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.

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.

TRULY IRISH

Ah sure we just can't govern ourselves. We pissed the cash against the wall and outsourced the care of our kids to an ecclesiastical paedophile ring. It's an embarrassment really. Best just to let others govern our affairs. After all, they know what's best for us. They're grown ups. They're more sophisticated than us. Just look at the clothes on them and the way they carry themselves. They have dignified poise whereas we're just a bunch of emotionally damaged drunks staggering about the place. They go to war too. They go to war to protect their interests whereas we just go to war with ourselves. It's not easy going to war to protect your interests. It demands mature deliberation. Can you see us maturely deliberating? No, me neither.

We are certainly disrespected abroad and we are probably hated. It has come time to change that. It has come time to tidy ourselves up. It has come time to have a wash and a shave and do as we're told. The time has come to cop on. And that is what we have done. That's what we did on Thursday. We bowed our heads in supplication and handed the keys of the car back to Daddy before we crashed it again. Some might extend that analogy to point out that Daddy was in the passenger seat, drunkenly demanding we overtake traffic and keep switching lanes, but that kind of talk is disrespectful. Have more respect for Daddy. After all, he's a grown up.

Some of us still live in the past and talk about risings and rebellions but supplication is the game these days. There's no shame in it. We gave the whole independent nation thing a go. We really did. But, you see, there's something wrong with us. There is something seriously wrong with us that we refuse to take responsibility for ourselves, that we can't invest in ourselves or have faith in ourselves, or even consider that self-improvement is a remote possibility. We have failed ourselves so many times that we have dismissed ourselves entirely. Quite right too.

We're very lucky that they're helping us out. We should remember that every single morning. Every single morning we get out of bed we should give thanks. They are very kind. We're really not worth the bother. We're as bad as the Greeks. Sure if the Greeks go all that will be missed is a bit of feta cheese and if we go all that will be missed will be the odd sack of spuds.

Let's get serious people. We're a joke. The people of Ireland took the right decision on Thursday for the right reasons. I, for one, am proud of Ireland. For the first time in my life I am proud of Ireland because Ireland has at last realised that it should be ashamed of itself.

Ah the auld shame, now that is what it means to be truly Irish.

THE CULT OF FUGGER

There are few patterns to be found in human experience and there is no predestination. It’s fundamentally random. Nothing is meant to be and people are neither blessed nor doomed. However, humanity has an inbuilt ability to see patterns. We noticed the seasons and the tides and all the things that have routine in this world. This led to our mastery of cause and effect. We became fisher men, hunters, farmers, and inventors. To a certain extent, we began to control our destinies. BUT, not everything operates on the principle of cause and effect and not everything has a pattern. Seeing patterns where none exist is a common flaw in humanity. This flaw is called apophenia. Apophenia steps in at those frustrating and anxious moments when we realise we’re not in control of events. We panic and begin to construct patterns and causes where there are none to be found. This leads us up garden paths. It convinces us that our futures can be read in the movements of stars or that we can be saved by rituals. Sometimes, deep down, we might almost know what the future holds based upon past observation and sometimes when we have a problem we know what the solution is. Despite this knowledge, we often still seek refuge in apophenia. Instead of facing the future (which may be challenging) we seek succour in things like horoscopes. Likewise, addressing a problem sometimes requires great effort so instead we drop to our knees and say a novena because that’s easier. But remember, God only helps those who help themselves and Fugger is going to show you, my darling reader, how to help yourself by taking advantage of apophenia. And let me tell you, we are talking BIG CASH here.

What you need to do is start a cult. To do this you first need to construct a robust but entirely apophenic (is that a word? who cares, it is now) narrative. Then you go around acting as if you have exclusive insight and that you alone know the truth (a.k.a. your narrative). This narrative should tell people what they want to hear. That is key, you tell people what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. Psychologists do this all the time: ‘You can’t relate to your kids because your Dad laughed when you were seven and fell in a duck pond now give me €400 and get out of my office’. A decent narrative, no matter how irrelevant, will make people go ‘oh yeah’, particularly if it is one that gets them off the hook of taking responsibility for their own behaviour. It’s the same with horoscopes, ‘you’re a total no-hoper because Saturn was around when you were born but give me some cash and I’ll tell you how Jupiter is going to help you next June.’

OK, so to recap, what you need to do is create a narrative and link it to the cause and effect of people’s lives whilst making them believe that you are the oracle of said narrative and, therefore, indispensible to them. Got that? Good. Now let’s proceed. The next step is finding suckers. The Internet is great for this. You set up a site, leave posts everywhere and reel them in. Then you hold a conference (charge people in but not too much at first, you’re not in Deepak Chopra’s league yet). At this conference you will find yourself standing in front of a small selection of visibly desperate strangers, the type of people who sit next to you on the bus and stink of TCP. It’s not an ideal congregation but you have to start somewhere. Remember, if you get this part right, the Tom Cruises and Travoltas will come later. Anyway, to start things off, get the assembled up and dancing about. Liberate them of their inhibitions, release their endorphins and raise their goose-bumps with some good tunes (a bit like at a U2 gig, which is effectively an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about). Then, when they are feeling good about themselves, you lower the lighting, adopt a no nonsense demeanour, and introduce them to stage one of your narrative. The narrative should always come in stages so they have to keep coming back for more and buying the books, audios and DVDs that will be available from a stall in the lobby.

Before you know it, you’ll be attracting a better class of adherent and rolling in dough. Not to mention riding any member of the congregation that takes your fancy. ‘Come with me my dear and I will show you the enlightening art of the oven-ready position.’ It worked for David Koresh (or so they say but that might have just been a narrative the U.S. media constructed to justify burning the Branch Davidians to death, who knows, we’re all at it really when you think about it, it’s called lying or public relations).

Now, one other thing I should mention is to try and throw in a bit of shame. This is optional but shame really is great. If you can make people feel ashamed of themselves you’re on to a winner. People hate feeling ashamed so if you can incite shame in them you can set yourself up as the sole source of absolution from that shame. They’ll come to you on their hands and knees and beg forgiveness for the transgression of your choosing and you’ll be in a position to say ‘I forgive thee in exchange for sweet sweet cash, now go in peace jabroni’. Make sure that the shame they feel is caused by something unavoidable. Make the follower feel disproportionate shame for farting or something that they are bound to do occasionally. Make farting (or whatever you decide upon) seem like the very worst thing a person can do. ‘And lo’ he did fart and our lord Kangerok, Monarch of the Upper Realm, did weep and despair of mankind’. That kind of thing. Got it?

So, now you’re on the road. There are of course other incredibly important elements you will need to learn in order to put your cash-generating/cult-forming plans into action but to know about them you will need to purchase my audio-listenable CD and book sets from Daphne (a deliciously oven-ready 36-24-36) as you exit through the lobby. Thanks for listening and remember, you are the master of your own destiny . . .and the destiny of others.

(Below is a perfect example of how to start a cult conference)