Titanium Sushi

By Christen E

Most of these very short stories were written by swordfish that had passed away about 5 minutes after becoming fossilized in a block of basalt. This created huge problems for nobody, and so no record can be found of their ephemeral existence. Nobody was later found in the mouth of an intergalactic crab that had decided to visit the Crab Nebula.
These startlingly diverse tales have been written over the past 10 years in three different countries (Germany, Vietnam and the UK). Some of the stories are satirical – indirectly and whimsically revealing the madness of the human race, some absurd and surreal, some are plain silly, others are warnings, and some are simply deadly remarks on our hyper-deranged modern societies.
The Nod is a surreal fantasy that challenges the very foundation of consciousness with unexpected and amusing consequences. Conversely, The Spoon Dogs and Shaving with Fish are extremely silly tales. Almost as silly, but inversely proportional to the surface of celery sticks, are How to Clean a Teapot and Titanium Sushi.
Other stories are very dark and probe the deeper realities people keep hidden or forever deny until the reality strikes them with the hammer of fate. These include A Kind of justice, The Charity Shop and Chronically Offended.
The Celestial Bureaucrats was inspired by my first year in Berlin, where I had to deal with more bureaucracy (despite being an EU citizen) than the rest of my 63-year-old life put together! The Banking Virus is similarly inspired and depicts my vehement loathing of all things to do with banking.
Rocking the Boat is a satirical comment on societal pressure to conform. It is about rejecting the superior mind. Society is constantly attacking the individual, the great, the eccentric and the unusual, despite the suspicion that these individuals are the foundations of invention, progress and indeed, its own salvation!
The Wombi and The Guinness Book of World Records are semantical word plays which expose certain philosophical assumptions. For example, there are thousands of ways to break world records but not many of them would be considered seriously. In the Wombi the question of who we should really worship arises!
In the short Life of a Gravestone and Waste, I examine the insensitive reality of the human race. Like Tom Waits once sung: ‘There is nothing kind about mankind...’
I also have fun with people’s personalities. In My Deadpan Wife and Tradition various social peculiarities are more or less explained...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christen E
• Release date: Dec 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005361068

Christen E

I was the 14th son of a one-parent family of shepherds, largely supported by the pocketed springs of a mattress loved by geckos all over the Antarctic wilds of Borneo.

Book preview

Most of these very short stories were written by swordfish that had passed away about 5 minutes after becoming fossilized in a block of basalt. This created huge problems for nobody, and so no record can be found of their ephemeral existence. Nobody was later found in the mouth of an intergalactic crab that had decided to visit the Crab Nebula.

These startlingly diverse tales have been written over the past 10 years in three different countries (Germany, Vietnam and the UK). Some of the stories are satirical – indirectly and whimsically revealing the madness of the human race, some absurd and surreal, some are plain silly, others are warnings, and some are simply deadly remarks on our hyper-deranged modern societies.

The Nod is a surreal fantasy that challenges the very foundation of consciousness with unexpected and amusing consequences. Conversely, The Spoon Dogs and Shaving with Fish are extremely silly tales. Almost as silly, but inversely proportional to the surface of celery sticks, are How to Clean a Teapot and Titanium Sushi.

Other stories are very dark and probe the deeper realities people keep hidden or forever deny until the reality strikes them with the hammer of fate. These include A Kind of justice, The Charity Shop and Chronically Offended.

The Celestial Bureaucrats was inspired by my first year in Berlin, where I had to deal with more bureaucracy (despite being an EU citizen) than the rest of my 63-year-old life put together! The Banking Virus is similarly inspired and depicts my vehement loathing of all things to do with banking.

Rocking the Boat is a satirical comment on societal pressure to conform. It is about rejecting the superior mind. Society is constantly attacking the individual, the great, the eccentric and the unusual, despite the suspicion that these individuals are the foundations of invention, progress and indeed, its own salvation!

The Wombi and The Guinness Book of World Records are semantical word plays which expose certain philosophical assumptions. For example, there are thousands of ways to break world records but not many of them would be considered seriously. In the Wombi the question of who we should really worship arises!

In the short Life of a Gravestone and Waste, I examine the insensitive reality of the human race. Like Tom Waits once sung: ‘There is nothing kind about mankind…’

I also have fun with people’s personalities. In My Deadpan Wife and Tradition various social peculiarities are more or less explained…

ECH December 2020

THE NOD

No-one knew exactly who started it but it became apparent within 24 hours that the whole planet, creatures great and small, had begun nodding. Up and down went the heads of a trillion lifeforms. Nodding. They had all evolved a peculiar case of ‘the nods’ and nobody was immune to it. Apparently, it was no one’s fault. It was not even political! There were no protests. Neither was it a matter of racism as everybody and everything was clearly involved in an involuntary bobbing. Even the trees appeared to be caught in some kind of dedicated micro storm, a mesmeric vertical rhythm! 

It did not become clear why for some time. The dogs and cats and lizards needed even longer to question and stumble upon the possible causes for their newfangled behavior. The lizards and geckos were not particularly disturbed. The cats pawed at themselves anxiously but soon a deeper understanding pacified them. At some point in the process witnesses perceived a knowing expression in the eyes of the nodders. Just a little time before they, themselves, were hooked. This slow vertical signal of the upper extremity was nodding in unilateral realization. There was nothing academic about it. It was rather meditative. A massive truth loomed before them and their minds and creeping consciousness’s expanded to embrace it. The universe, and all its components, was in the process of understanding things it had never been able to get its head around before...

Furthermore, this hypnotic activity, this growing awareness, this undirected meditation, was contagious and eventually had a significant impact on the earth. The whole planet began to vibrate and threatened to drop out of its orbit around the sun. Instead, due to unforeseen magnetic impulses, other planets began to hum and bob like fishing lures floating on the surface of some gravitational anomaly, some mysterious galactic lake. The sun appeared to shimmer and dance in the heavens. Soon galaxies were shifting (in cosmic terms) in hyperbolic loops like the coordinated flight of starlings.

It was not clear at first what the universal realization, the sentient awakening was revealing to all these nodding entities. One thing was certain, the universe was not as it seemed. Everything the nodders had been given to believe was far from any deeper reality.

They were not realizing with increasingly open eyes, third eyes included, the so called wisdom of various races and bands of hominids and other experiments in life. Nor that they had been deceived for eons, nor that good and evil were actually relevant only in the lives of minor civilizations, nor that gods were fiction, that the universe was largely oblivious to their concerns. Nor were they realizing how petty their lives were in the scheme of things. Nor that everything was, in fact, a conspiracy. Nor were they becoming aware of the multiversal condition of material phenomena. Nor the distinct impression that their freedoms were temporary illusions.

As the very fabric of space and time began to vibrate to the rhythm of the aroused ‘consciousness of nod’ star systems began swaying in uncharacteristic ways. The duty to scientific law was discarded like a false skin and a new animation took hold. Vision became paramount. The cosmos became a huge macroscopic eye, seeing beyond all