Me and Buzz Housefly.

"A housefly in Chennai," Aravind Sivaway, (Wiki.)

Ian Cooper

Yay. Buzz (my pet housefly) has returned. He was probably just sulking, ah, due to the fact that I've tried to kill him ten or twelve times today.

I tried to get him a few times yesterday too, but he keeps coming back, looking for more. I thought I'd killed him a few times there, but maybe I was being too gentle. All that goop, ladies and gentlemen. Right?

I didn't want to get any of him on me...

Flies are okay. They're good people.

They're a bit like a dog in that sort of unconditional love that flies have.

You can even frolic with them, although I have to admit the poor little guy’s a bit of a punching-bag when I’m feeling insecure.

I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen. It's just that Buzz and I have become a bit withdrawn, perhaps even isolated over the years.

Every so often we feel the need to talk.

...let's hope me and Buzz get out of here for a little while tomorrow. Nice thing about a housefly, you can carry 'em in a matchbox.

...sounds to me like someone's got another idea. (Buzz.)

I just received an email where someone asked, "If I bought one of your books, would you sleep with me?"

I said, "Sure, and why not, it sure beats having sex with you."

“That’s funny, Ian. Are you working right now?”

“Ah, yes, Buzz, I am.”

“Okay. Well. I’ll try not to bother you too much.”

Buzz came and sat in my lap first thing this morning. They're eminently trainable. I kind of worry about the little guy sometimes. All that second-hand smoke.

I knew Buzz was a keeper when he flew inverted two inches above the keyboard, then pulled up into a series of Cuban-8s, hammerheads and rolling circles.

I think he likes me.

Buzz and I are going to the park to play catch later, but first some lunch. Houseflies don’t eat much; (they don’t drink much either), but a single grain of sugar keeps him going all day long. As for myself, I don’t know, maybe back-bacon sandwiches or something.

I leave the balcony screen door open so he can go out and have a shit and stuff like that. 

They’re not too hard to look after, that’s for sure.

It’s okay for you guys, you got wives and husbands, children and grandchildren.

All I got is this lousy housefly.

Anyways, we’re (Buzz is around the house somewhere) going to have a beer and try and figure out what to make for lunch.

END

Legalize It: Editorial.

Cannabis Training University, (Wiki).

Anonymous.

In Colorado, Washington state and Washington D.C., (and a couple of other places I’m too lazy to look up), they’re all saying the same thing.

Legalize it and they will come.

As Canadians, I’m sure that we all agree that all of them other countries all around the world are just plain nuts, right? But just this once the Americans have beaten us to the punch, or in their case maybe the draw.

The newly-fangled, independently-published pot industry is playing hell with the old fashioned curators of pot distribution, namely and to wit, the Mexican-Hindu Cartel, the Heck’s Angels, and the good old Jewish-Irishmen Syndicate, (who as you may know is/are constantly warring over turf with the Scottish-Hindu Gang and the Welsh-Shinto Alliance).

Remember when you could get Panama Red, and Acapulco Gold? I mean twenty bucks an ounce. That kind of thing. When was the last time you saw a fifteen-buck gram of Hawaiian, just a bit salty and tasting of pine trees and the sea? 

No more, ladies and gentlemen, and in fact I have never seen an actual Thai stick in my life. 

But independently-published pot is now legal. When was the last time you saw any good Black Lebanese? Three fucking gold camels stamped on the top, showing marks from being wrapped in, ahem, muslin? Not since 9/11, I bet.

(Some of these kids have no idea of what I’m talking about. – ed.)

Because now, what used to cost the consumer $300.00 an ounce is a lot cheaper. Now it generates tax dollars for the common weal rather than generate prisoners for some miserable and bastardly for-profit prison system.

The people have spoken or maybe they haz smokin’, whichever you prefer, ladies and gentlemen.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcaire has promised to legalize (or decriminalize, which isn’t always the same thing) marijuana use ‘first thing’ or so he says. One must take all political promises with a grain of salt, (not meth, okay?) for sure, but one wonders what Conservative (Pamela) and Liberal pot-smokers (Justin) think of all this. As for the Greens, they don’t even know what it means. The trouble with legalization of pot-smoking is that the people in charge of getting it legalized are of course the pot-smokers themselves, which is a bit like putting illegal drug cartels in charge of keeping the peace, ensuring the safety and welfare of the people, et cetera.

It’s like putting the coal company in charge of social housing when people could just live in their cars in the parking lot.

Safe to say it’s not their highest priority, especially in a land of badly-educated people, but in a province where the government has taken charge of gambling, horse-racing, alcohol and tobacco sales, prostitution even, one wonders what the hold-up is.

Of all recreational drugs, this one has the least number of side-effects (may cause munchies, pink-eye and green teeth), and is at least as good as alleviating constipation, (depending on how much you eat), as some other herbal remedies.

(This is why you save the stems, which have absolutely no gluten in them at all. You make tea, which softens them up, and eat them for the constipation. Then you drink the tea for the damned stems caught in your throat. It’s all good, ladies and gentlemen. Then you piss, which means it’s a diuretic as well).

But fucking seriously, ladies and gentlemen, the shit has all kinds of uses, I feed the seed along with bread soaked in whiskey on cold winter days to a bunch of starlings and then I sit back, giggle a bit and watch them fuckers try and hold onto a tree-branch…

You can also bathe in it.

It defoliates your tender little epidermis and puts a fine polish on those over-heated facial features.

‘Cause we all know (everyone that’s reading this) that you’re naked right now.

I know I sure am, which is one of the great things about this job.

Also, my shirt was on fire.

It’s all good, ladies and gentlemen.

You know, if we’re really, really polite all of the time, and let the other guys make fools of themselves all the time, then sooner or later we occupy the moral high ground by default. We don’t even really have to do anything.

Why not just think about that for a while.

You’ll figure it out.

END

I Need Beer to Write.

Ian Cooper.

I need beer to write.

Lately I’ve been getting about 250 words per beer consumed.

I need approximately 240 beers just to complete a 60,000-word manuscript. 

Then there’s the whole editing, proofreading and formatting process. We need to make a cover, write a blurb and upload our shiny new opus to all of them different platforms.

We are talking, ladies and gentlemen, of a minimum of about 350 beers, I kid you not, just to produce one measly little novel of pulp detective fiction.

Like any other person in any other occupation or walk of life, we suffer all the usual challenges of providing food, shelter and clothing, transportation for ourselves.

That’s not to say you can’t help, because you can.

The best way to buy beer for me is to go over to Amazon or any fine retailer, type in Ian Cooper and buy one of my books.

I promise not to squander that on anything too anti-social.

Just beer, ladies and gentlemen.

END

Here's my story, Legs, which is often free on Kindle.