Banal Realism
by John McGroarty
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: None.
Description: You’ve heard of (and perhaps read and enjoyed) Scandinavian Noir. Now there’s a new genre sweeping down from the Norse countries. It’s a sort of Nordic non-fiction of the mundane. And here’s a sample...
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I finished work early today. It didn’t rain. It did yesterday and the weather forecast said that it would. There were a few dark scary clouds at midday but thankfully no spray. I watched them from the office window and thought about how much better life was in the Middle Ages. Anyway, it didn’t rain in the end, which was nice. My bowel movements have been normal all week. Unlike Gunter’s. He has bipolar bowel syndrome. Poor guy. This week he had the skitters and was very depressed. Last week he was constipated and was having mystical experiences. I don’t have mystical experiences now. Not with Ingeborg and the six children. I much preferred it when I was young and constipated and having visions, but I am mostly regular now. I blame our social system. Saint Augustine was constipated for the last forty years of his life. Martin Luther had diarrhoea just before the Reformation. Something had to change. He dreamt a lot about antimotility medicines. Last night I dreamt that I was an orang-utan.
I went for a haircut before going home. The barber was an immigrant. From Bombay I think. I indicated the length I wanted by twisting my pinkie over my thumb ambidextrously. I like making shapes with my hands. Butterflies, flappy birds, silly snakes. The children love it! I can do Mr. Spock live long and prosper on both hands simultaneously. You have to be very intelligent to do that. We communicated, Captain. I think he thinks I am a jerk. People often think that. I’m always able to know what other people are thinking. Ingeborg gets angry when I say I think that he thinks that I think that he thinks that I am wrong in thinking that he was thinking something different from what I had originally thought. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics. As well as being insane Ingeborg is profoundly stupid. Poor girl. The Bombay barber didn’t have a lot of customers. If the Bombay barber shaves everyone in Trondheim except himself, who shaves the barber? Ingeborg’s whole family really hate that one. He trimmed my moustache too, which was becoming unmanageably droopy. He was watching a soap opera in his language. It was about a super rich very sexy stuff glamour puss who loses her job and her boyfriend is seduced by her auntie. The boyfriend, he’s in a gold shirt and the construction game, has all the dough and a mother syndrome. He pays her six thousand dollar weekly rent for her downtown Mumbai apartment. Her credit cards are all blocked post auntie and the sex bomb is destitute. The auntie is not a very nice person at all I think. The boyfriend should consult a psychiatrist with all that lolly. The sexy girl should move to Trondheim. I would meet her at the Vaernes airport. Pithy Burgermeister wouldn’t. He says that all the immigrants should bloody well go home and build their own overly generous welfare state! Ingeborg’s second best friend, Hatchetta Hanson, agrees. She has three nipples. One time Ingeborg really pulled on my leg hard and proposed a foursome with Hatchetta and Olga Pferdberg. Hatchetta was in bra and panties before Ingeborg said that it was all a joke. I was disappointed. We laughed awkwardly. They are very hard working people and don’t like paying taxes. They want more freedom in Norway. The series was very interesting and informative about a culture different from our own. Much better than the stuff we get on NBC. I must Google it to find out what happens. I bet Olaf Bronstad Unterberg hasn’t seen that one! Mr smarty smarty pants on fire know-it-all. I saw that the barber’s cabinet was assembled upside down. I notice things like that all the time. It didn’t seem to bother him. There was a label from Ikea still attached with the price. 1648.50. It was a nice black wood bargain, wrong side up or not. He made a good job of my hair and a manly effort at the moustache. I was there for forty minutes. Their work ethic is a little scary. He also snipped away at my nose hair frantically with little shiny scissors for ten minutes until I screamed and he turned his intense gaze to my ears. I must remember to disinfect my nose. I paid the barber from Bombay, opened the door and stepped out into the street. This is what I normally do on leaving a building. I then put one foot in front of the other and started to walk. It gave me a little thrill to think that this is what people, we humans, have been doing for millenniums. I ask you, how many pairs of feet have walked down how many streets, jungle paths, country lanes, supermarket aisles, red carpets at the Oscars since the big bang? People didn’t know about the big bang in the Middle Ages, which was not very nice for them. I think the barber is a repressed homosexual. I often think people are repressed homosexuals. Especially men. He seems overly obsessed with nasal hair. Last Julaften I dreamt that I was sailing down a river full of alligators. On the banks there were wild snarling grizzlies and wolves. I woke up with an erection but Ingeborg had gone jogging and for brunch with Olga Pferdberg. I made strong coffee and waited in the kitchen.
After that I went to buy a big bag of bagels for the munchkins at the Flo Dough Bagel Shop on Kirk Douglas Street. There were a lot of hipsters eating donuts and talking about things with their hipster wives and kids. They make me mad. But don’t get me wrong, I am a hipster too, yeah man, so I never feel out of place at Flo’s I will have you know. I am writing this on my tablet, which I have mounted on a wooden frame that hooks round my neck and allows me to write every minutiae aspect of my life in real inspiration flow time. I think Flo is a repressed lesbian. She has five children and a flowery dress. I think she is unhappy. But not as unhappy as her children. Her eldest, Olav, committed suicide last month. I blame our social system. People were happier in the Dark Ages. I would like to see the suicide statistics for the Middle Ages. It was a sin too I’ll have you know. Idea for a sociological paper. Suicide Levels in a Small Medieval Norwegian Town. Idea for a flash fiction piece for Sorcerer Magazine. Death goes on holiday dressed up as an Italian tourist in a pink shirt and shades. After two days fishing and drinking super expensive beer and schnapps he runs out of money and gets bored. He puts on his Death suit and starts decimating the local fjord villages. After a while he gets bored again and calls a cab. I always buy my children bagels on a Friday. I hate my children. Don’t get married and have children. It takes up too much time and stops you from becoming a literary genius. Hedda, Erik, Lucas, Philius, Mathilda and Elias. In that order. HELP ME. I rest my case. It was Ingeborg. She was an only child and wanted to compensate. She is mad. Then the whole country became a social model envied around the world. People were happier in the Middle Ages. Flo short changed me once for the bagels. Perhaps that why I think she’s a repressed lesbian? I’m not sure if she thinks I’m a jerk. Idea for a psychoanalytic paper. Oh, no, forget it. I already have.
I hopped home. I often do that. It’s an act of rebellion against the dictatorship of two legs. Ingeborg was frantically preparing the table. The children are with Ingeborg’s parents. Her father is an alcoholic and her mother a gin lush but the children love them. More than they love us I think. My children definitely think I am a jerk and that Ingeborg is a lunatic. We are having a dinner party tonight. Ingeborg loves having dinner parties though as she is mad and stupid she always gets dead døddrukken on potato aquavit and makes a fool of herself. With big lumberjack hangover next day. We have to go shopping to the Mackerel Mall very soon. I much prefer it to Seal City. I used to trim my moustache at Reggie’s. The dirty little Swede doesn’t sterilize his clippers. One time he punctured my chin sack. I was not very happy. Gunter and Gretel are coming. I must remember to buy some super duper strength reinforced titanic Andrex bum roll. Adolf Cheesedip Von Stauffenberg is coming too. He is lonely. His wife ran away to Thailand last year with her depth yoga teacher. He has a blog. He writes mega noir novels. His hero is a Maori detective with a limp. He consults with Wakapapa and the tribal elders to solve all the cases. It’s very mystical. Adolf Cheesedip has never been in New Zealand. He does it all from his living room in Ragnar Square on Google maps street view. Gunter and I are big fans. Gunter does most of his reading in the lavvy. Hatchetta Hanson and Pithy Burgermeister are an item. He has a marsh mallow face and a shrivelled ear but is really right wing so that’s okay. I think Hatchetta is a repressed Attila the Hun. She is very nasty to me because I know about her extra nipple. She’s afraid I will tell Pithy. He is very short sighted. He is writing a book about Mussolini’s maternal uncle, Fabrizio Pastrami, the famous Turin juggler and world champion yodeller. He likes Status Quo and Mr. Noddy Holder. Poor guy. I blame our social system.
On the way to Mackerel Mall we bump into Walter. He has a Stetson hat and two French bulldogs on pink leads with glittery silver bones. He never looks at me. He thinks I am a jerk. He has on two odd socks and Velcro camouflage pants. He likes chatting to Ingeborg. I think he is a repressed heterosexual. I blame our kindergartens. He is a big jogger. Like Ingeborg and Olga Pferdberg. He has a nasty athlete’s foot and a testicular rash. He tells Ingeborg all about it. Ingeborg calls Olga Pferdberg to ask about an ointment Doctor Edgar Amundsen prescribed for her tickly fanny. I start to hop around in circles. They completely ignore me. Ingeborg has a lot of practice with the children and Walter with the French bulldogs. I nonchalantly pull out my big smart phone and search for the Indian soap opera. No luck. I get the Trondheim Times page up on the screen and get jolly engrossed. There is a fascinating article about a local girl who defecated a small Christmas Tree. Scientists are astounded. There were no scientists in the Middle Ages. The Trond has crosslinked the story with one about a young Japanese who passed various baby bonsai over a six month period in 1923. The paper says that one of the trees bore a striking resemblance to Albert Einstein. Creepy or what? And another had an undeniable likeness to Charles Lindbergh. She predicted the coming of the Charleston and the Wall Street Crash. One of the French bulldogs tries to urinate on my leg. When Walter and the bulldogs jog off Ingeborg is angry with me for my rudeness. She threatens to tell Hatchetta. I dare her to. We walk on in silence for twenty minutes. I often walk in silence so I am used to it. I remember that I didn’t sterilize my nose. I feel a little insecure and suck up to Ingeborg. We hold hands. She is a very forgiving person. After a hundred yards I start to hop again and Ingeborg plays along. As she is completely barking mad she is a much better hopper than me and hops off towards the Mackerel Mall leaving me trailing behind. I blame our jogging culture. People hopped more in the Middle Ages ……
The manuscript breaks off here but if enough readers send a healthy donation it could go on in a similar vein for another five thousand pages or till the death of the author or the end of the world, whichever comes first.
Swearwords: None.
Description: You’ve heard of (and perhaps read and enjoyed) Scandinavian Noir. Now there’s a new genre sweeping down from the Norse countries. It’s a sort of Nordic non-fiction of the mundane. And here’s a sample...
_____________________________________________________________________
I finished work early today. It didn’t rain. It did yesterday and the weather forecast said that it would. There were a few dark scary clouds at midday but thankfully no spray. I watched them from the office window and thought about how much better life was in the Middle Ages. Anyway, it didn’t rain in the end, which was nice. My bowel movements have been normal all week. Unlike Gunter’s. He has bipolar bowel syndrome. Poor guy. This week he had the skitters and was very depressed. Last week he was constipated and was having mystical experiences. I don’t have mystical experiences now. Not with Ingeborg and the six children. I much preferred it when I was young and constipated and having visions, but I am mostly regular now. I blame our social system. Saint Augustine was constipated for the last forty years of his life. Martin Luther had diarrhoea just before the Reformation. Something had to change. He dreamt a lot about antimotility medicines. Last night I dreamt that I was an orang-utan.
I went for a haircut before going home. The barber was an immigrant. From Bombay I think. I indicated the length I wanted by twisting my pinkie over my thumb ambidextrously. I like making shapes with my hands. Butterflies, flappy birds, silly snakes. The children love it! I can do Mr. Spock live long and prosper on both hands simultaneously. You have to be very intelligent to do that. We communicated, Captain. I think he thinks I am a jerk. People often think that. I’m always able to know what other people are thinking. Ingeborg gets angry when I say I think that he thinks that I think that he thinks that I am wrong in thinking that he was thinking something different from what I had originally thought. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics. As well as being insane Ingeborg is profoundly stupid. Poor girl. The Bombay barber didn’t have a lot of customers. If the Bombay barber shaves everyone in Trondheim except himself, who shaves the barber? Ingeborg’s whole family really hate that one. He trimmed my moustache too, which was becoming unmanageably droopy. He was watching a soap opera in his language. It was about a super rich very sexy stuff glamour puss who loses her job and her boyfriend is seduced by her auntie. The boyfriend, he’s in a gold shirt and the construction game, has all the dough and a mother syndrome. He pays her six thousand dollar weekly rent for her downtown Mumbai apartment. Her credit cards are all blocked post auntie and the sex bomb is destitute. The auntie is not a very nice person at all I think. The boyfriend should consult a psychiatrist with all that lolly. The sexy girl should move to Trondheim. I would meet her at the Vaernes airport. Pithy Burgermeister wouldn’t. He says that all the immigrants should bloody well go home and build their own overly generous welfare state! Ingeborg’s second best friend, Hatchetta Hanson, agrees. She has three nipples. One time Ingeborg really pulled on my leg hard and proposed a foursome with Hatchetta and Olga Pferdberg. Hatchetta was in bra and panties before Ingeborg said that it was all a joke. I was disappointed. We laughed awkwardly. They are very hard working people and don’t like paying taxes. They want more freedom in Norway. The series was very interesting and informative about a culture different from our own. Much better than the stuff we get on NBC. I must Google it to find out what happens. I bet Olaf Bronstad Unterberg hasn’t seen that one! Mr smarty smarty pants on fire know-it-all. I saw that the barber’s cabinet was assembled upside down. I notice things like that all the time. It didn’t seem to bother him. There was a label from Ikea still attached with the price. 1648.50. It was a nice black wood bargain, wrong side up or not. He made a good job of my hair and a manly effort at the moustache. I was there for forty minutes. Their work ethic is a little scary. He also snipped away at my nose hair frantically with little shiny scissors for ten minutes until I screamed and he turned his intense gaze to my ears. I must remember to disinfect my nose. I paid the barber from Bombay, opened the door and stepped out into the street. This is what I normally do on leaving a building. I then put one foot in front of the other and started to walk. It gave me a little thrill to think that this is what people, we humans, have been doing for millenniums. I ask you, how many pairs of feet have walked down how many streets, jungle paths, country lanes, supermarket aisles, red carpets at the Oscars since the big bang? People didn’t know about the big bang in the Middle Ages, which was not very nice for them. I think the barber is a repressed homosexual. I often think people are repressed homosexuals. Especially men. He seems overly obsessed with nasal hair. Last Julaften I dreamt that I was sailing down a river full of alligators. On the banks there were wild snarling grizzlies and wolves. I woke up with an erection but Ingeborg had gone jogging and for brunch with Olga Pferdberg. I made strong coffee and waited in the kitchen.
After that I went to buy a big bag of bagels for the munchkins at the Flo Dough Bagel Shop on Kirk Douglas Street. There were a lot of hipsters eating donuts and talking about things with their hipster wives and kids. They make me mad. But don’t get me wrong, I am a hipster too, yeah man, so I never feel out of place at Flo’s I will have you know. I am writing this on my tablet, which I have mounted on a wooden frame that hooks round my neck and allows me to write every minutiae aspect of my life in real inspiration flow time. I think Flo is a repressed lesbian. She has five children and a flowery dress. I think she is unhappy. But not as unhappy as her children. Her eldest, Olav, committed suicide last month. I blame our social system. People were happier in the Dark Ages. I would like to see the suicide statistics for the Middle Ages. It was a sin too I’ll have you know. Idea for a sociological paper. Suicide Levels in a Small Medieval Norwegian Town. Idea for a flash fiction piece for Sorcerer Magazine. Death goes on holiday dressed up as an Italian tourist in a pink shirt and shades. After two days fishing and drinking super expensive beer and schnapps he runs out of money and gets bored. He puts on his Death suit and starts decimating the local fjord villages. After a while he gets bored again and calls a cab. I always buy my children bagels on a Friday. I hate my children. Don’t get married and have children. It takes up too much time and stops you from becoming a literary genius. Hedda, Erik, Lucas, Philius, Mathilda and Elias. In that order. HELP ME. I rest my case. It was Ingeborg. She was an only child and wanted to compensate. She is mad. Then the whole country became a social model envied around the world. People were happier in the Middle Ages. Flo short changed me once for the bagels. Perhaps that why I think she’s a repressed lesbian? I’m not sure if she thinks I’m a jerk. Idea for a psychoanalytic paper. Oh, no, forget it. I already have.
I hopped home. I often do that. It’s an act of rebellion against the dictatorship of two legs. Ingeborg was frantically preparing the table. The children are with Ingeborg’s parents. Her father is an alcoholic and her mother a gin lush but the children love them. More than they love us I think. My children definitely think I am a jerk and that Ingeborg is a lunatic. We are having a dinner party tonight. Ingeborg loves having dinner parties though as she is mad and stupid she always gets dead døddrukken on potato aquavit and makes a fool of herself. With big lumberjack hangover next day. We have to go shopping to the Mackerel Mall very soon. I much prefer it to Seal City. I used to trim my moustache at Reggie’s. The dirty little Swede doesn’t sterilize his clippers. One time he punctured my chin sack. I was not very happy. Gunter and Gretel are coming. I must remember to buy some super duper strength reinforced titanic Andrex bum roll. Adolf Cheesedip Von Stauffenberg is coming too. He is lonely. His wife ran away to Thailand last year with her depth yoga teacher. He has a blog. He writes mega noir novels. His hero is a Maori detective with a limp. He consults with Wakapapa and the tribal elders to solve all the cases. It’s very mystical. Adolf Cheesedip has never been in New Zealand. He does it all from his living room in Ragnar Square on Google maps street view. Gunter and I are big fans. Gunter does most of his reading in the lavvy. Hatchetta Hanson and Pithy Burgermeister are an item. He has a marsh mallow face and a shrivelled ear but is really right wing so that’s okay. I think Hatchetta is a repressed Attila the Hun. She is very nasty to me because I know about her extra nipple. She’s afraid I will tell Pithy. He is very short sighted. He is writing a book about Mussolini’s maternal uncle, Fabrizio Pastrami, the famous Turin juggler and world champion yodeller. He likes Status Quo and Mr. Noddy Holder. Poor guy. I blame our social system.
On the way to Mackerel Mall we bump into Walter. He has a Stetson hat and two French bulldogs on pink leads with glittery silver bones. He never looks at me. He thinks I am a jerk. He has on two odd socks and Velcro camouflage pants. He likes chatting to Ingeborg. I think he is a repressed heterosexual. I blame our kindergartens. He is a big jogger. Like Ingeborg and Olga Pferdberg. He has a nasty athlete’s foot and a testicular rash. He tells Ingeborg all about it. Ingeborg calls Olga Pferdberg to ask about an ointment Doctor Edgar Amundsen prescribed for her tickly fanny. I start to hop around in circles. They completely ignore me. Ingeborg has a lot of practice with the children and Walter with the French bulldogs. I nonchalantly pull out my big smart phone and search for the Indian soap opera. No luck. I get the Trondheim Times page up on the screen and get jolly engrossed. There is a fascinating article about a local girl who defecated a small Christmas Tree. Scientists are astounded. There were no scientists in the Middle Ages. The Trond has crosslinked the story with one about a young Japanese who passed various baby bonsai over a six month period in 1923. The paper says that one of the trees bore a striking resemblance to Albert Einstein. Creepy or what? And another had an undeniable likeness to Charles Lindbergh. She predicted the coming of the Charleston and the Wall Street Crash. One of the French bulldogs tries to urinate on my leg. When Walter and the bulldogs jog off Ingeborg is angry with me for my rudeness. She threatens to tell Hatchetta. I dare her to. We walk on in silence for twenty minutes. I often walk in silence so I am used to it. I remember that I didn’t sterilize my nose. I feel a little insecure and suck up to Ingeborg. We hold hands. She is a very forgiving person. After a hundred yards I start to hop again and Ingeborg plays along. As she is completely barking mad she is a much better hopper than me and hops off towards the Mackerel Mall leaving me trailing behind. I blame our jogging culture. People hopped more in the Middle Ages ……
The manuscript breaks off here but if enough readers send a healthy donation it could go on in a similar vein for another five thousand pages or till the death of the author or the end of the world, whichever comes first.