A group of us are visiting a friend in Galway this weekend. I neglected to mention this to him until something approaching the last minute. He was mildly resentful at having to change his plans – plans in the loosest sense, since he was just going to be sitting on his arse doing nothing. In his words, he’d been looking forward to not having to put pants on for the weekend.
You might say, I remarked, that we’re forcing you to move to PANTSCON 4.
I might, he said. In fact, I will.
We quickly realised what we were sitting on. An effective PANTSCON scale would do away with the footling awkwardness of “smart casual” and “work formal” and so on – after all, once you’re wearing the right trousers, everyone else falls into place automatically.
Twelve hours later, and here we are. The PANTSCON scale, revision 1:
5: Pantsless. The lowest condition of pants readiness.
4: Pyjamas or similar slouchypants.
3: Jeans. Cords, if you’re that way inclined.
2: Work-appropriate pants. Chinos. “Slacks”.
1: Fancy pants, with a crease you could lose a finger on. A condition of maximum pants alert.
Patent pending. Use it wisely.
Right. How do you write a poem? I mean, without feeling all self-conscious about it and worrying about what poems are supposed to sound like and getting your head stuck in some other century and ending up with at best a bad parody and at worst a limp imitation. Come on come on come on, deadlines to meet, I haven’t got all day.
It’s bizarre how messed up you can get simply by not sleeping. I’ve been completely useless for the last couple of weeks and I’m pretty sure I was seeing through time for a while. Plus the weird fascination with what my hair was doing: I woke up one morning with it stubbornly piled on one side of my head which, combined with the natrual eyeshadow afforded by my heroin-addict good looks, made me a shoe-in for a New Romantic. At least until it went all Dylan-Moran-in-an-explosion-factory and I started feeling all deranged postpunk nasty. This happened without me getting anywhere near a mirror, by the way. I was learning of my hair situation subconsciously, through some kind of barnet osmosis. This leads me to believe that my hair is essentially a more versatile, less vindictive Venom symbiote. Whatevs. The ladiezz still love it, yo.
This is the creepiest email I’ve ever received.
It doesn’t help that it was apparently sent from two minutes in the future.
Some battles you can’t win. I’m telling you this for your own peace of mind.
You think that because you’re here, because it got you here, that it’s your friend, that it’s the good guy. Or at least you think you can see a good guy somewhere in there. You think that, sure, right now it’s in a bad place, it’s done some things no one would be proud of, but hasn’t everyone? Wouldn’t everyone? You think you can reach in there and bring that good guy out.
But you don’t know the truth: this ticket is not redeemable.
Oh, there was a time when it was. The old days. But not anymore, not after everything it’s done. See, when you’ve come a certain distance you just have to keep going. Momentum. The devil has you as his own. Like the man said: you can run from a knife, but you have to charge a gun.
So you can try. You can try all you want. You can call down the armies of heaven, you can move mountains. But you should know: this ticket will not bend. It will not fold. It’s going straight to hell and brother, it will bring you with it.
Not the specific thing I mentioned last week, which is not strictly speaking in my hands, and I think maybe not entirely in the hands of the person I am led to believe it’s in the hands of, but that’s all right because I don’t think even he knows exactly what it is I’m talking about…
Ok, losing track. The thing in question, which is a secret project that I managed to not entirely realise I was part of until it turned into a public project, but courtesy of the estimable Billy here is a thing for you to read. Start there, read forward, enjoy.
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