Submerged Ledgers



Peter Vickers was an underwater accountant who did all of his calculations in full scuba gear while submerged in his backyard pool. Under these conditions, he could concentrate his way into remarkable feats of memorization.

In his will he stipulated that he be buried in his scuba gear inside a coffin full of water.

“What kind of funeral will that be ? No one will see you !!” his beloved wife, Myrtyl, hollered.

“Well I won’t be seeing them. So really it’s only fair,” he shouted back.

MUSIC IS HEALING BUT FRIENDSHIP KILLS

"MUSIC IS HEALING BUT FRIENDSHIP KILLS" is based on an image from the the Royal Art Lodge , an artistique collectif out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, a province which is like the Iceland of Canada as it's the epicenter of all things wonderously weird. They have outdoor festivals where they project silent films on thick swarms of mosquitoes. Eat your Icelandic heart out Bjork.
Enjoy...

MUSIC IS HEALING BUT FRIENDSHIP KILLS

"I made my own version of a classic song just for you. Just sit back and relax," he smiled.

There was little else I could do as I was in full traction from an ass-backwards trip down several flights of my friend's stairs.

"There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold," he sang sweetly as his xylophone rang out beneath him.

THE PRINCESS IS RELEASED FROM JAIL

"THE PRINCESS IS RELEASED FROM JAIL" is the last fast fiction to be based on a photo by Marieta Tsenova . She has sent me a total of 6 male and 6 female portraits which was really the whole impetus behind turning this visual + word collaboration into a daily thing.

Thanks Marieta, I hope you've enjoyed seeing some of the thousands of words that these pictures are worth lined up in interesting ways.

Enjoy...

THE PRINCESS IS RELEASED FROM JAIL

Yeah just let me do whatever the fuck I want. Yeah I'll do whatever I want. Yeah !! I'm doing it right now. Freedom. I'm here. Free. Doing whatever I want. This. Doing this. Sitting here. Now.

Free.

Free.

To sit here doing nothing.

ASTRONAUT BUYS HIS GROCERIES

"ASTRONAUT BUYS HIS GROCERIES" is a fast fiction based on a painting from Scott Listfield which begs the question, "Would you get air-conditioning installed in your helmet if you spent the summer in an astronaut suit in New York ?"

Scott Listfield has had heaps of well deserved praise for his paintings of an astronaut walking through various hum-drum locales. Oh, and there are occasional dinosaurs, too.

Enjoy...

ASTRONAUT BUYS HIS GROCERIES

The world watches itself in the fish-bowl front of the astronaut's helmet. The world waits for him to say something. The world stands back at a safe distance from this astronaut who is coffined away - strange secrets and all - within his uniform. The world rummages about in dirt looking for what might have happened up in the stars. (The world laments there are no paparazzi in space.)

"Well I heard that after he quit the space program he wanted to join the circus, but they wouldn't let him. The government's got people that have been in space on a special list and there are a whole slew of things they can and cannot do. After he realized he had all these limits on his freedom he just plumb gave up." She says all this with her eyebrows raised for dramatic
effect. Next to her, the digital price display flashes numbers as she swipes food items across her scanner.

The customer listens to her while watching her groceries total grow.

"Well I read in the National Enquirer that he broke some rules up there in space. There are laws up in space just like anywhere else. You can't for example ... bring back undeclared items. He tried to sneak back some moon rock or something. His punishment is that he can't take off his space suit. It's a kind of house arrest," the customer says all this leaning into the cashier all the while keeping her eyes on the growing total of groceries.

"A house that you carry with you."

"Exactly."

The total reaches its hundred and thirteen dollar and thirteen cents
climax.

Outside, the astronaut fumbles for his car keys while trying to keep hold of a bag of groceries.

"Crud," he mummbles, dropping his ring of keys.

The world watches and waits as rumours orbit around him like an excess of moons.

MICROBIANS

"MICROBIANS" is a fast foray into the fray of story-telling based on the an image (and it's accompanying title) by Gabriel Suchowolski, a multi-talented man whose work can be seen at cocoe, whose play can be found at microbians and whose editing can be witnessed at newstoday. So here's his handiwork which is entitled Microbians. (Or at least that's the name of his ultra-rad site.)

Enjoy...

MICROBIANS

We dress in these cute suits to fool you, people of earth. You do not realize that these are the suits which allow us to shrink to impossibly small sizes and then enter your bloodstream where the real damage is done.

Fuck War of the Worlds. Those aliens were pussies. We tried to get tickets to these things you call movies but we weren't allowed in because they claimed we needed "i.d's". We snuck in anyway inside the bloodstream of an obese "used car salesman" named Mark. The destruction of everyone else besides this "used car salesman" and Tom Cruise will be our revenge. We shall allow these two men to "fall in love", reproduce and replenish the planet. It only seems fair.

Originally we came to wipe out all emus, a ridiculous species that we've always hated. We are still going to wipe them out but only after we've gotten into all of your bloodstreams.

So anyway, prepare to die people of the earth.

JUPITER BOO-HOO

"JUPITER BOO-HOO" is a story inspired by those who've expired because they've perspired too much. Sort of. This story is about that and sex. This is the second to last photo in a series of portraits I've been getting from the lovely and talented Marieta Tsenova. While I'm no prude I hope this image doesn't start a trend of people sending me photos of their boss in her underwear. This isn't that kind of site. I repeat: thisisntthatkindofsite.com. I mean that. I mean that pseudo-seriously. Yup. mixedmessages.com

(Question: What did we do before we could add "dot-com" to the end of any string of words ? Answer: Nothing. We had nothing to say and there were more gaps and pauses in conversation several decades ago. During those pauses people would sometimes simply stare at the sun. Ancestral fools.)

Oh yeah so here's the sexy photo:

Enjoy...

JUPITER BOO-HOO

From behind a battered up English 10 text-book he glares outside at the reddish sunshine. "What's the fucking use !" he mutters, lobing the Science Fiction collection across his room and directly into a little plastic basketball hoop. It knocks loudly on the door and his mother, from some far away corner of the house, answers in kind.

"That is not the sound of studying. The sound of studying is silence. Silence," she screams from someplace like the basement.

The text-book opens on the floor to a thinly drawn illustration of Jupiter next to a story about creatively telepathic adolescents in space. The gist of the story is that they can transmit "waking dreams" into physical items which are then passed on to somone else through a simple touch. There are doodles of breasts and anuses all around the margins of the story.

He closes his eyes and crashes lands quietly on his bed. "Telepathic retards in space," he sighs into the sheets. Summer school homework is hell, his friends have told him, but they don't know the half of it. He has been holed up in his room trying to write a stupid essay about the creative use of telepathy for what seems like a life-time. All he wants is to go out with his friends to the party in Langley where there will be drunk girls. Thinking of girls, he reaches for a photography magazine beneath his bed that he stole from his friend's weird older sister.

He opens it to two women undressing each other with lazy hands. They are looking out to him.

He is transported into the picture where these suddenly 3-D girls giggle and offer him the tops of their breasts which he then proceeds to kiss sloppily. After several seconds of lip-action, he passes out. The breasts have been doused in poison.

Back in the bedroom outside this fantasy, he is stretched out on the bed covered in sweat.

And the "retarded" telepathic adolescents in space - who sometimes walk among us- have their revenge.

TALL TATTOO TALES

"TALL TATTOO TALES" is a super quick read about an aunt's bed-time stories which are based around the ink on her skin The story takes as its inspiration this cute little number by the very talented Vera Brosgol. Check out her site where you can witness the old-school playfulness of her drawing style taking on tattoos, bondage and medical malpractice.

I came across Vera's work at Drawn!, an illustration blog.

Enjoy...

TALL TATTOO TALES

"Well Mickey was in a bad way. You see he'd been drinking for about one week straight. When I went to see him he was rolling around the floor with a mickey of vodka, screaming out something about his Minns being the only rodent that would ever truly dig him." Aunt Flora explained all of this with her back to us and her top pulled up above a tattoo of Mickey throwing up chunks of unmentionables which graced the small of her back.

Everytime she lifted any article of clothing to reveal voluminous wads of tattooed flesh, something between my stomach and balls shuddered. But her stories were comically sordid enough to keep our interest and to help us forget the fact that our aunt's half-naked body was the source.

"So I payed him a visit to see if I couldn't help him out and so I said to him,"Mickey you are one cool cat. Why are you doing this to yourself ?" That line usually got him to crack a smile in his most foul moods but he just stared at me through these dead eyes and I'll never forget what he said, "You arrrrggghghhhh," and then he threw up. Yeah I'll never forget those garbled words. I'll never know what he was trying to say, that's for sure but I'll also never forget those horrible sounds. He drank himself to death three days later."

She took a story-teller's pregnant pause.

"At the funeral I quoted his last words but everyone was too high on acid or something to truly get my drift. Those words sent everyone on a really bad trip." She lowered her shirt which signalled the end of the tale.

"Well sweet dreams," she smiled.

Sweet dreams, indeed.