the last person to post here wins

("...now where did that elf go..." asked the goblin taking the last place again)

from the goblin's blog

59) the goblin could see it coming, his mother in her 86th year had Alzheimer's and yet looking back it had been a fight worth waging for her, in fact he still thanked his wife and children for their understanding over those many months apart from them it had taken, that is, between its first state of simple forgetfulness on to that usual fully blown abusive state one sees rooted in someone not knowing who anyone was around them were, the goblin's nights had been long, he had had to make sure that she did not escape the house nor fall, meaning a watch that was each night every nights so between the goblin and his father they had gained his mother a year and half longer in her own home, and it was only until she had become featally incontinent too that they admitted defeat and placed her in a secure home, looking back, his feelings were mixed, first off there were no regrets, he was happy at himself, he still is, and he had looked at this more as chance to say thank you to his mother than as any burden or bore, but he had also had to admit to himself that somewhere in all this his mother had already died, she was there and not there, anyway if the goblin had to take a memory with him, it would be of almost the last time he saw her before he returned to Switzerland, you see hospitals in England are not allowed to restrain people and yet his mother would have only fallen if she tried to stand up, so they laid her back comfortably in a reclining chair in the sitting room while the goblin stroked her hand like a cat. "I want to sit up" she would ask, "in a moment" the goblin would reply knowing that it couldn't be, she would clasp the side of the chair, pull and then give up. "I want to sit up" again, the goblin felt like he was looking at someone drowning, "in a moment", again and again until that image stuck in the goblin's memory, it seemed to sum up Alzheimer's for him

The elf suddenly appears, he has been working on his appearing and disappearing act with magic. The elf ponders on this really big project he is suppose to do.
The elf is really busy with some work he has to do. And it's suppose to be his thing to. The elf begins to mumble to himself, "this is a pain in the rear end..."

(the goblin didn't hold the elf or anyone else here, saying "...you come, you go, that's life, so I am the "last poster " again, but one thing is for sure, the hardest part is to win against oneself)

the goblin was thinking why, when one just wants a decent meaningful picture about something on photobucket, one had wade through a billion pictures of mundane moronic family snaps, "...I mean one types in "the four horses, death and destruction, please" and sure enough up crops up yet more of those photos of new born babies, people straight out of Eastenders, and pets..." lamented the goblin as he slowly climbs his way through them

repost from a "woman's interest"(read "mommies") site's "last post" thread

the goblin joins the club, he has spent a good hour downloading the ISO image of Mint linux to burn to some CDs for friends, he then burns the CD, he then boots the laptop on the CD to install Mint linux, installs Mint linux and is very happy until he notices that in formatting the hard drive during the install has lost his original ISO image and has to re'download it again

Glossary:
goblin = a geek who gets his hands dirty swooping computers bits
geek = someone who should not be trusted near your computer
CD = something like a 78 but without the needle or gramophone
operating system = remember that high priest who removed bits and wraps one, well something like him
ISO = a picture of an operating system, those hieroglyphics of the high priest doing his work
boots = something that takes off the sarcophagus lid

from the goblin's "dear all" diary, 5th September 1996

Dear all,
Oddly, the two responsibilities of "bringing up" and "bringing in" remind me as a parent of the offerings of Cain and Abel, how much more the offering of "bringing in"(the money) burns with a brighter flame, so I am grateful that we live in an age where the clear cut roles of "father brings in" while "mother brings up" have blurred to the point where each parent does both, at least now I can understand the little thankless flame of "bringing up" is far warmer in its unappreciated way.

sin.,flea

The elf doesn't like being underestimated. The less he post the more he post. That is how it works with the elf. The elf is done with his homework so now the elf can post as much as he wants. Even though technically the elf has no clearance for it. And the elf shall win too. Cause the elf is cool like that.

fleamailman wrote:

the goblin was thinking why, when one just wants a decent meaningful picture about something on photobucket, one had wade through a billion pictures of mundane moronic family snaps, "

It's gems like this that keep me reading your posts.

(the goblin thanked the scriblebots for their acceptance of him, saying "...I repost often enough, strangely it's only then, at that point, that I notice typos or some ambiguity, subtle or otherwise, which had been there under my nose all along...", the goblin was just confessing that often he didn't see what he saw for what he thought he was seeing, continuing "...now another way to look mad in the bistro it to reread aloud, albeit in a low voice, which not only helps one smooth out the text each time, it also gains one a large berth between oneself and others...", by others the goblin meant those bistro goers again, who were ever seated a few tables away that have guessed rightly that the goblin is either composing something, therefore mad, or that he's just mad period, that is since they most probably considered themselves to be sane by default or at least by some visual comparison..." something that at times the goblin was loathed to agree upon here, while being even more loathed to comply with their conformities that is, so the berth was a blessing he just felt)

The elf wants to have fun today. He wants to play this game, but he doesn't want to get yelled out. The elf is sifting through old memories and old feelings begin to bubble and brew up. The elf doesn't like sifting through old memories, but he is trying to find one dear and important to him. He needs this memory the way someone else needs his money. The elf has become almost obsessive over this one picture that fosters the dearest memory of them all. The elf is also very happy today. The elf likes being happy.

(the goblin was the same he felt concerning certain memories, "...it is as if the ghost of it seeks me out, and I can feel myself following it, or equally avoiding it, depending, ah, but it knows that there's a debt somewhere, and it wants me to write about it..." remembered the goblin now of those many times to date, adding "...the sensation is like depth, the wait that is, and within that deep continuous feeling one clearly follows its outline in ones mind and relives it, over and over, till those letters one starts tapping on the keyboard form such words on the screen that one instinctively feels everything as some overdue flow or an outpouring of what it was but no, not as "when it was" but of "what it still is " unchanged, unforgotten..." mused the goblin at it, knowing that he would have to give examples now)

"...we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year, good tiding we bring..." and on hearing that song now the goblin was once more back at the Bookworm bookshop with the ghosts of his past, the son stood by the counter and recalled how he had received a postcard from someone who had died in the planecrash the day before, the mother sat at the cashdesk pricing the books and somehow the goblin fitted as he hand-wrote his "dear all diary" or something thing else wordless except for asking the spelling of something, until the droning carol music which had got to everyone there had got to the goblin too, so he paid his coffee, and started singing in tune "...we wish you a merry Syphilis and a happy Gonerear..." only to be dirty looked by the mother into silence who couldn't help herself bursting out laughing two seconds later, "...we are not the Red Cross..." she would say but the bookshop was exactly that, and when she died this world collapsed, and within a year her son too, who first lost the battle to alcoholism, was found drowned in the river, so if they are reading this now their goblin friend misses them and his "dear all diary" should be theirs he feels

"...same idea as in "the ghost of divorce"..." mentioned the goblin to the elf

day turns to night, the droning darkness hides shapes and shadows of things past feels the goblin as he looks out across the lightly lit city of Geneva, "...cold is king then..." he thinks aloud to himself alone with his thoughts "...in the cold of the night comes these ghosts, god I hate them as much as they must hate me, they won't die till I do, I know that, and my mother brings them back from where I thought I buried them inside..." the goblin's mind went back to his first marriage, of letting go a little girl's hand and saying "...mummy and daddy are not happy..." and then the formalities of separate lives of an ex wife and a daughter of his first marriage at an ever acceptable distance, and each with new lives and partners, each understanding that "it was the only way", "the right thing", "one can't live a lie can one", etc.," but the goblin also knew that no amount of understanding puts this ghost to rest, "...time hadn't..." he was struggling to say what he saw now, "...but a death in the family puts family members back facing one another again..." said the goblin "...I dare say that our unspoken ghost of "might have been" will be sitting between us three I imagine while we pretend to be nice to one another..."

You cannot pretend to be nice to another person, Goblin. You can be nice for reasons other than your desire to help, but your act is either nice or not nice. There might be tension in a meeting, but you or the other being nice is what you do (did).

You can be cruel: act and say things that would hurt another. You can be cold: act as if the other is not present and avoid any contact. You can be cordial: recognize their presence and do things to not make any scene. You can be kind: politely accept their presence and do things to keep the association pleaant. You can be other things as well. You cannot pretend to do any of these things. You either do them, or you did not. You can claim that you acted kind for malicious reasons, but that does not remove the fact that you did such an action. It is nice to take the kryptonite away from Superman. Just because you intend to use the kryptonite to power a death ray and take credit for killing Superman yourself does not deny the fact that on that day you acted nice to Superman and saved his life.

(the goblin liked the above reply very much and could relate in part, "...ah, if only it were entirely true though, for how often do those acts turn out to be opposite to ones intentions I wonder, superman could hate me for saving his life, something ones sees often in life where someones pride hits on a rock in the past and hates for it, or superman himself could turn out to be the arch villain here and, where I could have saved the world at that point, but didn't..." mused the goblin who was following TerishD basic idea, though for the goblin his slant was more one of "what you did you did", but people's motivations are rarely clear cut, nor their results straight forward, making everything an adventure in its uncertainty, life, like some unfathomable book, pulls the reader onwards, "...oh I could pick any author, and could argue about his or her motivations in what had been written, or again I could pick any event and argue on it merits to the passage on history too, but it would only be a shadow formed by the way I cast my light over it..." mused the goblin in the gray morning, where once more the ice cold city on Geneva beckoned it's believers to their treadmills where the goblin, amongst them, is real enough he knows, save only that his shadow seemed to fall further and further away)

the goblin was thinking in dibs and drabs today but the music was "fine young cannibals" which made up for it as it flooded pictures of younger times when he wrote letters, actually with a pen and paper in the bistro "...yes, I was mad even then, but they got it wrong, it is not "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword" it's "he who lives by the sword wants to die by that sword too..." ventured the goblin who couldn't envisage life without his sword then, nor just living on aimlessly, "... for what is life without ones passion in it..." asked the goblin

(here again)

the goblin had come to an agreement with the owner of the bistro, in that as soon a the place filled with lunch people the goblin would uproot to the bar and continue tappidytapping from there, the owner had once asked why the goblin typed so much "...life is a race with death for revealing oneself through ones creations...", "..OK, but that isn't going to pay the bills is it..." the owner remarked, so the goblin just found himself remembering that line he knew “Domine, quo vadis(loosely, I am going back to be crucified again since you are departing from it)" and typed on

between the pouring rain and unforgiving sun Geneva has periods of gray dullness like now in which the goblin would usually sit in the bistro trying to make sense of his life before giving up knowing that when it all "made sense" he would only want he life to be a "mystery" again saying "...now I understand, I don't want to understand anymore..."

A tribute to a ghost

"...the "Bookworm" is still here..." said the goblin adding "...but the family who had created that then bookshop have now passed away taking the books and everything with them it seemed, save for the name that is....", in fact the bookworm bistro standing here now has nothing to do with what the goblin wanted to relate at this point, but once it was so very different, it lived and fought against this sleepy city, for here then, the writer's club met each Thursday night after closing time, and although never numerous nor known, they read extracts to one another from whatever work they were writing at that moment, the goblin contributed his "dear all" letters but most were writing novels, and anyway who cares if they were any good, they were "fresh being unpublished" being about the only thing we could all ever agree upon, "...um so that was perhaps it, "our only rule" of being unpublished, it felt like the crest of some unknown wave, and looking back it still strikes me as a ridiculous but all too priceless period of poverty..." ventured the goblin still at it, for them then but for himself mostly

from the goblin's "dear all diary" 16th November 1997

Dear all,
The lump,curled upon itself and caught cradled in the crutch of an armchair is my son who in his sleep now adequately makes do for a fireside cat though he doesn't go to sleep, it come to him, strikes like a violent storm then... silence. He will wake soon and after initial rumbles grumbles and whines engrossed in his own adventure this typhoon terror of toonsville will trampeed across the sittingroom much to the anticipation of the hatter who, having filled the wastepaper basket with failed attempts at this letter, is about to delve in a little bit of child exploitation to empty it: "...dormouse, take, empty, return, got it..." looking at the bin the dormouse replies "...wow, I must have the only daddy in the world that writes so much rubbish..."

yours sin.,flea

(in fact, the goblin had no idea what a writer actually was, "...probably some different thing to each person in turn..." guessed the goblin, adding "...ah but I do know what "a post" is, and if I have posted today...")

repost from "what are you doing" thread, elsewhere

the goblin had been talking to dead relatives in those long sold houses of his youth and childhood, "...OK now, in this still morning darkness one can dismiss it as just last night's dream, whatever, but it lingers clearly in my mind at this point, who they were, the casual conversation, and a nagging suspicion that this communication might have been what I had been seeking, like something suppressed while awake only to pop while asleep..." mused the goblin who left the verdict open here but still felt moved by it

the bistro owner's wife is enormous for her short size, the goblin often looks at her not so much for something indecent intention but more as the object for some great hug, the personification of Gaea in his view, and in this adoration she would make up for every other woman he knew and whether his hands would meet behind her didn't matter, no it did matter and they wouldn't, wow at the thought which alas is all it could be.

("...hi darling I'm home..." went the goblin with a big smile thinking if there's no reply the household chores could be fudges a little longer while he does what husbands do when the captain is out, as he posted his next below)

opening the writing box filled with all the letters mostly from his mother, the goblin knew that she had never written anything of depth since she hadn't taken much time in writing them, that they were simply her way of saying "thinking of you" or used as a way to air out any particular problem she was facing at the moment, that is, with some anecdotal snapshots of village life mixed in, so the goblin didn't care to reread them at this point but, like a book one wants to keep on the bookshelf, he had kept each one albeit in a somewhat discarded fashion in this writing box till now, today though, knowing that there would be no more of them, he had readied a folder expressly to which he had scribbled down the title "Mum's and auntie's letters" while the writing box itself would probably go empty now, if not used for something else then, "...well anyway, who writes letters these days..." the goblin asked himself

slowly the goblin remembers this slot here that he had left through the distraction of his "dailylife", not that he hated "dailylife", only that it seemed to ask for absolutely everything and always from him, "...all this demand on me is its need not mine..." voiced the goblin aware that the little time he puts into "facing the slot" is probably all that sets him apart from his "dailylife"

the goblin tries to write something every day, "...but writing something is not matching something, so it's hardly clear cut in that I don't feel it's finished until it's matched, so some days I might actually write nothing and finish something, one up to me, whereas other days I might write something without finding its matching picture, one up to me again I feel...", not that it mattered what the goblin actually produced here, nor what would happen if he didn't do it, nor even what people would think afterwards, what mattered to him was not giving up before trying, that's all, and somehow the goblin just repeated to himself "...one is not "what one has done" but "what one is doing"..."

the goblin looks up from the laptop out the window where the cold but sunny Chamonix afternoon shows a man with some muscular disorder erratically trying to help himself up onto the curb from a wheelchair where his carer hasn't quite got the knack it seems, that goblin thinks nothing of it till the carer succeeds in getting the front wheels up and where in her first step it hits the goblin that she too limps badly, after which they then cross slow clumsy loving glances at one another and then laugh happily on their way together as it nothing had happened, that is, as if they were no different from anyone else, which of course they weren't any different, save perhaps that the goblin had now caught a bit of their happiness in his post here he felt, goblins often stole from life like this, "...we're not to be trusted you know..." whispered the goblin again with a smile

the goblin could relate, (lying since he's usually daydreaming), at times the goblin needed a break as if to step a few feet back from the canvas just to see if what he was portraying was still the big picture in his view while at other time the goblin needed to get up close to outline its finer details "...the problem starts when one goes too far in either direction when the portrayal becomes "distant" on the one hand or "over detailed" on the other, but the slot never minds, do you slot...", the slot, eying the goblin's coffee again, replied "...not at all goblin, I'll eat anything and still be hungry afterwards..." and then smiling the slot adds "...in fact, it's amazing goblin that you even try to get the essence of your life into your posts then, surely you must know that it is impossibly futile...", "...well slot, I just like these odds..." replied as the goblin wondering if he too could somehow throw the washbasin through the bars of our "dailylife asylum" just like in the film with Jack Nicholson

("...still letting me win mortals, too kind..." said the goblin)

repost from "what did you do today" thread elsewhere"

the goblin upon leaving home his morning had sailed singlehandedly across to the nearest bistro where upon landing fell to ground to do his shoelace first and then to boldly state "...I claim this coffeeshop in the name of scribbles forum to the detriment of you regulars who do not type here with laptops..." at which point the bistro owner's wife, enormous as ever, bounces out of the kitchen, wipes her wet hands on her thick thighs, flicks her hair back and looks at the goblin with those eyes again "...and what can I do for you senior goblin, a coffee I know but would you like more my sweet one..." the goblin feels his shoes with the bottom of his chin, retrieves his composure somehow, points to a cake and tries not to look at her as she slowly bends over for it saying "...ah you like these then..." she asks, at which point the goblin resembles something slowly turning on a spit as he pays and scurries to the corner table to get on-line again, "...he who had sailed in now surfs away..." types the goblin as the picture fades