Here's Charlie Messier

My Experimental Stage

2006-09-12T17:14:00.000+10:00

Some people say that I’m on my way down the hill. That I went over it a few years ago and that I’m on the slippery, crow-eyed slide towards death now. Getting old is fine for women but it’s a different story for men. As they say, ‘A woman is like a fine bottle of wine’ – which has never made to sense to me because, from I am told, older women go off.
Anyway, the point is that I am as young and hearty as ever, as I have just gone through the ‘experimental stage’ of my life. Yes, for a couple of months there, I was a self-proclaimed homosexual: I spent an extra 2 hours shaving every morning, I went on a blouse-shopping spree, and I campaigned against the rampant stereotyping of homosexuals in the Western World. I did it all.
But rather than getting on board the seedy underbelly of seedy men in the city’s seedy underbelly, I went for a more wholesome approach: The Gay and Merry Men of Christmas Present – a choir of all-male carolers.

It was a newly-gay man’s paradise. The male carolers were walking around in nothing but reindeer harnessing gear and green Swedish pants. I could barely contain myself I was so blown away.
Unfortunately for me and my experimental stage, I had misjudged the situation. During rehearsal on my first day, I pinched the bottom of the young man in front of me during the second verse of ‘Oh Holy Night’. A number of the male sopranos saw this and were less than impressed. It seemed as though The Gay and Merry Men of Christmas Present was not a choir of gay men, but a group of carol-enthusiasts who really were nothing more than gay and merry – in the same way that Christmas is gay and merry, and not at all sexual, let alone homosexual. I was then viciously bashed and kicked out of the premises by the men, who turned out to me neither homosexual, nor gay and merry.
And thus ended my ‘experimental stage’. Something that, once the bruises and internal bleeding cleared up, I was glad to have done, for it proved to everyone that I am young at heart. Just not literally, as the bashing did come close to puncturing my aorta.

Father's Day with Florence

2006-09-07T10:03:00.000+10:00

I had the unfortunate experience of remaining not only sober, but conscious, for a decent portion of Father's Day this past weekend. This would not have been such an issue but for the fact that my illegitimate child, Florence, decided to visit me for the first time in 23 years. He usually just sends me an abusive postcard for that one special day in September and carries on about my own denial of his existence. Which I find incomprehensible and refuse to believe he would say such a thing.

But I digress - damn, I digressed again by pointing out that I had digressed - damn, I did it again...

Anyway, my son Florence appeared at the front door of my shack on the morning of Father's Day, but to his surprise, my front door was at the local tip and had not been attached to my lodge for some months, ever since Hurricane Whoreinboots. Making his way from the tip to the door-shaped gap in my shack, Florence announced himself with a hearty holler of 'GOOD DAY FATHER!!!', which gave me such a shock that I dropped my last bottle of whisky to the floor, where it lay in pieces, as broken and finished as my heart. When I looked up I saw my accursed son standing there with his arms full.

It seemed as though my hair-less hippie son had decided that I wasn't being ironic when I named him Florence that fateful day that the nurse cut open his mother, and had become a professional giant-rabbit breeder.

I (begrudgingly) sat my Florence down at the kitchen table and went down to the cellar to find a drink. My cellar is full of not bottles of wine, but model pirate ships. I bought a cargo-load of the ships a few years back from a merchant man from Venice who convinced me that pirates used to make the model ships and hide rum inside the masts so they could drink without the captain noticing. Of course I was yet to find any rum inside any of the toy ship masts. Nonetheless, I grabbed an armful of toy ships and headed back upstairs.

Fixing Florence a glass of Aktavite, I sat with him at the table and listened as he told me about his new life. I was systematically snapping pirate ship masts in two and throwing them away when they turned out to be hollow, when Florence dropped a bombshell. We both looked to the floor to the see the old, flaky remnants of a grenade that had fallen from a hole in his pants pocket. Florence told me he had found the old thing in the field where he bred his monstrous rabbits. I said I didn't care for his theories and he cleaned up the bombshell off the ground.

All this time, the gigantic rabbit Florence had brought with him had been sniffing about my shack. Presently, it returned to Florence and jumped onto his lap. Florence told me the rabbit was my Father's Day gift. I slapped him across the face. He jumped at me over the table and began gnawing at my neck. Florence watched in glee as the rabbit tore away at my neck flesh and eventually I passed out. Which was fine with me. I prefer to spend my Father's Days unconscious after all.

Introducing Charlie Messier

2006-06-05T23:56:00.000+10:00

Good evening to you all and welcome to the Charlie Messier Assortment.

I am the Charlie Messier in question. I am a divorced, 51-year-old. I live with my aging grandmother and I believe in art, open relationships and unsliced bread.

I probably won't post for a while after this post - I'm not going to rush into that 'difficult second posting' - no matter how much cashola my record label throws at me.

Charlie