Category Archives: drinking

Broke, bit­ter, usu­ally half-cut by lunchtime

By Mat | Published: December 20, 2005
Two months ago, as I was in Las Vegas shooting Osama bin Laden with a machine gun, a man connected to the publishing industry was reading the choicest extracts from my novel. Before him were two stacks of paper: one piled heavy and high and marked ‘NO’, the other much shorter, marked ‘YES’ and, I’d like to think, haloed with tinkly stars dancing to a heavenly coloratura.
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Truth, Beauty and Above All Quantum Superposition

By Mat | Published: December 13, 2005
Suddenly I’m at an imaginary party. “Nice party,” I say to a passing poet, rather lamely. She nods politely. I look around, a bit lost. “Listen,” I say, “do you know why I’m here?” “I don’t even know why I’m here,” she says crankily. “Why am I a poet? You’re making me up, you tell me.”
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Eng­lischsch­lichacha (part two)

By Mat | Published: July 18, 2005
We looked at the football players. They looked at us. One of them had a whisk. This is not a euphemism. "What did you guys get kicked out of?" asked my new partner. "Engleschlitchacha," I twitched. "Oh great," he said. "Not just nerds. Retards, too."
Also posted in complete mortification, neurosis | Comments closed

Eng­lischsch­lichacha (part one)

By Mat | Published: July 14, 2005
I have a terrible, humiliating and very specific speech impediment. I find it painfully impossible to pronounce the term 'English Literature' in mixed company. I can say 'Russian Literature'. I can say 'English cricket team'. Hell, I can say 'Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevskij' without blinking, but I honestly cannot say 'English Literature' without dislocating my mandible. It has haunted me since I was sixteen when, in a profoundly influential life event, I was psychologically traumatised by a bowl of scone dough. There is an explanation for this, but to make it requires that we briefly revisit a party I attended a couple of weeks ago.
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The Ninety-Thousand Man

By Mat | Published: June 24, 2005
Milestones are a strange business. I've never had a problem with motivation writing this novel, except when driven to soulless despair by some of the insaner moments of a listless career in university administration, yet I do tend to go a bit wild when my word-odometer passes a number with four zeroes in it.
Also posted in The Last Monk, photos, writing | Comments closed