maggot

14-04-2026

This morning I woke up with the most egregious leg cramp. Recently I decided I'm sick of doing cardio at the gym because the sheer boredom and sterility of it makes me speed up irresponsibly just for sheer stimulation - until I'm clutching my chest, my wide eyes and tiny pupils staring up at cat deeley on single wall-mounted telly like im caught in the ecstasy of prayer. instead of bought a step. a plastic £20 step off the internet. and now im trying to do half an hour stepping every day while working my way through the criterion collection. for the entire week i watched tarkovsky's stalker in 25 minute chunks while climbing up an imaginary endless stairwell. it was hell honestly. i thought there'd be a lot more zone in the film, tbh. they should call it Three Depressed Men.

this morning my leg felt like it was trying to go inside out. my gastrocnemius (ive been looking at pictures of leg muscles) was contorting under my fingers like a big maggot with a foot on the end. it was fresh agony!

i used to have a fantastic relationship with maggots. a step uncle would take me to the reservoir to go fishing and i'd get to look after the bait. cream coloured segmented capsules of wet flesh. wriggling.

id trace thick race courses in the loam with my thumb. let them waggle about mindlessly until they reached the end. i didn't know they became flies. i didnt know what they were. imagine my surprise first time i glanced into the innards of a rotting animal and saw them again. what are you guys doing here?! you guys are for fishing! you're for racing!

morlvision

morlvision is back!!!

for those outside my inner and intermediary circles, i run an annual song contest. it's the apple of my eye, it's also intimidatingly popular. it began as a why-not-do-this alternative song contest during the tail end of the final uk lockdown. now it's the highlight of the year.

last year we had 30 participants, spanning three continents. this year, who knows, 31?? honestly i hope. we're full to burst.

if morlvision has a gimmick, it's that each participant must incorporate one of three randomly distributed prompts into their all original song and music video. prompts vary in difficulty and specificity. you can peruse all previous submissions on its own webpage or for the more goblin-minded there's the dedicated fan-wiki.