ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

I'm putting on a play about our current world. I won't be giving any of the actors scripts so they'll have to improvise any old shite that comes into their heads. I'm hoping for some monologues that make little sense, but sound powerful anyway - in a strange way.

I'll also cue light changes and sound effects and pull up and down the curtain at entirely random times so as to disorientate the cast and audience alike.

The whole show will finish with the theatre catching fire and everyone being directed to fake emergency exits that all lead to the toilet.

It'll be just like real life. It'll be very realistic.

Then of course there is the encore. Played by the final living actor, burnt a gaudy orange, coughing and sooty upon the remnants of the stage. The last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste*, sans everything.

*Oh, definitely tasteless.

EVER DAFTER!

Once upon a time,

...everyone woke up and moved their lips to speak but the only sound that came out was the sound of a klaxon. An alarming, blaring, enraging, fucking klaxon.

And everyone cleared their throats, but it did no good.

And everyone rinsed out their mouths, but it did no good.

And everyone sucked a lozenge, but it did no good.

And everyone was very unhappy because they thought they would never get the chance to insult each other again.

So everyone went on the internet, to type their insults into cyberspace, but when they placed their hands on their keyboards everyone saw that their fingers had turned into logs of shit. Ten logs of shit was all they had, five per hand. And everyone was startled to see their shit fingers and everyone screamed, but all they emitted was a terrible klaxon sound.

So there everyone was, honking and weeping in front of computers that were covered in shit.

But after a while, everyone adjusted because people can adjust to anything. The human race is a very adaptable species.

And in no time at all, it felt like nothing had ever changed and everyone just carried on. Instead of insulting each other they just honked at each other and instead of typing callous and cruel remarks into the internet, they just smeared shit all over their computer screens.

And they lived happily ever dafter.

ThE EnD.

POOR PEPE

Bullying was normalised by reality TV, pop star judges and tough guy celebrity chefs with Deirdre Barlow hair.

Young Pepes learned that to win you must be malicious. That empathy is a weakness. That sympathy is passé. That spite is right!

Poor Pepes. Sad, insecure, mutually stigmatising, profoundly petrified Pepes. Discouraging each other. Stealing each other's strength.

The least equipped of us to deal with the challenging vagaries of life, should Pepes be pitied?

Pepes degrade and humiliate each other in an attempt to exorcise their own degradation and humiliation.

But self-hate is non-transferable. They curse each other and they are all cursed.

Jungian shadows are projected wildly. Insults and caustic humour betray an overwhelming dissatisfaction with existence.

It goes on and on. From snide to cutting. Accumulating. A toxic tsunami sweeps across our world. An inescapable, global hex.

Discourse is corrupted and now those racing to be POTUS exchange cruelties. So presidential. What good influences.

Being kind or even considerate and thinking 'hey, there's a whole human being inside that human being' is history. 

Climate change, warfare, whatever, the Doomsday clock is reaching twelve. 

It seems the concluding act of the human race is to piss on its own grave.

But if you can't beat them, join them. I think I'll give it a go.

So, my first and final insult to the poor Pepes of the world is this...

My remaining hope is that I live long enough to see you all die.

Die.

In cowering, sobbing, isolated regret.

Inhaling the Arctic methane.

Your world in unrest.

Dying. Dying. 

Dead.




That is all.

Release the gas.

Send in the drones.

Whatever.

MULTI-PLATFORM FUGGER

I'm thinking of repackaging myself as a multi-platform event. I'll no longer be just a man and a blog but an app and a Twitter account and a movie and a book and a glossy magazine and a comic and a podcast and a live stream and a first person shoot 'em up and a cake recipe and a meteorological condition and a provocative undergarment and a political ideology and an intimate compliant and a comedy routine and a wrestler's finishing move and a brand of dog food and a car hire firm and a place to store hazardous waste and a new hairstyle and a song in the pop charts and a dance move and a witty slogan and a new wave in fashion and so on and so on.

I want all these new strands of me launched at exactly the same time on the same day to much fanfare. I want to be the thing everyone thinks about, simultaneously, for at least an instant before they decide they don't really like me and come to hate me and set about starting a backlash. But starting a backlash will be no use because, as well as a man and a blog and an app and a Twitter account and a movie and a book and a glossy magazine and a comic and a podcast and a live stream and a first person shoot 'em up and a cake recipe and a meteorological condition and a provocative undergarment and a political ideology and an intimate compliant and a comedy routine and a wrestler's finishing move and a brand of dog food and a car hire firm and a place to store hazardous waste and a new hairstyle and a song in the pop charts and a dance move and a witty slogan and a new wave in fashion and so on and so on, I will also be my own backlash.

There will be no escape. Every route will be closed off and the world will be trapped in a hellish circuit with me as the starting point and me as the finish and me as all points between and even if I am dead I will go on, branded into your culture and onto your brains, permanently burnt into your retinas, forever at the tip of your tongues. I will be the source of every 'like' and every 'dislike' given. The parts of the world that do not concern me will creep by in the background and when anyone tries to discuss them others will change the topic to me. Me! Fugger! The blog, the man, the event, the range of action figures, the clothes line, the schism, the healing of that schism, the religion, the atheism. It'll be Fugger this. It'll be Fugger that. Fugger will be the source of all confusion and the source of all clarity. Fugger will be first word that babies utter and Fugger will be the solitary word on all your tombstones. Face it, when I am repackaged as a multi-platform event you will all be truly Fugged.

And so it will go, on and on and on until something else comes along and gets hashtagged instead and lays me finally to rest. R.I.P. Fugger, Multi Platform Event. We'd miss you if we could remember you but I'm afraid that we can't. So much happens now and it happens so fast. No one's got time to recall the past. Like what came before Fugger, ...what the Hell was that? It was probably the Crazy Frog or some kind of crap. No one can be expected to remember that far back.

THE SCHIZOPHRENIC AGE

Reuben was outside the shopping centre again yesterday, handing out his leaflets. He looked unwashed. Pity. He could've been assistant manager of Office Furniture Direct. His wife kept me up all night last night too and not in the good way she used to. She doesn't discretely pop by anymore. She spends most of her nights standing on the roof of her car, pointing at the sky and screaming that the Moon is coming.

People believe all sorts on my street. We've lied to each other so often about infidelities, unreturned lawnmowers, whose kid hit whose first and so on that notions such as trust and truth have completely dissolved. In the absence of a unifying narrative, everyone has picked their own story. James down the end of the street thinks that I'm a member of the Illuminati because of the way I close my curtains - a sinister left to right that apparently corresponds with a certain occult ritual. Michael and Anne from number 38 are convinced that Madge, the dog from number 12, barks a secret code to spies that are housed in the garden shed of number 23. And no one even knows who lives in number 23. The residents of number 23 are so paranoid that they never emerge from their house. Some of us think that they may not even be in there. Who knows the truth? Who knows if there is even a truth anymore? Was there ever a truth? Everyone has their own ideas and no one has the same ideas. There are just so many ideas. A multitude of ideas. A mess of ideas. What is the collective noun for ideas? An 'insanity' of ideas?

The only thing myself and all my neighbours agree on is that we can't trust each other. This sometimes seems impractical. Take the time number 4 caught fire. We all stood watching as the Sweeneys banged their fists against their upstairs triple glazing, their faces contorted in muted screams as they were swallowed by flames. All we could say to each other was 'false flag'. In fact we chanted it: 'False Flag! False Flag! False Flag! False Flag!' In the morning, the authorities came and cleaned away the family's charred remains as we viewed suspiciously from our windows. We all agreed that the whole thing was a staged event involving special effects and we all thought that each other were behind it. No one mourned the loss of life. If you die on our street we think you are secretly still alive and if you are alive we think you died and were replaced by an impostor. Everyone on my street is an impostor. Even me, according to everyone else. But they would say that because it is they who are the true impostors. Not me. I think. I think I think. I'm fairly sure I think.

Despite our mutual distrust, everyone on my street shares pride in one thing. We won a prize for being the most atomised vicinity in our borough. The county councillors said that we were leading the way. A member of government even paid tribute to us at a business function. He said we were an alert and vigilant community and what was great about that was that we applied our alert vigilance to fantasy and not reality. 'Reality is all ours lads and we can do what we like with it,' he told the vested interests and they all raised a glass to toast the death of community and the advent of the schizophrenic age.

You know, I sometimes feel as if I don't know what anything is. What anything really is. I just know what things look like and what others call them. It's the same with people. They could be anyone. You could be anyone. I could be anyone. Just who are we anyway? And why are we all so frightened?

SERVICE PROVIDER

I'll steal your world from you and you'll rent it back. You'll appreciate it more because it has a price. You'll earn the money to pay for your keep by working for me. I'll pay you almost as much as you pay me. You can borrow the rest you need from me so you don't fall behind on the payments but you'll have to pay me interest. It's my world after all. You owe me, in perpetuity.

I'll do the same with your peace of mind. I'll rob your self-esteem and flog you placebos. I'll tell you that you are ill and sell you pills if you become fatigued. You are unwell. The world is well, that's why you pay for it. If you can't pay for it you are not fit for it. You are too weak to be part of the world. You are aberrant, a malcontent, a criminal, a skiver or sick. Take your pick.

I'll make you feel ashamed of being poor or poorly or too fat or too thin. I'll make you hate yourself, outside and in. I'll be the sole gatekeeper of your self-approval. I'll be your self-improver. I'll sell you books that tell you how to get by but they won't tell you how to get by so you'll have to buy more. Then I'll get you to pay me for an army and I'll send it to war against another army that you also paid for.

When the fighting is done, I'll charge you for reparations and get you to pay me to pay you to clean up the devastation. You'll pay me for the monuments that you'll build in my honour. If you died in my name, I'll say you were a martyr. I'll sell you a coffin and pass your debts to you kids. I'll be the one who decides where you spend the life after this. Heaven or Hell, I'll own you even in death and you'll thank me because it was too much responsibility to own yourself.

TARZAN'S SHAME

There were shops so Tarzan went to them. Have you ever been to shops? I bet you have. Most people have been to shops. Not Tarzan though. Tarzan had never been to shops before. Tarzan had no need for shops up to this time. Up to this time, Tarzan had been living in hedges at the ends of gardens and feeding on birds, squirrels and hedgehogs. Tarzan had everything Tarzan needed but people who are called 'The Authorities' told Tarzan to change Tarzan's ways or they would lock Tarzan in a room for the rest of Tarzan's life. Tarzan did not want to be locked in a room for the rest of Tarzan's life. That struck Tarzan as very constricting so Tarzan changed his ways.

Tarzan was told that Tarzan needed proper clothes and other things called accoutrements and that Tarzan would get them from shops so Tarzan went to shops. Then a man in a shop told Tarzan that Tarzan had to hand over money if Tarzan wanted to take away the items Tarzan needed. Tarzan asked the man in the shop what money was and the man in the shop showed Tarzan bits of paper and some small pieces of metal. Tarzan realised that Tarzan did not have any money. Tarzan asked the man in the shop if he would take pebbles and litter instead of money and the man in the shop said that he would not. Tarzan told the man in the shop that Tarzan needed money and asked the man in the shop to give Tarzan some. The man in the shop told Tarzan that Tarzan would get money in the bank and told Tarzan where the bank was so Tarzan went there and asked the lady in the bank for money. The lady in the bank told Tarzan that Tarzan could only take money away from the bank if Tarzan put money in the bank. Tarzan did not think that this made sense. Why would Tarzan need something Tarzan already had and if Tarzan had something why would Tarzan give it to someone else to give back to Tarzan? Tarzan told the lady in the bank that she was wasting Tarzan's time. Tarzan left the bank.

As Tarzan was leaving the bank, the lady in the bank told Tarzan that Tarzan should put some clothes on. Tarzan told the lady in the bank that the world was Tarzan's clothes and walked out the door, putting one foot into the world just like most people put one foot through the leg of their trousers every morning.

Tarzan asked a man on the street if he knew where Tarzan could get money and the man on the street told Tarzan that Tarzan could earn it by working so Tarzan went looking for a job. Tarzan asked people if there was a job that Tarzan could do for them in exchange for money and they told Tarzan that Tarzan needed qualifications before Tarzan could get a job. Tarzan asked them where Tarzan could get qualifications and they said the college so Tarzan went to the college and the people at the college told Tarzan that they would only give Tarzan qualifications if Tarzan gave them money. Tarzan told the people at the college that Tarzan had no money and they told Tarzan to get a job.

Tarzan was beginning to get very confused. Tarzan was confused and hungry. Tarzan saw a small dog but Tarzan did not eat it because Tarzan did not want to be locked in a room for the rest of Tarzan's life by The Authorities.

Tarzan wandered the streets naked and a man pointed at Tarzan's penis and said 'cover that up or I will call The Authorities'. Everyone seemed to be disgusted by Tarzan's penis. The men all had their penises covered up by clothes and the ladies had their breasts and vaginas covered up too. Lots more of their bodies were covered up by clothes. Only their heads and hands were showing. They had hidden themselves from themselves because they found themselves disgusting. Tarzan realised that Tarzan better find Tarzan disgusting too or Tarzan would be locked in a room for the rest of Tarzan's life so Tarzan practised being disgusted by Tarzan and to go around thinking about the money all the time. 'Tarzan needs money, Tarzan needs money', said Tarzan to Tarzan all the time and Tarzan's hungry belly agreed with a growl.

Tarzan never got any money. The once mighty Tarzan got weak and skinny and Tarzan still had no clothes. An old lady saw Tarzan and said 'you should be ashamed' so Tarzan became ashamed. Tarzan became ashamed of Tarzan's nudity and Tarzan's poverty. Tarzan had never felt shame before.

The shame hung around Tarzan. Even though Tarzan could not see the shame, Tarzan knew that the shame was there because Tarzan felt the shame. Tarzan could no longer see the world because of the shame. Something Tarzan could not see was stopping Tarzan from seeing. 'Tarzan is blind yet Tarzan has eyes!' exclaimed the confused and miserable Tarzan.

Tarzan tried to hide from the shame but the shame found Tarzan wherever Tarzan went so Tarzan went to the only place the shame could not follow. Tarzan went to death. Tarzan dived from the top of a big shop and landed on the pavement. Splat. The shame was gone but Tarzan's skinny naked body remained, crumpled on the path. Tarzan's body was left there. No one would clear it away because of a thing called an industrial dispute. The men who clear away dead bodies wanted more money and the people who gave them money to clear away dead bodies did not want to give them more money. So, Tarzan's body rotted where it was and those who passed by it said it was a shame. 'What kind of world is this at all?', one lady asked. Tarzan could not answer her because Tarzan was dead but she did not want Tarzan to answer because she did not want to know. She already did. Deep down, she just wished she didn't.

THE GOOD GAME

It's a good game despite the fact that we're positioned somewhere near the bottom. We're not at the very bottom though, so we can take heart in that. We're doing OK compared to those at the bottom. The game must be pretty good if people positioned near the bottom are having an OK time of it. It makes sense to keep playing, right?

Positioned at the top are people in costumes, robes and crowns and all that kind of thing. These people tell our minds what to do. Then there's the people who are positioned second from the top. These people wear suits and tell our arms and legs what to do. If our arms and legs don't do as they are told, people who wear uniforms (those positioned third from the top) take our bodies away and lock them in cells. When you are in a cell you are at the bottom and you have lost the game because you have broken the rules.

Now, if you haven't lost the game yet and you want to get to a higher position you can. You can't get to the top because God decides who is at the top but you can get second from the top. It's very difficult though. Most of the people who are second from the top are the offspring of people who are second from the top, but it's not unheard of for others to arrive at that position. All you have to do is pretend to do what you are told but don't. It's a good game but it's a funny game. You can only win by breaking the rules and not getting caught. If you get caught breaking the rules you lose but if you don't get caught breaking the rules you win. Those are the real rules of the game, but you don't get told that. You have to figure that out for yourself or be the heir of someone who already has.

This game doesn't come in a box. The pieces needed to play this game are all around you, you're wearing them, they are in your bank account, you live in them, they are on your resume, in the colour of your skin, the language you speak and the accent you speak it with, in your likes, in your dislikes, in your abilities and disabilities, in your chromosomes and hormones. Some of us may have more of the pieces required to play the game than others but, whatever the case, we all have to play. There is no alternative to playing. Well, there might be one alternative. You could upend the board and send the pieces flying everywhere and demand that everyone play a new game, but where would you be if you did that? No one knows. It's a scary thought. That's probably why everyone who plays the game is so frightened.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe I've misunderstood the game all along. Maybe everyone playing the game is in the same position. We all start in the same position and none of us progresses from that position. That position is fear. Fear. When you think about it that way, maybe it's not such a good game after all.

Hmm.

Oh well, at least we only have to play it once.

THE REBEL

Tattoos. Piercings. Dressed in black. Playing Xbox. The counter-cultural rebel. Hates 'skangers'. Collects Marvel comics. Almost voted once but didn't bother. 

Not out of principle, it was just raining. 

Has a thing for things with skulls on them. Smokes from this fucking huge bong. 

Calls people 'douches' but mainly online. The movie Fight Club changed his life. 

Read most of The God Delusion, well some of most of it. Has the gist of it. 

Mentions it on the LiveLeak comments where he has a Family Guy avatar and likes to wage the occasional flame war. 

Used to play bass in a band called Sinister Decay. Never heard of Jean-Claude Trichet. 

Does IT for the IDA. Can name every hold in MMA. Hasn't been tested but reckons his IQ must be high. Has a Guy Fawkes mask but doesn't know why.

PASSING THE BABY

'Passing the baby' was the chief custom of the Hahananawup people. A Hahananawup child would be born and held and caressed by its mother before being passed to its father who would cuddle the infant and then pass it to its grandparents who would cradle the little one before passing it to its uncles and aunts who would display affection in the usual way and then pass the newborn to cousins who would say 'ahh would you look the darlin little thing' or whatever before passing it to their friends who would show an obligatory amount of enthusiasm before passing the baby to friends of theirs who would display customary endearment and then pass the youngster to others who, by this stage, would be complete strangers to the infant's parents. The baby would continue to be passed from one person to another until it vanished from the lives of its mother and father completely, not to be seen again for at least four decades.

This would happen with every baby born into Hahananawup society, resulting in a whole population of people passing each other around. Of course, as a baby grew to adulthood the reactions of those it was passed to would change. Instead of pinching the baby's cheeks and saying 'coochie coochie coo', the Hahananawup people would offer polite conversation and ask the former baby how things are going or maybe say something about the weather.

It is thought that the custom of passing the baby brought about the end of the Hahananawup people. Hahananawups were not able to incorporate careers into their lives of being passed around so any chance of forming even the most rudimentary economy was remote. Consumption of food must have been difficult too but that matters little when one considers that there was no food to consume. Farming and hunting were close to impossible for a people being perpetually passed around and passing around others, to say nothing of attempts at procreation. The Hahananawup civilisation was a short lived one. As a people, they were just a throng of bodies jumping in and out of each other's arms, growing weaker all the time and suffering from the contagious conditions that the baby passing tradition facilitated. It is thought that the Hahananawup people only survived for two generations after adopting the custom of baby passing. We can work out what happened from the records of other societies who observed the Hahananawup at the time and from the remains of the Hahananawup themselves. Ah yes, ...the remains. A troglodyte city, empty but for a meshed heap of skeletons. The birds don't sing in the home of the Hahananawup but the wind whistles eerily as it moves through that colossal lattice of bones.

When the Hahananawup people and their custom of 'passing the baby' comes to mind, we are forced to consider the consequences of doing something just because everyone else is doing it. Some of our most treasured and adhered to customs might too be nothing more than really really really dumb fucking ideas. I suppose that's the moral of the story. Not that stories should have morals. Stories should just make people think and let them decide for themselves. But that's a story for another day. Until then, keep passing the baby.

And now a short film...

OBJECTS

There's no one left in the world. No one at all. But the cars still drive and the trains still arrive and depart and announcements still crackle from Tannoy's but from no one's mouth and for no one's ears. Products are still manufactured and sold but by who and to who? Import and export still continues but why? The world still bustles but is simultaneously silent. There's no one here to clean up the dog shit but that's OK because there are no dogs to shit.

An algorithm drives things on and machines fulfil the roles of consumers and producers. GDP is steady and things are running smoothly and does it matter that we are no longer here to witness all this because targets are being met and graphs are looking healthy and wasn't that what it was all for? There is no one here to see what is happening but that's OK because there isn't much to see. There is no longer anyone here to comment but that's OK because there is nothing to be said.

The grass still gets cut.

Dead leaves are swept up.

Healthcare expenditure is nil.

Objects go to the cinema to watch films made by objects about objects being objects and there is no one to complain about objectification. And there's no more of the sound and fury that signified everything. The world is purely utilitarian and every emotional experience is a simulacrum. A protocol. A choreographed imitation. The objects in the cinema laugh at all the right parts. There are no longer any wrong parts. Things are working at last. We finally got there by removing the thing that prevented us from arriving - us.

The tide comes in and the tide goes out and an abandoned tanker bleeds on the horizon. It doesn't matter at all.

JUST JENNY

Jenny was glad to have finally found a reason for being. She'd had trouble finding any reason but was actively searching. Her lack of interest in just about everything had isolated her. She was always on the periphery of conversations at her school, simulating interest and nodding and pretending to laugh or gasp at the right times but never truly engaging. She was no one's best friend or worst enemy. She was just Jenny. 'Oh, it's just Jenny', people said. Even her mother said it. Just Jenny, someone adults kept alive and healthy to see what might become of her. Well, she had decided what she was going to become and, my oh my, what she became.

Despite her persistence, Jenny's online forum contributions and Facebook posts always went unacknowledged. That is until Aarzam from Luton (a place in England) started responding to her because she responded to him. He kept going on about God and justice and all this stuff and Jenny asked him what he was talking about. What followed was a correspondence that lasted for months. Jenny didn't really care what they were talking about, the important thing was that they were talking. Jenny never had a point of view on anything so she consciously decided to adopt Aarzam's point of view on everything. Not everyone agreed with Aarzam, in fact some people thought he was crazy or evil, but he got people's attention and attention was something Jenny craved.

Anyhoo, as the girl in question would put it herself, this all led to Jenny being stopped at the airport and asked to step into a back room to answer some questions. She told them, flatly (everything she said came out flatly) that her destination was Syria and that she was joining her boyfriend. The airport security were nonplussed by this strange girl in a homemade burka fashioned from a bed sheet dyed black. Things became even more confusing when they asked Jenny where she was from. South County Dublin was the answer but her accent was clearly United States. She told them her 'mom' spoke like that too. She was asked if her 'mom' was American. 'I don't think so', Jenny said. They asked Jenny if she had ever been to the United States. Jenny said she hadn't. They asked Jenny why she had an American accent. Jenny wasn't aware that she had an American accent and said it might be because she 'watched a lot of shows'.

So, like, anyways, things turned into a really big deal. Aarzam had been seen in a viral where a non-unionised freelance journalist got beheaded. Jenny became the opposite of famous, infamous, for a while but then she just became famous when she renounced her newfound beliefs and ran a mini-marathon in aid of something, she wasn't quite sure what. This was all on the advice of an agent Jenny's mother employed. 'We're going to need someone to handle this Goddamn fucking shit storm', was Jenny's mother's reasoning.

The newspapers and the TV went crazy and spoke to the other kids in Jenny's school and they said that she always seemed like she was keeping secrets. Jenny didn't know they thought that about her. It was kind of cool. Better than boring. Jenny went from being 'Just Jenny' to 'Jihad Jenny' in the space of a few days. Some professor guy called Schlemp wanted to talk to her for a book he was writing called 'Online Anomie International: Islamic Extremism and the Search for Likes'. They were going to make a movie too with Saoirse Ronan acting as Jenny. 'She's OK I guess, she's kind of old though', Jenny told Ryan Tubridy on The Late Late Show. Ryan asked Jenny if she'd lift her burka and give the audience a peek at her pretty face. Jenny did. There was a big round of applause and then Ryan gave everyone a hamper of beauty products.

Jenny's mother was really happy with how the whole thing panned out but she was 'really pissed' at first. There was silence in the car when she picked Jenny up from the airport but then she suddenly exploded. She screamed and slapped her open palm against the steering wheel.

'How the fucking motherfuck did you wind up facebooking with a bunch of Wahhabi crazies?'

'Jeez Mom, take it easy. I don't even know what Wahbabbi or whatever is. I just made friends with a Muslim boy is all. What's the big deal?'

'Just made friends with a Muslim boy?' Jenny's mother repeated, emphasising her incredulity.

'Yeah', said Jenny, 'he kind of like listened to me'.

'And what the heck were you saying that made him listen to you honey?'

'I dunno', replied Jenny, her voice trailing off. 'Just stuff I guess, ...just, y'know, ...stuff.'

AN INDEPENDENT STATE OF ONE

I will no longer affiliate myself with any of you bastards. I want no part of your nations or your systems or your beliefs. I refuse to passively endorse your willfully naive values, cosy hypocrisies and murderous ideologies. I am a deist, although often doubting, and I worship at an alterless church with the sky for a roof and sermons delivered on the breeze. I have created my own flag too and I speak a new language that I have invented for my use alone. I have composed my own national anthem and I have declared myself to be in an independent state of one.

You do not fill me with wonder. You just make me wonder what it's all for. You have broken my heart but I'm not broken yet. My defences are up but I will continue to trade and negotiate. I will participate in your customs but I will no longer pretend to fully appreciate them. I'll just be there like a visiting dignitary. That is, I will try to be dignified but I can't guarantee anything. I might get nervous and drink too much and there might be an outburst. I might suddenly announce that this is a farce and that I want to go home and then I will go home and there will be relief all round. I might talk to a homeless man that I meet on my way back to my sovereignty. I'll find him crouched in his cardboard kingdom and bidding me welcome in exchange for some small token. I'll give him a smoke if I have one. He'll tell me how you beat him and how you fucked him and how you now fear him and he'll ask me my story and I'll tell him that I just lost interest.

And he'll offer me a drink and I'll take it without knowing what it is and he'll fall asleep but I'll stay awake and watch the sun begin to seep through the clouds and the litter running down the empty street and I'll see the best amongst you, in high vis jackets, sweeping up your shit. Making the world presentable again so you can continue to make it a mess. I'd consider a complete trade blockade with you bastards but I know I'd starve to death. 

Gone From Here...

NAUGHT TO FREEDOM

The primary measure of a man (and perhaps these days a woman too – who knows?) is his ability to drive. Although important, the quality of a man's car is secondary to his ability to use it. Third in importance is a man's home. A man's home is a place where he can watch cars on television. After these things comes a man's job. What does he do? Is he in a prestigious profession? Perhaps he does something he loves, like selling cars. He drives his car to work where he sells cars to earn the money to pay for a home where he can watch cars on television. This is the contented man. This is a proper man. This is the car man.

Others perambulate along the jagged winding pavements of their civic existences trying not to trip on the cracks, stand in the dog crap or lose their way. But the car man never falters or sullies his person and the car man always knows where he is. He is in his car. He has his hands on the steering wheel. He has his feet on the peddles. He is in control. As long as he is not in a traffic jam, the car man has peace of mind. The car man is content. Society is designed to accommodate the car man. Roads are cut into the Earth like whip welts so the car man can drive through them on his way to work or on his way home from work or on his way to God knows where.

You know, I bet God is a car. I bet God's eyes are shining headlights that look right into your soul and judge your driving ability, your measure as a man. I bet God's mouth is a grinning grille and I bet God's voice sounds like a revving engine. God loves the car man and the car man loves God because every time the car man drives he is 'Nearer My God, to Thee'. Oh yes, the car man is God's favoured son and, although the car man is as boring as fuck to have a conversation with, the world belongs to the car man and, despite the fact that his car is his cage, the car man is free. Naught to freedom once the pedal is to the metal. Or at least it feels like freedom and isn't the feeling enough? Isn't life all about how you feel?

...DiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiNG!

What I want you to imagine today is an orchestra. An orchestra that doesn't know it's an orchestra. An orchestra of competing sections: brass, woodwind, percussion and strings. Each of these sections thinks the other sections are stupid and doing everything wrong. The brass wonders why the string section isn't blowing into its instruments and the percussion wonders why everyone isn't just hitting their instruments with sticks. The woodwind thinks the brass lacks decorum, a bit 'brassy' if you like, and the brass thinks the woodwind is really 'stuck up'. As far as each section is concerned, it is engaged in a sonic war against the others. Each section attempts to assault the others with waves of sound. The loudest is the victor and each section feels it is always winning because, from where a given section's musicians are sitting, they are the loudest. No one gets discouraged and the war goes on. Kettledrums rumble like tanks. Violin bows are drawn like arrows. Brass blunderbusses blast and clarinets, flutes, oboes and bassoons are raised and fired like guns, rifles, mortars and bazookas.

The conductor is there too of course, on his podium. A stressed out secretary general of sorts, attempting to maintain some kind of order. He waves his baton frantically, favouring one section one moment and another the next. He doesn't really know what's going on. He clumsily turns sheets of notation as he mops his brow. He wishes the whole zero-sum composition would just fucking end.

And the cruel joke is that from a distance all this tumult and enmity harmonises into a single stirring composition, the woodwind soaring over the strings and the percussion and brass propelling things forward. From the seats in the auditorium, the ominous score builds to an unnerving crescendo that explodes and then lulls into the saddest adagio ever heard that then fades before it all happens again but in a different order and with some variations. It's such a tragic twist that those upon the stage are unaware of this and labour in the mistaken belief that they are separate competing entities and not, simply, 'one'. The sections do not know that they are all playing the same music and that the music could be joyful and celebratory instead of frightening and heartbreaking.

But there is one musician who knows the truth. An orchestra member who realises that every orchestra member, no matter what section, is part of an indivisible whole. One guy, sitting all by himself, down the back and to the side a bit. One fella who knows it would be a waste of time to share his wisdom with the others because he'd be laughed out of the concert hall. One member of the orchestra who, quietly and in his own mind, has it completely and utterly right.

He stands there, stoic, poised and mindful. He understands the great cacophony as a symphony and bides his time to prove this to the others. He waits and waits and waits until a great musical swell rises and then crashes. As the crescendo subsides he raises his instrument, holds out his wand and strikes once. Only once and with a perfectly restrained amount of force. The rage from the rest of the instruments dies out and silence rules but for the fading resonance of his modest contribution. The triangle goes ...DiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiNG!

THE YTIRALUGNIS

I'm kind of clever, kind of. I read about stuff that matters and I ponder it and comment about it, online usually as I find the interface of face to face a muddled and confusing place.

I'm currently worried about artificial intelligence and the impending Singularity. When it comes to artificial intelligence, the Singularity is the point when computers become more like humans only superior. It's quite concerning. Although, maybe, maybe, yeah maybe, I was thinking, we should be talking about things happening the other way around. We should be talking about the impending Ytiralugnis. That's what's really going to happen. The Ytiralugnis is the Singularity backwards, the point when humans become more like computers only inferior. When we all become the nodes of one great algorithmic consciousness. Led by the #s and validated by the 'likes'. 101001000011010001ing our nodey little heads off. All as one. Unified at last. A singular thing but in a perverse kind of reverse. All with opinions on opinions we are destined to have opinions on. Each of us will be a 'unique' series of takes on whatever is trending.

This is Lord Shiva as a search engine and us as anonymous voices emitting from the Cloud. We'll no longer be people but blogs and Twitter accounts and Facebook walls and apps and regular forum posters and viral uploads. We'll be multi-platform experiences. We'll all be part of one great family. Our surname will Dotcom. Our new family may be slightly dysfunctional, somewhat divided. The upper caste will be those with high hit counts. The lower caste the least hit. And newborns will be called noobs and the elderly will be sneeringly referred to as Commodore 64s. And when we die we'll be shipped off to a landfill in Ghana and stripped down for reusable parts and then incinerated on pyres by kids with emphysema, wearing homemade pollution filters, that never logged on in their lives.

The #Ytiralugnis – it's going to happen. It has happened. It's happening right now. Artificial Intelligence, it's making us kind of clever, kind of; reading about stuff that matters and pondering it and commenting about it online, finding the faceless interface a muddled and confusing place.

MONKEYS DON'T HAVE WORDS

In a former life I was a monkey. I didn't have a name, just a scent. I used to drink water from leafs and pee anywhere I liked. I spent a great deal of time screeching and hopping up on other monkeys who didn't mind at all. I jumped from tree to tree and threw berries at predators, taunting them from the safety of high branches, just for the laugh.

Past life regression therapy has brought these memories back to me. The main thing I remember is an overriding sense of urgent delight and an overwhelming immersion in what they call Oceanic Feeling. I wasn't just in the jungle, I was the jungle and I was everything else in the jungle.

I eventually got old and fell out of a tree and into the jaws of a big cat, which was a nasty end but up to that point I'd had tremendous craic. Anyway, even though I was eaten by a big cat, I was the big cat. It's hard to explain. It was a feeling beyond words. Monkeys don't have words. They don't need them. They'd find them inadequate.

In another former life I was a cartographer of either geographic land or the human mind, I'm not sure which. All I really remember is a sense of discomfort. There was a kind of fear there: of boundless spaces, of uncharted realms, of unlabelled and uncategorised things. I didn't have this fear as a child but as I grew older, and read stories of wild places, wild animals and wild people, I came to understand that categorisation was necessary. I too was categorised and this gave me a robust sense of what they call Ontological Security and this Ontological Security provided me with a buffer which I used to protect myself from the sheer randomness of what they call 'outrageous fortune'.

I eventually got old and developed dementia. I started drinking water from leafs and peeing anywhere I liked. I spent a great deal of time screeching and hopping up on people who took offence and contacted the authorities. I jumped from building to building and threw bottles at the police, taunting them from the safety of high rooftops, just for the laugh.

I eventually fell from the top of a multi-storey car park and dashed my brains on the pavement below and was taken to a morgue where a little label was attached to my toe, with a little number on it, and I was put into a drawer that had another number on it and then I was put into box that had my name on it and then I was buried under the ground in a plot in a cemetery that had a saint's name on it and then I could have sworn that I felt a nameless monkey walk right over my grave and I think it took a pee.

THE WAY OF THE FÜGHRER

My uncertainty is, of course, simple affectation. I am certain of everything. In fact, there is no one more certain than me. When you come to know how certain I am you will bask in my certainty. You will abandon your lack of certainty and abide by my abundance of certainty. I will sit high in the mountains of southern Bavaria and pose for certain looking portraits that you will hang on your uncertain little walls. Certainty is all you want. You crave certainty. For you, it's all about certainty and, perhaps, a pinch of demagoguery. You are lost and want only to be shown the way. Any way will do. Even the wrong way. As long as you feel that it is The Way. I will mention The Way a lot when I take to my podium, gesticulating and embracing myself as I become overwhelmed by the power of my own words. The words of The Füghrer.

You will come to understand that The Way is the only way. It will start with a fashionable chain of coffee houses and clothes shops called The Way. First you will 'hang out' there and then you will work there, both earning and spending your money in the same place. You will feel the brand of The Way providing you with a sense of identity. No more will you long for that vague thing you couldn't quite identify but always felt missing from your life (it was a sense of communal belonging and purpose). With calm newfound confidence, you will lounge in The Way apparel as you sip The Way coffee and listen to me orate about The Way on The Way's very own radio station – that will also play the odd tune by Ray LaMontagne and The Polyphonic Spree.

'The Füghrer says that we are no longer to serve albinos in the shop.'

'The Füghrer lifted my chin and kissed my forehead. I am in ecstasy.'

'Did you note the Füghrer's pantaloons at today's rally? The becoming and unique cut denoted both authority and discernment.'

'He may have interned half the population but the Füghrer's love of alsatians reveals a sensitive soul beneath the cut and thrust.'

'The Füghrer says that cretins and intellectuals are alike in their wilful cerebral aberrations and that both are to be rounded up and left in the courtyard for collection at noon.'

'The Füghrer promises us a golden future but a golden future that demands blood red sacrifice.'

I will give you boots, britches, braces and little hats to wear. I will fortify the crumbling battlements of your souls and send you out to war against those who, by their very existence, offend our people. Our enemies, the unfashionable, the aged, the portly, the unsightly, the impaired and the unwell, will be first to fall and then we will expand our franchise into Europe, Russia, Africa, Asia, Australia and across the Americas. We will have no allies but that will not bother us because all the world will soon be ours and think like us and dress like us and drink coffee like us and both work for us and buy from us alone. We will stand, sartorially exalted, above the rest of our species, flashing our abs and waving our hashtag flags - #EinVolk,einReich,einFüghrer - and we will sing rousing choruses of Light and Day by The Polyphonic Spree.

Of course, there will be some resistance. The malcontents, the sneering older brothers and sarcastic big sisters. But we will pay them no heed. We will bar them from our outlets and all the world will be our outlet so they will find themselves barred from life itself. Let them be swallowed in the shadow of our glorious advance as we live our lives The Way lives should be lived. All of us certain in ourselves because we are certain of The Way and because we have good bone structure.

And that is The Way things will be and that is The Way things will remain until battalions of enraged Slavic conscripts pour through our defences and tear each and every one of us a 'new one'.

It has happened before and it will happen again. That is, after all, the way of things and the way of things is, after all, The Way of The Füghrer.

PAINT PISSED

It seemed to me that troglodytes painted the things they saw to better understand them. If they saw some kind of massive elk or boar in the forest they'd go home and paint it on the wall of their cave. Reducing the animal to a simple image might've made it comprehensible to a troglodyte's rudimentary cognitive abilities. That was my theory anyway. You see, I too found the world outside my flat to be an incomprehensible place and that's why I thought cave painting might be of similar benefit to me. As I said to the nervous looking girl who sold me the poster paints down the pound shop, 'maybe it is the purpose of art to make sense of reality'.

I decided I'd go out and do whatever it is I do all day and then come home and paint what I saw on my walls. Rather than sabre-tooth tigers and mammoths, I covered the walls of my flat with depictions of suburban life - things like bent bus stops, crumpled bags of Tayto, an umbrella I saw stuffed down a drain and a schoolgirl that gave me the spaz face from the window of a passing SUV.

However, I started noticing how the bulk of my work related to the gigantic shopping centre that towered over the leafy streets of my timid village. Almost all of the images were nothing more than replicated brand logos - Harvey Nichols, H&M, HMV, Hollister, House of Fraser, Little Hitler's Haute Hut - all the well known names. I realised that my environment was thoroughly colonised. A few questions occurred to me. Were these logos art? In my attempt to make art that recorded life, was I merely making art that was a record of other art? Was the ultimate aim of art, from its inception to now, to replace reality entirely? Is art the creator of reality and not its reflector? Trees, clouds, animals, even people (genuine living people, not people on billboards or people who may as well be on billboards) didn't really get a look in. My surroundings were a prescribed range of aspirations and aesthetic ideals. I found it all a bit alarming. In fact, I found it fucking shocking.

There was only one thing for it. With resolute determination, I decided to get pissed out of my mind. Booze had provided great succor to those before me who had lost their environments to colonial forces. Many Australian Aborigines and members of native American tribes spend their time staggering about the place in piss stained slacks so ...when in Rome.

I went to the pub.

I found Professor Isaac Delahunty sitting up at the bar. I was delighted. He was just the man to confide in. Isaac had been the head of an anthropology department before the university closed it down to fund more vocational pursuits. These days, Isaac could be found drinking away his redundancy as he scribbled notes for a study he claimed to be making on the life of the suburban sop (a study that I suspect will never be completed). Isaac jokingly referred to himself as as an anthropolopissed but he was the only one who laughed at this little joke. His was a terrible wounded laugh.

I told Isaac what I had been up to and what it had got me to thinking and he told me something astonishing. Isaac said that the troglodytes of yore weren't painting what they saw but actually painting what they wanted to see. Isaac said that the troglodytes were the 'ne plus ultra of solipsism' (he spoke in that fancy way you'd expect of an academic, albeit with a slight slur) in that they thought the world did not exist until they witnessed it and that the world was influenced by their expectations. That's why they only painted animals. They were painting what they hoped to catch for dinner. By meditating on it, the troglodytes believed they were bringing the creature into being. 'Why didn't they just paint the thing ready cooked and save themselves the bother of having to go out and kill it?' I asked. Isaac shrugged and said 'they may have been the precursors of those that theorised the Observer Effect but that doesn't mean they weren't a bunch of dopes. I mean they lived in caves for fuck's sake'.

I thought about what Isaac had told me and, after about fifteen pots of porter, I made it my business to go home and fashion a new reality, one free of consumerist colonisation. I staggered back to my place and on all the walls of my flat, every inch, I painted a jungle. A wild jungle, overrun with all sorts of exotic creatures from past, present and God knows when. I was working away for hours, accompanied by Krautrock classics on shuffle and several bags of carry out. I worked fast. I was in a frenzy. I eventually collapsed.

I woke up hours later and saw what I had done. It was quite a sight but it beat what was there before. My head hurt though. It was all a bit hard to take in so I got to my feet and left my place in search of Solpadeine and a breakfast roll. Once I was on the road I was, well, how should I put this? Taken aback? Shocked? Absolutely fucking traumatised? I think the latter sums it up best. Yes, once I was on the road I was absolutely fucking traumatised to see every inch of my suburban village tangled up in vines. I could hear the screeching calls of monkeys and the distant roar of lions. Pterodactyls wheeled in the sky above me and a couple of Triceratops were fucking outside Spar. When I reached the shopping centre I saw a pack of jackals chasing a zebra down an escalator and a Siberian god-bear futilely trying on a pair of slim fit chinos. There were people around of course but they were in pieces, scattered limbs and organs.

I felt bad. I could have painted an equitable Anarchistic society living in peaceable harmony but in my drunken state I had opted to create this feral barbarity. Many people had lost their lives. The army were probably on the way and the whole thing was bound to end in an appalling conflagration. I'd be lucky to survive myself. Worst of all though, the most tragic thing about the entire scenario to me, was how badly rendered everything was. It all looked like it was painted by a demented child. If this was to be the end of what passed for civilisation, it could at least have looked nice. All the creatures had bandy limbs and lumpy heads. The vines were scribbly and unimpressive. You couldn't even tell what a lot of the stuff was supposed to be. At one stage, I was chased down the road by something that looked like an enormous lobster crossed with an elaborate mathematical equation performed by Jackson Pollock. It all looked completely crap and it was all my fault. It all just amounted to so much sigil bullshit. Even the pub had been destroyed by, ...well I'm not sure really. They looked like musical notes, octave clefs I think, covered in fur and with fangs. Who knows what they were meant to be. Beats me, ...I never could paint pissed.

DO ME A FAVOUR LORD SHIVA AND GET THE F**K OUT OF MY OFFICE!

'Hope fuels the fool because the fool doesn't know what to hope for.' That is the legend that hangs over the entrance to the Fugger Life Coaching office.

There's a lot of discontent out there. There's a lot of people limping through their lives, hobbled by their discontent. A lot of these people come around to Fugger's life coaching office. I get them to sit down and tell me all about it and they do. It's always the same. They are unhappy. All of them. Some want to be understood. These people usually are understood, perfectly understood. The real problem for these people is not that they are misunderstood but, in fact, that they are not understood in a way that they would like to be understood. They would like everyone to understand them as fantastic individuals but others understand them as flawed individuals. Instead of acknowledging that they may actually be flawed, the people that come to my office take the easy option and decide that they are misunderstood. Do you understand that? No, neither do I. I tell these people that they are indeed misunderstood and the person that understands them least is themselves.

Other people often tell me that they wish they were, and I quote, 'fucking dead'. I am forced to point out to these people that their problem is not that they wish they were 'fucking dead' but really that they wish they were 'fucking alive' or maybe just 'fucking'. I'm not sure if that's what these people want to hear but it's what they need to hear. They usually ask me what they can do about it and I tell them to stop wanting things and maybe to try and just let things happen.

You see, the problem for many is that they won't let things happen unless things happen exactly as they want them to. Take the great many who come to me complaining that they are 'unloved'. I tell these people that, unless they are child eating cannibals or something, they are doubtlessly loved by someone but probably just not by the person they wished they were loved by. Then I tell them that the person they wished they were loved by is probably visiting some other life coach complaining about not being loved by some other person and that this other person might well love the person I am talking to and also be feeling similarly unloved. Do you follow me? You probably don't. You often get confused by those perplexing sentences I construct for that very purpose. Apologies. I'll make myself clearer. It's like this, Tom comes into my office complaining that no one loves him. By 'no one' he means Jane. Then I tell him that Ann loves him. Then Jane comes in complaining that 'no one' loves her and I ask if by 'no one' she means Ann and she admits she does and then Ann comes in complaining that 'no one' loves her and she means Tom. It's a Möbius strip of discontent. The Universe's little joke. Lord Shiva playing a game with himself. A strangely miserable game but perhaps entertaining in its misery, like Eastenders or something. I tell those that feel unloved that everyone feels unloved and this is the ultimate irony of the cosmos because everything in the cosmos is the one thing. 'It's as if the top of your head longs to touch the sole of your foot because it fails to realise that they are already connected', I say. It's in response to this that I'm often told by my clients that I'm being far too spiritual and not at all pragmatic. That's when I say that spiritual is pragmatic and that it seems to me what the client actually means by pragmatic is magic, as in a magic solution to all their problems that will bring them their desires on their specific terms. I then conclude by reminding the client that I am a life coach and not a fucking genie and, pointing to the words over the door, I say 'do me a favour Lord Shiva and get the fuck out of my office'.

Yes, my clients often complain that my coaching fails to make them happy and they usually ask for their money back. This is when I remind them of two things. The first is that money doesn't make you happy. The second is that life is not about being happy anyway but actually about feeling fulfilled and fulfillment often comes by a circuitous route that involves a great deal of unhappiness. Take a mountaineer who feels the need to conquer a daunting peak. Climbing to the peak will probably be a miserable and trying experience but the compulsion for fulfillment drives the mountaineer on. When my clients finally understand this they usually return to the topic of the money I've taken from them. (It's very hard to shift people away from the thought of money) 'If money doesn't make one happy Mister Fugger', they ask, 'then why don't you give me a refund?'. My clients often adopt a smug expression when they ask this question, thinking they have turned my own logic against me. This is when I tell my clients that they'll find not getting a refund more fulfilling than actually getting a refund because if they don't get a refund they'll enjoy moaning about it all the time and moaning is obviously what makes them feel fulfilled because actually addressing their fucking problems certainly doesn't seem to do it for them. If this seems unfair to you I'll remind you that the clients and me are one and the same anyway as we are both of the same cosmos so they don't need a refund as they never lost the money in the first place. Remember too, you are also us so if you still think it's wrong for me not give a refund you should remember that you are me so you are also not giving that refund and, like the clients, we are also being denied the refund just as the clients are denying themselves the refund. It sounds complicated but it's simple enough to grasp really, once you're enlightened. We are all one. We are all Lord Shiva's sock puppets, albeit unaware that we are mere avatars in his cosmic game of Eastenders.

****

Look, I hope I'm not coming across as esoteric and heartless. That's not my intention. I know that life can be rough and sometimes it can be very very rough. I also know that depression and sadness are terrible things but discontent, well, discontent is quite another thing. Discontent is caused by a sense of entitlement that is based on cultural norms and today's cultural norms come from the unsophisticated narratives found in popular large screen dramas, advertisements and other kinds of things where all problems are portrayed as solvable and everyone, ultimately, gets what they want. This is nonsense. Even if it were true, once you got what you wanted you'd probably start to want something else. 'Want' is the problem. 'Want' is an addiction. 'Want' is a state of mind. We are indoctrinated to 'want' and not just 'be'. Sure, 'want' makes money but money doesn't make you happy. Mine is the true War on Want! Quit wanting! That should be all you want.

Consider it this way, a thousand years ago my clients wouldn't have had the time to be discontentedly wanting all the shit they want, they'd just be happy enough to have made it to the end of the day without being mauled to death by some kind of gigantic bear.

Do you understand? Are you feeling illuminated? Good. Now, do me a favour Lord Shiva and get the fuck out of my office.

(Remember – although greatly enlightening (and a bit up its own arse these days), visiting fugtheworld.blogspot.com cannot replace a therapeutic relationship with a reliable mental health professional - you crazy fool.)