Corey is trying to focus on various novel projects, and one non-fiction project at this current time. In the past, and still occasionally he dabbles in play writing. Mostly though, he considers himself to be a poet at heart. Despite his best efforts to focus on other projects the poetry continues to flow. Here is the beginning of a new novel project that I am very excited about… (it hasn’t been edited or revised yet, where as I am trying to forge ahead on the first draft)
G-BEW
(Greatest Book Ever Written)
Chapter One:
Mayonnaise does not mix well with ketchup. That’s not an opinion, it’s a statement. Now let’s put that behind us, and have no further discussion about whether or not this statement could fall into the realm of opinion. It’s not, trust me. Let us, however, not forgot the impact that statement has. You’re probably not aware of the statement’s significance, and thus oblivious to the impact it has already and will continue to have on you. I wasn’t aware the first time I read that particular statement. Now I know. Now I mix mayonnaise and ketchup together on everything. Think of any food that, conventionally speaking, you add mayonnaise to; sandwiches, potato salads, tuna, chicken burgers. Now think of ketchup; hot dogs, hamburgers, hell, I can’t even believe I’m making a list of what ketchup goes with. Ketchup goes with everything. It’s awesome right? Well what if something happened to you? What if something got in your brain and completely re-wired the way you think about condiments and their singular non-team up uses? Welcome to my life post G-Boo. Or should I say post G-Bew, as in B, E, W, instead of B, O, O? Nah, fuck it, G-Boo is better then G-Bew. I swear my life use to make sense. Post G and however the hell you want to spell the boo.
If you could only hear me sigh. Not just now, but I mean every time that I make a sandwich. Oh I recall, and relish in the memory of sandwich making as a young lad, sans the persistent sighs of frustration. You know what else I miss from my youth, back when I was a care free undeclared English major, skidding through my undergrad? Puns. Man, I use to love puns. Like that pun I just made about relishing in the memories of sandwich making. That’s a relatively clever pun. This time five years ago, I probably would have been unable to have unfinished that sentence, without bursting into laughter. The pun, was by far my favourite literary device. Now puns are fucking soul sucking abysses of emptiness. I write one. I recognize it as being a pun. I know that it would come off as funny, or punny to a lover of puns. I know this because I formerly was a pun enthusiast. Now puns make me feel a great big, smoking heap of hopeless nothingness. Makes my black eye liner streak, and adds chicken scratches to my wrists. Numbing depression. Life post G-Boo is pain. All the pieces of my self sacrificed to the infectious plague that was G-Boo.
Another thing that I use to be capable of, was staying on topic. Coherent, cohesive, patterns of conversation or writing use to come natural to me. Now it’s a constant, never ending struggle to keep the poison of G-Boo from seeping through my thoughts. Nobody calls me anymore. All of my former friends have been scared off by my apparent “delusional” behaviour, and involuntarily references to that damn book. Once a week an agent from mental health services comes to visit to me. He just checks in to make sure I haven’t offed myself. Did you know that in the twenty first century nearly 1.3 billion people world wide participated in a mass suicide on G-Boo day? I mean Christmas. Fuck. There I go again. I’ve tried medication for attention deficit disorder. Nothing works. Everything cycles back to you know what. Which is why Gorax is my only friend, and that’s pretty pathetic considering it’s his job to visit me. He’s not that honest of a guy anyhow. He won’t even admit that his real name is Gorax. He keeps pointing to this fake name tag on his lapel, that reads “George.” Right, George. As if that’s a not a made up name. Anyway, I know the truth about Gorax, and I don’t blame him for wanting to keep his real identity secret from his employers. The government. The first law of G-boo above all other things is, never trust the government.
That’s a lie. Perhaps I’m not all that trustworthy, or at least I suspect I might be judged that way. The actual first law of G-Boo is, “Mayonnaise does not mix well with ketchup.” The foot note to that law reads, “Despite this, you will forever combine mayonnaise and ketchup on all things you eat. These two holy condiments shall never again be apart.” Right. Damn right! Never again shall mayonnaise or ketchup ever be eaten alone. Why? We don’t know why. G-Boo doesn’t tell us that, so therefore we don’t need to know. What I do know however, is that the first declaration of G-Boo is a contradiction. It states that mayonnaise does not mix well with ketchup, yet it orders us to always combine them. Now I always have to mix them. I feel an absolute compulsion to do so. At the same time, whenever I do, I nearly feel sick to my stomach and by the time that I’m done preparing my food I don’t even want to eat. Most of the time, I throw my mayo-ketchup covered food away, wait for my stomach to settle, and then make something else to eat that doesn’t involve mayonnaise and ketchup. For they are synonymous with one another. You can’t have one without the other, yet they don’t mix well, and when I mix them, I can hear the first law of G-Boo echoing through the halls of my brain. “Mayonnaise does not mix well with ketchup.” The opening line of what is undisputably, the greatest book ever written.
G-Boo. Or as it turns out, the actual spelling, G-Bew. Either or, neither is actually the real title. The real title is lost to the ages. I mean I know it, because I’ve actually read G-Boo. As it is now I’m the only living person who has read it. I would never dare to utter it’s true name. The government is listening, and to actually speak the true, real name of the book code named G-Boo, is the ultimate crime. Punishable by death, and the conviction is made without trial. Zero tolerance, because one slip up, could end the world as we know it. Even though no one knows what the real title is, if I were to speak it, then it would be known globally in a matter of hours. Like an airborne virus the sound of G-Boo’s true title has the power to infect everything and everyone on this planet.
If I could wipe my mind clean of this curse I would, but once a book is read, it can’t be unread. Heed my words. G-Boo ruined my life. It robbed me of everything dear to me. Everything and everyone. Except Gorax, whom I really think would like me if he just got to know me on a personal level, in which case he wasn’t judging my sanity. So yeah, heed what you read, but don’t worry about this book, it’s safe. I’m not writing the greatest book ever written. I’m writing the story of the greatest book ever written… and how it ruined my life.
