Another one bites the dust
The mouse emerges, peeping cautiously over the edge of the hole. Green fronds swing aimlessly overhead in the mid-evening pallor. The big blue above looks dangerously open. The mouse sighs and makes the sign. Tonight he must prevail. There will be no comebacks.
He grits his teeth against the biting cold. The evening closes around him like a prickly shroud. He patters down the path in short, jerky steps, meaning to blend in, managing to spill out. Here and there a pale star edges into view. He looks up and prays. Success tonight (like every other night )means life or death to him.
He makes it to the crossing. The red light blinks and the mad rush stops. He plunges into the fray. Running over the Zebra before the khaki coloured hyenas stirr.
Once across, the mouse catches his breath and thinks of his warm quilt and his mellow, yellow, lighted, armadillo... friend.
“Life was so rough lately”, he mused. But there was no time for sensibility; The challenge lay open in front of him. A long line of yellow-backed slugs, crouched in awful, grinning readiness, the hunchbacked, red toothed jackals waiting hungrily beside them.
The mouse braced himself, drew a deep breath and walked up to the first in line.
“Please... Will you go to Hutchins road?”
“Hop on”, said the jackal, spitting some pan in a semi-circular arc, south.
The sky burst into a riot of colour and fanfare. the battle had ended early tonight. the ‘game’ was won.

journo angst
the scales have fallen from my eyes. north east west south, does not mean giving every story a chance; rather— it means how many cms the edited story was and just how much space the page had left last night when the pagelayer was fighting the deadline, scanning his basket for a 16cm, SC.
i shudder to think what they would say if they knew this at home. iconoclasts(in the form of ajay) would have a field day with one more salvo to wage war against the ‘dotty’ world of the journalist. salvo no one- “i would’nt want to be one of those geeks sitting in a cubicle, hugging his knees, muttering ”must find words that fit 4/3 story, box item, headline”, “or one of those nerds who feverishly looks through his dictionary and laughs delightedly when chances on the right synonym to that niggling vacuity that disturbed him so mercilessly”, “or one of those goggle-eyed dweebs who sits in the basement of his house, cowering over his ancient pentium-2, jamming out a story, while ocassionally glancing devotedly at his pet spider, spike.”
Oh, how i shudder to think what ajay would do with this tasty tidbit. (shudder, shudder)

but there are advantages—
like various members of the family who show keen interest in being subject matter of the next feature, offering their whole-hearted cooperation in sacrificing their life’s achievements on the alter of (presumably) my success. The joy and glee one gets when such paragons of virtue, turn glassy-eyed and demand that i believe them to be separately (and unknown to each other), the cornerstones of the nation.
the peaceful, awakenings each morning to the realisation that a job somewhere during the course of the day must be commited to and sweated through.
the murmer of friends that makes the day so much the sweeter for its presence.
the plump envelope that sees me through variously coloured softees and dog-eared second hand books, week after week.

i like my life... 'nerdy' be darned.
(and what is ‘cool’ please ajay? 'carlito' answers will not be tolerated)