Big taxi mouth, Barney Eggleston, got himself and his pooch kicked out of a London cab for mouthing the dirty. Not only that, but a big tit was dancing on the roof of the cab and taking the St Michael, so he let it have one with a five note concord straight in the beak. A right bloody mess. In the melee, his pooch only went and got himself on the wrong side of the river.
After things had gone down tits up, Barney was straight on the blow to his missus: ‘Andy, listen up; the dog’s bollocks only gone and got himself on the wrong side of the river.’
By Alan McCormick & Jonny Voss.
I am here watching this pathetic man I once loved drone on with his views on politics with his views on music with his views on work with his views on housework with his views on television with his views on women with his views on men with his views on friendship with his views on money with his views on alcohol with his views on family with his views on books with his views on health with his views on fitness with his views on children with his views on travel with his views on cooking with his views on charity with his views on relationships with his views on himself with his views on me . . .
In my squatting position, two feet appeared beside me on the pavement. Shoeless. Toes hairy. Nails cracked and overgrown. I looked up, then stood up. The man was about my age, but with a beard, and with heavy, black-framed glasses. A broad smile revealed perfect white teeth. He wore nothing but a pair of underpants. “Are you looking for the brick?” he asked again. “Yes,” I said, taking a step away from him, trying not to reveal my alarm, feeling around in the air for my daughter’s hand. “We are.” “We?” he said.
In the pub, Gordon the bore boar is telling Melissa the pisser about his day of drinking.
A shy man called Simon Please held in all his emotions during the day. At night the emotions ranted and ranged and went walkabout in the guise of a dwarf Tasmanian devil called Mad Mike. Mike hurled abuse at the moon and spat the rain back into the clouds. He turned the world blood red with his anger and frightened the midnight birds into falling from the sky and onto the ground. In the morning Simon Please put on his suit and tie and ate all his cereal. He listened to the news on the radio, patted his pet dog on the head and left his house.
The interpreter serves as the link between the team and the primary resident detainee. The interpreter must participate in all targeting sessions and after-action assessments. It is helpful, not vital, for the interpreter to establish a rapport with the primary resident. Interpreters are instructed to avoid answering questions and to limit communication with the detainee. Most detainees find our method of communication extremely distressing.
They lock you in a tower with a crumpled Italian sports car and say, “Okay, you know what to do.” You bend to the wreck with the ill-forged tools that you have always used. A drunk and a mime teach you Korean. Their pedagogy rejects yes/no answers, focusing instead on sit-ups. You must say the ineffable to all those you have slighted or admired. You build an antenna to communicate further into the beyond. You are a Twinkie in a forgotten vending machine, returning to the womb of atomic matter. You rule a fiefdom. 
Robert was screaming those profanities at me, the way he always had. Over the years. When the shine of an adventure started to wear off. In places like Santa Barbara and New York City and Tucson. “St. Thomas is a fucking dump, you goddamn idiot! You think you and fucking Baruch are getting boat jobs to Africa? Huh? Say something you fuck!” He let the bottle fly. It hit me in the head, and I got mad. It hurt. I ran after him, and he started laughing. He was faster than me, but I kept running after him. Chasing him down the Charlotte Amalie harbor. Block after block. My sandals slapping the street. The coke dealer who gave us the rum was behind me. He was a friendly guy from Trinidad. He always had a big smile. He always wore an Oakland Raiders hat. He liked watching these displays on the waterfront. It happened every night. 
Raymond Badgely Jr. was turning five. His parents had every intention of booking a room at the Party Palace, but since Raymond Badgely Sr. lost his job earlier that month the family had been making cuts. Late one evening, Marie Badgely flipped through channels hoping to drown out her husband’s snoring when she caught an ad for a children’s magician on the station that runs a low-budget slideshow of local advertisements. Three weeks later the magician was in the Badgely family’s den, clad in his top hat, cape, and faded tuxedo, waving his stick wand and performing amateur slight-of-hand tricks - pulling a never-ending handkerchief out of his breast pocket, linking and unlinking chrome rings, extracting shiny coins from tiny ears. Each little face with a juice-stained upper lip focused on the man.
Young Hilary Stoppard and his pretentious young set contemplated the splenetic corners of art’s responsibilities within a splintered decaying cosmos. Under an ageing Soviet philosopher’s smoke exhalation they gathered in an umbilical circle to soak in each of his puritanical philosophisings: ‘Believe in the rhythmic order of your heartbeat and trust no creation younger than your least favourite aunt or neighbourhood spinster.’ Hilary’s girlfriend, Bunti, corrected her spine with a long natural breath and a complex re-interpretation of Alexander technique. Sigmund, who suffers from total-allergy syndrome, adjusted the valve feeding oxygen into his astronaut suit and wondered if air was in itself a poison more potent than Velcro.
