘Beatboxing Joker’ or ‘the phenomenal and tragic performance of The Joker in The Dark Knight’ or ‘Jared Leto’ or
JFK BLOWN AWAY, CSI, NCIS, BATTLEFIELD EARTH, SCIENTOLOGY, BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY, PLATOON, Michael Moore, Guantanamo Bay, Michael Bay. BREADSTICKS ARE NOT GRISSINI. A GANGBANG IS NOT AN ORGY. A FANNY IS NOT A VAGINA.
A US marine’s hands are registered deadly weapons. Little Nicky. Big Daddy. Daddy Day Care. Professor Frink. Mickey Rooney. Mickey Rourke. Mickey Mouse. Mickie Donalds. Debbie Reynolds. Drake and Josh. Hannah Montana. Donald and Goofy. Stephen King. Tim and Eric. Jerma.
‘The moon landing, neil armstrong, buzz aldrin and the third guy no-one remembers’ they should make a movie where he goes to ‘Madison Square Garden’ and eats a ‘corn dog with Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?’ and has a glass of ‘Arizona Ice Tea with WWE and the death of Michael Jackson’ and goes to Target and buys a semi-automatic and walks out to an Elementary school and kills all the kids because he believes in the flat earth conspiracy and the hollow earth one and that kids are being routinely indoctrinated into the sexual practices of devil worshiping psychos who call themselves PRONOUN and CRITICAL WOKE AND THEY’RE TAKING OUR LOBERTIES THE FIRST AMENDMENT THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS THE RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH LOVE LIFE AND THE AMERICAN WAY I AM BEING HELD HERE AGAINST MY WILL SEND THIRTY TRUCKS OF CHEETOS AND TWO HUNDRED PALLETS OF MOMMA’S APPLE PIE AND A TIN OF WHOOPASS AND A CREAMSICLE AND A CHERRY SODA AND A NEW MUSTANG AND THE RUST BELT AND THEY REALLY DID A NUMBER ON THE MOVIE ROADHOUSE WITH THAT UNNECESSARY REMAKE AND DID YOU SEE THE NEW BATMAN MOVIE AND DID YOU SEE THE NEW SPIDERMAN MOVIE AND DID YOU SEE THEY MADE THE NEW SPIDERMAN MOVIE INTO AN ACTUAL GOOD REPRESENTATION OF WHAT IT’S LIKE TO LIVE IN AMERICA TODAY AND DO YOU THINK THE SPEIDER GIRL IS TRANS AND IF SO I BET THOSE DUMB HICKS IN THE SOUTH WILL BAN IT LOL BUT NO REALLY THERE’S A LOT OF PEOPLE IN THE SOUTH WHO ARE GOOD PEOPLE AND THEY’RE REALLY GOING THROUGH IT RIGHT NOW SO CAN THE LIBERAL VOICE OF DOCTRINE PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT ACTUALLY WHEN YOU FRAME THE CONFLICT BETWEEN EVANGELICALS AND LIBERALS AS A CAPITALIST CLASS CONFLICT YOU SEE THAT THE UNDER REPRESENTED FACTOR IS THAT NO-ONE REALLY BELIEVES WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ANYWAY.
They Live, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Scream, Longlegs, The Substance, I Saw the TV Glow, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, SUMMER CAMP, Sleepaway Camp, Camp GRENADA, hello mother hello father, camp by susan sontag, gravity falls, steven universe ,cartoon network, adult swim, nickleodeon, SPONGEBOB! Whacky Races, Hanna Barbera, The Mystery Machine, Jeez Scoob, Ru-Ro! Barbie, the original series, the next generation, enterprise, voyager, Episode 1 2 and 3 are generally accepted as being an inferior work but really it’s 7, 8 and 9 that represent the problem of artistic credibility, the Hollywood Studio System, Silicon Valley, Silicone Valley, the alamo, bang bros, brazzers, spiked tv, girls gone wild, jon bon jovi, bruce springsteen, lee harvey oswald, taco bell, taxi driver, the casting couch, harvey weinstein, millenials, GEN X, GEN Z, GEN ALPHA, CANCEL CULTURE, MAINSTREAM MEDIA, FROGS GAY, THE WHITE HOUSE, THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, MEGALOPOLIS, MADAME WEB, BATMAN VS SUPERMAN, BATMAN EATS PUSSY, TWITTER CLOUT, DISCOURSE, DOOMSCROLLING, THE LIBERAL ELITE, WALL STREET, HAPPY BIRTHDAY IS NO LONGER UNDER COPYRIGHT.
the supreme court has announced that next fall, next thanksgiving, next veterans day, next arbor day, next patriots day, next presidents day, next juneteenth, next Season, as in Season of TV, Monk, Montgomery Burns, Who Shot Montgomery Burns, Is Bart the Evil Twin, Days of Our Lives, Friends, Joey, Rachel, Ross, Chandler Bing, Google Search, Steve Jobs, Windows 95, we need to go back to the early internet America Online, BLIZZARD BOUGHT BY MICROSOFT, Mr ROGERS.
we all fucking know who Mr Rogers is right, we all know what that Guy looks like Right! MR ROGERS! IT’S A REFERENCE WE ALL UNDERSTAND PEEWEE HERMAN WE ALL KNOW HIM SMOKEY THE BEAR, YOGI BEAR, THE BARE NECESSITIES, what’s your favourite classic disney animated feature?
what’s your favourite classic disney animated feature?
what’s your favourite classic disney animated feature?
I could go on but please, what’s your favourite classic disney animated feature?
I’m sure I could go on for hours yet, unpacking all the lint from my mind of a country I have never FUCKING been to and that is genocidally destroying all life on earth with the continuation of a built in politics of racial extermination, but please, what’s your favourite classic disney animated feature?
you know what they call ‘what’s your favourite classic disney animated feature?’ in France?
please, please, please, please god, please, please please please please please please please please please please
I’m in your house, eating your plates, your mugs, your coffee filters, gnawing the metal of your taps, door handles, your fingers, asking you one simple question
it’s not hard
what’s your favourite classic disney animated feature?
GlitchOut 