The mother was holding a baby, had a stroller with what looked like twin girls around three, and had a five-year-old boy who was running around the shelves with a finger shoved up his nose. I considered warning him that if he fell, he would poke his ...
The brain is an incredible multitasker. At the same time that it’s piercing itself with superheated needles of anguish, it’s ruthlessly making plans, contingencies, plotting out a future, giving zero fucks whether it’ll ever see it. On the day ...
The trouble is, writing the damn thing is like unscrewing your skull and pouring the contents of your brain into an empty tank. The tank has a shape, more or less - has more or less defined edges, a bottom and sides. But what it mostly has is volume:...
We've got this heat going on, that's all. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not go into that end of things." "Oh, it's all the same to me. You're both adults and you got two working brains between you. Both of you were raised right, so what you...
Many myths and religions have some kind of threat of retribution from their god or gods, and their doctrines warn of the dangers of doing various forbidden things. Why? Because memes involving danger are the ones we pay attention to! As oral traditio...
Sex was a practiced art to him. Each move calculated. His brain always worked while he performed, his body seducing his prey with ease, noting each response of his target. But in one moment, everything had changed. She swept him into a tidal wave of ...
Too often we forget that discipline really means to teach, not to punish. A disciple is a student, not a recipient of behavioural consequences.
I looked at the woman crying over the doll and felt something else. I was sick of people acting against their own interests. Mooing about how to refinance the slaughterhouse. Putting skylights in the killing pen and pretending the bolt in the brain w...
Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual New World, the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. Heresy extend...
I was always asking myself why. Why am I feeling this? Thinking that if I knew the cause I could find the cure. But of course there was no reasonable why, at least not in the present. I was awash in an accumulation of past feelings and future dreads,...
I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I've got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love...
I do think that I'm a big believer in having an idea or having ideas and just tucking them away in the back of your brain. Even if you aren't consciously thinking of them, I think they simmer. You're working on them, even if you don't know you're wor...
I'd laugh, only my stupid lizard brain has disabled the laugh button for now. I'm too frozen up with tension. I am owed so much laughter. Sometimes I hope I'm building up a stockpile of missing laughs, and when I've recovered, they'll all come explod...
This was supposed to be yesterday. I was sitting on the Cardiff/London train, supposedly about to write this very column, and realising something quite terrible. My head was entirely empty. A vast echoing void. Bigger on the inside, but with nothing ...
Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis, words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, wh...
All of us know at least one drama queen or drama king. These people love to yell and make a scene when they’re offended. While all of that screaming might make them feel better in the short term, in the long term it does nothing for their careers o...
A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin o...
There's so many mysteries related to how flies are able to make their way through the world. I'd certainly like to know a lot more about how their brain works. I'd certainly like to know a lot more about just how they're put together. I mean, these a...
His gaze, blunted by the unnumbered procession of iron bars, uncounted as his softly padded steps. Smooth motion of blood and sinew turning in its own, small circle prescribed by bars and walls ...and skin, confined. Suddenly, without warning, a flas...
What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. T...
When I started out, I didn't have any writing routine, I had a job. Writing was a hobby I indulged in over the weekends or in the evening when I wasn't too knackered, watching TV, reading a book, or up the pub. I only ever started counting words upon...
