an evil panda clown eating a baby

Inspired by a thread on a forum elsewhere, please set out the title and author of the last book you read and, if you're feeling schoolmasterly, assign the book a score out of 20 (20 being best, 0 being Wuthering Heights) and justify yr scoring.  Me first?  OK.

How late it was, how late - James Kelman
Excellent stream of consciousness social documentary style novel with Kafka-esque flourishes.
Score: 15/20

First installment of responses to this. More will follow laterer, hopefully.

Live After Death
"It's quite simple, really," said the bearded man, whose name I still hadn't managed to catch, while he pressed his gloved hand down on my stomach. "Simply stare into the lights above you and empty your mind." An electrical whine started somewhere behind my head. I flinched. "Don't be concerned," the man said as he tightened the ankle straps, "that's just the Transtemporal Chi Attenuator I mentioned earlier." The lights flickered. He chuckled. "I'm afraid it uses rather a lot of power, so it may go dark, but not to worry, not to worry."

A Cow Christmas
"Ooh, Moooira, it's mooorvellous!"

Queen's Greatest Hits: Volume 1
Tap the powder, light the match, heat the spoon, gie it a stir, draw it up ("Christ, Phil my hauns are pure shakin"), tie off and try an find a fuckin vein. Hauns ur shakin too much. "Phil. Ho, Phil, gonnae gies a fuckin haun shootin up, no?" Phil lies prone on the carpet, needle jutting. Fuck.

A Farewell To Kings
A strong hand cupped under each armpit and he's half marched, half carried along the cold corridors. Sometimes his feet don't quite touch the ground and he feels like he's gliding. Not a word spoken - no point in arguing. No-one about, mercifully. A-and there's the Dean's door open and Mandy's sitting there perched on the desk in a familiar pose - short skirt, red-rimmed eyes, cradling a mug of tea - and the Dean sitting in his own visitor chair, leering up at her tits. And then onwards, out through the double doors into the spring green, his box of documents already waiting by his car.

Ill Communication
MOTHER STOP AM ILL STOP DYSENTERY STOP WIRE MONEY STOP LOVE DANIEL

DANIEL STOP HAVE NO FUNDS STOP HAVE MAILED CARE PACKAGE STOP LOVE MOTHER

MOTHER STOP CORK INEFFECTIVE STOP SEND MONEY STOP DANIEL

Bedtime for Democracy
There's a flurry of fists, a directionless rage that's been building ever since his father spelled B-A-T-H-T-I-M-E and switched off the Wii. Eventually the fists cease flailing and settle, balled, on his pj-clad hips. I don't react. Incensed by my lack of concern, he thrusts his chin out and breaths heavily through his nose.
"Bed," I say. There is a pause in which he considers saying 'no' but his eyes flicker about the room. He opens his mouth, raises a hand, pointing towards his brother, who is already tucked up in bed, casually vandalising his Elephant and Piggie books.
"David doesn't want to go to bed either!" he manages at last with a tone of triumph.
"Bed," I say. "Now."

Van Halen
Placing his hands one on top of the other on his knee, Adolf D'Haeseleer heaved himself up into the trailer. He looked about the field, at the bunting, the stalls, the row upon row of small commercial vehicles, each polished to a high gleam. He felt giddy. The wind picked up and blew his sweat-damp shirt against his back. He shivered. Someone, some underling, handed him a loudhailer. They had laughed at him, laughed at his dream. "The told me," he started, his words riding out on a lick of feedback, half the crowd looking round now, "that this was a 'stupid idea'. Theo van de Velde actually told me that I would be better erecting the world's largest fibreglass sprout. Yes. But he was wrong." Bewildered faces looked back at him. Birds circled. This was his moment. His legacy!

Van Halen II
"Adolf Mr D'Haeseleer Jr? If you would step away from the shredder, I'd be grateful. Now. Please. Thank you. I'm afraid that it falls to me to ask you a few questions about your time as Treasurer of the Halen International Van Jamboree."

Van Halen III
Adolf D'Haeseleer III spun the heavy crank of his blade grinder, sparks flying in arcs across the workbench. He would avenge his father. Van de Velde would be made to pay. Yes.

I have moved house, fleeing the mean streets of Glasgow's douce-yet-boho West End for the altogether more genteel suburb of Newton Mearns, some forty million miles south of Glasgow city centre (and, consequently, also from the action).  Move was brought about by Better Half's doctor sterly intoning "Pollution in the city is damaging your already weedy lungs.  Move to the suburbs."  In return for agreeing to this move, my wife gave me three gifts.  A lawnmower, a whirlygig and an awesome clock.

All of which should go some way to explaining why I haven't managed to hand in my homework assignment as promised.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.  If there was a fire, I'd be out of these quicksharp, happy to be shivering in the night-time street, only a rough blanket to protect my modesty and plus, who needs albums now - music can be obtained with little fuss or effort.  Still, this is the five I'd keep.  Desert Island Discs, as it were, but with added INFERNO.  In order of acquisition:-

1. Angel Dust - Faith No More
The best album I had ever heard when I was 14.  Lionel Richie cheek by jowl with a track called Jizzlobber. ROCK!

2. Liquid Swords - GZA/Genius
A Wu-Tang solo classic, GZA here not ranting or doing the panto-villain thing, just busting crazy rhymes ("I’m in the park, setting up a deal over blunt fire/ A bum n gga sleeping on the bench, they had him wired/ Peeped my convo, the address of my condo, And how I change a n gga name to John Doe") in a methodical style over bass-heavy rhythms and eastern keyboard lines.   Atmospheric right through. 

3. The 3 EPs - The Beta Band
Pronounced to rhyme with Peter, btw.  Folk drone rock hiphop birdsong and rapping in Fronch.

4. Computer World - Kraftwerk
Bittersweet electropop goodness.  By turns funny and depressing. And you can dance to it.

5. The Charm of the Highway Strip - The Magnetic Fields
Country music on synths.  Extremely hummable melodies and brilliant lyrics ("I've been making promises I know I'll never keep/ one of these days I'm gonna leave you in your sleep") with the occasional epic pun.

So, assuming you were castaway on a desert island with all your music and your bivouac burned down, which music would you grab before heading off to sleep on the beach?

The woman let out another chuckle.  “Back in a moment!” she said brightly and walked past him.  He felt the ache in her elbow grow and recede as she passed, moving away, before it vanished.  He ground his teeth together, pure concentration, trying to get a grip on something, on a mind.  The gun barrels pressed into his temples, oblivious.  He reached about, trying for the minds of the guards but what little there was left was cold and hard and slipped about like soap.  Focus.  Focus.  He picked one of them.  He pounded away, battering, battering, slamming the fill weight of his mind against the steel ball.  He paused, breathed again and recommenced, his muscles slackening, going limp, as everything was given over to the onslaught, throwing everything into each blow.  And there it was. A hairline crack.  Something to work with. High and behind him, he heard the door open again, miles from his assault.  Her elbow creaked.  He lost concentration and his mental assault slipped from his control, flailing about the room like a firehose, lashing the walls, gaining no purchase on the stone.  He started to black out. Focus.  He dragged himself back up to consciousness just as she placed the hat on his head.  He heard the crinkle of tinfoil, felt it cool and jagged against his scalp.

“There,” she said.  She took a step back, clasped her tinfoil hands together and smiled as if she had just placed the fairy on the Christmas tree.  His mind was dark. He had no reach.  From a tool belt round her waist, she brought a staplegun and set about attaching the hat to his head with a series of robust punches. Pain shone through his head from twelve furious punctures. He couldn’t feel her elbow.  He could feel blood trickle down his cheek. He whimpered.  Still smiling, she took a roll of gaffer tape from her belt and, pressing the end to his forehead with her thumb, wound it round his head, a single black bandage strap, the guards stepping back as she came to the.   He thought of moving, of trying to run.  He didn’t. The guns were placed back against his temples.  She surveyed her handiwork once more. “I have to go and get something,” she said to him, “I won’t be a moment.”

Soon she was standing in front of him, her hands behind her back.  She looked as if she was about to burst out laughing.  “You may find this a little juvenile and, well, it is, but there’s it’s just an interim measure until we find a more permanent way to,” here she adopted the expression children use when they wish their parents to know they are thinking, “minimise the physical threat you pose.” She grabbed his left hand and forced a large red dildo into his palm, balling his fist closed and deftly taping it shut tight.  She did the same with his right.  He looked down at his new hands, red and obscene.  She took the pistol of the guard nearest her and dismissed them both. “Move,” she said to him, “and I will shoot you in the face.”  Still pointing the gun in his general direction, she tore at the metal face of her balaclava.  He looked at her as other people had.  Her pink-rimmed eyes, lined and jowly face, flat nose and her chin that melted into neck like congealed candlewax.  He had no knowledge.  He didn’t know anything about her. He felt sick.  His guts lurched and his mouth flooded.  Focus.  He thought about going for her, ducking and rolling and clobbering her with the dildos.  He didn’t.

“Now,” she said, “in the spirit of scientific enquiry, I need to check whether you are, uh, neutered or whether you’re not and you’re just pretending to be.”  She shouted into the back of the room, “Send in the girl!”

They sent in the girl.  She walked around him.  She was 12 or 13.  Barefoot.  Tanned and skinny.  She wore the loose, sweaty face that terrified people wear.  He couldn’t really be sure.  She might be pretending.  Or sick. He didn’t know anymore.   “Come over here,” said the woman, her voice warm, waving her gun limply.  He knelt there, fighting to reach the girl, but unable to break out of his hat. The girl approached the woman.  The woman smiled broadly.  “Don’t be afraid.  What’s your name?”

“Claire,” said the girl.   He watched the gun in the woman’s hand.
“Claire. Don’t be afraid, Claire. We’re just conducting an experiment and we want to be absolutely certain of the results.  There’s really nothing to be worried about.”  He saw her metal finger curl around the trigger. He fought and he fought but he couldn’t break out from the helmet. 

“Now, then, tell me Claire,” said the woman, “what is your favourite colour?”
Claire managed to bring the tip of her tongue to her teeth to make the L before the bullet left the barrel.  He pushed himself forward from his toes, throwing himself at the woman, crashing into her waist just in time to see the girl collapsing into a pile of bones and clothes and blood.  Still falling, driving the woman backwards, he swung his arms up, striking each side of her face with his long red fists, white fire exploding in his mind.  The woman fired the gun again, aiming down at his head.  And he saw the foil cap ripped open.  And he saw the valve blasted from his head, fragments of metal and bone spinning, arcing away across the room.  He saw blood squirt parabolic and he saw the woman crash down on the floor.  He saw the gun skitter and slide. He saw his face hit the slabs and his teeth shatter.  He saw his new fists bounce and settle on the stone floor as the woman reached for the pistol.  He saw the woman and knew everything.   He took control.  He boxed her consciousness up and made it watch as she took the gun and placed it against her left knee.  He saw the bullet shatter through bone.  He felt her pain as she buckled.   He tightened her grip on the gun.  He saw the guards rush in.  He crushed the soft kernels of their minds.  They fell.  He reached out the room and across the island and made everything well.  He did not want to be disturbed.  He knew how long he had left. He was going to take his time.

He wiped his tongue across his teeth, feeling the smooth, sticky film of plaque against each of his taste buds.  It was always like this, before he touched the dial: sensations became more acute, more detailed.  He could feel everything: the circle of gently padded pressure of his fez; the downdraft on his cheeks from each blink; the drops of sweat forming in his dermis, pushing through to the baked heat of the noonday air.  He felt powerful, complex, a colossal system alive with activity, too large to be slowed or stopped, all driven forward by the massive slow thump of his heart, each beat a punch inside his chest. Focus.

He looked up at the cathedral, half ruined on the rim of what was left of the caldera, the other half long since fallen into and smoothed by the sea.  His eyes tracked back down the path, following the sickle sweep of the narrow street between the ramshackle tenements until his gaze settled on his shoes.  Breath in.  Breath out.  Now.  He slid his fingers under his fez, tipping it back, and spidered his way up through is hair towards the dial.  Even without touching it, he felt the cold of the dial on his fingertips.  As soon as his fingers connected with the chill, grooved surface, he felt the perfect circle of a gun barrel pressing hard against each temple, the throb of his knees on the marble floor, the plastic twine being tied roughly round his wrists. Focus. He screwed his eyes closed knowing that this wasn’t now.  It might not even be later.  Not for him, anyway.  It passed. He opened his eyes.  Focus.  He turned the dial one click. 

The whole world roared in his mind.  He let it wash over him.  His vision blurred. Focus.  He knew what he was looking for and he found it: their panic. They knew he was coming.  He felt them crowded into the near sides of the alleyways, their guns heavy in their hands.  He licked his lips and tasted their sweat.  He saw through their eyes.  He saw the town as they saw it. He pieced it together.  There was no way around.  So, through. He saw himself in the V of a gunsight and ducked to a roll just as he felt the trigger squeezed.  His fez tumbled.  He was sitting behind a wall, knees drawn up, before the crack of the shot was heard. The fez hit the dusty stones and rolled down the hill.  Calls came, orders being shouted.  He closed his eyes.  He blew a bubble of spit between his lips, his hand on the dial.  He held the bubble, concentrating. It popped.  He turned the dial. Full throttle.

He knew everything.  He knew the streets, the houses, the roofs.  He knew the ghosts of the past and he knew them alive, still living in some other moment.  He knew the caldera ablaze with ash and rock and lava.  He knew the cathedral crack in two and saw half of it slip down to the water.  He knew every crack of lightening and peal of thunder.  He knew the routes of the foxes, where the birds nested.  He knew the worries and joys of everyone on the crater, then and now.  He could feel every surface, every sensation ever felt on this curve of land. Focus. He knew their fears

No time for anything fancy.  He made them blind.  All of them.  No time to be selective.  He felt their panic, the gunmen frozen with surprise.  He heard plates smash, felt shocked breaths, understood the dumb terror of the retards chained to their beds in the hospital.  He told them, It won’t last long.  They calmed.   He felt creases in gloves dig into fingers curled around trigger.  He felt bullets hit flesh. He heard each gunshot, each scream from a dozen angles.  

He made his clothes burn.  He ran up the street, sidestepping wailing gunmen, swirls of yellow flame flapping from his tailcoat, up the street, his feet a blur.  He danced up the street, alive. He wasn’t expecting to get shot. 

There was a hand – a big, human hand – under each armpit.   He opened his eyes.  He felt the perfect circle of a gun barrel pressing hard against each temple.  He felt throb of his knees on the marble floor and plastic twine being tied roughly round his wrists.   Pain, his pain, shone out piercing round a point in his side.  His head ached and he felt blood drip from his nose.  They tied his feet together, keeping him on his knees, their guns against his temples.  He tried to make his clothes burn and couldn’t.  He tried to know the thoughts of his captors.  There was nothing there, each mind was worn to a small, smooth kernel. The minimum. He cast his mind about, outside, to the town.  It wasn’t there.  Panic gripped him. Blood bubbled at his nostrils, tears came.  He pissed himself and passed out, held up by massive hands, head clamped in place between gun barrels. 

He came to in the same position except now someone else was in the room.  He could feel an arthritic elbow.  He could see himself, from behind.  He felt hot breath over a fat tongue.  A thin, metallic crunching came as he watched the himself being rounded.   He opened his eyes.  In front of him was the shape of a dumpy woman, wrapped, save for holes for mouth and eyes, and a tear over the left elbow, in tinfoil.  A mummy.

“Do you know,” began the mummy, in a German accent, “actually, of course you don’t,” a brassy chuckle, “but I really didn’t believe that this would work.  I was almost entirely convinced that Dr von Harbou was having a joke at my expense.”

It's been some - six, actually - months since I wrote anything other than work emails, thank you cards and the occasional half-arsed comment on the halfbakery.  But this weekend I will, provided I don't get too wasted celebrating Scotland's qualification out of der Gruppe der Tod and into the finals of the European Championships, hopefully get some time to write. I have two ideas for writing about both of which are linked to halfbakery ideas.  AndI need you, my dear, dear friends, to help me pick.  I also need you to tell me, in five words or fewer, how the story will end.   Be as specific or as abstract as you like.  Or not.  It's up to you.

This is me.  Come join me!

Joy in my heart!  Joy in my heart!

For those not in the know, this is last fm.