Be sure to call them migrants,
illegals, refugees.
Call them anything you like,
just not human beings.
In your role of keeping
the nation well informed,
warn of imminent invasion.
There’s a risk of being swarmed.
It’s an oft told story,
worn, tattered and old.
They’re simply a problem,
that needs to be solved.
So, don’t use words like people,
humans or family
lest you reveal
that children drowning
is a tragedy.
Blogs
Send them down the mines.
Primary Schools should identify pupils at risk of unemployment. This is the advice from one Alan Milburn, a former Health Secretary. I don’t know much about Mr Milburn, but I wonder at what age he sent his children down the mines to start earning their keep. He goes on to suggest that the first signs of the unemployment risk can be seen from preschool. How these signs manifest, I’m not sure. Perhaps there are nursery kids neglecting their finger painting choosing instead to get stoned or day drink. I imagine those marked for their indolence will be removed from society, liquidised and used as coolant for the data centres of the future.
Perhaps I am just an old idealist and feel primary schools should be focussed on providing students with an education for the sake of an education. Everyone being different, this level of education will also differ, but as long as each child is reaching their full potential than that is a victory in itself.
This is of course a very old way of thinking. It is too sentimental. Of course, schools are merely production lines where children learn how to become effective economic units, whilst their parents fulfil their capitalist obligations. The numbers must rise.
It’s suggested that “The Department for Education will be asked to update its pupil premium guidance to emphasise that those at the highest risk of unemployment can access tutoring and mentoring schemes using additional funding for disadvantaged pupils.” This is all well and good, but what is the plan if these offenders continue to appear destined for unemployment?
It seems an odd time to bring this up, what with the cultish devotion to the rise of AI. People gleefully declare how that’s going to be taking people’s jobs across a wide range of careers. A student may be hitting all the right marks and show a creative flair for the written word and have great ambitions to become a writer of renown. This student will be immediately branded as at risk of unemployment. Their writerly dreams ironically written off as an outdated concept. They shall be mulched and used as fertiliser in great hydroponics farms desperately trying to feed the more productive members of society as the outside turns into a sun scorched desert.
I would argue that rather than using schools to filter out those who stand in the way of perpetual growth, time and resources would be better spent trying to create more jobs for these children to do when they are of age. Or better yet, focus on changing the system that can’t possibly survive the great automation, so that rather getting every human to toil away to ensure the shareholders get their dividends, they can devote their lives to the enrichment of the human soul. Let’s face it, the more jobs AI takes the less money consumers have to purchase the products or services created by the businesses using the technology. The idea that we can continue to further enrich the billionaire classes whilst simultaneously making it harder for the majority of the population to earn money makes no sense. It’s self-defeating. Maybe we should be teaching that at school, in the hope that some clever person might grow up to solve the problem.
This whole idea fails to address one of the most deciding factors of human ‘success’ for lack of a better word. That being the luck aspect. Many people find themselves in positions based on who they know more than what they know. That’s not to suggest that these people don’t work hard, but the fact is, most of us lucked into a job, which then led to other things. Then consider nepotism. A primary-school student may look destined for unemployment, but when they reach working age may find a family member willing to give them a basic admin job in the company they own.
Then consider the idea that there may be jobs in the future that don’t currently exist now. In the 90s, if someone said they wanted to be a social media marketer, they’d have been asked, ‘What the hell are you talking about? Stop interrupting private reading time.’ There are countless, useless cretins earning money under the title of ‘influencer’.
“Mr Milburn said welfare reform would play a key role in the final report, but argued that a young person reaching the benefit system represented a failure of education, skills and health policies.” Now, whilst I’d never say that I want to see people on benefits, the idea of someone falling on this safety net representing some sort of societal failure makes little sense. For one, someone reaching the benefits system is not destined to stay on it forever, in most cases (such as Job Seekers’ Allowance) it’s a temporary boost whilst the individual… seeks a job.
It just goes to show how affective anti-welfare propaganda has been over the years. Someone getting benefits is seen as a failing of the system, rather than the idea that someone can hit hard times and still be cared for representing some collective triumph for humanity.
As a tax payer I like the fact that my money goes to into the welfare state, and I like the fact that it theoretically pays for children’s education. I don’t necessarily like the idea that it paid for this government-issued report which reduces human children to cogs of industry.
Yes, it’s important that we make it easier for young people to get jobs, but getting primary schools to question the employability of a child that’s only recently learned bladder control is not the way to do it. Invest in creating more jobs. Invest in building more affordable housing so that people can live off jobs that don’t necessarily pay huge amounts. Support small to medium, locally owned businesses instead of funnelling cash into multi-national conglomerates that don’t pay their taxes. And of course, make them pay their taxes so there’s more money to support small to medium, locally owned businesses.
I don’t really know what the purpose of this was other than, ‘I read an article and it enraged me.’ It’s just weird how rich old men have done away with any pretence and decided to just turn the world into the most outrageous dystopian nightmare.
A Talent for Bullshittery
I always believed that everyone has something they are good at. Something in which they know what they are doing, are happy to do it and do it well. I spent much of my life struggling to work out what that thing was for me. I thought it might be music, but recent events have demonstrated I am average at that. I’ve had a relatively varied career in which I’ve secured jobs purely by accident. My main role in all these jobs is maintaining an air of competence by desperately pretending I know what I’m doing.
I managed to get good grades at school despite a general lack of understanding of any given subject. I still don’t know where the mysterious 1 came from every time someone decided to carry one, but I found if I did it often enough sometimes it would work and I’d get ‘a mark’. Over time, I was able to collect enough ‘marks’ to be given a letter. GCSEs came and I did no revision, as going over things I don’t understand in the hope that I’d learn anything was an exercise in futility, and so I just winged it.
Come results day, I found I had an A in Drama, thanks to an entirely improvised monologue. Otherwise, I got Bs across the board (apart from woodwork which actually required skill – I got a D and was grateful for that), a girl I fancied was incredulous. ‘How?’ she said, ‘You did no work. You just sat there making silly remarks.’ She said it with such an air of disdain I decided a relationship was probably not on the cards[1].
After a minor mental breakdown and some self-discovery, I discovered my skill was the ability to bullshit. Riding a wave of adrenaline, I can throw out enough words to act as a smokescreen to hide my mediocrity. By the time employers work out I’m not very good at the job they pay me to do, I’ve either been there long enough that it’s hard to get rid of me, or thrown up so much smoke that nobody is quite sure what it is I do and nor can they work out if I’m doing it properly or not.
I hate technology. I hate computers. I hate people coming to me with questions. Yet, somehow, I spent close to three years working in IT support. I largely spent my days carrying around a monitor. If people saw me, they’d ask me a question, to which I’d point at the monitor and say, ‘I’ll come to you in a bit, I’ve just got to….’ I never needed to finish the sentence; people would just assume the monitor[2] and I were serving some sort of purpose. ‘Yup, when you’re free.’ They would say. The fools.
I once had on my CV that I set up and maintained an online sales division for an office. Which was bending the truth so hard I practically folded it in half. The reality was I put some office furniture on eBay[3].
I have a degree in English Literature, and in the three years it took me to acquire it, I refused to read any of the books on the modules, applying my bullshit skills to the art of essay writing.
My method was to make a statement and THEN look for a reference to back it up. If I couldn’t find one that backed it up, I referenced something shorn of context that made it look like they were backing me up.
To explain, imagine I made the statement ‘Dickens used the character of the Artful Dodger to show that poor East End Londoners are just genetically predisposed to be criminals.’ Of course, I’d find nothing to support this, but instead I might find a reference in an essay that says, ‘Some people believe that the Artful Dodger represents a certain demographic’s natural tendency towards criminality. These people are idiots.’ And I’d strip out ‘Some people believe that’ and ‘These people are idiots.’ And voila I have a supporting reference.
This is of course academically dishonest, but means I’m well equipped for a career in journalism.
Only once did I get caught out, in a module called East End Fiction. I made a broad point that East End Fiction was not actually restricted to the East End per se, because (judging by the texts and what I could hastily glean from the authors’ Wikipedia pages) the population of the East End has historically been very diverse. If anything, the thematic thread linking the texts was one of poverty. The module could have easily been called ‘Working-class Fiction’ without changing any of the content.
I submitted this essay late and significantly under the word count. In the ‘any extra comments’ section of the submission I hastily scribbled, ‘They say good things come to those who wait. They were not talking about this.’
By all accounts I should have received an immediate fail. As it was, I just got docked some marks and received an unrespectable total of 42. The comment at the bottom said, ‘It’s evident that you didn’t read the texts. However, the argument holds up.’
This talent is more a curse than a gift, however. For starters, eventually I’ll find myself in a position where words are not enough and I have to actually produce some sort of work or something of value to someone. But, as I have explained, I get into the positions I get into due to my ability to bullshit, so have no real skills or knowledge to follow through with.
Secondly, existing in a constant state of ignorance but being possessed of the knowledge of it instils an ever-present sense of dread and frustration. It leaves riding tsunamis of adrenaline, leading to crashouts that I can almost mark in the calendar.
I’ve got one scheduled for the end of next month.
Constantly not knowing what I’m doing leads to a great deal of stress and anxiety. People say I get in my head too much about things. That I tell myself I don’t know how to do something and therefore don’t do it. If I turn that around and tell myself I can do stuff, then it’ll get better.
The problem is you can’t bullshit a bullshitter.
[1] In retrospect, I have had it pointed out that I am not particularly socially aware, so my judgement isn’t the best in these situations. Perhaps what I interpreted as disdain was in fact awe and wonder.
[2] An empty box is better. Alternatively, if it’s a large company, you can stand in the server room stroking your chin and going ‘hmm’ and people think you are doing something very important and are not to be disturbed.
[3] I have since removed this as I am possessed of the ability to feel shame.
Economics: What a Load of Bollocks
Along with writing various pieces of fiction that have never been published, I have devoted a not inconsiderable amount of time to writing a non-fiction book currently titled ‘Economics: What a Load of Bollocks. This probably won’t be published either, but at least that can be attributed to the fact that, at current rates, I won’t get round to finishing it until four years after I’m dead.
One day, I happened to be reading the contents of a five-pound note[1] when I read the sentence ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of five pounds.’ I thought that was rather odd, considering it was five pounds. You see, what this means is you can take your five-pound note into a bank, and the bank will happily give you five pounds for it. I’ll be honest, it’s much less amusing in practice than it sounds.
It turns out, this statement is more a nod to the past than anything else. It comes from a time when physical money represented gold. You could go into the bank and demand your five-pounds worth of gold, at which point you’ll be told to bugger off. To paraphrase the late and great Sir Terry Pratchett, ‘The promise will be honoured so long as you promise to never ask[2].’
In reading my five-pound note, I was unable to see the rabbit hole I subsequently found my self tumbling down. Most currencies in use today are fiat currencies, the value of which are determined by public trust, government backing and the balance of supply and demand[3]. In essence, the value of your five-pound note is based on belief. It’s the age old, ‘Because we say so’ approach.
It’s made even more interesting by the fact that five-pound notes are a bit of a rarity these days. Since COVID, the use of cash has plummeted. We live in an almost purely digital age, where money is mostly digital. A given country’s finances are bits of data on a screen. It’s all smoke and mirrors, just without any actual mirrors which would at least count for something. There’s not that much smoke either.
There are still those who tout the superiority of cash, using arguments such as, ‘What if the banks go down? What if there’s a terrible catastrophe and we can’t use card?’ which, taking the above paragraph into account, is very stupid. If the modern banking system collapses, cash will have no value. The government would not be able to back the currency, because they have no banks to issue it. Interestingly, should the banks collapse, food will still grow out of the ground, the laws of physics will still apply, the Earth would still spin and orbit the sun. The only thing that would really happen, is some computers somewhere will have fallen over. And yet human society would collapse, despite nothing really being lost and nothing physically changing. Theoretically, they could just build the systems back up again and type in some numbers and say, ‘Sorry about that, let’s pretend it didn’t happen,’ and everything would be fine.
This led to me to start the book ‘Economics: What a Load of Bollocks’, which will, one way or another, be made available to one and all at some point in the future, if we manage to get there.
Still, it was when writing the chapter, ‘Economic Warfare: We Can Just Say [Insert Currency Here] is Worthless, that I got an attack of academic insecurity. What if someone asks, ‘Who is this prick to question economics? What are his credentials?’ If I were a bolder man I would say, ‘The only thing one needs in order to question economics is to take part in an economy.’
But I’m not a bold man, so instead applied for a Master’s in Economics, which led to this exchange:
University: Was your undergraduate in economics?
Me: No.
University: Have you ever studied economics?
Me: No.
University: Did you study mathematics at any point, either at Uni or A levels?
Me: No.
University: Are you at least good at maths?
Me: Not really.
University: So why do you want to do a master’s in economics?
Me: I’m writing a book on why it’s all a load of nonsense and need some academic credentials to lend it a sense of authority.
University: I don’t think we’ve ever had someone want to do a master’s in a subject in order to prove the subject is ‘a load of nonsense.’
Me: Does that work in my favour?
University: No.
The application has stalled somewhat, as they wanted to know what grade I received for my undergraduate in English Literature. I can’t remember and I don’t have the certificate because I never went to the graduation because I had no respect for academia at the time. Anyone who’d give me a degree has no business handing them out. I said as much to the person handling my request to find out what I scored over ten years ago and I feel it has not left them inclined to do so speedily.
So, in conclusion, the book will be delayed until I complete the master’s, which in turn will be delayed until I can complete the application… and until I can work out how I’ll get the £12,000 to pay for it.
[1] A perfectly reasonable thing to do regardless of what anyone says.
[2] Terry Pratchett, Making Money somewhere in the first third.
The Frog Prince
by Hubert J Watergipridget
There once was a vain and arrogant prince. He spent his time doing as he pleased, with no concern for anyone but himself. One day, an old lady knocked on the door of the castle. The guards were away at an escape room on a team building exercise. Being used to guarding rooms from the outside, they weren’t having much success. They were using the tactic of ‘trying the handle’ for the seventy-second time.
Anyway, the prince was forced to open his own door, because the servants were also on a team building day. It was poor timing and highlighted problems with interdepartmental communication.
The old woman bowed low to the prince and said, ‘Give an old woman a kiss, so she has some warmth in her heart in her final days. For my cottage is cold and I can’t afford firewood.’ This was because the crown had taken it upon themselves to heavily tax firewood as a green initiative, despite giving an inordinate amount of money to the firewood industries in the form of subsidies. This in essence meant the hard-working people were taxed twice and the firewood industries profited twice.
Anyway, the prince said, ‘Absolutely not, for you are a foul old hag with a hump. A disgusting hump that makes me want to thump it. In fact, I shall. Take this!’ And with that he thumped the hump. At which point all the magical furniture in the castle started to sing.
Thump the hump. Thump the hump.
The disgusting humpy lump.
Throw the old lady down a well
For she has an awful smell
Thump the hump, thump the hump, thump the hump!
The lady staggered back making a horrible squawking noise. She then revealed herself to be an attractive lady in disguise as an old woman with a hump. ‘That was a test, and you failed. And now I shall curse you for your behaviour.’
She waved her hands and the prince was transformed into a slimy frog.
‘You shall be a frog until you receive true love’s kiss!’
The now attractive lady ran away.
The prince lamented on how he would be able to convince a lady to kiss him now he was a frog. It would be a long journey of self-discovery, where he would have to convince someone to love him for his character rather than his looks. It would be a long and difficult journey.
Not that it mattered, for when the servants came home, the head servant saw the frog sitting on the carpet and said, ‘What a disgusting little frog,’ picked him up and squeezed him until he burst.
The end.
Analysis from Henry Pretension
This take on the classic fairy tale, as in all Watergipridget’s work, has many layers. To read his work is to play an endless game of pass the parcel where one might start to suspect there will never be a prize. The promise of a prize is simply the way the elites of a given society get us to ‘pass the parcel’ to their tune. The parcel now being a metaphor for the circulation of money perhaps. See, to read Watergipridget is to expand one’s mind to the point that even one’s metaphors become other metaphors.
There are many interesting things to comment upon in this story. It highlights the human instinct to physically attack and destroy the things we do not like. The prince does not like the hag’s hump, and so he thumps it. The servant dislikes the frog, so squeezes it until it bursts, despite the fact that the frog is his prince. There is some tragic irony there.
The fact that it is a servant who squeezes the frog prince to death illustrates the power of the working people. Once the veneer is removed from the face of royalty, revealing them for the weak and slimy creatures they are, the servant classes can crush them easily. That is not to say Hubert was on the side of the proletariat. He often defended the rigid British class system on the basis that, without it, it would be quite impossible to say who was better than whom.
Overall, the lesson to be learned from this story is: never trust women. They’ll be the undoing of us all.
To read more of Watergipridget’s work, see The Tiny Compendium of Ridiculousness
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.
Entirelyforced 