WE'RE NOT DEAD!

WE'RE NOT DEAD by FugTheWorld

WASTED WORDS: Six Years of Fugger!

Fugger first blogged on this day, six years ago. That's six years of words arranged in grammatically dodgy order for reasons best known to absolutely no one, least of all me. All I know is that six years is a lot of words. Too many words. But what the Hell, it's Fugger's birthday so here are some more...

For this anniversary post, I thought I'd do something special and let you know about the word quota. Everyone has a certain amount of words assigned to them for use in their lifetime. Did you know that? Yeah, there's a word depot that stores a limited amount of words for each person's use. Once you use up your words, you can no longer speak or write. You are struck dumb. You never get to communicate again - beyond pointing and waving or using facial expressions or nodding and shaking your head. Consider that next time you waste a load of words complaining about the shite on telly. You might run out of words before you've said what you really want to say. It happens. Having said that, I'm not sure if running out of words is a bad thing at all.

Words drain life of value. Honestly. When you recount an experience in words you reduce that experience to just words. You even start to consider the experience as a story that you tell and forget the actual sensation of the experience itself. Emotions become syntax. Then you start to embellish things, to add a bit of sparkle to what inevitably becomes a jaded narrative. You might even discard reality completely and make something up. I'm not sure if anyone knows for certain why we do this. Maybe we do it to entertain others so they'll like us. Being liked feels good. Being liked makes us feel safe. Being liked sometimes brings rewards or gives us a chance to procreate. Or maybe it's not about being liked at all. Maybe we exaggerate just because, you know, because. For reasons we can't put it into words. We're a funny species, sometimes on purpose.

To keep experience authentic, the less you say the better. The only way you can properly convey an experience is through telepathy and we can't do that, yet. Once we master telepathy, we'll consider words as insufficient and rudimentary a means of communication as smoke signals. Dishonest smoke signals at that. With telepathy we'll know exactly how each other feel and we'll understand each other's motivations and no longer have a clutter of words clouding our mutual comprehension. Despite the odd embarrassment, this will be for the best. There'll be a certain amount of awkwardness because people you dislike will know that you dislike them and, worse still, people you love will know that you love them. Your silly preoccupations and insecurities will be on show for all to see, but then so will everyone's. This will probably lead to a lot of empathy in the end. We'll all see how silly we are and have a good laugh. You might even stop disliking those you dislike and come to love them, now that you've come to truly understand them.

(This post isn't very good is it? I should be putting a narrative on all this and packaging these concepts in some kind of amusing scenario, with a set up and a pay off. There'll be a funny bit at the end, I promise, but it should be less of a slog getting there shouldn't it? I should try harder to hold your interest. Holding your interest is my aim I suppose because, you know, just because. For reasons I can't put it into words.)

But where was I, oh yes, the word quota. Some people, those who talk too much or write a lot, like yours truly, often exhaust their word supply before death. If you keep an eye out, you sometimes see these wordless people around the place. You might see them paying for items at a checkout and smiling politely but saying nothing when they are handed their change. Most are elderly, but some are younger, living out decades incommunicado. I've a theory about these people. I reckon they find it liberating to be without words. I can't say for certain of course because wordless people aren't able to confirm it, but their knowing smiles and zen demeanours could well be down to their word lack. They look free to me, whenever I see them. They seem unburdened. I say 'hello' and they just nod sagely.

Anyway, this brings me to the funny part of this sixth anniversary post. 'At last,' says you. OK, so, there was this fella right, and he was always going on about this and that and whatever and never shutting his yap and it's his first day at work in a new place and he really needs a shite. He's busting to go, absolutely dying, but the building is huge and he can't find the jax so he goes to ask where it is, but then he finds that he's run out of  

MAN UP! HEAD DOWN!

Life isn't to be enjoyed. It's to be tolerated. I think that's undeniable. You can breakdown in the face of this truth or you can man up. If you choose to man up, you get your head down. You get your head down and you get your work done and you pay your way. There isn't much joy in it, but there is dignity in it. Don't be a freeloader. Don't expect anyone else's share. Take care of yourself. It's about competition, not cooperation. The only time you cooperate is to beat the competition. We're all rivals and you know it. Deep down, you know that only too well. Sure, the minus is that no one owes you anything, but the plus is that you don't owe anyone anything. Just get your head down, provide for yourself and try not to die in too much pain.

You see, you've got to be a tough guy in this world because this world is tough, guys. You don't measure the worth of your world with intangible notions like personal contentment and a sense of community. That stuff isn't quantifiable. You don't see that shit on graphs. Community can be best validated by measurable collective economic stability. That way we keep the road to the workplace smoothly tarred. Anything else and you're on your own. You've got to man up and compete. You've got to generate the income to partake of resources. There isn't enough to go around so you've got to earn your share. There's a scarcity and even if there isn't a scarcity, we should act as if there is or else there will be. Got me?

Way back in the way back when, F.W. Taylor knew that internal gratification didn't get us anywhere. He knew that external reward is the way to go. You're not a craftsman, you're a cog, but you're a cog that gets paid a heck of a lot more than a craftsman and shit gets made quicker too. Where would we be without quick shit? Waiting, that's where. It's about efficiency guys. Efficiency trumps all and if you're efficient you get paid more and you can spend your pay on quick shit.

Of course, I know what you're thinking. You're complaining that your income has been cut despite your hard work. If your income has been cut you man up. Work harder! The frontiersmen of old didn't bitch when their crops failed. Oh no. They steeled themselves for a hungry winter and tried again next year. People died, yeah. People die all the time. The cog gets rusty and it's replaced. Big deal. The machine has to keep running and that's all that matters because without the machine, well, without the machine we'd all have to go without wouldn't we? Yeah, we would. We'd all just be spare parts with no purpose. We'd have no reason to get our heads down and we'd have to look up and look around and if we did that then who knows what we'd see. What would we see then? It could be anything. Anything under the sun. The thought is too awful to contemplate. Just get your head down, that's the only way. For the love of God, whatever you do, get your head down and don't look up. Don't look up, just man up! Man up and get your head down!

THE TECHNOCRATS

Do you remember those mad cartoon characters The Technocrats? They were on every Saturday after the ThunderCats. They wore well-cut suits and expensive watches. They always had mildly bored expressions on their faces and pushed their glasses up their noses. They overcame sovereignty with their powers of austerity. At every commercial break, you'd be reminded to stay tuned when The Technocrats pointed at you from the screen and told you to 'stick with the programme!' Ah yeah, The Technocrats were mad. Do you remember them at all?

They had a robot that was the comic relief. The robot was called KEN-E. KEN-E was a clueless sack of mechanical crap that barely worked. The Technocrats were always playing tricks on him. In fairness, KEN-E was a very loyal robot. Even though The Technocrats didn't take him at all seriously, KEN-E would always obey their commands. 'The Technocrats demand my loyalty,' KEN-E would say, 'I must stick with the programme.'

The Technocrats had all these enemies too. Alexis Feckless was the worst. He was always coming up with stuff so he could escape paying his way. He wore a leather jacket with the collar turned up and he had a shiny bald head. He looked really evil in a lazy kind of way. He was terrible. We'd boo and hiss him when we were kids. We all joined The Technocrats Club too. You'd send away your name and address and then you'd be billed for all sorts and sent budgetary advice. They'd tell you how to spend your pocket money and recommend that you sell all your toys to wealthier kids and then rent them back. After a while of renting the toys back you'd run out of the money you made from selling them. Then you'd write to the club requesting further advice and you'd get a letter back telling you to 'stick with the programme!' That's all the letter said. 'Stick with the programme!' This was just advice of course. You didn't have to do what the letter said, but if you didn't you'd be thrown out of The Technocrats Club and no one wanted that. All the other kids would laugh at you. You'd have a bit more pocket money for sweets though.

I'll never forget the shocking final episode when Alexis Feckless revealed that The Technocrats were completely broke. He was a real dick about it. 'You're all broke,' he said laughing. 'I've got the proof and you're all completely penniless and always were. You're all a sham! A complete and utter sham! YOU'RE ALL JUST A LYING, CRIMINAL, TYRANNICAL, SCUM SUCKING SHAM!' Then the show got cancelled so we never discovered how The Technocrats got out of that spot of bother. I'm sure they figured something out though. The Technocrats always came up with crazy plans. Some would say outright deranged plans, completely fucking demented plans. But, whatever happened, The Technocrats always looked like they knew what they were doing. Even if they didn't have the slightest notion what they were at, they always looked like they did. That was their main power. I'm sure they were OK in the end. We never found out though. The whole series was scrapped and I've since heard that every episode was taken and incinerated and the ashes were flushed down a toilet because the people that commissioned the show found the whole thing really embarrassing and shameful. Actually, the animation was a bit shit now I come to think of it. The plot continuity was all over the place too. But when you're a kid you don't mind that stuff too much. You're naive and pretty stupid and you'll accept any hopeless old God forsaken shit that's peddled to you. That's why the kids were so fond of KEN-E. They identified with him. KEN-E liked the reassuring demeanor of The Technocrats. I suppose the robot was comforted by their certainty. No matter what half-arsed bollocksology was afoot, us kids and KEN-E always stuck with the programme. We remained loyal. That is, until The Technocrats show got scrapped, burned and flushed down the fucking crapper where it rightfully belonged.

SOMEWHERE SOMETHING

SWEAR NEVER TO DO IT AGAIN, AGAIN

We don't make history anymore. History just occurs. It kind of spills out all over the place and we have no say in it. History is like a pint that gets knocked over by some really drunk fella. It lands on his lap and makes it look as if he's pissed himself. Sometimes it leaves a stain in the shape of a country.

Nobody is in charge anymore, for good or ill. It's all just cause and effect, but we're not sure what the cause was and we don't know how to deal with the effect. A lot of people are talking but nothing is being said. Most people are arguing about things that may or may not have happened and the factors that may or may not have caused these things to happen or not. I doubt anyone really cares though. Just as long as their opining is heard. As long as they are seen to stand out from the herd ...for whatever reason. No one knows a thing. We are all just caught up in a domino effect and we don't know who pushed the first domino and we can't tell which one will be next to go.

Take the example of ISIS. I really don't know who ISIS are. I don't think anyone does. ISIS themselves don't even know. All they know is that they are history, occurring. They are just delighted to be 'trending'. This is humanity in entropy, where being click bait is the sought after currency. ISIS are like the rest of us but instead of doing the Ice Bucket Challenge, they chop off people's heads. The Islamic Wahhabi state matters about as much to them as whatever charity the Ice Bucket Challenge was in aid of mattered to us. By the way, did we #GetKony in the end? No, I didn't think so. That met a sorry conclusion. Naked on the road, wanking and roaring.

We are all Jason Russell. Remember him? You probably don't. History quickly fades these days.

Future historians will look back at our times and try to figure out what happened. They're going to have to pick their way through an abstract mess. The course of history by Jackson Pollock. A tangle of twine and you can't find where it starts or where it ends. And what an end. Might this be the end? Or is it just a stupid transition? Maybe we'll wake up, like the pissed fella that spilled his pint, and feel a bit disgraced and look out the window and see a brand new day and swear never to do it again.

And then we'll do it again.

And then we'll swear never to do it again, again.

INCORPORATING ALAN

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My sitcom about a writer of superhero comics who aspires to be the next John Dee has been commissioned. It's called 'Incorporating Alan'.

In episode one of Incorporating Alan, Alan hilariously sets out to prove that Paul Daniels is not a proper magician.

In episode two of Incorporating Alan, Alan is unamused to discover his publisher merchandising plushies of one of his edgy rapist characters.

In episode three of Incorporating Alan, Alan struggles to find a polite way of getting his friend Warren to stop dressing like him.

In episode four of Incorporating Alan, Alan struggles to find a polite way of getting his friend Grant to stop pretending to be him.

In episode five of Incorporating Alan, Alan refuses to partake in a Q and A at a Batman convention unless it is entirely conducted in Enochian.

In episode six of Incorporating Alan, Alan is at loggerheads with his publisher when he decides to kill off their most popular character again.

In episode seven of Incorporating Alan, Alan kicks off his two-year stewardship of the Pokémon comic by placing Snorlax in Chapel Perilous.

In episode eight of Incorporating Alan, Alan is infuriated when a critic describes his new experimental writing style as 'Krypto the Super Doggerel.'

That’s it for the first series. I was asked to produce more episodes but I referred the broadcaster to the occult properties of the number eight, saying that any other amount would exhibit preternatural ignorance.

THE BIGGER PICTURE OF THE GREATER GOOD

Our goal is 'The Greater Good'. Bad things must sometimes be done in the cause of 'The Greater Good'. Sometimes acts are performed in the cause of 'The Greater Good' that are so bad they outweigh the good in 'The Greater Good'. In such cases, there is no contradiction because it is all done for 'The Greater Good'. 

'What exactly is this Greater Good?' enquiring minds might ask. The answer is that we do not know. However, this does not mean that we should stop trying to achieve 'The Greater Good'. Ignorance of one's goal never excuses a failure to accomplish it.

It is the same with 'The Bigger Picture'. Enquiring minds often ask us why we monitor the private communications of entire populations, or why we blackmail, bomb and execute the very citizens we claim to protect, or why we expose vulnerable young people to paedophile rings. We do not answer these questions. Instead, we encourage the enquiring minds asking such questions to see 'The Bigger Picture'.

When enquiring minds ask us what 'The Bigger Picture' is, we reply that 'The Bigger Picture' is a big picture of 'The Greater Good'. If some enquiring minds remain unsatisfied and continue to ask questions we have these enquiring minds discretely done away with and placed at the bottom of a remote riverbed.

Some of the most enquiring minds one could hope to encounter populate the riverbeds of these fair isles.

Remember...

Curiosity is not encouraged.

Obedience is essential.

Rationality is irrelevant.

Enquiring minds/riverbed dwellers sometimes point out that our ends and means lack sense and morality. Before discretely doing away with these enquiring minds/riverbed dwellers, we remind them that existence itself lacks sense and morality. Ergo, we serve existence. Serving existence in the way we do makes asymmetric sense. It is also the moral thing to do, asymmetrically speaking.

You are free to disagree, but we may have to discretely do away with you if you do.

If you would like to assist us in our asymmetric efforts, we would be very pleased to hear from you. You cannot contact us of course, but we will be monitoring your communications and certain to get in touch should we find your candidature fitting. Anyone can join the secret service, whether they would like to or not. The only requirements are a 'public school' education, a loose grasp on what it is to be human, a perpetual sense of paranoia and a penchant for auto-erotic asphyxiation.

You never know, you might one day end up being a member of our team. Just think, you could be the next James Bond, or perhaps James Rusbridger. It's entirely up to you ...and by 'you' we mean 'us'.

****

The British Secret Service, completely mad since 1909. It's for The Greater Good. 

Get the (bigger) picture?

HOME FOR SOCIETY'S FAILURES

A private home for the relics of the establishment. They wander the corridors shouting out half-remembered things and attempting to adhere to protocols from days gone. Doddery TDs roar for imaginary Ceann Comhairles. Their minds suspended in battles yesteryear, they emit non sequiturs. 'Don't interrupt me, I didn't interrupt you,' they protest to no one in particular about nothing in particular. Senility clutches to the remnants of instinct. It's an attempt to make sense of what never made sense.

A spoon is raised to Sir Anthony's gaping mouth. The most ancient of them all. Vacant. The train has left the station and the stop long since terminated. The comparatively sprightly Denis giggles and hides Sir Anthony's slippers. Then Denis can't remember where he hid the slippers or even that he hid them at all, so he looks for the slippers so he can hide them again and wails when he can't find them. His memories redacted, he can only be calmed by a little treat. Lobster bisque or something like that. Then he scurries to the corner and whispers legal threats into the ear of a husk that was once a leading journalist. The husk weeps and pleads for mercy.

Undead ex-ministers cut deals with dementia afflicted tycoons. Brown envelops are exchanged but there's only shit in them. Speaking of shit, along come Joan and Enda, collecting water charges with their bedpans. Buttons are dropped in with a clinking sound and they shuffle on, droning about the future of the nation and muttering some vague legislation.

There's a large fence with snipers all around. Whether the guns are there to keep those seeking vengeance out or keep those who killed the future in, no one is quite sure. Perhaps it's a bit of both. The situation is being contained, that's all that matters. That's all that ever mattered. Actually dealing with situations was never the aim. It was all just a perpetual crisis management game, with some money made on the side. The profits of chaos for those presiding over that chaos. They felt it their due. 'You'd do the same,' was their internal excuse and cognitive guilt inhibitor.

Their time long passed, their power in the past, they are now put out to pasture. Rendered harmless and bovine, they await slaughter. Night falls and along comes the Reaper. A soul is collected and another shameful cadaver is left for inclusion in the annals of this home for society's failures.

THE COSMOS COMMUNICATED

The cosmos communicated. It flooded his mind with stars and equations, with the formula for infinity. Everything was revealed to him. EVERYTHING. The reality of the smallest thing to the largest thing. There was no size. It was just a category, like the whole of time and space that stretched out before him. He saw the beginning of all and the end of all and he saw that both occurred at once. He saw things as God saw things. He saw that he was God. He saw that all was God. He saw that all was one. The ultimate truth was set in front of him and the intelligible was rendered elementary. The mysteries that had taunted humankind since its inception were solved and made known. The Universe had whispered in his ear and he had been granted the most absolute of privileges.

He alone saw all.

He alone knew all.

He alone knew what it was all for.

'Hang on,' he eventually said to himself, 'if I play my cards right, I might be able to make a few bob out of this.'

WASTE OF WATER

WASTE OF WATER by FugTheWorld

The last in the trilogy.

THE CHAT LIKE

THE CHAT LIKE by FugTheWorld

TORMEY

Tormey by FugTheWorld

THE INDIFFERENCE ENGINE

The first ever computer was Charles Babbage's 19^th century Difference Engine. A beautiful machine consisting of twisting brass gears, the Difference Engine solved equations and it changed the world. Soon the world will change again. We'll invent a quantum computer that will solve everything that remains unsolved in any given field. The quantum computer will be able to perform infinite calculations infinitely, sorting out everything at once with its omnitask ability. All ailments will be cured and even death will be overcome. All questions will be answered and there'll be nothing left to wonder about. There'll be world peace because everyone will be in perfect agreement. There'll be nothing that can't be done.

However, one unsolvable problem will result from this solving of all problems. The ultimate problem of eternal boredom. We'll be rendered yawning immortals sat in front of portals that look onto the past, watching the human race when it used be confused and beset with problems. We'll envy our ancestors the struggles that were their reasons for being. We'll long for the days when we had real feelings. There'll no longer seem to be a point in anything when we know the point of everything and there'll no longer be a reason to go on when life just goes on and on and on and on. Pity the gods that we are destined to become, as superfluous as they are superior in the shadow of their Indifference Engine.

CHOKING ON POWDERY SHITE

He loved to look at the lovely moon in the sky above him and dream that he would one day go to the moon and then one day he got in a rocket and went to the moon and he landed on the moon and lived on the moon and he became unhappy on the moon because he could no longer see the lovely moon in the sky above him and dream of one day going to the moon because he was on the moon and all it was was rocks in the dark and powdery shite.

Now, that's a little story for you. What does it mean? Well, I suppose it's just a long way of saying 'be careful what you wish for and be content with what you have.' Trite but perhaps true enough and maybe you should apply it to your life. Unless of course you are a two year old Sub-Saharan sucking on an energy biscuit and dying of Malaria. I doubt the moon story would bring much comfort to such a person. It's hard to imagine what kind of story would. I suppose stories are just comforting little indulgences for those who are not in such dire circumstances. I suppose, the less you suffer the more time you have to contemplate suffering. It might even be a case of the less you suffer the more you seek out suffering and then have to reckon with it, the very nature of it, so you need stories to explain it. Converse kind of stuff that, perverse even. There might even be a story in it. A story about an adored king who lives in luxury but all he can do is dwell on the slightly frayed trimmings on one of his robes and compose stories about them.

I'm not saying we're all crybabies. I'm just saying, well, imagine your heart is broken. That stings doesn't it? It does. Well, bad and all as that is, you probably wouldn't be worrying about it all that much if you were being chased by a lion would you? You wouldn't be going 'I wonder what she/he is doing right now,' with some roaring clawed fucker of a giant cat charging after you. I doubt you'd be remotely interested in hearing a parable involving someone overcoming their lovelorn predicament if you were involved in a predicament involving a lion.

What I'm saying here is that we have stories to comfort the comfortable and the truly uncomfortable don't get any stories, which is fine because they're too distracted to heed them anyway. If you're listening to a story, well, then things mustn't be going so bad for you and maybe you shouldn't take the story too seriously because, when things get serious, stories aren't much use at all. For example, I've never seen anyone put out a blazing building with a story about a brave firefighter. And I've never seen a man successfully wrestle a lion into submission by recounting The Epic of Gilgamesh. Stories are just made up things. They are only stories. Even the ones on the news. Even the ones God told. Even the ones you tell yourself about yourself. Instead of listening to stories, you'd be better off going outdoors and looking up and contemplating the moon and being happy to be under it and not on it, gasping for breath and crawling over rocks in the dark, being in no mood for stories and choking on powdery shite.

GO WIND NOW

WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING

There's tremendous relief to be found upon discovering that you were wrong about everything. It's initially jarring, sure, but after that there is a sense of great excitement that everything is up for rediscovery. The boredom of thinking you had it all figured out and things would always be thus vanishes and the world begins again. It's like the reboot of some franchise. It would be good for our jaded species to have such an epiphany, communally. It would both invigorate us and cut us down to size. It would unite us in confusion as we drop our respective dogmas. All that is required is for something remarkable to happen. Something that causes such a paradigm shift that it shifts all the other paradigms into obsolescence. What we need is an inexplicable event. An event that defies all scientific understanding and proves both the existence and nonexistence of God at the same time. What could such an event be?

I've never told anyone what I'm about to tell you now. When I was a child, myself and my brother had an argument in our garden. I can't remember what the row was about but we soon stopped fighting when our dog got up on a Triumph 20 and started cycling around the lawn. We never had a disagreement again after that. Everything seemed trivial. That dog brought peace to our household and rebooted both our realities. Maybe the dogs of the world should do similar, at some synchronised time. Some quiet afternoon as people go about their business and international tensions simmer and the rich rip off the poor and people kneel to God and families dine in silence. Imagine the collective gasp if the dogs of the world suddenly mounted whatever bike was nearest and started peddling about and maybe even doing the odd wheelie. World news would broadcast identical events as they occurred globally. Then, as suddenly as they got on the bikes, the dogs would dismount and one would look straight into a television camera and say, 'there now, what do you humans make of that? That's softened your cough for you hasn't it?' And indeed, at last and long overdue, humanity's cough would be softened. The dogs of the world would then resume acting thick and never explain what happened and we'd all be left as we should be, humbled but curious and feeling very much alive. Set free of certainty and happy to be wrong about everything.

SHIVA SERVER SPACE

Sometimes a thing that is the opposite of a thing is destined to become the thing that it is the opposite of. Sometimes, going so far in the wrong direction is the catalyst that motivates us to change direction and go in the right direction. This is just such a time. The separation before the union.

The atomisation that has caused us to communicate via electronic communication will cause us to actually become that electronic communication, uploaded minds unified in one big algorithm. We'll no longer be 'here' but we'll never be alone again.

The only physical evidence of us ever having existed upon this plane will be a skyscraper sized server humming in the middle of a field somewhere. Obsolete corporeal forms will dangle, atrophied, from wires on the server's bleak exterior, but consider the server's interior. Oh, what an interior. Our communal consciousness residing inside, realising that we are all Lord Shiva and that we are all 'one'. We'll be creating universes and playing cosmic games until some tiny fucking varmints scamper up the field and nibble right through the Shiva Server's power cable, causing existence to end and start all over again.

Start because the tiny fucking varmints will evolve into a super intelligent race and eventually upload themselves to a similar Shiva Server space.

...they'll no longer be 'here' but they'll never be alone again.

Here's a poxy song about it...

I love you very much you know, so go away and come back when we're ready.

PLACE

Before we emerged there was a place.

A place just like the rest of the place.

A place near a place that was the same place.

A place in a place where it stayed in place.

A place that waited for us to take our place

and place the place in context.

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.

INVISIBILITY CLOAK

(Image: Pol Úbeda Hervàs - I'm Not There) 

 

I sent off for an invisibility cloak. I've had it a while now. When I put it on I'm completely invisible. I like being invisible. Well, I like not being seen, you know, going unnoticed. I rarely take the cloak off now. The cloak allows me go about my daily business without fear of being recognised. Recognition is a fear of mine. Have you ever been recognised yourself? I don't just mean 'spotted', I mean actually recognised. I can't stand it. I'm ashamed of myself you see. For the longest time I have been dogged by a sense of embarrassment that is caused by being me. It's like the feeling teenagers get when they are seen with their parents only I get it when I'm seen with myself, which is always, unless I'm wearing the cloak. I love the cloak.

When the cloak is on, my unbecoming physical carriage is concealed as is my appalling dress sense and my facial expression of acute defeat. The only thing I could possibly do to mess up my day is say something stupid but I recently had my vocal cords severed so that too is no longer a concern. I'm only made detectable by the shopping list I carry. As far as others are concerned, I'm just a floating piece of paper with words like 'sausages', 'eggs', 'washing up liquid' and 'Chambourcy Hippo-Tots four pack' written on it. The people of the town don't bat an eyelid. There's a few of us using the invisibility cloaks around here. There's a lot of floating shopping lists and wallets and briefcases. There's a lot of people who want to continue availing of the world while not actually being part of it. It's a beautiful planet, it's a pity to mar it with oneself.

Personally, I think everyone should wear invisibility cloaks. Maybe kids shouldn't, so we can keep an eye on them. Kids have nothing to be ashamed of anyway. But the rest of us, my God, the things we have presided over or instigated, allowed happen or failed to make happen. Really, I'm astonished most of us still show ourselves in public. We should all be invisible and we should all get our vocal cords done too. Then the only way left for us to mess things up would be to write something down, as I am here. Writing would be the only remaining threat to our culture of ultra-discretion. A ridiculous blogpost, an angry text, a love letter to someone who doesn't love you, a ransom note to the wealthy parents of the nervous child in your box room. All of these things are likely to occur if we retain the ability to write. But I have a solution to this threat. All keyboards, pens and writing implements of every sort should be rigged with a fatal booby trap that will activate should the device detect that you are writing something other than a shopping list or a purely utilitarian combination of words such as 'out of order' - which, incidentally, happen to be the words I want engraved on my tombstone.

I'm not sure how the writing devices would be able to detect what you are writing but I'm sure some clever person out there will figure it out. I'm too stupid to sort out that kind of thing myself. My stupidity is another deficiency that is evident when I am sans cloak. My stupidity is visibly demonstrated by my clumsy gait and open mouthed breathing. I really am a pitiful sight. I look like a stupid dumbass just like you look like an arrogant jackass or a wonton tart or a violent thug or a scared little bug.

Yes, we should all be invisible, all of the time. Well, ...most of the time. There might be occasions in my unseeable utopia when it is appropriate to take off our cloaks and reveal ourselves. These would be the times when we need to be together. To share moments of visual and tactile intimacy. On these occasions we'll uncover ourselves and stand naked before each other, revealing our scars and stretches, our folds and wrinkles, our distended packages and unimpressive appendages. All of these things and, of course, our eyes. Our vulnerable eyes, staring into the vulnerable eyes of another, with no cloak, no chatter, no hoodie, no shades, no Facebook profile page to protect us. Just ourselves, completely naked and hoping not to be rejected.

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?

KEEP OUT OF THE PARK

Everybody vanishes in the park. People still go into the park but these people know that they will never return. The people who still go into the park have lost all interest in life but they are still curious about what happens when you enter the park, so they go into the park. What becomes of them, no one knows. They are never heard from again.

The park can be seen beyond its perimeter railings and through the gate at its entrance. It is tended to, but by who? No one knows that either. Some believe the park is maintained by the people it retains. Their souls are trapped in the confines of the park and they are forever its slaves, mowing its grass and pruning its hedges. That's one of the legends anyway, but that's all it is, a story. No one knows the truth. All anyone knows is that if you go into the park you don't come out of the park. 'Gone to the park', is even a euphemistic term for death for those who live near the park, like me and you and everyone else.

The government sent the army out to see what was going on in the park. This was a few years ago. Tethered troops entered the park, communicating by radio with other troops who were stationed outside the park. They went in, walked up the lane, turned the corner and then the transmission crackled, hissed and went dead and the cable the troops were attached to slackened. Seven soldiers were sent in but they left it at that. Then they sent a robot in, a kind of little remote control thing on wheels with a camera attached. There are stories about the footage it sent back. Again, these are only stories. No one knows what it broadcast before it disappeared. Those who saw what the camera picked up were left without reason and babbling word salad. They then attempted to bomb the park from above but when they sent the planes up the pilots forgot what they were supposed to be doing and returned to base with their missiles still loaded.

The park is a quiet place. It has a strange draw to it. It seems so tranquil in there. Not remotely foreboding. You'd have to remind yourself not to go in if it wasn't cordoned off with police ribbon and signs that say 'keep out of the park'. When you see the signs that say 'keep out of the park', you say to yourself, 'oh yes, I really must keep out of the park' and you keep out of the park, but a part of you wonders what it would be like to go into the park.

Another odd thing about the park is that no one knows who put it there or when. No municipal records refer to it and there are no accounts of what was there before it. Some think that it has always been there. Others think that it only seems to be there but isn't there at all. I don't know what to think so I don't think about it that much. Most of us don't like to think about the park. We all know its there and sometimes, as I've said already, a lonely or desperate soul will discretely duck under the police cordon and wander off into it, but no one dwells on the park. No one discusses the park at any length and those that bring it up quickly find the subject changed. No one ever says, 'don't talk about the park,' they just start talking about things other than the park. The park is taboo.

No one speaks of the park. No one understands the park. No one knows what to do about the park. The park is rarely at the forefront of anyone's thoughts but we all know it's there, at the back of our minds. Just outside of our doors. The warm gentle wind of a permanent early autumn. The honey glow of an everlasting twilight, spreading through its branches. Beckoning.

THICK CRIMINAL

Do you remember the time we kidnapped that millionaire's kid and it took you ages to write the ransom note because you thought it had to rhyme? You're some thick. And you kept calling it a ramson note too didn't you? You did. You thick.

And then you kidnapped yourself, remember that? You kidnapped yourself and sent a 'ramson' note to yourself demanding that you send all the cash you have to yourself to get yourself back. You thought that if you paid yourself all the cash you had to get yourself back you'd double your money. Jesus God in Heaven, you're an unbelievable simpleton.

And do you remember that time we were planning to burgle a house and you said we should burgle my house because I had loads of nice stuff? Unbelievable. You even told me when not to be in to make sure we didn't get caught. You complete dope.

And then there was the time we robbed that bank and after they handed over the money you immediately tried to open an account with the bank to put the money in. Remember that? You said it wouldn't be safe walking home with that amount on us. 'What if we're mugged?' you asked. 'There's loads of criminals around these days,' you said. 'Even we're criminals,' you pointed out. Jesus Lord MacFuck.

Then there was your counterfeit money scam but instead of using forgeries you used real money because, as you actually said yourself, 'it's more realistic'. Remember that? Remember how pleased you were with yourself for coming up with that one? And you said your favourite part of the plan was that you couldn't get caught because you weren't doing anything wrong. I was lost for words that time, absolutely lost for words. It reminded me of the pyramid scheme you set up with you as the only member. Remember that one? You said you couldn't lose.

Honest to God, how you ever got to hold a ministerial position I'll never know.

THE MAN IN TATAOUINE

Schloop schlop, off to the shop. Sausages, eggs and milk. Flip flap, back to the flat. Put them in the fridge.

I was very far from anywhere once and he was even further. Standing in a long stretch of nowhere near the Tunisian Libyan border. What was he doing there? He was just standing. He certainly wasn't going to find any figs or anything. Maybe he was a North African Harry Dean Stanton, walking off the memory of a woman. Or maybe some Crowleite who got into a spot of occult bother or maybe a Saharan demon some Crowleite summoned. Maybe just some Berber up to something but what that something could've been must've been almost nothing. All you can find is scorpions and sand until the cold night falls and the snakes move around.

Maybe he was an off-roader whose vehicle took a tumble or a refugee escaping national turmoil. To my mind at least, from a distance, out there, he momentarily became Frankenstein's monster. An existential anomaly. A slip in cosmic continuity. I once heard a baby crying far out in the ocean. It might have been some gull but I didn't see one. Maybe sometimes the Universe puts things where it shouldn't and you see or hear something in a place where you couldn't.

I'm grilling my sausages and putting milk in my coffee and thinking of him and feeling glad that I'm me. At least I'm just bored whereas maybe he's scared. I'll never forget how he just stared and stared. Maybe he was wondering what I was doing out there. Maybe he thought of calling out but just didn't dare. Maybe he thought that he was looking at Set. Maybe what I saw was an angel of death.

THE CONTRARY MAN

I have tirelessly trained and run in the most competitive of races with the greatest of athletes and, on the cusp of victory, I have slowed my pace to ensure I finish last. I have prepared the sweetest tasting meals in all of culinary history and put them straight in the bin. I composed the most stirring musical composition that ever would've been heard had I not performed it on only one occasion, in a remote and unpopulated vicinity, with my ears plugged so even I would not hear it. Every single time someone wins a lottery and does not claim the winnings, it is me. I painted the greatest painting ever painted and then I painted over it. I wrote the greatest work of literature anyone would've ever read had I not rewritten it so that every word was 'shiteballs'. I then retitled the piece 'Shiteballs'. I have invented things that would have changed humanity's course for the better had I not placed them in a locked safe and hurled that safe into the core of a nuclear reactor. I have also learned the ultimate truth and when people ask me to share it with them I tell them a lie.

I have done all these things because I am The Contrary Man. I have devoted my life to mastering the art of living and then denied myself and the rest of you the fruits of my talents and knowledge. This is my ultimate revenge on the existence that has been foisted upon me and upon us all. An existence that, for many, consists largely of suffering without explanation. This compulsory existence is the ultimate injustice and my greatest achievement is to deny the challenges set before us by learning to overcome them and then not overcoming them. I have even discovered the secret of immortality only to cremate it and when I breathe my last I want to go to the afterlife and I want God to look at me and I want God to ask me 'why?' and I want to relish the look of incomprehension on God's face.

This will be my victory but the effort has not been an easy one. In the struggle there is a small amount of satisfaction. I have learned to love the meaninglessness of it all and I have learned that the most tragic failure, when executed correctly, is the greatest triumph. I have come to understand that the only finishing line that matters is death and even that doesn't matter very much in the dribbling staccato overwhelming context of this, ...whatever this is.

AN EMBARRASSING COMPLAINT

After six years of blogging here on Fugger, I think it's time I told you about my uncle Dan and his embarrassing complaint. He fell over when he was doing a bit of gardening and landed arse first on a garden gnome. The thing split through his pants and went right up his arse crack. Pointy hat first. It really must have hurt. It got lodged there.

A proud man, Dan decided never to speak of the gnome or its whereabouts. The complaint was too embarrassing to address. He didn't fancy a humiliating trip to a health professional. A doctor might presume the ornament had arrived at its location via some bizarre act of gratification. The truth would never be believed. Dan barely believed it himself so he thought he'd just keep it to himself. He was a bachelor so he had no wife to shock when he took off his britches at night. 'No one will notice', he said to himself. 'What difference will it make?' he fooled himself.

Dan accepted the compromises his predicament brought him. Going to the toilet was complicated. Cycling was a no no. The very act of sitting down was, forevermore, out of the question. People would insist that Dan take a seat but he'd say that he preferred to remain standing. This made people feel uneasy at dinner parties and so on but they weren't as uneasy as Dan, living his life with a ceramic interloper nestled in his rear.

Although permanently on his feet, Dan could no longer stand quite straight. His posture was at a slight angle to the world. This made him feel as if he was at an existential angle to the world also. He saw other people, everyone else, go about their garden gnomeless lives, working and loving and fulfilling goals. And there he was, unable to even go swimming lest someone spot the wee man's boots protruding from his posterior. Dan felt as if he had been cast into the lowest of castes. He was an untouchable. No one could ever truly know him because they did not know the truth of his situation. Despite it all, Dan remained unprepared to risk revealing his plight in case it brought derision. Better to silently suffer with some dignity than be the subject of mockery. Concealing his degradation, Dan walked the streets with his head held high ...and with a bowlegged gait.

After a few years, Dan could no longer bear to attend social gatherings. The fact that he had a garden gnome up his arse increasingly weighed upon him. The thought of it was always there, gnawing, mocking, eroding his peace of mind. Dan started to suspect that others had noticed the gnome and were making snide remarks and innuendos at his expense. He would mishear things. Words like 'home' or 'roam' or 'comb' would be misinterpreted by his paranoid ears and he would hear the word 'gnome'. Then he would explode. 'What did you just say?' he would furiously demand of confused friends and acquaintances. Dan realised that his situation was having a knock on effect. It was spreading out from himself and hurting those around him.

Dan became a recluse. He had no choice. His became the most solitary of stations. Dan attempted to take some solace in the supposedly 'small' things in life. He tended his garden, even though it had betrayed him. He fed birds. He stared at clouds. He kept the company of animals and plants and things that could not judge him. He attempted to cultivate a kind of Zen philosophy but it didn't work out. 'How many covertly carry crosses as large as mine?' he often wondered as he saw the people of his town happily interacting. It was such a fool's bargain, the suffering of isolation Dan had chosen to endure was worse than any suffering public embarrassment could cause.

The decades passed and Dan never took a wife or pursued a career. His only achievement was keeping his stigma a secret. It was on his death bed that Dan confessed all this to me. I did not snigger as I lent my ear, although I'm sure I looked pretty shocked. After Dan said what he had to say he closed his eyes and went. He seemed more at peace than I had ever seen him. They took him from the hospital bed and no one mentioned the gnome up his arse. It wasn't out of respect that no one mentioned the gnome. No one mentioned it because it wasn't there. It must have fallen out some time previously, perhaps years before and Dan never noticed. Who knows how long there wasn't a garden gnome stuck up Dan's arse? Who knows how long Dan had laboured under his misapprehension? Turns out that the only place the gnome was stuck was in Dan's imagination.

RIGHT WHAT'S WRONG

I've invented a contraption. It's broken. When someone comes across the contraption they feel compelled to repair it but every attempt they make to fix it just breaks it more. It's addictive. The intrigue experienced when you try to repair the contraption becomes a compulsion. Soon you are muttering and moaning and growling in irritation but you won't give up. You'll stand up and walk around the contraption and consider it from all angles and you'll draw diagrams of it and make 3D models of it and perform mathematical equations based on it and even write poems about it, so fascinated by the contraption you will be. You will name it too. You'll give it all kinds of names. You'll name it after yourself. You'll name it after me. You'll name it after a country. Afghanistan maybe. Or perhaps you'll just call it 'life', after that other confusing thing you've been wrestling with and that the contraption provides distraction from. The contraption may be frustrating but at least it is not that other confusing thing.

And eventually, after you have grown weary and old and your mental capacity has diminished and your physical strength is sapped, you will look at the contraption and realise that you never even knew what it was for and you will wonder if it was even broken in the first place and then you'll come to understand that all you did was break it over and over and over again in new ways, each and every time until, finally, the contraption broke you.

Then you'll breathe your last and collapse and I'll take up your body and put it in a sack. I'll place you in the space under my stairs and then I'll wait and watch for the next person to come along and find the contraption and try, until dead, to right what's wrong.

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.

THE GUARANTEE

The following is a transcript of what I told the banking inquiry about the part Fugger played in the events leading to the blanket guarantee.

'Why did we guarantee the banks? Well that's quite a question. A fierce question altogether it must be said. Absolutely fierce hard to answer, but I'll give it a go and I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to make up some guff and pepper it with all the lingo like liquidity and all that. No. I'll be straight with you. I'll tell you the truth. The truth of it is that it's a mystery. A pure mystery. It's like a strange event. Life is full of strange and mysterious events isn't it? It is. And this is one of those events. Very much so. Very strange and mysterious. Fortean in nature, I'd even say. Truth is, we're not sure why we did it. It just kind of happened and to be honest we barely talk about it anymore. It upsets us. It was an extraordinary experience y'see and not in a good way. Not in a good way at all. It's like this, imagine if you and a few of your pals were on the way home from the pub one night, a night like any other night, or so you'd be thinking, but then a spaceship kind of thing appears and you get zapped up into it and there's aliens in there and they start sticking things up your hole for a bit and then they drop you back. Well, the whole guarantee thing was a bit like that. If aliens grabbed you off the road and started sticking mad science fiction objects up your arse you wouldn't talk about it would you? I mean, you'd be upset about it. You'd be kind of ashamed of it maybe and you might even wonder if it even happened. Well, that's what it was like for us, y'know. When I look back on that time, I usually can't really remember what happened at all. All that comes to mind is a beady eyed little monster fella sticking a mad yoke up my hole and that's my answer for you. That's what I have to say. We guaranteed the banks because it was like an alien putting something up your arse and it was very confusing and distressing and I don't want to talk about it anymore. So, we'll leave it there if that's alright with youse.

Now, tell me, can a fella charge for expenses showing up at this thing?'

The End (of Irelend).