Fevered Mutterings v1.4 – 14th January 2008
The first thing you notice is his suit.
From a distance, it looks real, but then you catch sight of the label, which could be anything from OurMarny or Eve St. Lawrence to Dolby & Guano. His cufflinks gleam authentically until the light glances off their side, loosing a wink of pocked iron. He has a ‘kerchief in his waistcoat pocket, which on close investigation carries the moniker Travelodge.
He’s a deep, ruddy orange. This unnatural tint has sunk deep into the palimpsest of his face, a recording of an indolent life riddled with short-cuts and lazy scams, and when he smiles it’s like a garish leather sofa being squeezed in a car-crusher. His teeth are so white they appear backlit, they’re bigger than Gary Busey’s, they’re bizarrely spaced and they’re clearly as genuine as his tailor. Around his neck is a gold medallion that he keeps facing into his wire-woollen chest, because it says “HRH Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee”.
He has a long overcoat that flaps around his ankles as he walks, but in an unnaturally slow way.
He always has a great idea. Want to make a bit of money in your free time? He has 10,000 sure-fire methods to become rich. He’s got half a million Followers on Twitter. Want to invest, and then sit back and let the greenbacks / tenners rumble towards you in a pyroclastic flow of moolah? He knows someone who, for just $29.95, will relinquish a dazzling arsenal of insider secrets and tips gained from long, hard years of graft in the City. He’s good for it, he’ll tell you.
He knows Mr Umbekururewembke, the former Manage-Director of Great Nigerian National Country Bank of Nigeria.
Want some software, but unwilling to pay the extortionate prices in the shops? He knows a man who knows a man who used to work at [multinational IT company] who now makes a living selling OEM versions of software, for back-of-a-lorry prices, mate.
He opens his jacket, and then you realise why it swished with such inertia. It’s packed with leaflets, samples, promotional gifts. There’s even a laptop, hanging just off his hip, and on the front of it is plastered a huge sticker saying “Free laptop!!!!”, with 4 exclamation marks, and underneath that there is much smaller writing that reads “Subject to completion of promotional criteria, including recommending 10 friends who each take advantage of at least 1 promotional 18-month timeshare lease offer”. The laptop is made by Jujitsu-Semen. Next to it, dangling obscenely, are a couple of items that would look like vacuum cleaner appliances, were they not labelled Make Her Happy and Mr Dongtastic.
He puts notes through doors, with his tanned, oily fingers. He puts an incredible number of notes through an incredible number of doors. It’s not clear how he does it, like the way Santa doesn’t seem to have enough time for all the children of the world. He writes the notes in special ways, making sure certain key words are misspelled so the reader isn’t tipped off that it’s an attempt to peddle garbage. Sometimes, inexplicably, he copies over short passages from famous novels like The Hobbit and Harry Potter and the Prisoner Of Azkaban. Nobody knows why, including him.
You never, ever want to visit his house, ever.
Do not under any circumstances accept any kind of invitation from him.
Image: PentaxFanatiK.
He must be some of us, so who is he? Which of us sends out 49,005 emails to deoplasta collective address CD? That person will burn in hell.
No, he won’t burn in hell.
That would imply there was something left of him, after I’m done with him, when I track him down. And that ain’t so.