‘A six foot fluffy camelid — taking up space in the front room, chewing on the furniture and shitting in the hallway — cannot fill the gaping void that so clearly exists between you and your boyfriend.’
Dear Uncle Randy,
I’m thinking of buying my bf a llama for Xmas, should I ask the landlord first?
–
Perhaps rather than directing your enquiries toward the landlord regarding the admissibility of cohabiting with farmyard animals, you should first be asking yourself, ‘What am I trying to accomplish in purchasing a llama?’ No doubt, they are glorious creatures, capable only of increasing the value of their surrounds per diem. But ask yourself, where is this llama coming from? Is it a genuine gift of abundance and joy; an expression of union and mutual adoration between you and your partner? Or is it a desperate attempt to resuscitate a relationship that has ceased to beat sound and true; a fanciful bid to inject some long lost novelty into a habitual performance of partnership that has succumbed to a lacklustre quotidian monotony? Be honest now.
Evidently, your relationship is in a state of utter ruination. You cause each other nothing but irritation and distress, frustration and resentment. Arguing acrimoniously over everything and nothing, keeping score of numerous offences and transgressions, it has become clear that your personalities are incompatible as you strain to remember the good times and why you entered into this quagmire of toxicity in the first place.
Whilst a llama can certainly offer both charming company and plush wool yields, a six foot fluffy camelid — taking up space in the front room, chewing on the furniture and shitting in the hallway — cannot fill the gaping void that so clearly exists between you and your boyfriend. A llama will not repair your broken love, nor solve your inability to communicate effectively. A llama should never be a band-aid cure for such a gangrenous wound, and it would be profoundly unfair to lay that burden upon such a sweet and unsuspecting creature. Perhaps you should address the emotional chasm that separates your two hearts before you consider shanghaiing another life form into the vortex of your personal shit storm. Consider therapy; consider breaking up. Consider the llama.
‘Are you deliberately releasing your bladder into your pants? If so, romance is inevitable.’
Dear Uncle Randy,
I can’t stop making a tit of myself in front of this hot girl at work. Yesterday I accidentally stapled her skirt to the desk — do you think I’m still in with a chance?
–
When it comes to the mating rituals of the animal kingdom, you simians really have nothing to worry about. Fortunately, hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection have taken care of a great deal of the courtship process. Seduction runs in your bloodline. Your parents, your great-grandparents, all the way back to your lascivious neolithic ancestors, have all been wholly successful in the art of seduction, and each has passed their sexual prosperity on to you.
The problems only really arise when You get in the way of your own natural process.Hooked by desire, wanting, clinging to what could be, you try to ‘figure out’ how to attain the object of your affections. Rather than moving with the rousing instincts of your primordial body, you start thinking with the limited scope of your quotidian mind. Questioning, judging, second guessing each minute communication between you and this prospective mate in a desperate bid to affect a desired outcome. And in such a state you lose flow, you forget yourself, you become stilted, unnatural and wholly unattractive. Good job.
It is uncertainty from within that repels and inspires a flaccid disposition. Humans like confidence. Unwavering certainty in an uncertain world is attractive; it is beneficial to survival, reproduction and the evolutionary heritage you carry forth today. So harness your innate powers! Your carnal prowess is present already, you must simply trust in and act upon your instincts. From this place of relaxed libidinous certitude, only success can arise. Are you stapling with confidence? Are you stammering with conviction? Are you deliberately releasing your bladder into your pants? If so, romance is inevitable.
Now, armed with re-animated aptitude and unwavering self-belief, you can assert yourself and your desire at will. You can express your being freely, brazenly, knowing that all you do and say will be met with joy and acceptance. Create your own chances, attract at will, get out of your way.
‘Embrace your status as a symbol of lacy lust and adorn your washing line end to end with a plethora of aphrodisiac gifts: thongs, stockings, bodacious bras and negligees, all for the taking!’
Dear Uncle Randy,
My underwear keeps going missing from my washing line but only the black lacy things – what can I do?
–
There are infinite circumstances in this world which lie beyond our immediate control. The economy is in ruins; public transport is delayed; it rains on your wedding day; you are impotent at 30; other people exist and insist on having their own ludicrous opinions, feelings, and sexual perversions. One could spend a lifetime beating upstream, screaming into the winds of circumstance, exhausting oneself against the turbulent, unremitting reality into which one is thrown. Or, one may relax and recline, surrender willingly to the current and ride in harmony with the comings and goings of today’s bullshit.
The question remains, what can you do? What action can you take; what does lie within your control? You could stop hanging your laundry out — hang it up inside, or stop wearing black lacy things altogether. You could move to a neighbourhood with fewer registered sex offenders. You could install sentinels to watch over your washing line with guard dogs and submachine guns. You could instigate an international campaign to hunt down and execute the perpetrator, brandishing their severed head as a warning to all prospective panty snatching perverts.
Or you could simply accept the particularity of today’s perversions without resistance, free from antipathy or aversion. Greet the current state of your reality with open arms and live congruently, agreeably. Remove all conflict, find your seat in today’s oddity of life and discover joy in the unwanted and unforeseen. Embrace your status as a symbol of lacy lust and adorn your washing line end to end with a plethora of aphrodisiac gifts: thongs, stockings, bodacious bras and negligees, all for the taking! The legends will be true of the beauteous bounty bestowed. Pervs will come from far and wide to purloin your panties and sniff the crotch of charity and goodwill. And as you give so generously to the world, the world shall respond in kind. In a glory of karmic retribution, gifts shall rain upon you as abundance proliferates throughout your life. Harmony shall restore, devoid of conflict, full of pants.
‘When you are so engrossed in the world around you, the possibilities can’t help but present themselves.’
Dear Uncle Randy,
I’ve been in town for a few weeks now and I can’t find a job. Any advice for the road?
–
There are few trials as disheartening as the downtrodden dejection of being unemployed. Out of work and out of use, drifting jobless through the bustling noise of the world at work, one’s meandering existence can become lacklustre and hopeless. As economic ruin creeps ever closer with each depleting dollar and the stability of one’s material existence is brought into serious question, one shoulders the anxiety of impending destitution. Teetering between the possibilities of deprivation and prosperity, subject to the whims of a saturated job market, one’s fate can seem totally out of one’s own control. Meanwhile, in such a state, the possibility of any spontaneous personal enjoyment of such abundant free time is struck off. Yet, powerless and discouraged, one can only persevere.
A few weeks is nothing; these things take time. Many believe that they will glide effortlessly into the sickest job in the mountains as soon as they arrive in town. Sex magnet bar tender; powder shredding snowboard guru; juiced up adrenaline surging bungee slinger; Mr Connected black suits slick hair concierge of Hôtel Extraordinaire. And sure enough, some do. But most end up eventually getting any old job and making the absolute most of it.
Rest assured, a job will come. It may not be exactly what you imagined or desire, but a job it shall be! And with it will come its own idiosyncratic perks and pros, drags and dead ends, its own people and memories, its own chapter in your life. And whilst such particularities lie beyond your control, knowing that it is sure to come relieves you of the anxiety of unemployment. So relax. Loosen the force of your grip on the outcomes of your choices and experiences. You are free to enjoy yourself, to drink in the town for all its worth. To go out, to meet people make friends have fun. To get to know the individuals that make up this teeming power house of a working town. Because in this town, friends take care of friends. And when you are so engrossed in the world around you, the possibilities can’t help but present themselves.
‘Arise, Apeman! Haul yourself from the primordial swamps, erect your stooping posture and discover the wonder of opposable thumbs!’
Dear Uncle Randy,
People say humans are evolving… are kids going to be super intelligent or fucking stupid fucktards growing up with all this technology, eg iPads, iPhones, games to play with?
–
You’re quite right, people do say that humans are evolving.In fact, I hear it’s all the rage; every species is doing it.Perhaps you should give it a try.Surely you’ve had quite enough of scraping your knuckles along the ground, relying predominantly on your sense of smell for environmental reckoning, gnawing on animal carcasses found in the trash whilst grunting territorially over the fence at your timid, nonplussed neighbours.Arise, Apeman!Haul yourself from the primordial swamps, erect your stooping posture and discover the wonder of opposable thumbs!
Do not forget, “all this technology” is nothing new.Humans have made use of such technical knowledge for hundreds of thousands of years; you are a technological species.The wheel really got things rolling, whilst fire making is still very much in fashion. Numeracy, clothing, and pointy sticks have all come rather a long way.More recently, satellites have facilitated instantaneous global communication, and the internet has bestowed a wealth of pornography and cats at the click of a button.
However, whilst technologies continue to develop at an ever increasing rate, evolution is a slightly slower process.The human tail fell into obsolescence roughly twenty-five million years ago, whilst that new phone you just bought is already super lame.As technology steams ahead like a bullet through the neolithic brain, shaping the world in which you live and how you interact with it at an unprecedented rate, humans can only cling on desperately, simultaneously marvelling at and fearing that which they have created.
Perhaps technology will come to improve life for the better, enriching the young and expanding the minds of the many; saviour of Earth and freer of Mankind.Or perhaps humans will continue to devolve into a race of drooling imbeciles, kept docile and amused by beguiling zeros and ones, gleefully prodding at the digital world of their screens and luxuriating in the sweet rush of brilliant pixels as they flee the malaise of shitty reality.
‘Still not getting the message?! Chloroform them and duct tape them to a chair. Shatter their knee caps and extract their front teeth with a crowbar.’
Dear Uncle Randy,
How do I deal with my flatmates’ smelly trash? My room is near the kitchen and I’m tired of my flatmates stinking out the house so I’ve put the bin outside, but they keep bringing it back in.
–
Other people are, on the whole, insufferable.Cohabiting with such detestable creatures is the ultimate test of tolerance, patience, and compassion.They chew loudly and slurp liquids; they leave a trail of filth and detritus in their witless wake; they verbalise every inane thought that crosses the putrid moors of their mutton mind as if they weren’t an intrinsically worthless bag of dicks; they breathe.Sometimes you just want to scream, to turn on them in a fit of fury and beat the life out of their thick, incompetent skulls.But alas, we are civil, domesticated folk living in peace and harmony, yae.So we must squash the broiling bile deep down inside ourselves, relieving the pressure only by degrees.
Under no circumstances should you address the matter directly; one must never abandon the amiable facade of agreeability.Rather, the passive aggressive approach is always preferential.Through sullen silences and cryptic communications, they will surely realise the nature of their transgressions and adjust their behaviour accordingly.Continue to put the bin out, and every time they bring it back in, put it back out.Say nothing.Confront no one.Smile and laugh gaily as you swallow the encroaching stomach acid; everything is just tickety-boo!
But for some reason it doesn’t work.Somehow, they aren’t capable of reading your mind, of intuitively understanding what’s agitating your inner world.Well then it’s time to up the ante!Innocently destroy something precious to them.Cut their hair whilst they sleep.Film them in the shower and release the video online.Still not getting the message?!Chloroform them and duct tape them to a chair.Shatter their knee caps and extract their front teeth with a crowbar.Is it beginning to sink in now, you trash stinking shit stain?!Get my drift, you fetid bucket of rotting arseholes!?Laughing maniacally, press your thumbs against their larynx and squeeze tight, watching the light dwindle from their eyes.Slice and peel off their face and wear it upon yours, screaming into their mutilated corpse, “Who’s trash now, bitch?!”Eat the brains.Dismember the body.Burn the remains.Return home to make a nice cup of tea in a world free from indoor bins and vexing housemates, purified and odour-free.Recline, relax, and ignore that twitch in your eye.
‘You are free to denude fully, candidly flaunt your life choices, gyrate, twerk, and thrust the truth all over your parents’ faces.’
Dear Uncle Randy,
So what’s the best way to tell my parents that I’m a stripper???
–
There are times when one must deliver news which provokes unpredictable reactions, which inspires fears of judgement, rejection and, from loved ones, the possible retraction of Love. “I ran over your cat;” “I did a shit in your hot tub;” “I’m actually a sophisticated humanoid sex robot sent back in time to harvest the sperm of fertile men to impregnate the matriarchal society of the women-only Earth of the future and your love for me is unrequited.” Some pills are hard to administer, hard to swallow.
Dropping such colossal truth bombs can require tact and dexterity, a certain delicacy of handling. It is often best that the receiving party is sitting down, drinking warm liquids and breathing into a paper bag, as the truth is administered gradatim so as to reduce the risk of paroxysm. Alternatively, one may brazenly tear down the crushed velvet curtains of ignorance, boldly revealing the bare naked truth cavorting proudly behind, arms a’spread, audacious and proud; “c’est moi, bitches.”
My father was a stripper. Randy Sr. was working the Flamingo Rooms when he met my mother; she was on day six of a two week bender, making it rain mad stacks all over his chiselled everything. I entered their stories several years later after a slew of electric escapades across the globe, intimate and daring exploits between the pair of star spangled lovers. Upon hearing the story of how they met, my father’s work became but one quality of a resplendent tapestry, woven alongside wrestling a bear, discovering the third dimension, and numerous other idiosyncrasies of his legacy. No single facet could ever be said to command the depths of his character, the timbre of his spirit.
It’s the spaces between pages that shape our stories. And it is at the crossroads where our choices lie that we come to define ourselves as individuals, in decisive moments of liberty and autonomy. Should you regard such decisions with contentment and assurance, declaring the fruits of your volition will prove to be of little difficulty. Rather, you are free to denude fully, candidly flaunt your life choices, gyrate, twerk, and thrust the truth all over your parents’ faces.
‘The mighty moustache springs forth from the very depths of character, from the spiritual well pools of masculinity.’
Dear Uncle Randy,
My gf says she’ll leave if I don’t shave my Movember tash off… but I think I look sexier with it. What should I do?
–
For millennia — before even the charitable pursuits of Movember — moustaches have adorned the faces of great men; the virile, the gallant, and the devilishly sexy.
Whereas the common beard is more often than not a means of disguising one’s feckless face in some shameful manner — hiding an ill-defined jaw line, veiling the chinless declivity of mouth into abrupt neck, compensating for the lack of hair elsewhere, or simply redressing a face so bland and characterless that it commands no interest at all — the mighty moustache springs forth from the very depths of character, from the spiritual well pools of masculinity.
These shocks of brush, these lustrous lip ticklers, brandished by only the manliest of manly man men, are emblematic of the delicate balance between rugged nature and civilised man. Forever bristling beneath the surface of polite society, man’s animal nature bursts through the clean shaven and tame facade. It is the virtuous man who bridles and grooms his own inner beast, who reigns his carnal spirit and shapes it to his liking, all the while wearing it on his face as a daring mark of the potency that lies within. Such men are pillars of community, leaders of nations, livers of legend and myth. Songs are sang and festivals are held in their honour. Some may even attain immortality, outlived by their moustache, as their hirsute image becomes synonymous with their actions.
For charitable ends or not, there is nothing more sacred than the relationship between a man and his moustache. It is a personal statement of one’s autonomy, integrity, and, of course, raw animalistic sex appeal that none can deny. There is no greater aphrodisiac than the lustrous whiskers, the brisk bristles of the top lip of a real man. Grrr. If your girlfriend cannot see this, she is clearly defective and dangerously unbalanced, and you must leave her immediately. In the words of the great moustacheer Albert Einstein, ‘stash before gash, brah’.
‘Whilst the fourth dimension grinds to a steady halt, the days on board assume their natural rhythm, and the novelty of living aboard a pirate ship gives way to happy habituation.’
I arrive at the ship late in the afternoon on a torrential Thursday. Soaked through to the skin, I stand at the edge of the dock and peer downwards; it is low tide and the deck awaits my greeting three metres below. On my back I’m hauling a hefty rucksack crammed with clothes, and a smaller backpack containing miscellaneous necessities on my front. In each hand — fingers turning purple and numb — hangs a shopping bag bulging with provisions for the voyage to come; rum, chocolate chip cookies, oranges, bananas, beef jerky, peanuts, tobacco, gin, and more rum. I’m ready. “New crew!?”, comes the shout from below, “Are you George?!”; my arrival has been expected. “We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow”; expectations are amiss, the first of many. The scheduled leaving date for the passage to Fiji is in two days, but it would be a further six weeks before we set sail. I drop my bags down to capable hands below and stretch my arms out to bridge the distance between the dock beneath my feet and the slanting rigging. A leap of faith is required. One must simply fall forwards arms out without failing to grab ahold of something wooden, trusting in the opposable blessings of one’s evolution. I descend the rigging with what I would call grace, and within minutes I have shaken hands with all the present members of crew and have successfully located an available bunk. I unpack and ask a lot of questions.
I had found the ship fortuitously, on a gloriously sunny day a couple of months previous, whilst road tripping with a friend. It sits bang in the middle of a small harbour, just north of the Abel Tasman National Park, towering over the neighbouring pleasure yachts and fishing vessels. Strange, stolid faces in the sheer rocks of the coast gaze upon the harbour below: an insouciant scene, doused in the sun’s limpid game with the water’s edge. I wanted to take a look at the boats, and this one was the main attraction. A 137ft, three masted main t’gallant topsail schooner, steel, painted red and black, with a wooden deck, tall, taught rigging, and a long pointy bit on the front. For all intents and purposes, it’s a pirate ship; there’s even a cannon on board, albeit drainpipe makeshift. As my buddy fished from the boulders of the harbour’s barrier, I was invited aboard and taken on a tour of schoolboy wonder. Several weeks later, after some email exchanges with the captain, I return. I have no experience, no clue, not a jot, but I’m eager to learn. Fortunately, I am not alone in this respect. By the time we do set sail we are twelve crew members and one captain; four female and nine male; five Americans, three French, three Australians, one German, and British me; thirteen in total. The youngest is 19, the eldest — not including the captain whose age shall be forever shrouded in mystery — is 30. Each of us possesses a level of skill between none at all and total novice. Fortunately, the captain, with over forty years of experience, is a true sea dog of earned salt.
I quickly discover that there is an absolute shit load of work still to do on the ship before we can make sail. The captain has had to await a crew to gather, like ants to a rotting apple, to provide the labour he needs to get it sea worthy once more. Like all sea faring vessels, it has dedicated itself to steadily decaying with the rhythmic rise and fall of the unrelenting tides. A thick crust of rust coats every exposed inch of steel and in parts it succeeds in eating through to daylight. Sections of handrail have been crippled and torn off by their unforeseen battle with the underside of the undersized dock. The hull has become a marine metropolis teeming with aquatic life, an underwater garden occupied by one overtly territorial, nesting octopus. The entire deck needs caulking and ultimately replacing. Portholes need refitting. Everything that clangs needs to be ground down, scrubbed, primed and repainted. Over the coming weeks I get stuck in and covered in rust dust cuts and bruises. Within the first few days, I stare a little too curiously at the flaring tip of the welder and develop a cheery case of “arc eye”and spend two days recovering in the darkness of my bunk, wearing sunglasses and eating all of my provisioned jerky. A week later, I have a fight with a power tool and a rust hole and almost lose an eye, but acquire a daring buccaneer face scar in the process.
And for six long weeks the leaving date is pushed back and back again. Hopes are raised and dashed, raised and dashed. Week after frustrating week after blasted week, it comes to feel as if we will never leave. The voyage-to-come becomes exactly that: an event forever suspended in the future tense; an expectation never to be fulfilled; a promise that evokes only a perpetuity of unquenched anticipation. The ship has succeeded in rusting its way straight through the fabric of time and space, invaginating itself into an ethereal pocket beyond the coming of future days. We have entered the twilight zone.
Whilst the fourth dimension grinds to a steady halt, the days on board assume their natural rhythm, and the novelty of living aboard a pirate ship gives way to happy habituation. I am woken up early by more efficient members of crew for morning meeting. I sleep in the saloon, my bunk being one of four set into the starboard wall, tiered two by two, privacy contained by perpetually damp curtains. The port-side wall opposite is occupied by the library: several shelves crammed with perhaps 600 books spanning such diverse genres as sailing and marine sciences, the paranormal and UFOs, spirituality, sexuality, erotic fiction, science fiction, and erotic science fiction. With sleep still in my eyes I haul out of my bunk, cross the saloon in five lumbering paces and heave myself up the steps into the galley. Mornings are not my bag. Most are up already but not all, sat around the two tables on folding bench-seats that run the sides of the snug mess/galley. It is in here that many hours are spent diligently asphyxiating brain cells as one sweats over belligerent kerosene cookers in a desperate bid to prepare food for thirteen people — a process which gets only more farcical at sea. I drink tea and choke down uninspiring muesli whilst discussing the finer points of cooked breakfasts and which crew member will be the first sacrifice when we inevitably resort to cannibalism at sea. By 08:00hrs all crew members have assembled and the captain calls morning meeting, in which we discuss progress so far, establish work projects for the day, and tell shit jokes. The list on the cork board fluctuates as completed tasks are crossed off and new ones added as the wealth of necessary repairs is unearthed. We get to work, making a cacophony of steady progress that reverberates throughout the harbour. As well as the ship, we try our best to prepare ourselves for the weeks of uncharted seafaring to come, which generally involves sporadic exercises in knot tying and sail training. We get up on deck and go through the process of setting, reefing, and furling the sails, which initially involves much confusion and shouting. We climb the rigging, haul sheets, tie knots, and gradually come to learn that the processes are not all that complicated after all. It is also during these exercises that I discover that my “foul weather” gear is essentially a wearable sponge and that my hands are very soft.
As progress ticks along almost imperceptibly, so does life in the harbour, and we get to know each other as a crew. We cook and eat, work and relax together; although the captain remains a somewhat enigmatic, hermit-like figure. We come to familiarise with fellow residents of the boating world around us. French François, towering, sophisticated and nonchalant, does repairs to his green wooden boat; we help him lower his half-tonne reconditioned gear box off the dock and into his engine room with a degree of difficulty. Ugly Mike (self-proclaimed), a rugged Kiwi with a white bushy beard, docks his red fishing trawler alongside us and throws three hulking tuna across to us. Some nights Mike will board our ship, beer in calloused hand, to tell sordid stories of his illustrious past and warn us wild eyed of the hazards of the treacherous seas. Al, another Kiwi fisherman, tattooed, with boyish blue eyes, flies his drone and rides his quad bike around the harbour. He gives us packs of smoked Pacific bluefin tuna because he doesn’t eat fish. Captain D, a larger than life Kiwi pirate, a ginger Viking of the seas, takes us out on his boat to go fishing in the bay. He teaches us navigation, how to sail, how to fish, snarling arrrggh! whilst drinking home brew. We sit onboard John and Eta’s Espresso Ship, a vessel once owned by Jacques Cousteau, and drink coffee and play with the puppy Bruce. It is here that mysterious conversations are held concerning hearsay in the harbour, rumours regarding a particular fishing boat and the conduct of its owner. Raised eyebrows and slow nods are exchanged as sentences trail off eerily; ‘did you hear about the guy who disappeared…?’, and ‘you know what happened with the broomstick…?’ There’s Carlos, a lean, meandering hippie, who parks his bus at the harbour; we sit onboard to smoke and play guitar and talk about the universe. The kindness and generosity of the locals, the support and encouragement of the neighbouring sailors, their genuine nature, all colours quotidian harbour life with an tonality of amiability and ease that is commonplace in New Zealand. Each time we hitchhike in to town we rarely wait long before a cheery local pulls over to give us a ride. They seem to know all about the ship and are genuinely enthusiastic to meet us and hear about the progress on board.
At night I sleep well, nestled in my narrow bunk, surrounded by all my worldly possessions. The early mornings, the days of labour and activity, the late night drinking sessions; all contribute to exhaustion and a good night’s sleep. But there are times when we are woken by the creaks and groans of the ship. As it rises and falls with the tide it rubs against the side of the dock, vibrating against its restraints like a broken violin, like the straining efforts of an animal in chains. The groans echo the growing restlessness of the crew, the desire to cast off and set sail. We should have left weeks ago yet we’re still here, tethered to the dock, waiting and uncertain about the future.
There are several events however which punctuate the everyday goings on, mini milestones which remind us that progress is indeed underway, that change is in fact occurring. We fire up the 120 horse power two cylinder diesel engine to make sure it’s running smoothly, filling the harbour with a rhythmic rumble of kinetic energy. Our food delivery arrives: boxes upon crates of enough food to keep thirteen people alive for at least sixty days. Canned fruit and canned vegetables, tomato paste, canola oil, soy sauce, white vinegar, white rice, brown rice, sushi rice, fusilli penne macaroni spaghetti, rolled oats quick oats cornflakes Weetabix, shitty instant coffee and assorted teas, packets of sugar-drink powder, raspberry strawberry plum apricot and mixed-fruit jams, Vegemite, peanut butter, chocolate spread, cabin bread, brown sugar white sugar, brown flour white flour, fast action yeast, icing sugar, cocoa powder, six-hundred eggs, brown lentils, red lentils, split peas, kidney beans, lima beans, cannellini beans, pinto beans, black-eyed peas, chickpeas, decimated coconut, dried dates, raisins, popcorn, long life milk, milk powder, onions, potatoes, cabbages, pumpkins, and enough corned beef to safely see a British family of five through the war. And whilst we will not consume all of this food, we will be thoroughly concerned about its sufficiency throughout the trip.
Once having completed all the necessary work on the boat, we even have a leaving party, before spending another two weeks waiting for suitable weather to set sail.
A sharp journalist for the local weekly newspaper interviews several of us and reports on our having set sail, which makes the front page; the departure was certainly big news to us. And if, after a mere six weeks of set backs, I was beginning to get a little agitated and to doubt the integrity of the whole endeavour, other members of crew – some of whom had been living on board for up to three months prior to my arrival – were downright exacerbated, infuriated by the whole bastard ordeal. It is true, we as a generation are impatient; I know I am at least. Perhaps it is simply youth itself and a basic lack of experience in the gradual passing of all things. Or the influence of the internet and the rapid technology of our service industry; the expectancy of immediate gratification in all its tasty forms. An insurmountable mountain of expectation has been assembled from the constant barrage of images of success and happiness; so much to see, so much to achieve with what feels like so little time. The lives we could be living, the selves we could possess. So much beyond our insignificant immediacy. Whatever the causes, it seems we are yet to learn the virtue of patience, or even recognise its value. Whilst all things come to pass, for us they can never pass quickly enough. But time moves slower for the ship. Decay takes an age and it has witnessed times before and will witness times after us that we cannot know. It is slow and it is patient in its unremitting march towards oblivion. We, on the other hand, chase our oblivion far more feverishly. We want change now and we want life now and we want our deaths now; we want our destiny already. Well here it is, knocking on your big ol’ watermelon head testing that it’s ripe. It’s time. We set sail tomorrow!
‘Return to the stars mine child, dilate, dissolve into an infinite singularity of all and nothing, an eternal instant beyond passing time.’
Dear Uncle Randy,
Is there life after death?
–
Oh, Death. The chilling void over which our delicate existence teeters on a thread. The untouchable unknown that pervades every breath with its potentiality to negate absolutely everything. For all beings, life shall come to pass. Eventually, death shall prevail and nullify all that we know, all that is. It is the sole certainty of existence — the certainty of non-existence — that impregnates life with its clout, its pulse, its verve. Life’s negation, paradoxically embedded within its own possibility; to be and not to be, simultaneously — impossibly intertwined.
Regarding the event itself, and the immediate and eternal aftermath of your passing, there are many who profess to hold the answers to such perennial concerns. However, such professed truths can be challenged purely on the grounds of their collective ubiquity — surely, they cannot all be right. And certainly, they are all wrong. For only I, Uncle Randy, hold the Truth. Gather at mine feet, mine lambs, and harken upon mine words of eternal glory, yea. Follow me and ye shall find quiche.
You shall die, under circumstances yet to be determined. Perhaps you are crushed by a flaming girder in a valiant attempt to save orphaned children from a racist house fire, or maybe you choke on a piece of ham in an empty elevator before releasing your bowels onto your own rigid corpse. Either way, it will certainly be dreadfully slow, excruciatingly painful, and very very scary. Next, your Shattnox shall invert and sploosh through its own KatattaZam before plooming out the crest of your Zaluk-Nuh, dispersing into the ether of eternity, uniting once more with the Great Kaka-Zorp from whence you came. Hark, salvation, yea. Return to the stars mine child, dilate, dissolve into an infinite singularity of all and nothing, an eternal instant beyond passing time.
Clearly, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. All the gripes and grievances of this life shall one day be wiped clean, obliterated by the mercy of death. Oppression, starvation, suffering, shall all be put to rest, whilst the successes and achievements, accolades and titles of your life shall come to nought. Now, don’t you feel better? Good. Please give generously as we pass around the donation basket.
‘When Cupid fists you with such fervour that the whole world dissolves except for the deep, rhythmic thrusts of convulsive, gushing exaltation, declare it!’
Dear Uncle Randy,
Should I tattoo my boyfriend’s name across my heart? We’ve been together for 84 days.
–
Where is it written that longevity is a prerequisite for true love? Is it not the piercing touch of love that makes skip the beating heart, when handsome strangers lock eyes for a glancing moment across supermarket check-outs, with searching stares that puncture the soul like flaming arrows? Is it not the burning intimacy of pure, unadulterated love that draws together child and puppy in boundless embrace upon first introduction? Or the mellifluous delight of love as sunsets spill red across the evening skies before dipping below the horizon of immediacy. Profound moments such as these are undeniable, invaluable, and should be revered.
When the touch of love overcomes you so absolutely, let it be known. When Cupid seizes you unceremoniously in the tenacious grasp of his loving fist, and when he uses that fist to open you up and penetrate your very soul, when he fists you with such fervour that the whole world dissolves except for the deep, rhythmic thrusts of convulsive, gushing exaltation, declare it! Confirm it! Scream the rhapsody of love from the rooftops! Blazon it across your chest from pit to pit! Carve it into your forehead with a rusty nail!
And whilst ink may be, on the whole, permanent, love does not necessitate the same conditions. If love is anything, love is now, felt here in the present moment; forever has nothing to do with it. Forever is a myth, the demands of which only constrict and delimit love, yoking its freedom with impossible expectation. Such reassurances of eternity only validate insecurity, unwittingly aggravating the anxieties they aim to assuage. Yes, the nice feelings may dwindle, the warm fuzz could fade; so be it. Ephemerality does not negate actuality. Eighty four years or eighty four days, love is love is love. Worry not about the circumstances of tomorrow, concern yourself with the love of today! Testify to the moment and grant love its freedom, its liberty, free from the fear of loss. No regerts!
‘Their agenda is pudenda. They seek gonads to go gnaw. They will stop at nothing to attack your sack, to ravage your package, to masticate what you masturbate.’
Dear Uncle Randy,
There are a lot of possums near my house and I’m scared they will bite my penis in the night.
–
Your fear is undoubtedly well-founded. For millennia, man has rightly condemned possums for the demoniac, havoc wreaking beasts that they are. Let not their cute little foxy faces and charming fluffy tails beguile you into a state of darling delight. These malicious marsupials have but one malevolent objective that compels their pernicious lives: to devour your genitals.
As nightfall cloaks the land, the moon watches on in silence as nocturnal nasties leave their hovels of horror to unleash mayhem upon the surface world. Onslaughts of ghouls, bugaboos, and Cher, feverishly buck and rear their hideous heads; and it is the possums who lead such legions of darkness. Blood eyed, razor toothed, foaming with frenzied anticipation, they stalk the shadows, sniffing out a savoury sausage-stick such as yours to quench their grisly blood thirst. Their agenda is pudenda. They seek gonads to go gnaw. They will stop at nothing to attack your sack, to ravage your package, to masticate what you masturbate. Countless victims have been left totally smooth down there, like a Ken doll, after the savage attacks of midnight possum raids on the genitalia of the innocent many.
Why else would they be regarded as such pests? The government would have us believe that they are a threat to the dairy industry, to native birds and forests. But if that were true, why introduce these non-natives in the first place? It’s not like their fur is incredibly soft and sleek, so sumptuous and glossy… Regardless of their origin, certain preventive measures must now be taken to quell the deranged threat of possums upon us. It is well advised to stop smearing peanut butter on your crotch before going to bed, and to wash oneself thoroughly of whipped cream after intercourse. Government issue anti-possum pants, fashioned from seal fat, matted hair and razor blades, are also highly recommended. If such precautions are not adopted, your claim to Earth as its most destructive species will be impugned and revoked entirely, relegating you humans to the rank of roadkill on the highways of Planet Possum.
Randy.
Go look at the published version of The Source over here.
G. P. Kazakos 
