Heart + Soul

Yo Spuds. OK, I know I've been rather short on the whole writing thing, and though I have no excuse, I'll point my boney finger of responsibility denial at work. ContractGigByTheOcean isn't the dysfunctional pit of crapola that was Phuqued Firm, but legal research is dull dull dull no matter how much frosty topping you put on it.

Anyway, last night, I was taking a look through my bookshelf in my addled "Had two beers finally winding down but crap I have to sleep but I don't wanna 'cuz I've just now chilled" stage, and rediscovered one of my fave cool cat obscure writers, Jeff Noon. OK, he's obscure in the states but well known in the UK.

To geek out for a bit, his first novel Vurt came out in 1994 when cyberpunk was still dominant. A lot of reviewers compared him to William Gibson, but those reviewers are fucking lazy. See, despite all the ooh let's try to be cool vibe cyberpunk tried to put out, at the end of the day, the stories were about a bunch of skinny, geeky drongos who spent most of their hours on/in computers cuz they didn't have real lives so they plugged themselves away. Put all the neon/urban decay description you want, the main character in Neuromancer doesn't do a whole helluva lot except lie on a couch with electrodes. If Neuromancer was the tubby guy who thought he was cool because he knew every B-Side The Pixies ever released and didn't understand why the Chick at the Record Store wouldn't give him the time of day, Vurt was the punkish guy in a local band who didn't give a shit who the hell the Pixies were but could play a mean fucking axe. And, oh yeah, he was going out with the Chick at the Record Store.

Anyway, I had so much fun with Marty Stark as Dave Eggers a while back, I decided to do a Marty Stark as Jeff Noon (yeah, it's short, really short, but hey, I haven't written in a while so suck on it). So, here we go my kitlings:

'Sometimes Sunny Days Don't Chase the Clouds Away'

Fog clung to the Santa Monica beach like bad memories. These past few days hadn't been West Coast power pop, sun on your face, wind in your hair. No, these were jungle dub days full of low bass lines and no escape.

I crashed out onto Wilshire all tweeked from hours of shovelling cups of java and Diet Coke. I wanted out of the office with a mad quickness. I wanted a warm body and a cold drink. I knew I wouldn't get any the first but plenty of the second.