Arby Quinn - The End of the World

Now, lads. You all know that we're coming up to the end. And I don't mean the end of the month, or even the end of my potatoes. This is the end of everything. Sean the scorpion showed me his book, written by one late Paddy Nostradamus. I couldn't make heads nor tails of that git's English but Sean said it was very clear to him.

Next year, a chicken will escape from farmer Murphy's run and make his way to the post office. There, he will cluck three times and scratch the dirt a bit with its foot. A meteor will then strike the post office, ending the postal service as we know it forever.

Needless to say, that scared the bejazus out of me. No more letters, Sean? We'll lose contact with the outside world. Anything could happen and we wouldn't know about it. Sean just nodded his head grimly. There must be something we can do, I pleaded.

There could be, one thing we could do. Sean said. What if Murphy had no more chickens? I spent the next ten minutes pondering the implications of what Sean had said, indeed, what if Murphy had no more chickens. There'd be no more eggs, that much was for sure.

No more chickens, no more prophecy. Sean said. What was on my mind was the day only two weeks before when the Murphy kids pelted me with a salvo of those apocalyptic chickens' output. What can we do, then. I asked Sean.

Well, if we take his chickens and sell them on, we'll have saved the world Arby.

And, coincidently, that's also the story about how I ended up with Murphy's Buckshot in my posterior.

Amor Fati

Amor Fati. It's an idea that I've come across that sums up a lot of what I've been thinking about lately.

I'm a big fan of the Eels older work. One of their songs is called P.S. You Rock my World. As a kid it was my favourite song, it was at the end of a very depressing album but seemed to balance it all out with a really uplifting message. I used to have it on repeat when my mood was especially dark.

There's a line in it. A careful man tries to dodge the bullets while a happy man takes a walk. Of course in my case you can replace the bullets with eggs but the idea's the same. This idea goes all the way back to philosophers of the past and is summed up in this concept of the Amor Fati.

Love of ones fate. That's what it translates to. Considered to be the key of happiness by a few of the big minds in history. I suppose the idea is that it frees us from worrying about what actually happens in life as we agree to love it either way, it makes logical sense to me. Why worry about things we can't control, how can we even determine what is good or bad? Love it all, why not?

It reminds me of the idea of Valhalla, where the Norse Men taught themselves to seek out honourable death. Actually embracing their almost inevitable bloody end.

So, I wasn't the first one with these ideas, I need to come to terms with that. But that's how things are and I guess I had better learn to accept it. It's funny how this runs at right angles to what I actually believe but I acknowledge how much more positive it would be be to accept Amor Fati. I think I'll modify it slightly and fit it into my own belief structure.

Arby Quinn - The Dickhead Dinos

It all began a few weeks ago, dear reader. I was minding my own business, getting a drink of water down by the stream when the strangest creature emerged from behind some bushes. It was bulky and greenish blue, what could have been feathers flecked the sides of its body but it didn't have wings. I believe it was a dinosaur.

I stood motionless as it walked calmly towards me, as if I was the hallucination. He trotted right up to me, close enough that I could have touched him if I had chosen to and started eating the potatoes I had brought with me to wash in the stream. In shock I watched as this unreal creature devoured my lunch as if he had just paid me for it, as if it was his right.

He did one last thing before he left, and in all honesty it is the one action that haunted me most. He craned his flat and beaked head until we had eye contact and winked at me. The bastard winked at me. He then trotted off, slightly faster than he had arrived. I wanted to throw something at it, shout, something, but I didn't.

The danger is clear to me now reader, the danger is these Dickhead Dinos. They are coming to take everything we have as if it was rightfully theirs. For now I will try to learn more and take better care of my potatoes but I will not let them walk over me, not a second time.

Arby Quinn - A Guide to Investment

Now I know what you're thinking, Arby, what do you know about the world of finance? Have you even seen an episode of Dragons' den? Well, the answer is yes, I have. I was over in Sean the scorpion's house a while ago and I saw a bit of it. I immediately started investing in local businesses and have learned a lot, mainly that it's a terrible idea. So, to help you avoid the pitfalls that I have found myself falling into repeatedly here's my guide to investment.

Get the numbers right. It was actually Sean who taught me this one, “Arby”, he said, “why not invest in my new business?” I was so revved up I immediatly invested ten of my potatoes only to be informed the next day in a high level business meeting with Sean that his company had just folded the night before when he realised he didn't really feel like having a business after all.

Remember what you invested in. This is an important one, two weeks of investment left me without a potatoe to my name but for the life of me I couldn't remember what I had invested in. I have an inkling that I threw a few the way of the young local apple stealer. He said he was going to set up a highly legal apple black market, although I didn't so much invest the potatoes as throw them at him, so maybe it doesn't count, I don't know.

Don't listen to people. I've learned the hard way that people are merely complicated vessels of lies and deceit. Whatever they tell you will be a lie so just reverse what they say. If they say you are gauranteed a return, forget about it. If they tell you however that investing may actually put your life in danger you might want to give it some serious consideration.

Don't invest in anything ever. Investing is for people who have more resources than sense. I invested everything I had left in “Porky Record Label”. A local farmer had an amazing pitch where he sold me the idea of recording the first ever Pig based rock music. He just fed my investment to the pigs and told me to get off his land.

So those are my tips for entering the exciting world of investment, I don't recommend entering it however. Shows like Dragons' den glorify it but in actuality it's rubbish.

Picture stolen from here.

Dodging Eggs

I was the victim of a drive by Egging yesterday. It didn't hit me because the person throwing the Egg obviously suffered from some degenerative mental condition preventing them from developing proper motor skills but it certainly spooked me. What would drive people to do something so spiteful I wonder. General impotence I suppose.

Instantly the event made me think however, about life, about work and about writing. There are always Eggs flying around, little things we have to put up with. There's the fact that people are not always open to new ideas, a lack of free seats at Starbucks and there's the beginnings of a headache preventing me from finishing work on a spreadsheet.

Just one of these things stops us in our tracks and forces us to go back home and possibly have our coats dry-cleaned but we don't let it stop us. We're back the next day, working even harder. The thing is that it's easy for somebody to throw an Egg, that's why people do it. It requires no skill to provide a spanner in somebody else’s works.

Following many set backs I've finally revised most of my novel as it stands and I'll soon be starting the final section. It's good, really good. I've been reading through it with pride and you know. Despite all of the Eggs, there are no stains. In the end all of the barriers and little annoyances wash away and all that is left is what we strived for.

Our work has a permanence that the Egg throwers will never know.