Mockrates’ rePUBlic; or, Mockrates vs the Strawmen

As an amateur Hubert Watergipridget scholar, it brings me great joy to bring his renowned Mockratic dialogue to you today. For those who don’t know who Watergipridget is, I assume you’re some sort of illiterate scum of whom the world would be better off without!

Anyway, here it is.

It always astounds me that people refer to cold as bitter and yet the idea of warmth is one synonymous with all things good. Heat is stifling; cold inspiring.

A thin layer of ice had formed on the roads and paths, sending the aged sliding to their doom or keeping them safely locked away in solitude. Nothing is more disheartening to the soul than having to behold the elderly. A man does not wish to be reminded of his mortality but rather wishes for it to come as a surprise when he’s intoxicated and, the gods willing, naked.

Trashymachus and I entered The Chequers, it’s air smoke scented. I ordered a pint of ale called Lumpy Bogsprot and Trashymachus ordered one called Party Down at Hubert’s.

What ho, said Racisites, who happened to be sitting atop a tall stool at an unnecessarily high table along with Idiotus. Mockrates will surely join us in this discussion! Racisites bellowed.

A foreboding statement where Racisites is concerned, being the sort of person who spoke much but said little, and the little he said tended to be utter horseshit. Whilst I support the right to free speech, my support for shutting the hell up is often greater. By the gods I hate him. If I didn’t have to maintain the flimsy façade of civility, I’d happily beat him to death with a snooker ball in a sock.

Having said that, The Chequers was busy and Racisites and Idiotus had a table.

You will have noticed the flags festooning the lamps about town, said Racisites with a grin thick enough for a cart to get stuck in. What is your view on them, Mockrates?

My view is blocked by the walls of the pub at the moment, said I, for I am very witty.

What indeed is your opinion of them, then. Said Idiotus who never appreciates my wit, perhaps owing to his idiocy.

My opinion is that they are flags. Made from nylon or polyester, if I were to guess.

Is that an opinion or an observation? Asked Racisites

Perhaps, said Trashymachus, your question needs refining, Racisites.

Perhaps your mum needs refining, said Idiotus guffawing and glancing about to bask in the guffaws of others, of which there were none.

Very well. What is your opinion on what they represent?

Ah, my dear Racisites, I believe they are said to represent a nation. I declared in a manner that would perhaps be described as smug, were it not for my innate and obvious brilliance.

That’s a poor answer, claimed Racisites.

It is the very answer you asked for, said I. If you wish to go further, as to what a nation represents, then it would appear you are in need of a lesson in metaphysics.

Or maybe, Trashymachus chimed in, good Racisites means what do we make of the act of putting the flags upon the lamps?

Ah, but the two are intrinsically linked and would still require the lesson. For would the intent of those putting up the flags not be influenced by what the flags represent?

They represent patriotism. Pride in one’s nationality! Said Racisites, taking a gulp of his Spanish lager.

The flags represent patriotism? I asked. So, anyone can look upon them and feel patriotic and have pride in their nationality?

Yes. Said Idiotus slamming his hand upon the table.

Even a Frenchman? He could look upon these flags and feel proud of being French?

Absolutely not, said Idiotus.

No one can feel proud of being French, said Racitides.

Then the flags cannot represent patriotism or national pride as concepts in themselves. I took a sip of my beer. It tasted like someone had rubbed an orange on a handful of loose change. And so, I went on, I cannot answer your question unless you can define your terms.

The flags, they represent Britain, they represent Englishness! Said Idiotus as though it were obvious.

Ah, said Trashymachus, now we get somewhere.

If that somewhere happens to be the middle of nowhere at all! I plonked my glass down upon the table with enough force for some beer to slop upon it. A deliberate tactic to enjoy my beer with less beer in it. For are not Britain and England distinct entities? I asked.

No! said Idiotus.

Well… technically, yes. Said Racitides

They are?

Indeed.

So, which do the flags represent?

It would depend very much on the flag, said Trashymachus, there are Union Jacks and St George’s Crosses out there.

Union flags, Trashymachus. I corrected him.

Yes, I said as much.

No, you didn’t. You said Jack, when what you meant is flag.

What’s the difference?

Jack is for when flown at sea. Flag is for any and all other uses of the colours.

Seems a pedantic point to make considering the nature of the conversation, said Trashymachus with the air of a man who was already regretting leaving his house.

We are sophists, good Trashymachus. Teachers to one and all. What are teachers beyond professional pedants?

You make a good point, as always. Said Trashymachus, for I had made a good point as always.

Let us talk of the Union Flag, for the time being. I said. For St George’s Cross raises many questions, such as why the cross of a Cappadocian knight in the Roman army came to represent a tiny island he never came to.

You say the Union Flag represents Britain, though, though it cannot by definition. I said, coolly awaiting the rebuttal I was well equipped to counter-rebut! For, I am the great Mockrates, inventor of the Mockratic method and I had carefully made a clever trap.

It’s the flag of Britain for goodness sake! Blurted Idiotus. Who was an idiot.

A flag of the United Kingdom. I replied.

It’s the flag of the United Kingdom, for goodness’ sake. Said Idiotus.

With no reference to the flag of Wales. Is that not one of the entities which is supposedly united?

Ah yes, I always forget about Wales, said Racitides.

The people with the single greatest flag known to man, and the powers that be (or rather were) decided not to include it in the big one. If there’s one thing the Union Flag represents, it is oversight! I plonked my beer down again, this time with enough force to shatter the whole class and empty it completely.

The point is, said Racisites, I believe the flags were put up in defence of British culture.

And what –

And what, good Racisites, is British culture? Trashymachus interrupted me. I allowed it in this instance, as the man needs a win sometimes.

It’s under threat is what it is, said Idiotus.

His attempt at wit no doubt. He was not a witty man. To look at him was to be aware that somewhere a sack was down one potato.

You see, said Racisites, people effectively have to apologise for being British these days. Britain’s culture is being erased. Walk down a London street and you shall hear almost every language on the planet bar English!

Did not the English spend a great deal of time and resources in attempting to erase the Welsh language? A language that is, by definition, British? Said Trashymachus, which irritated me, because I hadn’t thought about that.

What? No… I mean. It’s a silly language. I had forgotten about the Welsh. We live in the here and now and cannot feel guilty or worry about things in the past that we weren’t around to have any responsibility for. Said Racisites.

Ah hah, so we cannot concern ourselves with the actions of those who inhabited the past? I asked.

No. Would you arrest a man because his great-grandfather committed murder? Said Idiotus.

So, when it comes to assessing British Culture, we cannot allude to the past. Therefore, we should feel no pride in Britain’s role in fighting the Nazis? We should not extol the virtues of any of the ‘British’ inventors and their works, as we ourselves had no direct role in producing them? I had them here. Or at least I would have if my audience had a single functioning brain between them. Alas, what they had was a lumpy sack of prejudice among which hid a single brain cell whose soul focus was keeping them alive, for all the good their living did for the world.

Of course we can be proud. Culture is history. Said Racisites.

Apart from the bad bits, of course. Said Trashymachus, breaking our unspoken agreement that it is I who make the sarcastic remarks. One day I really ought to strike him.

I suppose, said I, it is time for me to get another beverage. Of course. This was a clever ploy to form some witty retorts for future use. As I returned to the table Racisites was unleashing another turgid diatribe.

For example, simply look at the number of mosques that are popping up all over the place. He began. Britain is historically and culturally a Christian nation. Why should we let them start spreading all this Islam about the place?

Religious freedom, one would presume. Said Trashymachus, is freedom not a pillar of British culture?

Erm… said Racisites. Yes. But…

Trashymachus had foolishly disrupted the rhythm of the thing. I had quite the retort brewing. Not wanting it to go to waste, I ploughed on. Of course, said I, my good Racisites, with your great knowledge of history and British culture, you will be aware that Britain is only culturally and historically Christian after a certain point in history. Before the Romans came, our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, worshipped their own version of the Nordic pantheon and had their own cultural practises established. But our Great British ancestors gave up their established culture the moment some foreign invaders brought with them some stories of a magic Palestinian baby. They wholeheartedly embraced this Middle Eastern import. Surely this shows that culture is a rather fluid thing. Trying to preserve culture is like standing on a beach telling the tide to fuck off.

I’d stand on the beach telling the small boats to fuck off. Said Idiotus.

As would I. Said Racisites. I’d love to stand on the beach with a machine gun and shoot them all.

And this was supposedly a representative of Great British values. A man who would preserve Great British culture, revelling in the idea of shooting children for the crime of being born on a different landmass.

Would they not, Trashymachus began, be more deserving of a place in Britain, owing to the fact that they’ve put a lot of effort and taken great risks to be here? All we did was fall out our mother’s fannies.

Traitor! Yelled Idiotus. How dare you make me think about my mother’s fanny!

The fact is, said Racisites, who seemed unphased by the introduction of his mother’s vagina to the conversation – it’s a sad state of affairs that ‘the fact is’ is often followed by anything but a fact. Very rarely does someone say, ‘The fact is, the summit of Ben Nevis is 1,345 metres.’

The fact is, Racisites repeated as though reasserting himself after a brief narrative tangent. Foreigners coming here, are often criminals and will often commit terrible acts of sexual violence!

But my dear Racisites, are you suggesting that native Britains are incapable of committing such acts. Was Britain free of all crime and a bastion of women’s rights before the arrival of foreigners?

Well, no… not exactly, but… I think victims of crime would prefer to be victims of a proper English criminal! Idiotus replied on Racisites behalf.

No… not that. Said Racisites who realised he had got himself stuck in his own trap. The fact is, Britain is a very specific thing and just so happens to adhere to the world I have created in my own head, and anything that deviates even slightly from my comfortable image, is a threat and must be destroyed. And that is why I – I mean they – put up the flags. Look at my flag, it says, this is mine. Everyone must conform to how I want reality to be or suffer my wrath!

We all fell into a depressive silence. Ultimately, this is why we cannot have nice things. For all our talk of intelligence and rationality, unique to humanity, the fragile nature of society is subject to the whims of those possessed of a dangerous mix of ignorance and arrogance.

Given the option of a truth, backed up by the evidence of their eyes and ears or the option of a false reality that allows them to revel in their worst prejudices, humanity will, by and large choose the latter.

And there you have it. The Mockratic method had once again won out. I, the Great Mockrates, had once again proven his intellectual superiority and done a great service to mankind.

We finished our drinks and went back out into the cold.

For those who wish to read more of Watergipridget’s work. You can download a collection of his short stories here.

For those who don’t wish to read more, you can go back to rolling around in your own filth, I guess.

I Woz ‘Ere

I recently clapped eyes on a piece of graffiti that took me back. For starters, I’m not sure graffiti is the popular art form it once was. It’s like seeing a cassette tape. I’m not a nostalgic person by nature, primarily because I was a perpetually confused and nervous child, so I have no longing to return to a simpler time. Childhood is only considered simple because adults assume children haven’t worked out that adults are full of shit and have no idea what they are doing. We all knew.

Still, the graffiti I saw was once popular. It was almost a meme before memes. It was so common as to be considered cliché.

I refer to the hastily scrawled statement, ‘I Woz ‘Ere.’ It rarely actually has the apostrophe to represent the missing H, but leaving it out made me feel uncomfortable. Funnily enough, when presented with woz and ‘ere, I never read it in a youthful slang way but instead with a West Country accent. As if the town was regularly invaded by farmers who wanted their presence to be known.

‘I woz ‘ere’ is an interesting one. I’d go so far as to say it’s incorrectly worded too. It’s got the wrong tense. I don’t think anyone really cares about being remembered. Not after they’ve left the area or indeed shuffled off. We are all fully aware that our lack of presence is of no consequence, especially to us, as we are usually more preoccupied with where we are. Unless we’re dead. In which case we have either ceased to exist or have ventured into another state of existence, in which case we have other more pressing things to worry about, like ghost snakes.

This kind of graffiti doesn’t strike me as done for the sake of destruction either. There’s not any malice in it. There’s no artistic drive or political meaning. There’s no rebellion in it either.

Really, all a person is saying with that is, ‘I am here.’ I’m not certain they are necessarily saying it to anyone in particular. It’s just the act of doing solidifies the concept. It’s a reaffirming statement. I am here. I exist. I am a human, and I am here.

Maybe I just haven’t been looking for it and therefore am mistaken in the belief that ‘I Woz ‘Ere’ ever went away. It’s return, to me if no one else, indicates a turning point.

The need to reassure oneself that ‘I am here’ has never been more important. We live in a strange age where our humanity has been stripped away. It’s been a slow stripping, something that happens after every gym session when my body finally realises what the hell I’ve just done and can no longer move.

Arguably, it started with Facebook. Well, really it started with Myspace, but that at least taught people some basic HTML. Come to think of it, I think I’m eventually going to conclude it started with the advent of modern capitalism, as I am wont to do, but for the sake of not losing focus, let’s start with Facebook.

Facebook, ironically branded Social Media, allowed us to start living our lives a bit more digitally. It was a slow evolution, because it largely facilitated people meeting up in real life and then sharing the photographic evidence of the meet up, lest those who attended forgot they were there (which considering this was around the time I discovered I like drinking is entirely plausible). But then came camera phones, which ultimately led to more and more selfies, which led to a greater focus on the self. Which led to a gradual distortion as to what the self was. The selfie made it all external.

Anyway, I grew tired of Facebook quite quickly, and ditched the whole thing. I swiftly discovered I stopped being invited to things, with the excuse afterwards being ‘You aren’t on Facebook, so I couldn’t add you to the invite.’

I will accept that it’s entirely possible that I wasn’t invited because people didn’t want to invite me and, by not being on Facebook, I simply offered a handy excuse. I can picture people saying ‘Imagine if he was here, talking about the stripping away of humanity. It’s never that deep bro; you’re just autistic.’

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, being detached from Facebook meant I swiftly became detached from certain friends. Facebook boomed into the monster it is today. Instagram emerged. TikTok. All manner of attention hungry apps. People in their thousands, millions even, clutter the internet with content. With images of their apparent lives, with their thoughts, feelings and opinions. There’s so much of it all the time. People have rapidly become these nebulous entities on our screens. We have no real connection. They’ve become soundbites. They’ve become disposable.

Then there’s streaming. Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, they’re all working hard to pump content into our homes. All working hard with the food delivery apps of Just Eat and Uber Eats to ensure we stay in the confines of our homes.

Every so often, something decent slips through, but by and large it’s all slop. There are some ominous industry terms thrown about these days like content not being ‘Second Screen’ enough. Social media giants hired gambling experts to make their platforms as addictive as possible. Streaming giants on the other hand are hiring creatives who can produce shows that can be followed whilst ‘scrolling’.

So, we have social media sapping away at real relationships and streaming services commodifying art and entertainment in a bid to make it as uninspiring as possible.

Then there are dating apps. Romantic relationships commodified. Once upon a time, if someone said you could subscribe to a service that flashed some pictures in front of you and you chose the ones you liked in the hope of sleeping with them, you’d have thought they were part of a weird sex trafficking cult and erupted into violence.

Meeting people has become all the harder and all the more stripped from humanity. On the off chance that you ‘match’ you have the option to ‘unmatch’ at the touch of a button. I wonder how many times, before the advent of online dating, people just wordlessly abandoned an interaction because it wasn’t ticking all their boxes.

People are reduced to profiles. They’re to be judged on a handful of photos and half-a-dozen words.

Then couple the fact that the digital world of the internet is driven almost solely by division. So many sites just want clicks. They want eyeballs on page so they can sell that sweet sweet advertising space. The easiest way to get this is to generate conflict.

Everyone is reduced to labels in all their hollow glory. Millennials, Gen-Z, Boomers, Liberals, Conservatives, MAGA, Alt-right, clinical sounding words devoid of any real meaning.

We’re all told what our labels are and then we’re pitted against each other. We must fight to the last and give no quarter. Those with different labels to us are not human. None of us are. We’re consumers. And we consume slop.

To pay for all this slop and a place to live as we lap it up, we work at screens, tap-tapping away. We have to work endlessly to keep the economy afloat. We work at screens, tap-tapping away. The emptiest of all the words deified to point of being the be all and end all of all things.

Is the content nourishing? Does it make us feel? Is there anything left behind the profiles?

Every so often, it’s healthy to remind ourselves that we are here.

Well, that got out of hand.

The Floating Cosmic Toilet

I’ve spoken about the Floating Cosmic Toilet before in a blog I’ve since deleted. In fact, back then I called it the Floating Cosmic Space Toilet. I’ve bowed down to the pedant in me and ignored the musician who felt the addition of space gave it a bouncier rhythm. The idea of the cosmic toilet references the feeling I used to get when going for a poo. As soon as that lock slid into place on the bathroom door, I was filled with a sense of relief of a more spiritual kind than the physical I would go on to experience. Once the door is locked, the world outside ceases to exist and, for all intents and purposes, I am sitting on a toilet floating through the nothingness of space.

You can make the feeling ever more comforting by taking a towel and draping it over your head. That way you can’t even see the bathroom mirror and be reminded of the concept of the self.

As a young teen, I would partake in a ride of the Floating Cosmic Toilet upon getting home from school. Quite a potent faecal expulsion would take place, owing to the fact that it would have been brewing all day, because of the age-old law that states one cannot poo at school.

This is why school toilets would often have tough, crunchy and quite sharp toilet paper. And it’s also why the cubical with gaps at the bottom was invented. If a student were to give into weakness and deign to excrete on school time, their shoes must remain visible to all, so that others may remember said shoes and, upon seeing them at a later time, give the wearer their due.

We all remember the song:

He/(she) did a poo. He/(she) did a poo.
Now you know what you must do.
Berate him(her). Beat him(her). Knock him(her) to the floor.
Abuse them till they cry, ‘I beg you; no more!’
Then scoop them up, carry them, throw them in the pit.
That’ll learn ‘em for thinking they can shit.

It was weird growing up in the 00s.

Despite the fact that regularly holding onto a poo can cause constipation, fecal impaction, rectal distention and even anal fissures (which may be one of the worst two words ever combined), we did it on a daily basis. Which often meant the after-school poo was an almost religious experience. Even the most ardent atheist would see God.

To me, the after-school poo was an important moment. The physical release reflected an emotional one, where the trials and troubles of the day were released into the toilet of the past.

As I have said, once the lock of a bathroom door is slid in place, the world outside it ceases to exist. As do the stresses that come with it. Relationship trouble? Not when you’re on the Floating Cosmic Toilet. Work stress? Not when you’re on the Floating Cosmic Toilet. And so on.

It’s why, traditionally, the act of going for a poo was often depicted being accompanied by a newspaper. Taking a newspaper to the Floating Cosmic Toilet is incredibly therapeutic. You can read about all the disasters facing humanity with the calming knowledge that none of it exists, because nothing exists beyond the realm of the Floating Cosmic Toilet. You can read about the rise of global oligarchical fascism happy in the knowledge that such a thing could never come to pass because there’s no physical reality for it to happen in.

The rapid decline of the climate and the eventual mass suffering it will cause simply becomes a laughable thought experiment, because there’s no atmosphere in which a climate can breakdown in. There is nothing. And what a wonderfully freeing circumstance that is, existing in a great void of nothing.

In short, you needn’t waste time and money on therapy, just hold in a poo for the majority of the day and take a trip through the abyss on the Floating Cosmic Toilet.

Vacuous bag of rats.

I would never wish harm on any other human being, but if someone was to beat Elon Musk to death with a chair leg, I wouldn’t be unhappy.

The annoying thing about this recent rise in animosity towards Elon Musk is that I hated him before it was cool. Even when most media outlets were praising him like it was the second coming of Christ, albeit a Christ whose father owned a share in an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa, I had my suspicions. These came to a head when people started unironically comparing him to Marvel’s Tony Stark. These people must have had only the most cursory knowledge of the character, unless they were actually being quite prescient.

You see, Tony Stark is an interesting character to read or watch. That doesn’t mean he’s a good person. In fact, he’s interesting to watch because, to begin with, he is not a good person. He starts his journey as a misogynistic egotistical weapons manufacturer and dealer with daddy issues who doesn’t consider that maybe being a merchant of death and destruction is morally dubious until he comes into close contact with the death and destruction he has been responsible for. What we then become invested in, by and large, is a redemption arc.

With Elon, we just get the first bit. Well, not even that. At least Tony Stark genuinely built Stark Industries and designed most of its output. Elon mostly just bought his way into things. He founded a company yes, but it wasn’t necessarily that successful and was bought out early on. It was only when the company that bought his less successful company out (and gave him a large stake in), did he become proper wealthy. He didn’t make Tesla, other people did, and then they hated working with him so bailed out.

The Tony Stark comparison only works if Marvel’s comics followed the titular character getting rich out of other people building weapons and then proceeded to use his death money to claim to be founder of companies he never founded. Then, at no point does he decide to change his ways, and instead uses his insane wealth to undermine democracy and use his kids as a marketing ploy/human shield.

I read somewhere that Elon was bullied as a kid, and you can really tell. He has the vindictiveness of a former victim who unfortunately didn’t get the help and support needed to deal with it, so now does his best to show everyone what a powerful and clever boy he is.

You just need to look at him standing there in his long black coat and black hat. He’s trying to project the image of cool, but it’s an image of cool someone who has always been kept at a distance of cool. If we were to make a more accurate Marvel comparison, he’d be a specific version of Spider-Man, the Toby Maguire Spider-Man of Spider-Man 3 where the Symbiote is making him a terrible person, but in an incredibly cringe-inducing way.

Notice how he appeared quite reasonable when mainstream media was forever blowing smoke up his arse? It’s only once people got bored of him and he could no longer get his weekly ego boost that the cracks really started to appear. The only people who still gave him any praise was a specific online community. A community largely made up of ignorant, xenophobic twats who treated Elon like their king. Perhaps they saw something of themselves in this vacuous bag of rats sewn up in a skin sack. This charmless, unlikeable lump of miscellaneous meat who conned the world into believing he had a brain. Perhaps they thought, If I like this man, maybe one day I too will have billions of dollars and people willing to pretend they like me. Maybe I will be able to use my wealth and influence to punish society for not treating me like the genius I believe myself to be.

Elon clung to this crowd willing to metaphorically lick his scrotum, because it was all he had. Assuming you don’t include the billions of dollars. He bought a social media platform to empower them and silence anyone who so much as looked at him in a manner he disapproved. He’s only happy when people are praising everything he does, and even his most rapid fanbase is slowly turning against him and he’ll be left truly alone.

Then maybe he’ll do us all a favour and fuck off.

Infinite Typewriters

I wrote this in a terrible rush. I have not edited it or even done a cursory proofread. Nor shall I. For this is true art in its rawest form. If you can’t cope with poor grammar, awful sentence structure, plot holes and two-dimensional characters, then the modern world is not for you.

Get enough monkeys in a room with typewriters and they’ll produce Shakespeare. That’s what people said. I was unsure whether this would be a collaborative project, or whether each individual monkey would manage it on their own. If the latter, does each monkey produce the same play or do they each produce a different one?

Of course, as wonderful as this sounds, it fails to address the fact that it would be plagiarism. Whilst the works of Shakespeare are in the public domain, there is nothing particularly impressive about copying. It’s also less impressive than Shakespeare in the fact that the Great Bard predates the existence of typewriters by a couple of centuries at least. Get a monkey to write Shakespeare by hand and I’ll be impressed. With a quill at that, not a ball-point or fancy calligraphy set.

The concept interested me enough, however, to start the Infinite Typewriters project. The name was cleverly chosen to avoid the ire of animal rights[1] activists. The capturing of monkeys for the purpose of producing a new Shakespeare play would no doubt be prohibited by international law, though I suspect it’s far kinder than testing pharmaceuticals or cosmetics.

I often wonder whether previous theorists would have been pleased or disappointed had they attempted the infinite monkeys theory, only for the first monkey to produce Hamlet flawlessly.

In the first year of Infinite Typewriters, the monkeys showed very little interest in the machines themselves. It seemed it was going to take a long time to get any results. As it is, I have all the time in the world; more on that later.

In the third year when I had a total of fourteen monkeys, they produced three chapters of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Well, more or less. The grammar was better, and the characters immediately seemed more fleshed out.

In the fifth year, when I had a total of one hundred and eight monkeys, certain factions started to emerge. The writing was forgotten and the monkeys took to killing each other. It would appear that not only would this project potentially require infinite monkeys and typewriters, but infinite rooms to keep them separate.

Ten years in, people began to grow suspicious of the declining monkey population, which of course meant I had to slow things down, allowing populations to bounce back before securing more.

Fifteen years in, I had thousands of monkeys who had produced half of the Bible and almost replicated Einstein’s Special Relativity, though their formula was E = FC[2].

But no Shakespeare.

Twenty years in and I had ten thousand monkeys tapping away at ten thousand typewriters. Their output was impressive enough for me to get enquiries from some substandard universities for guest lecturers.

Forty years in and I could no longer keep track of the number of monkeys as they kept moving about, making it difficult for me to count. I therefore had to devote some time to creating a monkey counting machine.

Fifty years in and the machine said I had 145.9 monkeys, proving my understanding of programming and engineering was significantly more flawed than I thought.

Fifty-five years in and I outsourced the thing and discovered I had nine-hundred-thousand monkeys, who were now producing accurate translations of well-known novels. Still no Shakespeare.

Jump ahead three-hundred-and-nine years and I have literally millions of monkeys working at high-tech typewriters that would automatically notify me should any Shakespeare be produced. Three-hundred-and-ten years, and it finally happened.

Two houses, both alike in dignity…

Monkey four-million-one-hundred-and-eighty-five, after eighty-five years had done it.

Word for word. Beat for beat. Romeo and Juliet had been produced by a monkey. So impressed I was by this, that I snatched up the manuscript and the monkey, and hopped into my time machine[3].

I headed back to Shakespeare’s day when he was working in London, roughly around the time he was working on Romeo and Juliet. Of course, I hadn’t dared go back to meet the Bard himself until now, mostly due to nervousness. They say one should never meet one’s heroes. What if he turned out to be a particularly dull fellow despite his catalogue of great works? What if I turned out to be a dull fellow, boring the man?

Still, I had in my hands one of his most famous works and a monkey who had written it. I couldn’t fail to impress him now.

I walked through the streets of Rennaissance London, ignoring the powerful stench of faeces both animal and human alike, mixing together to make something fouler than either one alone.

I wore a costume I had bought from a fancy dress shop, an oversight on my part, as I rather stood out. What I should have done was use the time machine to literally get period accurate attire.

Anyway, long story short, I came upon the theatre currently housing the playwright and attempted to gain entry. A rather burly man told me I couldn’t go in on account of the rehearsals taking place. I got around this rather annoying obstacle by using a disintegration ray that I had picked up from a holiday to the future[4].

The actors were indeed at work on Taming of the Shrew potentially Shakespeare’s worst play. I expected to find the Bard either on the stage himself or directing the thespians. Instead, I saw no sign of the man, though I’m willing to accept contemporary imagery of him might be off.

I saw a stout fellow acting as director and approached him boldly. It’s amazing what being in possession of a disintegration ray has on one’s self-confidence. I demanded to see Shakespeare. He said that was impossible, no one got to see him when he was busy writing, lest they upset his flow.

I declared that I must be permitted to see him, for I have a play that may interest him.

‘A play that may interest he! He says,
The greatest writer of the English lan-
Guage? You think he wants to see things writ by thee?’

I could tell he was struggling with the concept of iambic pentameter. I thrust the manuscript under his nose but still he denied me. And so, I disintegrated him. The actors exchanged half astonished, half terrified looks. Still, when I demanded to see the Bard, they were hesitant, exchanging more nervous looks, bordering on desperation.

I had to disintegrate two actors and a musician before they eventually relented. A trembling young actor with a face caked in paint took me back stage and stopped before a thick wooden door.

He nervously fumbled with a set of keys, setting one to a lock.

‘He insists on being locked away, does he?’ I asked, ‘He doesn’t wish for any distractions?’

The actor said nothing. There were tears dribbling from his eyes, washing smeary lines through his makeup. He unlocked the door and revealed the finest writer the English language – perhaps any language – has known.

Horror! Horror! I cannot tell you the pain I felt upon this moment. My heart shattered, my soul was torn in twain. For in that room, the room of Shakespeare, sat nine monkeys, scribbling away.

[1] Potentially missed wordplay opportunity – ‘Animal Writes!’. Save this for next project.

[2] I cleverly used the footnote as the squared, as I don’t know how to do it otherwise. Anyway, they concluded that Energy was equivalent to the Faeces thrown at the Speed of light squared, showing they didn’t really know what they were talking about.

[3] The machine I had created in order to run this experiment.

[4] It gets rather bleak around 2032, and humanity is eventually wiped out in 2058 when an ill thought out experiment causes the moon to knock into the Earth, sending the Earth hurtling into the sun.

On Jobs and Applying for Them

One of the many things I loathe about being a living and conscious being is applying and interviewing for jobs. I don’t understand why we have to go through with this charade. Very few people want jobs and the ones who do either want the really fancy jobs, like actor or chimp tickler. Or they’re just freaks so lacking in imagination that they need to be given dull and repetitive tasks all day every day lest their brain attempt to have a thought leading to a severe aneurism.

It’s a process I can’t ever take seriously, which has led to long periods of unemployment, searching around the flat looking for things I can sell to pay the rent of said flat which has less and less in it with each passing month. I don’t like to assume I’m better than most people, but when filling out an application form or jumping through the widely accepted hoops of this dehumanising process, it’s difficult not to come to that conclusion.

I once, in a moment of madness and desperation, applied to be a police officer. The application questions were so mind-numbingly idiotic that I can only assume the government wants to wheedle out anyone who might ask questions further down the line. One ‘question’ was ‘name a time you had to come up with multiple solutions to a problem.’ More a leading statement than a question, I know.

I answered as honestly as I could saying, ‘People should be doing this all the time. Within seconds the human brain can come up with multiple solutions to a problem. Who on Earth just comes up with one and charges in headfirst?’

The next question as, ‘Why did you choose the solution you chose?’ To which I answered, ‘Because it was the best one. Only the very foolish or the extremely arrogant would think, “You know what? I fancy a challenge today. I shall go with my third best solution and see what happens.”

Then there was, ‘Think of a time you had to deescalate a tense situation.’ To which I said, ‘Done.’

Though I sincerely hope that there is some form of training police have to go through, and the entirety of law enforcement doesn’t just operate on the basis that PC Plod once dealt with an angry drunk one Saturday afternoon.

I didn’t even get an interview, the bastards.

I once applied to be a falconer simply because the job description had the delightful line, ‘You don’t have to own your own falcon; one will be provided.’ I enjoyed the idea of getting signed onto payroll before being taken to the falcon desk. In my cover letter I said, ‘Whilst I have no direct experience with falcons, I did spend a lot of my childhood feeding the local ducks and I can’t imagine their too dissimilar.’

I didn’t even get an interview, the bastards.

One time I did get an interview for some dreary job in a grey building somewhere staffed by people with glazed expressions. At one point the interviewer asked, ‘What drives you?’

And I said, ‘What?’

And he said, ‘What are your ambitions in life.’

And I said, ‘Ambition is the worst vice of the egotist.’

And he said, ‘What?’

And I said, ‘Every violent dictator throughout history has had ambition. Every narcissist, sociopath and generally unpleasant individual is driven by ambition. There’s something terribly arrogant about the idea. This feeling that you need to make your mark on the world. We should leave the world well enough alone, it’s got enough problems as it is.’

And he said, ‘Well… it doesn’t have to be world changing. Just a personal goal.’

‘Oh,’ said I, ‘In that case, my ambition is to never sit through another interview again.’

I didn’t get the job, the bastards.

I understand you’re supposed to embellish your accomplishments, selling them in the most positive lights. Occasionally, you have to bend the truth a little. Though I often bend it to the point it’s folded in half. My CV for one job states that I set up and managed an online sales division for a company. Which is not necessarily untrue. But in reality, when temping in an office I was asked to get rid of some fans, so I set up an eBay account and sold them.

I was interviewed for a ‘Cash Planning’ job in which I was asked, ‘Are you good at maths?’

‘Yes,’ I said with conviction.

‘What’s 12-and-a-half percent of 250,000?’

‘I dunno.’

‘Ah, well you might need to do these quick sums in the job. But anyway, how are you with talking to people on the phone?’

’18 thousand!’

‘I beg your pardon.’

’12-and-a-half-percent of 250,000.’

‘No.’

‘Was I close?’

‘Not really.’

I didn’t get the job, the bastards.

I just hate the pretence of it all. I have an inability to ‘play the game’ as people say. I don’t like the game; I struggle to understand the rules. We all know learning the rules of a game is the most boring thing in life. I get the impression that it’s similar to snakes and ladders, except the ladders lead nowhere and the snakes kill you.

My birth was something I was never consulted on. If I had it explained that I’d be dragged kicking and screaming into this world, whereupon I’d have a few terrifying and confusing years to get as adjusted as I can, before being abandoned for hours a day five days a week and a temporary child prison for a number of years, before being told I’d then have to spend the remainder of my life doing tasks I have no interest in order to be able to afford food, I’d have advised against the whole thing.

Why do we have to pretend we want jobs? Particularly when most jobs can be done by a trained monkey. It doesn’t even need to be trained particularly well.

I lost my temper at a hiring manager once when I was told that I ‘clearly demonstrated a high level of knowledge and competence, but lacked enthusiasm.’ So, I could do the job that needed to be done but wouldn’t smile gleefully like a mad man. I responded that, ‘Your product is Data Visualisation Software. Who on Earth is going to be enthusiastic about that? More to the point, how do you gauge enthusiasm? I don’t outwardly display emotions because, if I did, I’d be forever screaming into the faces of one and all! Enthusiasm means nothing!’

We’re all forced to be alive. We’re all forced to get jobs. Why the hell should we appear grateful for this?

Anyway, buy this book.

It contains many short stories leaning heavily on absurdism and irony to cover up a lack of talent.

Getting a Head in Life

Introducing an extract of a short story I wrote to avoid doing any work. The premise came about when I asked the very timely question: Imagine Weekend at Bernie’s, but with the added challenge of the body having no head.

Brennan had a number of problems. First of all, he was called Brennan, which sounded more like a brand of yogurt than a man in his late twenties. He also had a very respectable job at Durantis Technologies, a multi-billion-dollar company, which, if you’ve watched enough movies from the late 90s, you’ll know is terrible. You wouldn’t wish middle-class stability on your worst enemy. Decent pay packets leading to having disposable income, large houses with literal white-picket fences, no financial stresses and so on. It’s the sort of hell Dante Alighieri refused to depict in his Divine Comedy because it would have been too terrible to contemplate. The point is, being a healthy, fairly well off and moderately attractive white man in an economically prosperous nation is tough, and more people need to understand that.

He was also working closely with the CEO, overseeing a complex and tumultuous merger with Turandis Technologies, another multi-billion-dollar company. With so many billions of dollars at stake, the stress was mounting. Some might throw out lazy metaphors such as having the weight of the world upon his shoulders, forgetting that the world is floating through space and, assuming he was underneath it (therefore in space himself), it wouldn’t weigh that much. A more accurate thing to say would be to say that he had the stress of a large corporate merger to deal with, but that lacks poetry.

Brennan stood to receive a huge bonus should everything go well, which would only add to his misery. As already established, having lots of money is bad. The working classes, crammed into their social housing and eating Spam straight from the tin and drinking gin straight from the bathtub live in enviable happiness. Their gruelling, hard and laborious twelve-hour shifts, and the challenge of paying all their outgoings makes for a full and exciting life. If only they knew the sacrifices the obscenely wealthy made to enable their happy existence.

He got into the office at seven-thirty am and put some expensive coffee into the even more expensive coffee machine. He pressed the button to get it started, situated on a panel featuring a multitude of buttons and knobs, the majority of which did nothing, but a one-buttoned coffee machine would look cheap.

Bernard Shaw (not that one), the CEO, wouldn’t be in until much later. A CEO’s time was too precious to be wasted sitting in traffic, and so he wouldn’t get out of bed until rush hour was long passed. Rush hour had been stretched out over the years, now taking up at least three and a half hours. This gave Brennan plenty of time to work on the Big Important Presentation, or the BIP as it was known.

Acronyms were important in the world of business. Time was money, so it needed to be saved where it could. The cost of extra syllables across the year could really mount up. The coffee machine gave a jovial ping, and Brennan went and poured himself a cup.

Coffee made the world go round. ‘Don’t talk to me before I’ve had my coffee!’ people would say, wide eyed and slack jawed, a thin stream of spittle dribbling from the corner of their mouth.

‘Just don’t,’ they’d say. ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’

Brennan returned to his desk and switched on his Bapple CAM. They were more expensive than PCs and therefore harder to use. Sleek metallic rectangles they were, going went ‘Boom-boom’ whenever you turned them on.

He opened the BIP. It was currently twenty-slides long. Nineteen slides too many in Bernard Shaw’s (not that one) opinion. Too text heavy… his words echoed in Brennan’s mind. Don’t use ten words where three will do… and don’t use three where one would do. Don’t use words when a noise will do… sometimes noises are too long. A gesture. Sum the BIP up in a single movement of the arm. People are too busy to be interpreting noises.

By half nine, Brennan had the BIP whittled down to three slides containing two arm gestures and a waggle of his left foot. He printed off the notes and crept into Bernard Shaw’s office. The door was made of frosted glass, the sort that could only just be seen through. Or at least it would be if it wasn’t for the grey Durantis logo running across it.

By the windows, looking down onto the city below, was an obnoxiously large desk. On the left wall was a poster containing a number of penguins huddled together with the message, ‘Penguins huddle together for warmth. However, we don’t pay you to learn facts about penguins. Get back to work!’ Running along the floor was a strip of green cloth with a small hole at the end, for practising putting.

Brennan had never played golf, on account of not being a CEO. Another sacrifice made by the corporate overlords. If they’re playing golf, there’s less opportunity for poor people to be bored to death by such a ridiculous game.

Brennan placed the printouts on Shaw’s desk. He should have left there and then, but he was taken by a sudden urge to try his hand at putting. He selected a club from a collection by the door and picked up a ball from a glass bowl. He teed up and nervously thwacked the ball. It was launched across the room, smashing a lamp.

He selected another ball and lined up the shot, giving it a hefty tap. The ball rolled into the hole. Brennan decided he was very good at golf, and would take it up if he ever became a CEO, to protect the poor people of course.

He selected one more ball and placed it on the tee. This would be the biggest shot yet, he decided. He swung the club back and heard an ominous thunk. He felt as though his heart had exploded, releasing some horrible gunge. He turned slowly, not knowing what he was going to see.

He saw Shaw, lying on the floor. Or rather, he saw Shaw’s body. Shaw’s head had rolled out of the office, through the open door he had silently crept through.

He wasn’t supposed to be in yet! Why had he arrived early?

Brennan panicked and dropped the offending club. He tapped is foot anxiously, biting down on his tongue. What to do? What to do? He heard the ping of the elevator at the end of the office. The marketing team would soon be in, and they’d see what he had done. He had knocked Shaw’s head clean off. The big merger meeting would be ruined.

In a fit of blind panic, Brennan ran out of the office, scooped up Shaw’s head and returned. He shut the world out, plonking the disembodied head on the desk. The wide brown eyes glowered at him, as if to say, ‘What have you done now, you silly silly man?’

Brennan had no answer.

If this sort of thing tickles your fancy, why not buy this book. If it doesn’t, buy it anyway. It’s only 99p you tight arse!

On Phrases

As Western society marches towards fascism, which can only lead to a more intolerant and violent world that undoes any progress made over the last few decades, I think it’s only appropriate that I talk about phrases that annoy me.

I have often been told I am too literal a person. This may be the reason I tend to avoid ‘phrases’. They annoy me. All to often they make no sense. Even quotable lines, under any scrutiny, fall apart and can be discarded to the ‘nonsense’ pile; a pile that grows ever larger, threatening to cause a landslide of nonsense, burying the village of ‘Over-stretched Metaphor’.

My theory is, once you reach a certain age, you can spout any old bollocks and claim it’s an oft used expression. ‘It takes a strong swimmer to measure a whale.’ That’s one I’ll be telling my grandkids.

Anyway, a particular memory stands out in my mind. I recall sitting in a maths class attempting to make sense of ‘the scientific calculator’. Upon getting the wrong answer to a question I said, ‘This calculator is broken!’

To which the maths teacher said, ‘It’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools.’ This is possibly the most ridiculous statement ever uttered. I’d say it’s the mark of a good craftsman who can cast an eye over his tools and say, ‘Well this isn’t going to work. That saw’s blunt. Ever tried cutting wood with a blunt saw? You’ll be there for ages, and it won’t be a smooth cut. Either sharpen your saw or get a new one.’

The phrase should be, ‘It’s a poor craftsman who, upon seeing his tools aren’t fit for purpose, says, ‘I’ll give it a go anyway, because I’m so good it doesn’t matter that my chisel doesn’t have a handle.’’

One my nan used to say was, ‘You’d laugh to see a pudding roll.’ The phrase suggests that I’d laugh at anything. The problem is, it suggests that seeing a pudding flop about of its own accord isn’t innately amusing. If I was stood in a forest clearing and saw a Swiss Roll tumble on by, I probably would have a little chuckle.

A president once said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’ And, by and large, everyone thought, ‘that’s well good. What a clever man.’ Realistically, the crowd should have responded, ‘No, that’s not how democracy works you idiot!’

He claimed to know how to run a nation, and then put himself forward for position of nation runner, asking people to vote for him. The contract there is, the people would vote for him, allowing him to be nation runner, and in turn, he’d run it in their favour. If after voting for him, the voters have to then ask what they can do for their country, what was the point in that whole election bollocks?

Then there’s, ‘The only thing needed for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.’ This is dangerously close to victim blaming. Good people have their own lives to live. They can’t constantly be on the lookout with a big stick for evil doers. Why don’t evil people just stop being evil? Could a serial killer stand up in court and say, ‘yes I did assault, brutally murder and then dismember several people, but the point your missing is that good people didn’t do anything!’

Having said that, my brain is so shit that I was once brought low by a friend telling me that the pineapple was once seen as a symbol of wealth and status, which is why the pineapple is featured in a lot of architecture, and then they said, ‘For example, there is a pineapple on the roof of St Paul’s.’

‘An actual pineapple?’ said I

‘Yeah, an actual pineapple!’ They were giddy with enthusiasm.

‘Does that mean it’s someone’s job to change it like once a week?’ I enquired innocently

They responded to my question with another question. ‘What?’ said they.

‘Like, the pineapple would rot and attract pests. Also, wouldn’t it just fall off? Like if there’s a strong wind or something. How many tourists do you think have been taken out over the years by falling fruit?’

My friend looked at me for some time before repeating, ‘What?’

‘The pineapple on the roof!’

‘No, when I said, “an actual pineapple” I didn’t mean an actual pineapple!’

Which just goes to show people abuse language, so it’s no wonder phrases are stupid. Phrases can be forgiven for being nonsensical when people don’t mean the words that they say, despite the very specific meanings of said words.

There’s just no hope for anyone.

Buy this book if you like.

On Drink

After an afternoon of lonely day drinking, I paused to reflect on how well dry January was going. As a gym going, must eat-five-a-dayer (though I consider it a success if I manage 1 and a half), I often wonder about the effect of my drinking. I’m not an excessive drinker, but I am a consistent one. On a good week (or a bad one, depending on your view) I can average 1-2 pints a day or, if I’m feeling particularly fancy, a glass of wine or two.

This is probably considered too much by medical standards, particularly in regard to cancer risks, a disease that seems impossible to escape. It’ll get us all eventually if global warming doesn’t. My local pub has a poster over the urinals detailing the symptoms of colorectal cancer, which is not the most uplifting reading material when doing a two-pint wee. Having said that, over the years medical advice on drinking has got to the point that even looking at a pint of beer is considered liable to increase your chance of some sort of cancer by as much as 5000%.

I know talking about dry January is boring, but talking about drinking is equally boring. I suppose the sad truth of the matter is most of us, when it comes down to it, are quite boring. I find a drink or two takes the edge of that realisation.

People who give up drinking (mostly famous actors who have access to fancy rehab centres and have a flock of people ready to cheer on their sobriety and millions in the bank to inject other forms of excitement into their lives) tend to oversell the benefits.

‘I lost so much weight. I sleep better. I’ve got more energy. My emotions are better regulated. I can hear the thoughts of pigeons. The leg I lost in Nam grew back.’ It’s never ending. If that is the case for drinkers turned non-drinkers, I say kudos, but just once I want someone to say, ‘I gave up drinking and have never been more depressed. My family no longer invite me to Sunday dinner. And I keep shitting myself for no reason.’ Just for the sake of balance if nothing else.

The problem is, I feel there is no greater place than a pub. If I were a spiritual man and believed in an eternal paradise, it’d be one of two things. First, it’d be forever waking up and realising it’s only 3 am, meaning you don’t have to get up and get ready for school yet (it has to be school; it hasn’t been the same since I entered the world of work). Second, it would be a nice pub. Not too busy, but enough people for there to be a decent vibe.

A pub pint is about as close as I get to a ritualistic experience. Maybe being spiritually bereft has left a hole in me somewhere. Perhaps all human beings need that slightly ethereal edge to their lives. An embrace of the otherworldly and illogical.

Then there’s the aesthetic nature of drinking. It goes beyond the pure physical pleasure of the stuff. Get yourself a perfect pint in a sturdy glass. Whatever shade your beer, be it a shimmering black, a woody brown, a warm amber or a shimmering gold, a beer is a work of art, especially with a couple centimetres of tantalising foam. A small tumbler of whisky is like a poem, distilled into a potent liquid. There’s nothing quite so sophisticated as a glass of wine sloshing from side to side with the wild gesticulation of a passionate storyteller claiming, ‘And then, I says to him I says…’

That first metallic hit on the tongue is more refreshing than anything you can imagine. If it’s whisky, the powerful thump to the chest makes you feel alive. The sharp taste of white wine makes me think I could be an ancient Greek philosopher, discussing the latest developments in metaphysics. Perhaps I’d discover quantum metaphysics. Why is there something rather than nothing? Child’s play; imagine something that is also nothing at the same time, depending on it being observed. A mellow red makes me feel like an old lord, hunkered down in his fort for winter, eyes bleary with the smoke of the fireplace.

Look, the point is. It’s either I over idealise drinking as some high experience, or I sit and listen to my own thoughts at night! Maybe drinking is healthier.

The Death of British Democracy

It’s not without some anger that I come to accept the death of British democracy. I’ll get it out of the way first, I didn’t vote Labour, so don’t think of this as a puff piece for them. I voted Green, which means that I can sit on the sidelines saying BOOO! At whoever happens to be talking, seeing as they got fewer seats than Reform and, not being populist wanks, they won’t be getting any airtime. I mean, they did the unthinkable and from the word go talked about raising taxes. I’ll never understand why taxes get such a bad rep. People complain about the state of the roads, how difficult it is to see a doctor, issues within the education sector and so on. They want more, but only if they don’t have to pay for it. It’s weird, you’ll find a lot of people are willing to die for their country, but very few willing to help fund it. Life, it seems, is cheap.

Labour won the general election by a landslide. However, they haven’t brought about a utopia within their first six months of power, so therefore people have set up a petition to have another election, seemingly unaware of how elections work. I would hope, in the name of balance, if they did have another election and within six months the national debt hasn’t been blasted away and every UK citizen given a meat hamper, these same people would be calling for another election. Michael Caine even signed the petition, which is a shame. One, because he’s a super rich actor who will not be affected one way or another whatever happens, and two, he’s in his 90s. He’s likely to die soon and it’d be up to the still alive to clean up the mess.

It’s a sad time to be a citizen of the United Kingdom, what with people claiming that Nigel Farage is very charismatic. Presumably, these are the sorts of people who’d classify flour as a spice or The Macarena as some sort of avant-garde jazz.

Believe it or not, I’m happy to have been born English. On the whole, it’s been something of a privilege. I’ve known this ever since a teacher starting banging on about WaterAid in year 3. “Some people don’t have access to clean water!” she rightfully, chastised me and several others after we started an impromptu water fight. The joke was on us, as we did it early in the day and had to sit in a wet uniform.

It’s just sad to watch people cling onto this notion that the UK matters anymore. The country had its time and it’s over. It’s an old and largely impotent nation now and, believe it or not, that’s a good position to be in (figuratively speaking of course, I now regret my choice of words). We sit in relative wealth (on a national level, there is are many living in poverty within the UK I know). We have a lot of comforts that we can sit back on and just enjoy the ride, but nationalists will be nationalists. They can only be satisfied when cheering on achievements they had nothing to do with.

It astounds me that so many people have been taken in by his nonsense. Lots of people seem to think, without irony, that he represents the common man. This anthropomorphic toad who’d be considered an unbelievable caricature in a Dickens novel, spouting his empty, populist drivel.

I’m no stranger to populism. I once got myself voted onto the student council by promising to extend lunch by an extra forty minutes and, if students weren’t 100% engaged in a lesson, they would get their money back. When the teacher challenged me with sensible questions like ‘what money are you talking about?’ I contemplated blaming the immigrants, but wasn’t too sure what one of them was at the time, so played it safe just by dismissing her as being part of the Woke Agenda. The chaos I tried to inspire was mostly her fault by making applying to the student council compulsory for the whole class. Like every politician, my promises were left unfulfilled and the status remained quo.

Because that’s how it works now. Say what you want, for there’s no being held accountable. There are no consequences for lying. General bigotry is not only tolerated but championed under the banner of ‘free speech’. You can even tank a nation’s economy and be rewarded with a book deal and a career in public speaking.

Once upon a time, when shady foreign businessmen tried to influence a democracy, they had to do so discretely. They had to operate in a way that gave them deniability, perhaps through shell companies. Now they can just come right out in a public forum and state their intention.

I don’t know who I hate more between Elon Musk and Nigel Farage. I’d like to hit both with a plank of wood (I’d like to, but I wouldn’t – I state this because I know Farage is still upset about the battery acid comment. This a man who brushes off allegations of singing Neo Nazi songs as a younger man). I think Farage has the edge, because I get the impression Elon’s nonsense stems from a deeply entrenched sense of insecurity.

He’s had a hair transplant for goodness’ sake. A man who is comfortable in himself just goes bald. They shine their head to the point it could blind any would-be attacker or wild predator. Notice how, not so long ago, Musk was often touted as some great force of good in the world. He was considered the Oracle, a technological guru. Some would, without irony, say he was the real-life Tony Stark[1]. All of this no doubt went to his head. It made him feel good. It’s as if he suffers from an external sense of self. He needs constant reassurance that he is something special. Over time, whether it had anything to do with him or not, his name became less favourable. If this were a story, this would be where it’s said that the people turned on him. But instead, for a man with a fragile ego, it was even worse. People lost interest.

The only people who still talked about him as if he was this great visionary were the perpetually online. The sort of people who explode under direct sunlight. The sort of people who aren’t doing to well at life and blame everyone else for that. But they still stroke his ego, and so he nurtures them as best he can. He’ll appeal to the worst of humanity because at least they’ll say nice things about him. He’ll keep spouting nonsense and manipulating his X platform to maximise the likes and shares of his own words so he can keep his head above the waterline of self-doubt and insignificance. It is sad to watch[2].

Farage on the other hand, is just a dick.

A self-serving, snake of a man who will say anything at all to slither into power, whereupon he can make money. He’ll chase the money offered by Musk, because money is power. He’ll join Musk in spelunking through the caverns of Trump’s anus because he’s a little, weak turd who knows he’ll need to ingratiate himself with stronger allies if he’s to ever succeed.

And the media will help him do it. Because journalists are scum desperate for clicks. They used to speak truth to power but now they peddle lies and division for advertising revenue. In their relentless pursuit of eyes on page, regardless of methods, ironically blinds them to the fact that they are eroding the very foundations of democracy. Only an informed populace can truly engage in democracy, a deliberately misinformed one is just playing a game of Us vs Them, a simple game that often ends with a big old war and many lives lost.

We’re sleepwalking towards our doom. Farage will get in, and strip away everything we’ve built. He’ll undo all our progress and continue to pollute and destroy, all in the name of wealth. The posh and the wealthy will back him, because they stand to gain. Those with nothing will back him, because people often vote for chains, thinking they are for other people. They’ll cheer as they’re led to the slaughterhouse.

To quote one famous senator ‘this is how democracy dies; to thunderous applause!’

If you want some cheering up. Read this silly book. It has five stars. The most stars you can conceivably receive.

[1] In the MCU and in many comic book storylines, Tony Stark is an incredibly flawed person. He is arrogant, bordering on narcissistic with deeply ingrained daddy issues. He thinks he can get what he wants by throwing his money around. He’s a war profiteer! It takes witnessing the terror of war up close to set up a chain of events that leads to personal growth, which ultimately leads him to be a better person. It’s a satisfying arc. Tony Stark is interesting to watch or read, because he is fictional. In real life, for the most part, he’d be unbearable.

[2] Of course, I’ve never met Musk and have no background in or respect for psychology, as it’s a social science and can therefore be disregarded.