Phone Conversation With My Mother

Cast of characters:

Richie – stepfather

Jasper - dog

Narrator – mother

 “Richie opened a can of water chestnuts 18 months past their used by date and fed some to Jasper and put the rest in his fried rice and when I told him later that you could get botchalism from eating spoiled canned goods and said ‘oh it’ll probably be alright as long as the can wasn’t bulging’ he said ‘the can was bulging’. And so then I said ‘well botchalism has about an 80 to 90 percent fatality rate’ and he got quite upset – not about himself but about Jasper, he was saying ‘Oh if Jasper dies of botchalism I’d have to die too – and I’d want to be buried in the same coffin with him, in the same grave.’”

Paul Gallen and Violence

 

 

Fuck the impressionable soft-skulled children and their neurotic hovering parents.

(I’m proud of Paul Gallen. I’m proud of the fact that in a fortnight filled with nasty little incidents involving nasty little people he didn’t bow to the jungle blood-lust they call “public pressure” and offer up some excruciating contrition-speech as per current specifications.

I’m proud that he didn’t attempt to explain away the small matter of throwing a few punches in the general direction of some brute’s huge misshapen head as an unfortunate byproduct of being “tired”, or use some flaccid variation of the medically elusive brain fade/ brain snap excuse.

He stood staunch. Few do.)