J, cursed by a disappointing interlude, explored his cell undaunted. He trained a cockroach to crawl along the floor and then stop. And then start again at any given moment. Then stop again. And so on and so on. He realised this wasn’t much of a feat so he killed the cockroach.

  The next day J received a visit from his lawyer Zonar. Zonar was a competent man of the law and could even bash out a few songs on his ukulele, which he kept with him at all times. Zonar’s only failing was that he believed himself to be a character from the sci-fi television series ‘Star Fleet Pagan Ritual.’ Zonar believed he was from the planet Xeryan and consequently a Xeryite. After years of abject tyranny handed out by the evil Grongorgan Emperor, Gootchi-boo, the Xeryites revolted and created a Utopian community. At least unrealistically, Zonar was a pretty groovy together guy. He strode into the cell, his bright Lycra clothing shining under the fluorescent bulbs. His Lycra cape flew behind him as he pronounced himself with the traditional Xeryan greeting - his middle finger extended whilst saying: “Robjob Naber.”
  “Yeah, Rubajubjub neighbour, whatever,” replied J, curled on the small bed jammed in the corner of his cell. Sweat dripped from his brow as a result of the erratic climate controls in the remand centre.
  “Well I think we should go for the insanity plea,” said Zonar, “why else would someone confess openly to those slimy pistol-wielding, britches-wearing homophobic power maniacs? It’s our only hope.”
  “Okay,” replied J, seemingly nonplussed about the whole situation.
  “Judge Byrnes/Judge Ol’ Man Liver has been scheduled for the case which is a touch of a downer.”
  “Why?” grunted J.
  “Well he has this sort of problem with drugs, violence and anyone called Angus. And he sorta has this multiple personality problem.”
  “Oh,” said J as he lifted his head and uncurled himself. He looked left and right, then leant forward toward Zonar and whispered: “Look, you can’t get me some... tampons can you?”
  Zonar sat the stunned guppy wuppy fishisms wending their way across sweet sixteen sedakaberries squashist tubbytubtub fattyboy’s topographical faecal facial factual features.
  “No I can’t. But I can give you a quickie!”
  J stood up calmly, grabbed Zonar by his Jonathan Cape, twisted it roughly toward him and said, “I’ll give you a Milton.”
  Zonar lifted his Lycra shirt, revealing a thin anaemic chest with a massive ‘Z’ scarred across it. It looked recent. He turned around and bit the fluffy pillow that J handed him.
  “I have a problem with people called Angus too. I think it’s a code from those bastards in Minious - take out the G and what have you got?”
  “Well popularly the meanings of these sorts of derogatory masses of guilt in the way that others can only be found someplace soon has the mythic podiatry on the plane of the gantry playing mob had seen a chosen few of the rambling symphonic underbelly of all the favourite words in the world, whereas I have personally gone looking forward to the mindless guilt laden fantasies of my dead uncle’s budgie, which sits firmly on the dashboard of unreality with all the trappings of my own past silly and fastened onto the nasty pink thing of a ministerial. The grass started to get too soft so they won’t be able to play there for a while.”
  “I see. I see.”
  “To quote the unquote: ‘Nothing.’”
  “I see. I see.”
  “I have no real desire to finish this...”
  “Sentence? I see. I see.”
  Several people tugged at their pointy beards with the insanity of a weevil tugging at the corners of their soft mouths.
  ‘Twas two weeks until J next met with Zonar. J was surprised at the change that had occurred to Zonar since they last met. Now equipped with Luke Perry sideburns and a small Merle moustache, the once confident Zonar seemed a shadow of himself. His Jonathan Cape and Lycra clothing was now replaced with a ratty old Arabian Goggles T-shirt. His perfectly black trousers that he had once worn for thirteen seconds were replaced with huge bell-bottom flares that constantly caught themselves in a tangle under his feet. He seemed nervous and fidgety, his constipation clearly getting the better of him. At least he had brought tampons. Zonar quickly slipped J the tampons and a worn letter wrapped around a TDK-60 cassette tape. J grabbed the tampons, which he immediately inserted up his nostrils. He unfolded the letter around the tape, quickly discarding the cassette like a used condom to read the letter.

     My Dear One,

     When was the last time you had a religious experience huh? I had one just four and a half minutes ago, for ya - ELVIS is an anagram for LEVIS. Now why this may seem quite obvious if you are in pursuit of a HOT anagram, it is not if you are in pursuit of a renegade pair of jeans. Where’d they go? The answer is simple - ELVIS. Third World Poverty? ELVIS. Vandalism of the Enola Gay? ELVIS. Germy? ELVIS. Sad sewer babies? ELVIS. All things lead to one conclusion - ELVIS. ELVIS. ELVIS. EVILS. EVILS. EVILS. It is harder for an ELVIS to fit into a pair of LEVIS than it is for a rich man to enter the gates of Beven. And we all know how tight Beven is with his money, right? Why I bet he wouldn’t spare his mother a dime if she was a crackwhore working the streets of San Fran baby. And who would?
     One does have to ask oneself if he is one - who was the one? The one and only one. Higher duties for what porpoise? Back to the ELVIS Part III.
     Spun on a point of Damocles Sword


     Eleanor Sprout

  J sat back, chewed his lip, and gazed dispassionately at the letter. He looked with some interest at the tape lying discarded on the floor.
  “Guards! Get me a ghetto blaster,” he demanded.
  The guards complied immediately, running in with a coffin-sized ghetto blaster. J put the tape in the blaster and pressed play. What issued forth was a small man whose face was smeared with chocolate.
  “Oops. I’m so sorry,” he mumbled through a mess of brown sop and ran hurriedly away.
  “Curiouser and curiouser,” J noted.
  Then out blasted the funkiest fucking shit he had ever heard. This got his feet a tappin’ and his hips a gyratin’. The disco ball in his cell lit up and filled the joint with a multitude of shining beams and just the right amount of ambience.
  “Mess with me man and I’ll string your nigger balls up,” sung the chorus of coloured girls on the tape.
  Little did J know that beneath his cell floor was a government funded Scum Graveyard, where all the bodies of the damned were placed in a mass grave. But that funky music got their bones a jivin’ and, sooner than later, had numerous corpses escaping their hellish tomb for a real good time. A long dead crusty prostie with a bunch of syringes in her face (no doubt the result of a funky junky playing darts with her) did the hip-bang with her also murdered pimp whose purple velvet suit had retained a certain snazz even after months of decomposition. Soon the place was throbbing with a re-animated crowd that was real animated. One old drunk with a knife in his head made the grade with a style of hip hop dancing that propelled parts of his body all over the place. He was a roman candle of sputum and bile. A bent cop that had been decapitated was juggling his and someone else’s head while his feet did something groovy. It was the most vibing party this side of J’s bar mitzvah. He wondered if he could one-day tour with the ‘Death in Custody Chorus.’
  The mysterious tape inspired J. He listened to it constantly. He did not know who wrote the songs; he just knew it was funky. When he did not listen to the cassette, he practiced constantly. The cell guards agreed to his request for a guitar, bass and twenty-four track mixing desk. They also had little problem with J’s request to install a ceiling-high Marshall speaker stack. All light was blocked from entering Trevorina’s cell next door. She soon died. Lack of sunlight, they say. However, J knew better. This did not concern him.
  All the inmates complained to management incessantly about the twelve hours a day, one-hundred and one decibel deafening sounds from J’s cell. Their complaints fell on deaf ears.
  J began playing constantly in what he described as “a bombastic attempt to reach a point of pure art by vicariously attempting to fuse polka with the essential Jizzbucket sound, via adding a funk element with its roots directly taken from the blues. Because man o’ daddy o’ man, baby that blues. Just pump, pump it, oh baby that’s it, suck, suck it hard, come on bitch, suck it! Oh that feels so good, now fuck me, oh blues, fuck me, fuck me. Suck it. Yeah baby that’s it. The balls! The balls! Squeeze my fucking balls! Squeeze my fucking balls! Oh baby, fuck me like a Miniouan whore.”
  Time went by. Zonar kept visiting and mumbling about further delays in the case. “Another three weeks,” he said, “another delay,” he said.
  J became distrusting towards Zonar. Each time Zonar would visit, his attire, his facial features, his breath, his build, and even his accent would change completely. J noticed that Zonar had lost all the confidence that brimmed from him the first time they met. He had simply deteriorated in front of J’s eyes. This was the first time J had been scared.
  This fear began to manifest itself inside J’s music and lyrics. His songs became increasingly dark and lacked any of the tongue-in-cheek ‘My Son is a German Baptist and Damn I am Proud of Him’ attitude of early Jizzbuckets to more of a ‘Gee, I am Sick of these Turd Burglars’ attitude.
  After several months of writing, he felt he had enough material for a new Jizzbuckets album. He, however, struggled to contact the other members. Keef was the only member he could find. He enlisted the help of several session musicians who were currently held up in Trak remand and, with Keef, began to thrust their creative passions in all directions.
  The new material yielded a valuable insight into the world of The Jizzbuckets. Pounding riffs of vehement disco niceties were turned on their head and rooted right up the crack with a stiff bottle of El Toro. Och!
  J and Keef co-wrote the lyrics to a completely original song called Bean Town:

     Been reapin’ in the bean fields
     Got me some beans
     Had me a shonky bonk in the tree
     I’ll get the old disks out

     Bean Bean Bean
     Where have ya been?
     Jackin’ over the bean stalk
     Growin’ like you never seen

     Got a hole in my head
     I call it my mouth
     I got hearing in my ears
     You don’t need to shout

     Lost my virginity to a bean
     She was no regular human being
     Had a tongue that tasted like a pea
     Trepanation, that’s okay with me

     Beans Beans Beans
     Where have ya been?
     It’s snot what you thinkin’
     I like to rub cheese on my feet
     I spend my time a drinkin’, drinkin’
     Rhubarb is different to a beet

     How I crave that sweet, sweet taste
     Of my own waste

     I’m up to my waist
     In my own waste
     That ain’t no waste