Ep 1. Crashlines Incorporated – The story of Yassap I. Y’tae (A Serialised Story)

by Anton Martin Smith antonsmithwrites@gmail.com

Hi my name is Cal, short for Calvin. Last name Coolix. Yes my parents gave me a cartoon name – Cal Coolix but it’s been good to me – no one forgets my name. In business & in life that’s a plus. But I’m not here to tell you about me. There’s someone far more interesting than me that’s shown up on my radar.

Yassap I. Y’tae….is a very underrated international businessman…at least I think that’s what he is right now. Not exactly a mystery of a man, not an enigma – but certainly perhaps best described as a riddle-that’s-only-half-written. You have not heard of him yet – no one has.

Mark my works he will change the world. He is not on the internet! He is biding his time, choosing his words carefully, doing his due diligence, crossing his t’s & doting his I’s. Like a cornered Tiger, he is waiting to pounce. Well that’s what I’d tell you if I had to make a pitch about Yassap I. Y’tae right now. You must always sound confidant – even if you have zero intel.

There is slight static on the line. He informs me he will be launching soon. I pressed him what “soon” meant – he chose not to elaborate only saying in his true mysterious fashion: “If I gave you a specific date when the best date possible to launch has not yet materialized, I will only let both of us down – but I will contact you soon, that is my promise”. I said “ok but can I ask…” before I could finish I heard the engaged sound. I felt foolish, as I should have left it at “ok”. It was not my first or last “schoolboy error” & I hung up the phone.

I was overdue for a Cappachino, perhaps that’s the reason I felt a little off my game on that call. “stop beating yourself up Cal, you just need coffee – that’s all it was”. I began my journey to the lobby cafe – short walk through my small rented workspace, I would enter the lift, & go down three floors.

In the lift was Anne, she was also renting some space just like me – but for her own project. We exchanged pleasantries, but no more than that. For these were cold hearted hard business times, & both Anne & I knew it. All anyone cared about right now was business survival.

With so many ventures going to the wall these eighteen months since the crash, just surviving was almost like being a billionaire nowadays. Although my hunch was that Yassap I. Y’tae probably wasn’t in the same boat as me & Anne or anyone like us. I didn’t know anything about him other than his energy was all different. In my half century on this Earth, I’d learnt that what that old 20th Century physicist Nikolai Tesla said was right – energy, namely vibrational energy is everything.

The doors opened with a weird low pitch ‘ting’. As I heard my boots step on the hard polished concrete ground floor, all I could think of was getting caffeinated & figuring out who the hell was Yassap I. Y’tae??……..

(End of Episode 1. . . .the next will be coming soon!)

“Alas The Poor Fellow Has DHPS” (A Poem)

by Martin Anton Smith

Women prefer good looking men.

But what they really really live for is a “fixer upper”.

YES, Women prefer ‘Simpletons’.

So if you have brains, you better hide it fella!

That is, if you want to get laid.

Which, if you are the average joe schmoe,

You will be willing to lose your life for.

The odd Black Widow aside, this, usually happens metaphorically of course.

That deadening drawn out-ed-ness spiritual death.

of long-term Domestic Hen-Peckery.

This doesn’t all happen out of nowhere, so let me explain.

It all happens like this:

The bloke is so desperate for sex he marries a henpecking bitch,

Who soon enough ends up not shaging him anyway.

Soon enough he’s left only with a Henpecker, that won’t touch his Pecker.

Which is, inarguably so, a fate worse than death.

The only thing left to hope for for these poor fellows, is for a World War to again break out.

For when WW1 & WW2 broke, these henpecked & dusty peckered lot rejoiced heartily!

For they were no longer trapped at home with their wives & children!

Sure they might get their heads blown off by flak or rifle fire at any minute,

But that was a relatively small price to pay in comparison to their Domestic Henpeckery.

This is the problem with most men you see –

They overprice the chances of gleeful marital or defacto sex,

Yet totally underprice their chances of daily freedom.

For a man without a modicum of freedom, is truly not really a man.

He is but a shell of one.

That fact should not be deemed controversial, old fashioned or untrue.

Of course ‘Domestic Henpeckery’s’ got so so much worse nowadays,

As Nazi-like feminism has become as normalised as a deadly WW2 Panzer attack in 1940.

And so after decades upon decades of this phenomenon,

So now men have become women & women men.

And often very literally so.

It is an attrocious state of affairs!

So I have a final message to the modern 21st Century man:

Don’t be stupid,

Don’t marry of even date a Hen Pecker! –

Value your freedom of Association!

Value your freedom of Speech!

Value your freedom of Movement!

Value your Solitude!

Don’t marry a Hen Pecker,

Not Now,

Not Never,

Or on behalf of you Pecker!

Which contrary to working class beliefs,

Has acutely limited executive function.

It’s either that or get trapped & wait for WW3,

To finally set you free.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Although I’m probably kidding myself,

As men who over-trust their peckers, also don’t read books.

And so certainly – not my obscure & curmudgeonly written poems,

Emanating from the Arse-End-Of-The-World.

Luckily for me,

A subset of them might.

Perhaps a few hardened prison inmates might end up read these words,

So I’ll also half-dedicate this Poem to them.

Off course my warning is largely useless for these jailbirds,

For they are already protected by the Deadly Henpeckers by wrought iron bars,

Those Lucky Bastards!

But then again – one day they’ll too rejoin us all in the prison without bars.

But for the rest of the henpecked non book reading dopes out there,

They can only hope that their Putin stands strong & then their Trump retaliates with fire (or vice versa).

And so then,

Once again,

And as always,

A World War can come quietly to set them free,

From that casually murderous misandry,

Known in the near future in the Psychiatrist’s DSM manuals as:

Domestic Hen-Peckery Syndrome.

(Or DHPS for short).

“Tim Teeter’s Trip To Rigel”. (A Poem)

By Martin Anton Smith.

Tim Teeter’s problems were not at all anodyne – they were explosive.

And yet all his attempts to fix them were largely sclerotic.

Yes, he would try to apply a poultice to his wounded life,

But he only ended up surfing the sulkiness laced silence.

Tim’s one man think tank came up only with blank faced recommendations.

So, he was stuck like a light beam spiralling a event horizon boundary.

Tim’s existence was a kind of ‘Peregrinations in Purgatory’.

Yes, his life was indeed Kafka-esque but unfortunately it was also Phillip K. Dick-esque like too.

Things were deteriorating So quickly,

His hopes of improving to become Asimov-esque – that is stable & predictable,

Were now like seeing a distant flicker of candlelight-

Held up by a very rich man standing on the surface Proxima -b in the Alpha Centuri system.

But then Tim had an idea to fix it all – sure it was a long shot but worth a try.

He looked over to a Betelgeuse like pile of coats in the corner of his room.

He took a run up & slid under the coats finding himself on the bottom of it.

He felt a sense of calm come over him – he was insulated from the real world.

Then he felt a hard-edged rub against his hand.

He found a book in one of the coat pockets.

He took it out & looked at the cover.

“A Trip to Rigel’s Via Orian’s Belt” by Tim Teeter”

The front image was of a giant blue star with an approaching spacecraft.

“Hey that guy has the same name as me”, Tim thought.

Tim turned to the back cover – and there it was.

A picture of himself, perhaps twenty years in the future as a sixty-year-old.

Tim’s fears instantly disappeared.

He knew he’d be ok & his problems were only temporary.

The joke was on him, for the real Tim Teeter of the book did look like him,

But definitely wasn’t him & definitely wasn’t from the future.

Tim’s life was destined to stay a even mix of Kafka & Phillip Dick esque.

But at least his anxiety was assuaged until tomorrow,

When he would read the publisher details page.

That night under the coats was Tim’s best night sleep ever.

Well, apart for a small nightmare early on –

Where Tim found himself as an unemployed & depressed praying mantis,

Staging an elaborate break in to his own flat,

& then reporting it to disinterested police officer.

“How It Went Wrong With Yippy Y’Pong” (A Poem)

by Martin Anton Smith

I once met a girl called Yippy Y’Pong,
Or Y Y for short, which incidentally, she was.
O ‘culture wars’ did untie this fragile ‘Knot’.
Yes, We got what we got,
& we got the lot.
The Disagreements were decidedly epic;
The passive aggressiveness?
It was unfortunately unwaveringly,
underminingly uncomfortable.

So sadly, we soon divorced our special friendship.
The worry in the aftermath,
was equal in worth to mathematical infinity.
Yes – with My heart being so broken,
My formerly beefy baritone voice,
Became so softly & squeakily spoken.

My heart thus being swiftly & unyieldingly smashed,
Went from foppish aflutter to apoplectic palpitation.
So perilous was this heartless fact,
Its stringy moorings were no longer in-tact.
yes -it did Olympically jump out my chest,
& splattered downwards into the gruesome dingey gutter,
& Then fell down the dangling dirty depths of A sidewalk drain.

I stood wounded, literally heartless & dispiritingly dejected,
& Without much words or even a low decibel mutter.
I stood ‘stoopily’ with unevenly hunched shoulders.
Of course, it goes without saying: I was unhappy –
Suckered into being exquisitely, surgically, psychologically, ‘undone’.
Even worse the victor was watching my unravelling: it was Yippy Y’Pong
Just standing there watching, with a uneven smirk,
laughing when my heart rattled downwards with a
“Da Doink Da Doink Da Doink”.

And here’s the point:
O why O why
Did I Choose someone called
Yippy Y’Pong?
With her ‘worldliness’ in tow?
Alas! I was drunk with on Love!
Blinded by dead doves.
To her,
My flights of fancy,
were far more than just chancy,
They were deadly:
I might not just bore her to death,
I might have opened her eyes to something,
she had until now failed to see.
A dangerous idea that just simply couldn’t be.