Suggested Audio Jukebox:

 

[1] Olivia Newton-John “Physical”

[2] Black Rock & Ron “Stop The World”

[3] Hollow Drive “Danger Zone”

[4] The 7A3 “Coolin´ in Cali”

[5] Paul Engemann “Push It To The Limit”

 

‘Cos ⚡ Tease It To The Midpoint ⚡ just doesn’t sound urgent enough for my liking and is little more than a waste of two lightning bolts. Besides, we’re not here to speak of half measures and what good is a limit if we don’t push it to it? It just so happens that I found a pair of old leg warmers and a sweat band in storage and feel pretty footloose right now so it would be unthinkable not taking full advantage while the going’s good. You see, adhering to limits has never been my strong point and I have a tendency to take shit to extremes. Don’t blame me when all that energetic eighties music argues the case so persuasively. Tony Montana would likely have wound up a fishmonger had it not been for rousing encore and look where he ended up. And face down in a fountain riddled with exitwounds is not the answer I’m looking for here. Before he came a slight cropper, he was living the shit out of the American dream and, from the words I heard on the street, it doesn’t deviate a great deal from the English one. By not accepting any substitutes and believing bloody-mindedly in his abilities, Montana constructed himself an illustrious empire and no longer had to be content with being a bottom-feeder. The bottom line is that he pushed it to the limit.

Which is precisely what I have a tendency of doing although the grapevine hasn’t quite gotten wind of my mercurial rise as yet. Indeed I may well be the hardest working algae this side of the Atlantic and plough most of my available man-hours into perfecting my craft, not to be cocky, equipped will do me just fine. While this is all well and good, I’m fully aware of the stumbling blocks and one of these is the planet’s frustrating habit of rotating on its axle. I may have gotten pushing licked but, when the world picks up pace alongside me, it’s all too easy to fling my arms in the air and cry “weeeeee!” That would appear to be my stumbling block and, unless Stephen Hawking lends me the keys to his reinforced Daewoo land glider any time soon, it looks like I’m gonna have to settle for the old photo-finish. With the world shifting so briskly around me, attempting to keep up can feel like a futile task, and it isn’t long before fatigue begins to creep in like Cosby. This in itself is potentially calamitous but, when the dreaded brain freeze then pays you a slurpy visit, it’s time to start sweating your routine. Nobody wishes for brain freeze, which is why it shows up anyhoots. Here, allow me to elucidate through the power of opticals.

I can almost decipher his terror y’know – “Nobody told me I wasn’t Blueberry. Argh!” – and who can blame the poor little slushy fella for being so frosty? You see, brain freeze is a very real threat to writers, and can strike at absolutely any given moment it so chooses. It cares not for the overtime you’ve ploughed in warming those cockles as it has spent its last five summers in Bastard School fine-tuning the art of breaking folks’ sentences mid-flow. Second only to the testicle punt in most devastating close-quarter attacks, brain freeze can hold a stop watch up to one’s creativity and press reset each time you look like assuming some kind of lanky stride.

Regrettably many of our most ingenious ideas populate those frontal lobes and that’s why it’s always there or thereabouts hovering with intent while advertising subliminally. Heaven knows the interior damage it’s inflicting as it corrodes our gears with icy malice. Worse still, I’ve always been a dash indifferent to strawberry.

Alas, there is no such thing as world freeze or, at least, not patented so this affliction invariably sets us back a few notches while we await the eventual thaw. By that point, cerebral security is at its maximum, and incessant air raid sirens going off in your inner space doesn’t exactly help with the refocusing process. Some people know all that yoga shit and can get all trappist in the time it takes a feather to drop to topsoil but I never really got the hang of meditation as I misread it in the service manual and ended up earning my stripes elsewhere. It turns out that there is much to be learned from masturbation and it just so happens to entail more than a modicum of pushing it to the limit.

Select the correct audio accompaniment for suchlike bouts of sub-basement sumo and those temple veins will soon be bulging. Slap on Céline Dion’s latest cabaret album, on the other hand, and here comes that iceberg. I try and keep my wanking down to a bare minimum maximum; and I’m still going strong after almost thirty big ones in the trenches. Dagnabbit I even have my own flag bearers, Mindy and Mandy, also known as The Fruit Shoot Fräuleins.

Anyhoots, I feel I may be teetering a tad off-topic here and apologize profusely for thrashing my mulberry so. It’s the hot weather you see. Turns out having one’s brain frozen unannounced isn’t the only danger stranger in our midst. While the world is so predisposed turning, our sun has received yet another compliment about its healthy glow and is rewarding us all by sapping our very will to continue. Numerous times over the past seven days, I have been required to squint my eyes due to excessive exposure and I’ve worn its sticky heat like Eskimo Ned.

Hell, I’ve been literally begging for brain freeze and would have chased down the ice cream van had it not been for being pinned to my leather recliner like Frankenstein’s Thirstiest Monster. I couldn’t even tell you whether “IT’S ALIVE!” as I was too busy gasping for precious oxygen that simply wasn’t there. Now there’s heat and then there’s UK heat, the latter of which makes the red planet surface resemble a scarlet wind tunnel. However is a brain to function under these conditions? Is that limit even a realistic goal anymore? Do there exist half-limits? Push it midway to the limit has quite a catchy ring to it don’t ‘cha think? For the record, you wanna see me on the hottest day of the year?

I know right – give us a kiss. I’d always scoffed at face lifts prior to that fateful midday blaze but it’s hard to scoff at anything with your lips sliding past your nipples. There’s nothing like a little sweltering heat to turn things rapidly Toxie and I would have gone doolally had I not decided to fashion a makeshift Steve Buscemi from my excess neck skin. I never have done well with humidity and, try as I do to push through it, it’s hard as a liquid and the best I can realistically hope for is to soak through its socks.

Nevertheless, my pal Florence recently informed me that dog days are over, so I took her on her word and planned myself something of a seven-day extravaganza or content landslide if you wish. Within a period of 168 sixty-second shots, I pledged to drop the flood barrier and provide the Grueheads with one helluva gush. Considering my drafts are currently over sixty strong and heaving like Wiggam on a cross trainer, it seemed only right that I relinquish the goodies some in the name of the events industry.

Out they began to plop and I feverishly took to Twitter to call my brothers and sisters to arms. I called…and then I called some more…wolf-whistled…farted in a manner most warm and moderate…performed my very finest impression of a Wacky Wavable Inflatable Flailing Arm Tube Man…crammed pine nuts into my ears…worked out 4-across on my crossword…solved the crime of old Mrs. Berryman’s mysteriously disappearing tartlets…phoned E.T. on his home line and reversed the charges…clambered to the very top of the tallest tree in the land of confusion before realizing that I’d left my washing on the line…consumed four wheels of cheese and was currently halfway through the spare…suffered several bouts of sharp but ambrosial dairy reflux…put my right sock on inside out seventeen times…

…left the same number of lefties widowed…rode to Banbury Market on a rancid llama with an under-active thyroid named Tim and had to hitch a ride back…scratched four hundred instant win lottery cards just to see if they’ve decided to bring the sniff back…attempted to get Scratch ‘n’ Sniff reinstated…failed to get Scratch ‘n’ Sniff reinstated…started an underground Scratch ‘n’ Sniff black market swap shop called That Smells Funny…and surrendered over six quarts of perspiration through my overworked glands. All this endeavor and for what? Solo jazz hands and intermittent tumbleweed that’s what.

So this entire exercise has actually been a cunningly placed excuse for one long bitch then? No siree it hasn’t my good people and please allow me to elaborate over a nice tepid glass of cream soda. Initial concerns that I had somehow wound up a pariah proved inconclusive as it turned out that the blue bird had been hoarding my tweets in its very own Hate Clinic. It would appear that mailing my work incessantly has ruffled some feathers and I’ve been deemed groundable as correction. There was little old me paddling like the proverbial swan to reach that distant riverbank and some thoughtless omnivore went and lobbed a semi-slurped brain freeze into the estuary. Poxy litter bugging bastards went and froze my shit like Han Solo and all the while Luke was getting a head start on keeping it in the family. The bottom line (ordinarily running adjacent with tone) is this – Twitter trespassed my bottom and spread that shit to wingspan for its own vile amusement and you know what this means don’t ‘cha? War right? I’ll tell you what it’s good for.

Absolutely nothing. That’s what. You see, I’ve always been rather blasé in bother boots, and prefer to make love over radiation. I’m guessing the sun pretty much has that covered already so I think I shall opt for a peaceful existence and leave the blue bird to drop its rectal emulsion on some other hapless wazzock’s epaulette and try and pass it off as “lucky”. Thus I have come up with an alternative plan and it regards fallout shelters as such. Should you glean even the vaguest pleasure from my inane blathering, then I invite you to offer up either fist bump or curtsy and I shall make sure there’s a spot for you in the corner.

If Twitter is to make a public example of me, then I shall have to do this all low-key, beneath their very radar. Mailing en masse is clearly an excuse to be labelled “spam” and I’m always mindful of the sharp stabbing pains that I receive each time social blitzkrieg ensues. It has therefore been decided by the powers that try their level best to be that I shall fashion a few little rabbit holes and inform my readership of my movements by way of personal message group hugs. I have no idea whatsoever how this will play out or even if anyone will wish to play catch the ominous hairy ball with me in the first place. But I gotta push it right?

So whaddaya think? Tell you what, I’ll even get the ball rolling by formulating a couple of sub-groups to get this thing pushing. Nothing pleases me more than watching others interact and if I can chip in from time to time then I trust you lot with my carpet slippers. I’ve no idea how it will work and maybe it won’t but I’ll never find out the answer unless I push it to the limit. Failure need not be a consideration as I’ve learned more dropping to asphalt than I have mastering my Segway and have no objection with making an outright dick strand of myself should it be my turn to pick up that laugh tab. I’ve got my pride and one day it’ll show its face dagnabbit. Until then, these clown shoes aren’t tripping over themselves y’know.

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