1000th Post!

Various Artists - 9 (Autechre remix)

Eight hours since Clive had last looked up from his model train set and Kenneth and Geoff beginning to wonder if something's wrong. The ceremony finished seventeen hours ago. Clive: odd all day - odder than usual; if it wasn't for the incredible prestige of his award for outstanding achievement in the Beginners' Horticultural Embellishment: Level One (Basic) module, he would have been escorted from the premises of Mdme. Buchsbaum eleven minutes after his arrival. With a sigh, Geoff undid his bowtie and the top button of his shirt. Kenneth froze, expecting something from Clive, but - no, Geoff had judged the situation correctly. Clive was lost in some introspective hell, his mind clearly addled with all different kinds of shapes, words, patterns, colours, animals, formations and concepts - there would be no telling, in Clive's head, which was which - his self-esteem would be triangular, 4-4-2, nomadic and yellow one minute, purple, 3-5-2, liberty and oblong the next. His heart would beat incredibly fast as sweat would pore down his back while behind those eyes the blood in his brain would swirl and swim around his grey and beefy nerve endings, his empty crevices would become dusty with dwell and his teeth would clamp tighter and tighter together as he pondered the relation of orange and black stripes with black shorts brown perms picasso sandwiches and double-barrelled chestnut sidings, nagging at him: 'marchand, remonter et boue, gros bobard!'. - That kind of thing. Geoff quickly noticed that Kenneth was lost in contemplation of Clive's own anxious, runny-nosed ruminations and picked up the nearest magazine that came to hand. He read: "VARIATIONS IN INSECT STRUCTURE. To have observed insects at all is to have noticed that they vary tremendously - from flattened, crawling cockroaches, which feed on scraps of food, to flying butterflies, which suck nectar from flowers, and swimming beetles, which chase animal prey. These differences are mostly in external structures; internally, insects are more alike. Variations in the digestive tract are related mostly to what the animals eat. In the cockroach, which feeds on solid food, the gizzard is well developed, and its lining is armed with hard plates and spines. Insects which suck juices have no gizzard. In the honeybee the nectar is sucked up into a honey stomach, which corresponds to the crop of the" - Geoff flicked around a bit for something that caught his imagination - "Except for the gill slits there is very little about such a simple, sessile animal to suggest any reason for including it in the same phylum with fishes or mammals. But the development of a tunicate tells another story. The larva is a free-swimming animal that reminds one of a tadpole. It has a large tail which contains, besides muscles, a well-developed notochord and a dorsal tubular nerve cord. The trunk contains, in addition to other organs, a pharynx with slits" - no wonder Clive is so miserable, thought Geoff, it's the end of an era.