bluechrome publishing, PO Box 109, Portishead, Bristol BS20 7ZJ
First Edition 2003
Revised, Second Edition Published by bluechrome 2007
Copyright Ù Erik V Ryman 2007
Erik V Ryman has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The original edition of this book was published in the name of ‘Panton di Villa’. All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
www.bluechrome.co.uk www.erikryman.co.uk
ISBN 978-1-906061-04-3 Illustrations are by Sean Michael O’Brien, aged 11.
Doctor Mooze was originally meant to be a short story, something that could be read to my then unborn son but, as with most things in life, it was not quite that simple. Instead it became the final diary of a ten-year-old boy, Panton di Villa, and was published in his name...and man was he a brat.
Reviewers loved it, hated it, and weren’t sure whether it was true or not. Too neat to be true, I think, was the general opinion - although no-one was really sure.
Which of course was the original intent.But that was then, and as it is being reissued I thought I’d better come clean. At least this way Jack gets his dedication, even if it will be a while before I let him read it.
Erik Victor Ryman Spring 2007Hi! Welcome to my blog. I’m going to be writing it every day from now on until it gets really big. Then I’ll sell advertising on it so millions of people read it.
OK, it’s not on the internet yet, cos I haven’t got round to learning how to do that, but I’ve got a copy of Word my Dad lifted from work and I know how to use it. I thought I’d wait ’til I’ve got a bit more and it’s worth the effort. I can’t see the point in learning how to do all that shit and then getting bored with writing this and it’s all a waste - I mean, who’s going to pay for advertising if there’s only one or two pages?
Cool. I’ve done half a page already and it ain’t sooo very hard. Man, that sbentter Matthews - he’s in my class and he’s been trying to do a blog for months and all he’s got on it is stuff about his holiday in Portugal. Some of the pictures of women were cool – his Dad had done this sneaky thing where he took photos of Matthews’ Mum on an air bed - well stupid she looked - and had made sure that there were these real cool girls in the background. Matthews used Coral Picture to cut his Mum out and put a pic of himself in the middle so it looked like these cool girls were checking him out. They looked German – well my brother Toto said so and he knows cos he’s got these magazines hidden in his bedroom. It was sooo funny the other day when Mum started tidying his room, and he had to try and get her out. It was sooo cool, cos me and Toto were saying ‘Hey Mum, there’s someone at the door’. Then Toto said that he’d broken his foot and started hopping around and stuff like a real nonno. I was laughing, and Mum kept telling him to stop ‘trying to be clever’ which made me laugh even more cos he just looked sooo very stupid.
My blog’s going to be about real things. I’m on my second page now and haven’t even said what it is I like to do. Oh man, this is going to be easy. Maybe I will learn that internet stuff so people can see it.
I’m going to shoot some rabbits now with Dad. We’ve got a problem with vermin and we’re willing to take a responsible approach to managing it. That’s what he told the smelly reporter when those hippy blokes with beards and those ugly women told on him to the papers and the radio people kept coming round to his work and telling lies about him.
We have to kill the rabbits when it’s dark now so that no-one can see us and we’ve got to do it tonight because the man from the fur factory is coming round in the morning and he pays us money for them. My Dad says it’s secret, so not to tell anyone, especially not reporters.
Hi again! Welcome back to my blog. I guess I’ve got to keep writing every day if I’m going to sell it to someone and get adverts, but I had an awesome day today cos we went to see a football match.
It was really good – not like when you play it on the PS2 and you don’t really get involved. You can shout at people and sing songs and stuff. Dad got funny when these people kept singing songs with dirty words – I think he thought we hadn’t heard them before. He tried to pretend like he couldn’t understand what they were saying, and Toto kept asking him what the words were so he could join in. I think Dad knew that Toto knew and he kept raising his eyebrows in my direction, but Toto kept pretending that he didn’t realise. I mean, I’m ten years old and he still thinks I’m a kid or something. Like I don’t know how to say ‘fuck’:
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
I mean it’s not hard is it? Every fucking television show says fuck and we always watch films and things where people say fuck and worse words. He does though - he really does think I’m a kid still.
I guess all Dads are like that - they want to be your best buddy – but when it comes to things that your best buddy wouldn’t want you to do, like cleaning and homework and putting your light out when you’re on Havoc Hotel or something, well then they get to be Dads again and look lame.
Toto says that he could be a Dad if he wanted to, because he’s got hair starting to grow on his balls. He’s older than me. I’m not sure if I’d want hair on my balls - it looks kind of itchy. I don’t know why having balls with hair on them would let you be a Dad either. I know my Dad has got hair on his balls too – I saw them once when we went swimming and shared a changing room.
Once they put a big monster in the middle of the pool, and me and Toto were running from one side of the pool, up the monster’s legs, over its body then bombing into the little kids like that blubber belly bloke in the TV advert. That was wicked, but then Dad became a Dad again and stopped us doing it just because some little girl broke her arm or something.
I mean, we didn’t hit her or nothing - one of her friends jumped on her, not us. But Dad kept talking about insurance (like so what?) and how lawyers ruled the world and things, and then we had to go.
Toto said that it was Dad who threw the girl’s friend into the water and that was why we went, but I don’t know – I never saw nothing, cos I’m no grass and he’s family is Tony.
Anyway, after the football we went to McDonalds (another thing Dads do when they’re in Buddy mode – like calling you ‘mate’ and trying to chase after you until they run out of breath and start smoking again).
Dad’s meant to have stopped smoking, but I saw him outside his office when we went on our school trip on a coach and he was definitely smoking and it was definitely him, you know? I’m keeping that to myself though - cos I ain’t no grass and he’s, like, family.
I like the Sopranos - we saw them when we stayed at Nan’s house. She’s my Dad’s Mum, my Mum’s Mum is dead. I think it was in the war or something, least that’s what Toto says and he’s older than me. I guess he means the Iraq one that was on when I was born. That was like really cool, like a computer game or something – Dad kept his old videos and we saw it on Fox last Christmas. Dad says there’s going to be another war with Iraq and that we’ve got to do the job right this time. I don’t really know what that means cos all the films I saw were wicked and we smashed all those Iraq tanks and things to pieces. I don’t know if maybe it took too long or we ran out of time. Toto just laughed at me because I wrote ‘run out of lives’ like it was a real computer game, not a thing on TV. Toto says that the Americans had a cheat where they always had extra lives, but that they were English lives. I don’t get that and he won’t explain. Ever since he started getting fur on his balls he’s been saying things like that, like I’m stupid or something for not understanding what he’s on about, you know? I told him he’s getting to be more of a Dad everyday. He ain’t talking to me now – and I don’t care.
He’s started hanging out with Becky Allen as well. He reckons she’s his girlfriend, but Becky’s sister Kate who’s in my class and plays football with us and is like quite cool for a girl – she looks like Avril Lavigne, who did that song, Skater Boy – well she said that Toto wants to go out with Becky but that Becky wouldn’t let him feel her up or even kiss her with tongues. Kate says Becky's a cockteaser, but she didn’t know what it meant when I asked her. I think that’s what Toto does sometimes, he uses big words so that he looks cleverer than he really is in front of girls – but I don’t reckon he knows what he’s talking about.
I think that’s the worse thing to be, somebody who pretends to be cleverer than they are just to look cool or something. I just asked my Dad and he reckons you call it a ‘Phoney’ – like I didn’t know that. He said John Lennon (that singer from the old days) got shot because someone thought he was a phoney.
Anyway, gotta go to bed now cos Dad’s being a Dad again and still trying to lay that ‘Got to be good for Father Christmas’ stuff on me.
Oh yeah, The other thing I like did today that was sooo cool was to have a look at Toto’s magazines – the ones that he has to hide from Mum and Dad cos they’ve got pictures of German women with no clothes and stuff. Mum would go sooo mad if she knew that Toto had them under his bed in this hole he cut in the carpet like the trapdoor under our tree house. You can’t see it until you get really close, which is hard cos it’s under the bed and you’ve got to take these big drawers out that are full of games Toto used to play when he was a kid and all – Lego and Meccano and shit. I don’t think he ever played with the Meccano, though, cos when Dad gave it to him for Christmas – well we thought it was still Father Christmas then - Dad made Toto sit with him while he made this really big crane that went up and down and swung round. It took my Dad hours and Toto was saying ‘Can I have a go?’ but my Dad was really into it and just kept saying that Toto should watch so that he could do it himself next time. But once my Dad had finished the crane was really big and used nearly every nut and bolt and bit of holey metal and stuff - well he wouldn’t let Toto take it apart in case he couldn’t put it back together the same. All Toto wanted to do was play and make like a tank or a car or something but in the drawer under the bed it’s still like the crane Dad built except Toto bent it all up to fit it in.
Most of the magazines Toto’s got are stuck together cos they were wet when he found them in the park and he had to dry them under his bed. They smelt weird and like bleach and they all seem to have crap stories and pictures of women with no clothes or anything. Toto doesn’t know that I know they’re there, cos it’s meant to be some big lame secret and stuff, but I watched him hiding them in his carpet trapdoor once when I was hiding in his wardrobe and he came into the room. I just kept quiet and he shut his bedroom door and pulled this magazine from out of the back of his cargoes and put it under the carpet. I kept really quiet and snuck out when he went to the bathroom to read one of his other magazines. Most of them are really boring, but I do like FHM and GQ cos they have really interesting stories and things and don’t just have pictures of women sticking their lips out like they’re gonna cry or something.
Anyway, today was really cool cos I nicked the Christmas FHM and GQ magazines and hid them in my bedroom under my PS2 games so that I can read about clothes and gadgets and stuff.
My Dad said that he’ll take me to buy some cool clothes in the January Sales cos I’ve got taller and I’m a lot thinner than Toto so I can’t wear his old stuff - like I’d want to, right? He said that cos I’m ‘taking a serious interest in developing myself via the exciting medium of the World Wide Web he’d like to reward my interest by buying me some of the modern clothing I seem to like.’ Toto asked if that meant I was going to get some cool designer clothes and Dad said ‘certainly - as long as they’re not too dear and will last a while.’
Toto got really pissed off cos all he ever got when he got interested in the internet was this really lame cordless mouse that didn’t even work unless you were behind the computer and everything. It doesn’t really seem that fair cos Toto knows loads more than me about computers and web stuff and that – but that’s Dads isn’t it? Mum would have made sure that they spent exactly the same amount of money on both of us so that we don’t get jealous or anything, but Dad just says things then looks stupid when it doesn’t go quite right.
Cool. Monday morning and no school. I’m going to try and write every morning now cos Mum is giving me hassle about staying up late and getting black rings under my eyes. Don’t hear her saying that to my Dad when he’s been drinking beer with Uncle Terry and ends up throwing up everywhere. He isn’t really my uncle though - just somebody my Dad works with and goes and plays snooker with on a Friday.
That’s something else they do to you when they think you’re still a kid, they tell you all their friends are your aunts and uncles when they just ain’t, you know? It’s like we never did family trees in school did we? It ain’t hard is it? – I tried to explain it to Mum. If Terry was her brother or Dad’s brother then he’d be my uncle. As he isn’t either of them, unless Mum or Dad could have a black brother, which would be hard cos they’re both white, then he isn’t my uncle.
She just told me to stop being clever like my brother (cos he’s sooo very clever with his furry balls).
When I was younger (nine I think) I did ask Terry if he was adopted and if that was how come we were related. But he got funny with me and my Dad told me to apologise – don’t know why, but he always does. Toto says it’s because Terry is adopted and doesn’t know who his Mum and Dad are – but I think he’s just being a phoney again. Mum said it’s just a nice thing to say, calling Terry my uncle, and I do quite like him cos he laughs a lot and has lots of teeth. His son is cool too - he’s called Minto - but he’s 13 and won’t talk to me and always fights with Toto, so he’s my enemy even though I think I like him.
Toto is 14 by the way. He goes to the same school as me but doesn’t talk to me when we’re there, cos it isn’t really cool to be seen with your little brother. He used to be OK, and I guess he is still my best friend even if he’s turning into a phoney, but he doesn’t want to play with me most of the time anymore. I guess I pissed him off one time too many, or maybe he’s just an asshole.
Dad called the man at the garage an asshole, and I quite like that - asshole. He says things like that when my Mum isn’t around and he’s trying to be the cool buddy guy again. Toto laughed and told me that Buddy Guy is a singer who plays guitar and used to play with Elvis (I just found out that Elvis is the one that sang that Little Less Conversation song, and that he isn’t the black guy who does the cool dancing on the DVD. Elvis was some old fat man who died on the toilet. Toto says that he died about 25 years ago – but how can he have made the song?)
Phoney phoney phoney phoney phoney phoney phoney phoney fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck phoney fuck Toto is a foney phuck foney phuck foney phuck foney phuck
Getting bored with this now, going to go play with my WWE wrestlers. My favourite is the Undertaker who is 6 foot 10 inches tall and has been the WWE Champion 4 times (OK, it used to be called the WWF and I don’t think he’s won it since it became WWE after the panda people complained that people thought wrestling had something to do with pandas – doh!). He was the WWE Tag Team Champion 6 times and also the Hardcore Champion, but I don’t remember that. Oh yeah, he won the WCW Tag Team belt as well, but that’s not like a real thing, it’s just where the wrestlers go when they either want a rest because they’re getting too old or they want to get a new image or something. My wrestlers are action figures, which is pretty cool, but Toto rips it out of me if I play with them when he’s around so I tend to hide them in my bedroom until he goes and plays with Becky. Most of my friends play the PS2 game instead, but it isn’t the same. Anyway, when I grow up I’ve decided that if I can’t be in a band like Linkin Park - cos I can’t play guitar or drums or sing or anything and Dad won’t buy me lessons or nothing – or if I can’t even be in Wheatus who Toto said don’t even play their own instruments so it wouldn’t matter if I couldn’t or anything – well I’ve decided that I’m going to be a dodgy estate agent in London even if it is full of foreigners and cockney scummers like Dad says. See, I’ve been reading in Toto’s GQ magazine about the Mini Cooper S which is the coolest car ever – even if James Bond uses a BMW or something, cos it has a 1,598cc four cylinder, 16-valve engine and goes really quick doing 0-60 in 7.2 seconds and has a mad top speed of 135 miles per hour. Which wouldn’t beat many things in Top Trumps or anything, but my Dad says it would feel a lot quicker cos you sit so close to the ground and feel every little bump and stuff like a roller coaster. Like the one in Blackpool where I went with Mum and Uncle Terry when Dad was in France buying cigarettes he doesn’t smoke, and I threw up after we went to Pizza Hut and caught that lame bus that has to follow rails and goes really slow along by the sea.
I really like the red Mini with the white stripes on the bonnet and in GQ they say that they’re going to re-make that old film where the classic really small Minis chase each other around cos they’ve robbed a bank or something. But they’re going to use the new Mini, which is really cool even if it’s foreign now, and the engine is made in Brazil and the Government sold off the family silver like Dad says. I don’t know what that means but I didn’t want him asking me about GQ so I left it. Anyway, in GQ they said that dodgy estate agents in London have all been given a Mini Cooper S for free even though they normally cost £14,500. I’ll write more later if I can think of anything.
Hiya again. Tutu (my new name for my brother) has been showing me how to make my own cool logo like Sony have – you know, the circles with the square and triangle in them. If I get a mobile phone for Christmas (I don’t think Mum minds cos Tutu has one and she says she feels safer with me having one too, but Dad isn’t into the idea, so I’ll know tomorrow I guess) - well, if I get one, I wanted the Sony sign as the graphic, but now I want to make my own up.
Tutu just told me that I can’t cos you need special computers to do it. Why does he always spoil things?TuTutuTutuTutuTutu foney phuck TutuTutuTutuTututu is so foney, so foney a foney foney phuck.
Anyway, my logo is cool. Look,
Actually, today Toto has been really nice and showed me how to do more with the computer and things. It’s just, I don’t know, you get shown these things at school but they only ever show you the really boring things like Excel and Word and things and then you’re allowed to go on to really boring web sites that are meant to teach you things. I mean, why is it that all things you do at school are sooo boring?
We had to play this car game at school and everyone was talking about how we’re going to play this really cool driving game and we’re all thinking it’s going to be wicked, cos car games usually are and we’re all imagining Grand Theft Auto III or something and when we sit down at the computers the game is shit. Fucking shit. I mean they’re all so foney – foney phucks. If you’re going to get a game that’s meant to teach you something, why does it have to be such a shit game? Couldn’t we have a good game that we like playing, I mean if it’s good for you why does it have to be shit? I mean this car game, right - it didn’t even have a car in it! All you did was drive letters around the screen to make words up – it was like reception class. I told my Dad and he said it’s because educationalists teach because they cannot do, and there are obviously educationalist computer programmers who put these games together. Toto said he means that shit programmers write shit games and only teachers would be stupid enough to buy them
Anyway, I’ve had such a cool time with Toto on the computer today. As well as showing me how to do logos, he showed me how to use a program called Photoshop. I think it must be another one my Dad got from work, and I didn’t really understand it all, but it has this wicked tool that lets you turn pictures into water (Tutu says liquefy) and make them look weird.
I got a picture of Ms Courtney, my English teacher, and made her look really weird. My Dad says she looks like Cherie Blair now. Toto has just shown me how to put a picture in Word - this is really cool!
Mum has just told us off for playing with Ms Courtney’s picture. She was more angry with Dad though, cos she’d told him to throw away the school calendar we scanned the picture off. Toto thinks it’s really funny, cos he’s been saying for ages that Dad fancied her and that’s why the calendar was on June for six months. Ms Courtney smokes as well, I think that’s why Mum doesn’t like her.
Mum’s got this thing about smoking cos her brother died because he used to smoke a lot and got a cancer that made his hair fall out and made him look really grey and he got thin really quickly. Dad told us that he wasn’t well and that we shouldn’t smoke cigarettes, cos they’re bad for you. Mum told us that they’re really expensive in England and that Dad only used to smoke because they were cheap when he grew up in Spain, but that in England you might as well roll up a five-pound note and burn it. Yeah right – cos you’d do that – doh! I know Toto smokes sometimes and I worry that he’s going to get cancer and his hair will fall out, though he always has it short anyway so I guess it wouldn’t matter much, and anyway he’s a bit fatter than me so it might be good for him. Mum’s always trying to lose weight, but I wouldn’t dare tell her she should smoke – she hates it that much. Toto says that cigarettes make you cool, but I think they just make you smell bad.
Well, tomorrow is Christmas and Mum just told me that I should be making Christmas cards on the computer, not writing my silly blog. Shows how much she knows – I did the cards already (OK Toto helped me, but I messed with the pictures) and all I’ve got to do is print them and I’ve finished. Easypeasy.
Toto was really nice today, not a foneyphuck. I think it was because he hasn’t seen Becky Allen and he doesn’t have to pretend he’s clever.
Hiya, Dad said I could write some more of my blog while him and Mum go for a sleep. I think they’ve had too much turkey or something, because they both keep burping and things. Dad said I could go on the computer on my own cos Toto has gone to give Becky a Christmas present he bought from his pocket money. Mum thinks he’s really sweet now, but she doesn’t know that he’d spent his pocket money on cigarettes and that he got the money for Becky’s present from her purse. I told him she’ll kill him if she finds out and he promised to help me use a chat room if I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell him that I wouldn’t anyway. I mean, I ain’t no grass.
Well I got my mobile fone, but it hasn’t got the Wheatus ring tone on it. Toto said he would help me find some free ones on the internet when he gets back. The fone I got is a Saygem myG-5, which is a pay-as-you-go fone with an Orange tariff. It’s really cool cos it’s totally set up for playing games. It is the exact one I wanted and comes with special gaming features (I haven’t found out what they are yet, but the buttons look kind of like a PS1 controller, though I don’t think it will have rumble on it), polyphonic ring tones which Dad said means it’s real music not just one note at a time, and a colour screen which is really bright. It’s just sooo wicked. Best of all it comes with free SMS messages for 3 whole months. I can also use it to go on the internet but Toto says it’s ‘Wap’ which is German for ‘crap’ and that it's just a waste of money. I’ll try it though, just not when he’s hanging around, I guess. I want to get a Linkin Park cover for it next, but I think they cost a lot of money.
Other presents I got were a miniature digital camera from Toto that hangs from a key ring on your belt. He says that you can plug it into our computer and then play with the pictures in Photoshop, but that Dad will have to try and get a lead from work cos the camera hasn’t got one. I think it’s because he stole the camera from the Gadget Shop when we went to Bristol Christmas shopping, but Mum thinks he bought it.
Uncle Terry got me a drum that’s covered in this really bright coloured cloth with lots of beads. I don’t think Dad liked it when Toto and me were pretending to be those blokes from the advert who play the dustbins. Mum said it was a lovely present and that we’d have to write Terry a thank you letter. I think Mum likes Terry like Dad likes Ms Courtney, cos she always seems to act funny when he’s in our house and plays with her hair.
The other present I got was a book from Minto – well not really from Minto, cos his Mum always buys us the present from him and our Mum buys him a present from us. It’s all foney, but the present I got was cool, cos it’s a book called The Worst Case Scenario: Survival Guide and it had loads of really cool information about how you can escape from quicksand or deliver a baby in a taxi or take a punch and things. There’s also a really cool website that lets you email people really funny stuff, like a letter you can use to dump your girlfriend.
Anyway, Toto told us all during dinner that he’d had a wet dream. Mum sent him upstairs and Dad went to have a serious talk with him. I was going to ask Mum what it meant, but she just looked at me and said ‘No’. I know that voice, it’s the one she used to talk to Dad about the school calendar and he didn’t argue with her either. I’ll ask Toto when he gets back
I also got a book about using computerss off Dad and Mum, but why would I read about it when Toto can show me? That makes sense – doh!
It is nice to get presents from Mum and Dad though. When I was younger and didn’t know that Father Christmas didn’t exist (Toto told me to see if I would cry and I did), I was always sad because I thought that Mum and Dad didn’t buy us any Christmas presents even though everybody else did.
Anyway, I’m going to write my thank you letters now.Hiya. Dad just told me that Boxing Day is the shittiest day of the year as all you get is a hangover and gut-rot from the turkey. I don’t think that’s totally true cos Toto has just come back from Becky’s house and he’s got a love bite all over his neck.
I couldn’t stop laughing - even Mum was asking him if they have food in their house. Dad started trying to find garlic to keep the vampires away too (which was funny the first time he said it, but not by the twentieth – it ju