At Home with the Nod Gods (and Knuck Gods)

"Don't dwell on the past," people keep saying, "the past is a different country". Yes, yes, but the task here is to explore how an innocuous doodle should become imbued with its own life, sustaining itself and multiplying infinitely: bursting out from a billion twitchy cocoons until an entire new species petitions its progenitor(s) for "upgrades". To understand why this unusual situation should come about, the detritus of the past must be picked over, and its earthworks surveyed. Someone once explained to me that the human body's cellular matter regenerates itself about every seven years, therefore an individual in the year 1995 isn't the same person as that individual in 2008. But this only relates to the physical. Some things never change. It is strange that I should be so infatuated with the Nod God creatures now as I was throughout the 1990s, if not more so.

As I mentioned in the last posting here, giving Nod Gods cameos in schoolwork was a favourite diversion of mine. I always considered the concept of homework to be very discordant: home is a place of leisure, relaxation and creation, not of grindingly depressing written work unsanctioned by my own fancies. Being instructed to take schoolbooks into one's own bedroom is offensive. When I did eventually perchance to bring the spitball-flecked schoolbooks over the threshold, I was careful to place tissues onto the desk surface on which they lay, lest the contaminants of a hate-ridden school-malaise infect my room so pregnant with inspiration and joy. It was therefore natural to bring these vast reserves of life-force into action to dissipate the grinding tedium and its accompanying memories of torment. Nod Gods acted as fine footmen for this cause, and once stationed within a piece of work, never became frozen in trepidation, but continued to radiate forth their character. Even when the Nod Gods were slaughtered for quasi-comedic effect, they lent such a heavy interestingness quotient to the work that the exercise book often felt physically heavier as a result!

In this assignment for 'English' dated 25th January 1994, I managed to give the Nod Gods a very prominent role, and even included a picture of the Nods Gods!

Welcome to my house. This house has been infested with bad Nod Gods, flesh colour, sweaty creatures with drooping eyes.
The door is locked so you venture into the back garden. The garden is scattered with smashed up electronic circuitboards. Luckily the back door is open - you enter the kitchen.
In the kitchen you get a nice view of the garden. It has a warm atmosphere. Then, suddenly you see a gigantic, sweaty, sphere shaped Nod God, you open one of the many drawers and take out the longest, most sharpest knife and rip its intestines out. You scratch its forehead as hard as you can and slice it. You put it in the oven and turn the heat on and you cant bear to watch as intestinal fluid run outs the oven as it bursts with green gunge, anyway, enough of that. There is a short-cut to the living room so you take it.
The living room is a small and cosy place with the T.V. in the middle. You proceed up the stairs. On your left is a locked closed door, just to think there might be a Nod God in there makes your bones shiver. You turn right.
Beside you now is the toilet from which you hear a rapid 'bud' sound at various intervals. You kick the door down, unfortunately it was already open. In the bath is a very sweaty Nod God enjoying himself, singing to himself. You grab a bottle of bubble-bath and pour it in his eyes. You rush out, lock the door and go into a bedroom and relax yourself by playing on the computer. But you noticed the Y-function RS232 resolution cable isn't in place and you get an electric shock and die. A Nod God devours you for its lunchtime snack.
Now you will be able to find your way around my house. Hopefully no Nod Gods should be there.

This piece of work was even given special merit points by the teacher, Mrs. D----, giving me hope for the possibility of introducing them into other subjects. At the same time, the Nod Gods seemed to be approaching me as an 'agent' to get them roles in various works. I found that in certain subjects it was very very difficult to get them parts. 'History' was difficult for the Nods. One would expect it troublesome to introduce a Nod God into any work for 'Religious Education' lessons, but bizarrely, it proved surprisingly accommodating at times, mainly when title pages were needed, but the Nods took centre stage on a depiction of 'limbo': an afterlife for ambiguous souls.

Getting the Nod Gods into school homework was clearly easier than I had anticipated. The next logical step was to introduce the Nod Gods into schoolwork during school hours. If this was possible, the whole drab atmosphere of intolerance and scorn that dogged me could be transformed. My friend Matt C. (who shared my affection for the Nod Gods and the inventiveness they demanded) developed a genius solution that enabled the spirit of the Nods to be omnipresent during hours of life-sapping tedium - a mind-blowingly simple transformation of the hand. A Nod God face was drawn on the hand, resulting in what became known as a 'Knuck God', or 'Knuck' for short. It was instantly animated, and possessed such warmth of character that many people, even those oftentimes hostile, experimented with these transformations of the hand, referring to them as "knuck knucks". Now I would only have to glance at the Knuck God on my befisted hand to restore excitement during tedious lessons and unpleasant moments.
Despite the power of the Knucks, there was still one subject that couldn't accommodate interestingness. One subject that simply would never ever tolerate the Nod Gods was 'Physical Education' or 'Games' for the obvious reason that these lessons dwelt firmly on hard, cold physical reality and no artefacts were to be created. The dreamworlds of the beyond populated with the wraith-like muses awaiting communion were strictly out of bounds in 'P.E.'. The competitiveness, breathless wheezing, the energy depletion, the humiliation, the naked showers, the underarm deodorant machismo, the thunderous instruction of teachers more animal than human - all these factors systematically drop-kicked the muses into oblivion. Wherever the mob mentality festers, I am ostracised. To be ostracised without even being allowed to vent gubbins of the muse is simply torture. Furthermore, why should the affairs of the body be so bloody public? 'P.E.' may claim to "strengthen", but I considered it to be profoundly weakening. In my eyes 'P.E.' was (and is) a destructive subject - firstly it imparts inferiority complexes whereby the bully-types are unfailingly glorified, secondly it exhausts the body and mind leaving it uncreative for some time thereafter, thirdly it celebrates and revels in unnecessarily induced panic, and lastly, its exertions destroy fat cells, speeding up the regeneration of cellular matter in the body, as I mentioned earlier - thereby conspiring with the destructive aspect of time: imposing a different and more mature, thus life-weary, person upon oneself. The fact that 'P.E.' offered no creative leeway at all for the artifactual inclusion of Nod Gods was truly nightmarish. Knucks couldn't save me - I yearned for pen and paper. During the 'cross country' excursions we ran through the nearby suburbs and parklands, where I frequently found myself almost delirious with exhaustion, subsequently becoming the butt of ridicule for my peers and teachers alike, but the thoughts and echoes of the Nod Gods sustained me during these painful episodes. But the showers we were forced to take afterwards were traumatic enough to render me inert for the rest of the day.

I don't remember too much about these times, memory seems to fail under times of strain, but I recall an urgent need for something to be done about 'P.E.' and its all too real evils. For all I knew, 'P.E.' lessons were responsible for the tides cruelty in our year. An eternal sicknote was required for me to avoid 'P.E.' and 'Games' lessons. Try as I might to demonstrate ailments to my parents, sicknotes were never forthcoming, and nor was I confident of my ability to forge my parents' handwriting. Well, the only other option - and one that may also help other people discover their muse - was to utterly destroy the offices and changing rooms of this hope-forsaken faculty. 'P.E.' should be made to feel the destructiveness that it preached. The Nod Gods came to the rescue on Sunday 9th April 1995 when the Pavilion changing rooms were blown-up, as can be seen in this article from the local paper I cut out:
The Nods must've heard my thoughts, or perhaps even taken control of my body like a council of puppeteers and made me enact this misdeed without my knowledge or consent. Perhaps somebody else did it, and it merely coincided with my intense anti-P.E. thoughts. Whatever, when I saw what had happened, I felt very worried about many things. How did it happen? This was before the use of CCTV cameras became widespread, so no footage could be obtained (I felt that physical manifestations of Nod Gods and Nod Buds - spherical sweaty beings and their humanesque compatriots - were to blame here). Nods are known to temporarily hover by forcing vast reserves methane (thanks to a diet of grassy vegetation) out tiny orifices from their undersides, perhaps this is the 'flammable vapour' referred to in the newspaper report. How would the school react?

For awhile after this building was destroyed, P.E. and Games lessons were relocated to the warm indoors which was a little more comforting. Two years later a new, two-storey cricket pavilion was built on the same spot as the old one, with huge changing rooms and even more horrific communal showers in a gloomy central narrow corridor. Nothing had truly changed... Except the sense that Nod Gods were stepping further toward reality!

Getting to Know the Nod Gods

These creatures known as Nod Gods began occupancy of my vision with my wholehearted consent. During the difficult time acclimatising to a harsh new school environment, I actively sought their presence and attempted - with much tentativeness at first - to inaugurate them into any schoolwork in which it would be practicable to carry off. Bringing Nod Gods into academic work was exhilarating; suddenly a depressingly dull assignment could be transformed into something amazing. The most exciting part was the devising of ways to legitimately introduce the Nod Gods into assignments without any overt incongruousness thus evading any reprobation from the teachers marking the work. Some subjects could be more potentially accommodating of Nod Gods than others. Work in 'Geography' and 'History' for example, would prove extremely averse to Nod God inclusion. The first subject where I chanced an appearance of the Nod Gods was in 'English'; the subject itself fosters creativity and the teacher, Mrs. D----, happened to be suitably enlightened. We were studying the famous Twelve Labours of Hercules, and our homework was to imagine oneself as Hercules writing a letter to Eurystheus describing in first person the enactment of one of the twelve labours. Labour number six involved "getting rid of the Symphalian birds" (and these birds bore metal feathers), so slipping two Nod Gods amongst the birds wouldn't be too discordant, would it? It is near impossible to read a Nod God's emotions to thereby ascertain whether it means well or ill well. Their hard-to-read mysteriousness (coupled with their minimalist features) can work in their favour when it comes to their 'cameos' in academic work, since they are not too strident to trigger any strong reaction. In this assignment, I considered these ambiguous, expendable Nods to be a sinister evil. I wrote:

"(...) Flying much lower than the birds were two heavy looking fleshy things about the size of big pigs. Nod Gods, they were. They were round like a sphere and shiny with sweat. They floated and wobbled through thin air, no support whatsoever. I slashed them with my sword and their guts were dark green. I then approached the birds with my sword drawn."

This tiny digression may not appear much, but it made me really nervous. Would the teacher notice anything unsound? Nod Gods, you may recall, were the result of 'slacking', i.e. doodling and extra-curricular activity. To bring them into a piece of actual academic work seemed very audacious, therefore to do it with earnestness, gravity and believability was of the utmost importance. Thankfully, the work was marked "v. good" by Mrs. D---- and this was an encouraging sign: it indicated that Nod Gods could be introduced literarily without any sense of wrongdoing. They appeared to be viable in an academic context! Also, there were no illustrations in this assignment, so the creative energies were wholly concentrated into the act of description - obviously demanding more dimensionality.

Meanwhile, in my spare time I started pondering more about the anatomy of the Nod Gods. Why were their guts dark green? Well, let's employ reasoning... Their weight and size immediately suggests that flying high above the ground is an unrealistic idea due to gravity, so the Nod God forages mostly along the ground and eats grassy vegetation - hence the greenness of their insides. But, as we shall see, not all Nods are herbivores. At home, I wrote a short document for my own personal records to get to grips with the physicality of the Nod Gods. Here is the full document (click the images to see the original):

About the Nod Gods and Poms

Nod God diagram:
(Paranthroptus)
The Nod God is sweaty because they can fly. The gluteus maximus muscles push out a jet of air at high pressure which enables these Nods to fly. However the sweat is caused by glands because the muscles have to work so hard to hover for a limited amount of time.

(Notice that the arms were added at a later date - about a year later (in 1995) when it became necessary to give the Nod Gods more self-sufficiency - no longer would they have to suffer the soreness that results from nodding oneself along the ground.)
Cross section [male and female Nod Gods]:

Nod Bud diagram:
(Cro-Magnonod)
As you can see the Nod Bud is more humanlike in appearance but is much stronger. The most fascinating ability of the Nod Bud is that it can morph into many simple shapes.

Pom God/Bud diagram:
(Rotheoptus-Maectnod Pom)
The Poms are very territorial. Their personality resembles early man yet they are able to adapt to the technological era. They can be very aggressive (look at their eyes). Basically the Pom God has exactly the same features as a Nod God except the eyes. The same goes for the Pom Bud; they appear exactly the same except the eyes. The Poms are a dying race. Usually the Poms are the older ones.

This brief anatomical study contains information on the variant species of Gods: Nod Bud - a humanesque capable of metamorphosis, and the Pom God - with inverted eyes signifying more clearly their general emotional state. The Pom Gods also had humanesque counterparts in the name of Pom Buds. Incidentally, none of these were new creations - all were devised simultaneously along with the original Gods back in 1992.
The existence of the Nod/Pom Bud humanesques explained how the Nod Gods' vehicles were built. They were possessed of stretchy necks. The Buds also waited upon the mobility-challenged spherical Gods.

Smile of a Nod God

It has been almost a year since the last posting here. The reason for this is not due to any cessation of 'communique' (or 'inspiration') from the Nod Gods (the creatures that I have explained about previously), but rather my baulking at the prospect of unearthing troubling relics and mistakes: for it was unwise to have willed these thought-beings into existence all those years ago. To document the further development of the Nod God requires me now to sift through memories pertaining to a morally aslant secondary school. I am loath to illustrate all this, but I shall, for the benefit of the world. Make no mistake, it is by no means pleasant to exhume these recollections of the previous millennium, especially ones that whiff of 'insanity'. To present such materials so nakedly exposes me to further ridicule and humiliation, not to mention embarrassment. However, somebody told me that I could "make some good money" by writing about all this twattishness, and given my current situation (in which I am privy to debilitating hallucinations - regretfully of my own making) I have decided to subdue these qualms (fingers crossed that coins begin hitting the doormat). More altruistically, my prattling may possibly even aid people who are receiving unsolicited communication from escaped thought-beings. In order to understand how characters borne of one's imagination can sever their obligations to obey their creator, it is necessary to recount my antecedents.

The floating from primary to secondary school is always, it is said, a turbulent voyage. It didn't help that the secondary school was an all-boys' school - aggro upon a hellish vessel of unease. To be plunged into unfamiliar and possibly hostile environments sets the mind aquiver. Defence mechanisms are hastily contrived amidst a thunderstorm of dead-arms and dead-legs: namely, pulsar cannons, mini-time-machines, shuriken throwers, portable spiked ball-maces, electronic visors, foldaway plasma weaponry, sprongiformic bozo, flying mechanisms, anti-gravity automatic nunchakus, self-deploying titanium cubicles, briefcase-convertible shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, collapsible music-stand plus 'trumpet of disintegration' combo, CAC (Compressed Air Canisters) disguised as inhalers, roll-on corrosive/irritant wax in push-up tubes ('replace cap after use'), microscopic flame-throwers, time-inhibiting grenades, laser-guided insults; all the cutting edge technologies. Nod Gods too.

I drew this coloured map at the time to remind myself which areas of the school were particularly dangerous bully-wise. Red signifies extreme danger of torment, pink shows lesser torment, orange equals tension, yellow is mild twitchiness, whilst green is safe (click for a larger image). Note the library and I.T. rooms are safe; a fact that quickly propelled me to become a librarian and an 'I.T. monitor', where all breaktimes and lunchtimes would later be spent.


I was in the form '1R'. 'R' is short for Rhodes - ruthless businessman, bungler, exploiter of Africa, and generic fascist Cecil Rhodes, that is. This fact seems sickening the more I think about it.

The first morning assembly at this school was shocking. In the massive hall, everyone was directed to sing the hymn 'Praise Him', whereupon the booming grand piano shook my composure to pieces! At primary school there was only a modest upright piano, so I hadn't anticipated the overwhelming bombast of a grand piano. And why was the pianist (balding Mr. Humphries) playing it so bloody loud?! Was it due to his frustration at his own baldness? Surely he would've considered the fragility of the newcomers' senses... but no. Immediately afterwards, everyone started murmuring some half-understandable creepiness; "thy kingdom come, thy will be done". Certain fellow first years somehow knew the words to this odd chant, but to me it was truly alien - like stuff you'd expect a sinister cult to indulge in. It was called 'The Lord's Prayer' and was uttered at the close of every assembly, yet it did nothing to quell the hellishness and ceaseless violence among the pupils for the rest of the day. The staff were also highly authoritarian in a Victorian manner that simply wouldn't be allowed nowadays. Another shock to the system involved P.E. and Games lessons where humiliation, shower-naked ultra-vulnerability, claustrophobia and clothing displacement calculated to cause distress were all part and parcel. All these things were conducive to destroying all calm and rankling the nerves.

On my first few weeks at the secondary school I noticed that as one approached the school confines, the pavements would become increasingly flecked with a mysterious jelly-like substance. In the morning some spots would be bubbling and foamy, as if sent up from the earth's core itself, however, the jelly blobs were not hot to touch. I have always been interested in geology, fossils and insects, etc., and this discovery fascinated me. A friend of mine said this substance was definitely organic, possibly secreted by snails or slugs, although none had trails that suggested so. If these globules had fallen from the high heavens, on impact they would surely have spread much further with evidence of streaking. These theories were quickly discounted. It wasn't cuckoo spit because it contained no 'cuckoo'. The mystery was solved a few weeks later when I heard older boys walking ahead of me loudly generating mucus and spitting it on the ground with avant-garde noises. Disappointing. Why on earth were they doing this?! Was it just 'for show'? Territorial? Was the 'universal spirit' literally trying to drown their worthless souls in their own bile? Was it something to do with 'sex' perhaps?

One day I was walking across 'The Cage' with a friend (see 'Tennis Court' on map) to get to a lesson, when some older boys - for no reason - collided with us deliberately. I was treated to a kick which I deflected with my briefcase, but my unfortunate friend received a varnish of throat phlegm-jelly to the neck. A most unwelcome baptism (I too would soon be privy to many a sputal wash, fortuitously fortifying my immune system in the process and grounding me for an adulthood to be spent diving in bins for sustenance). Gut-churning. My friend was closer to tears than I was, so I tried to comfort him and distract him from the present hell by singing the catchy theme to the Club Biscuit advert: "if you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our Club". Incidentally, it is interesting to note that when I perambulate near schools nowadays, I never see as much spittle as I did back then - it must've been a 1990s thing - or something in the food in those days perhaps.

Another instance of torment is particularly notable. In the Bastille toilets (see 'Junior Toilets' on the map) I was engaged at a urinal in the act of passing fluid, when a particularly loathsome freckled fatty named Ian Parsons (who was in the same form as me) walked in and announced his intention to attempt to divide his pissing sequentially into every urinal. I expected that he'd probably wait until I had finished, but sadly he began whilst I was still stationed at the urinal. He passed behind me and said "there's piss on your blazer now," which really upset me. I zipped up and walked over to the mirror to see if there was any dampness visible, but none could be seen. Then, in the corner of my eye, I perchanced to glimpse a Nod God! The Nod God smiled sympathetically and was a sweetly-comic creature. It disappeared immediately, but it buoyed my spirits considerably. All sentient and kind, it was. Bizarrely, this Nod God had teeth - an unusual thing since I had not given any of my Nod God doodlings teeth, in fact, I had settled on their toothless nature - using their hardened gums to mash food. I have never told anyone about this vision in the Bastille toilets, but it was clear that the Nod Gods were trying to help me through this difficult time. Tangentially, it seems extremely discordant that this part of the school should be named after an 18th century Parisian prison. The name 'Bastille' also has unpleasant militaristic dimensions.


This comforting vision of a Nod God in the toilets was just the beginning... Soon they would start giving me pep talks and encouragement. Amazingly enough, they would even teleport me out of harm's way!