27: Tuna

Dullard’s Stare --------------- I was anxious at the animated cartoons action towards us. So, on seeing said animation in the supermarket, I performed a dullard's stare to mask the clarity of the hearts reflections. Without the correct social distancing intern in the shop, I carefully undertook spaced phases of birth and decline in between us. This cartoon dog standing as a human stands, dressed in the exact same clothes as I, though drawn of course, was not aware of my presence, though I sensed it would soon turn and, it’s nose comically erected, would twitch tentatively at first then frantically following a 1000 frame scent trail that had attached itself to my waistcoat by a punctured can of corned beef in the tinned food aisle. It never gets said when in movement, but it’s wonderful to have such long legs, and this, in collaboration with the low level extractor pipe near the top of my head, meant I could quite easily reach up and pull myself on to it with little fuss and, most importantly without drawing away Poochy the Darned Dog Snuffles and his Adventures in a Holistic Universe cartoons main protagonist from the dog chocolate currently caught in its stare My final crystallization into extractor pipe form was tempered by the purr of a pen and ink kitten choir also profiting from the pipes elevation. RAT --- So... this is rare footage of Elsabeth Aigner (AKA Alice Onions) doing the famous 'red apple trick' -- something very few actors could pull off convincingly, and a real test of their mettle: it's basically just eating an apple in mime, but it's done so convincingly that the audience -- in this case the director, camera operator, sound recordist... pretty much everyone in the casting room, -- actually sees, hears, some say they even taste the apple being eaten. The sound starts rolling, followed by the flash of the studio lamps, and by time the crew’s eyes have adjusted to the light, they all see it there, pressed to her teeth. And the mime is so precise that it manages to convey not just the apple's deep red skin, but the specific variety: Malus Prairie Spy. These particular acts of fructogenetic illusion had become standard casting routine among several more leftfield studios of the interwar period, and died with them as the depression pruned the esoteric fringes of Hollywood to the hilt, while the Big Five studios rose. But recently, a cache of these casting reels was found, inexplicably, in the old shuttered storehouse of a Long Beach tuna processing plant, derelict since 1957. Apparently, they stank so bad they were almost scrapped along with the rusting canning machines that had been stewing for 40 years under the tremolite asbestos roof, were it not for the discerning eye of passing location scout Alexander Station who noticed them being hauled into the dumpster and intervened. Once the canisters had been hosed down and disinfected, they were taken to the Westway Orchard Archive (where Station was reprimanded for the hosing-down, these after all were delicate historical records...) It took 16 months of painstaking validation by forensic cinematographers before it could be confirmed the reels were genuine R.A.T.s: the apple seen whilst filming, and the apple seen right now, on screen is just not there in the celluloid. It's been rumoured - although never verified - that it was the nitrocellulose of one of Aigner’s RAT reels that ignited - some say spontaneously - in Westway Vault 7, causing the fire of 1967, which saw 70% of the archive vanish in a flash. Death Report ------------ Death often goes to parties and leaves them with a terrible hangover. Other times it lies in wait, something of a grizzler the longer there is nothing to end in the vicinity. Worldly people pay no attention to the cloaked darkness pacing near, so there is no reason for it to hide. Its agitation often stems for not being seen as a kindly brother, or a helpful counterpoint to the lives they all live, or even as a go between or a facilitator, “There are no instruments to clobber, poison, cut down and do-away with any entity,” it mutters “well, none on my side anyhow.” Not dull of wit, death plays up to its image when it is clocked, looming or coming across as relentless; an amusement, it is aware, only to itself … But then a person is brought about and finished off by the same force inherent in motion of a wave as it plunges back into the ocean body. Looking in the mirror waiting for the cubicle to be vacated, it says, ”Not quite apparition or embodied or projection ...” “Alright mate,” comes the shout from inside the cubicle, “I won’t be a minute” “No,” it thinks, turning to the voice, “about 45 seconds by my watch.”