Mills & Boon For The Anti-Capitalist

The room is lit with candles; shadows dance through draped silk and give depth to the polished figures carved deep into the oak of the four poster bed. The sensual musk of anticipatory sweat rises from my prone figure; my heartbeat fills me with the ocean-sound of pulsating blood. The sugar-rush of lust knots my body as I hear the footsteps reaching the door.
With silent motion, the door opens... for a second the candles flicker; the light revealing a staccato image of the Latin beauty before me; her breathing slow and deep; her eyes focussed with fire and intent. Monica Bellucci. Monica Bellucci... her name washes over me and pricks my skin with needle-tips as the animal within pulls taut against the shackles of self-control. Her curves are gripped by my imagination, her dress lifted by my minds-eye to reveal pure skin teasing above stocking-tops. An orchestra of prescience builds to crescendo as, small step by small step... she moves to me... the floor now a catwalk of lucid female flesh.
Her breath on my neck. Warm and deep. Her hair teasing the honey-soaked sensitivity of my bare chest. I turn my head to the glass of the window; the framed reflection narrating the scene... I am voyeur to my own fate; the sight of her curved figure kneeling above me stirs my masculinity as a waking beast... I focus... my eyes pushing through the reflection to the world outside...

My heart almost stops as my pupils dilate to the vision in the street below.

Is that a fucking Nissan GTR!? The new model with improved torque-curve? Sorry about this love... give me thirty minutes, finish yourself off and I’ll bring you up a sandwich when I get back. Egg & cress? Smashing. A fucking Nissan GTR!..

Think I’m joking? I’ve paused on more than one occasion when I’ve been in the throes of love to savour the sound of a car or motorbike going past with the throttle open. It’s a terrible thing to admit, but if some sadistic bastard were to offer me one night with Monica Bellucci or one night with a Nissan GTR, I’d be smoking the tyres of Nippon engineering before the dark temptress had the time to remove her unfeasibly tiny undercrackers.

Which leaves me with a quandary. Because at the root of my love for fast cars sits a dark and depressing reality that chews at my every fibre.

Materialism.

Now, I could sit here arguing that my love of fast cars stems from the instinctive masculine desire to hone my skills of spatial awareness and engineering brilliance, but that would be like saying that I appreciate porn-harlot Jenna Jameson because she has good child-baring hips.

And she may well do.

But in reality, both the GTR and Ms Jameson would be a cheap thrill to satisfy the ego. Neither would provide me with a lasting experience with depth or meaning. And come to think of it, they wouldn’t be cheap either.

If you want to get contrived about it, you could argue that sauntering around in the car, or hanging-out-the-back of the blonde filth-meister would improve my social standing in a Machiavellian context, but this only bolsters the fact that this would make me a self-serving arsehole, regardless of the purportedly positive weight that Machiavellianism holds in certain areas of current social philosophy (mainly ones involving money). It wouldn’t improve my quality of life as a nuts-and-bolts modern human-being. And if you think of the amount of time, energy and materials that go into making that car or the deep sense of a wasted-life that will hit Ms Jameson when her fanny finally dries-up, both scenarios actually end up doing far more damage than any ego-hit for me could possibly justify.

And right there – badly illustrated with my finger-daubed blurb – is the problem with a materialistic society: Unjustifiable acquisition and the patently obvious harm it causes.

Basically, most of our materialistic urge comes from a need to satisfy the ego. The more attractive an item is, the more we get to pseudo-wank ourselves into a self-loving frenzy, or flex in the mirror when we finally purchase it; which was probably handy back in the days when basic acquisition meant that we could successfully feed our family, or keep ourselves safe, or obtain a way of reducing the risk of dying prematurely. Our ego gave us a big-fat dopamine reward to tell us that we were doing the right thing. We were genuinely improving our lot and our biology had evolved to tell us so.

So, what happens when these tools for a better life become incredibly inefficient, mass-manufactured goods that do little for us outside of the provision of an ego-hit? Well, Darwin gets another gold-star as he proves that the unfit die on their arse.

Think about it – there is little less economic than the western model of economics. We build stuff to break. It is an intrinsic part of capitalism; the need to make people buy more and more shit. The need for items to have a clearly finite usefulness. Sure, we have the ability to make items that would easily last a lifetime, but no business would make money if they sold an item that would never need replacing. The ubiquitous business model is to design obsolescence into goods, so that you keep going back and buying more. And on top of this, we hold back on selling the most up-to-date technologies, so that we can either design inferior products which are then pushed at lower price points (usually in the name of consumer choice), or so that businesses can future-proof themselves in the knowledge that they will have something saleable in 10 years time – which, by that time will have been superseded by newer technologies, and so the loop goes on.

And if you think about how the majority of items are made, it’s usually a single component within a complex product that goes kaput. Yet we throw the whole bloody thing away if it’s not cost-effective to fix.

The upshot is that we are consuming thousands of times more resources than we can possibly sustain. We are both literally and figuratively murdering the human race by sitting at the buffet and snorting up all the vol-au-vents whilst our kids look at us with a starved look in their eyes - and the caterers have buggered off, never to return.

EVERY life system on the planet is on the decline. This is a scientific fact. Every peer-journal over the last few decades has confirmed this, and also the fact that this is a human-led problem - a by-product of our greed and stupidity.

So, I have made a pledge to myself that every time I walk past a Nissan garage and get the idea that I must start the pointless addiction-led route towards the 60 grand I’d need to buy a GTR, I imagine that with every pound I save, a starving kid finally wastes away.

Sad thoughts maybe... but it also means that I run the chance of actually reaching orgasm on the day that Monica Belluci finally realises how sexy I am.

Dee.

The Apple Monkeys

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful orchard.

And in this orchard lived some monkeys. The monkeys loved their orchard. It was a simple life, with each day full of play as the monkeys swung from branches, or basked in the sun that broke between the leaves. But of course, it wasn’t all play. A few times a day, the monkeys would have to stretch out an arm and pick a juicy apple to eat, or take a few apples to the monkeys that were too young, or had fallen from trees and hurt their tails, or were simply too old to swing anymore. And of course, the occasional stray bear would enter the orchard and take a monkey for its tea. But all in all, monkey life was perfect. It was exactly how monkey life should be.

But, one day, sat at the base of a tree was a sly monkey. As he looked up at the canopy, he noticed that the most successful monkeys were the ones who were strong enough and smart enough to climb to the top of the tree and fetch the juiciest apples. And being the nasty monkey that he was, he watched with burning jealousy as these leaders of the troupe would share the juicy apples and get laid. He knew he was too lazy to climb that far, and the thought of sharing any juicy apples made him dizzy.

So the sly monkey hatched a plan.

During the night, he dug a pit in the middle of the orchard. As the sun rose and all the monkeys came down from the trees to stretch, one by one they fell into the pit, until the whole troop sat at the bottom, rubbing their eyes, wondering what had happened.

“My fellow monkeys” yelled the sly monkey from the edge of the pit, “today, I have saved your lives! I have discovered a way that will keep you safe from marauding bears and will allow us all to eat the juiciest apples from the top of the trees. We will build walkways that cover every inch of our orchard, we will construct platforms that mean you no longer have to climb to get there and we will make a single gateway to your new home in the ground. Around the edge of the pit we will sharpen sticks, so that no bear can possibly come in.”

The other monkeys listened and thought about what the sly monkey had said. It was hard work to climb the trees. The orchard was unsafe from climbing bears. If they only had to walk to get their apples, they would save themselves a huge amount of effort. And the pit wasn’t so uncomfortable, and was surely a whole lot better than being eaten. What a good idea!

As they applauded their new leader, he set out the plan for them. They would leave the pit once a day and each be given a job to do. Some would cut down trees from the edge of the orchard for building materials, others would construct the walkways and platforms; the remainder would collect the apples which would be stored at the edge of the pit and shared out at the end of the day by the sly monkey.

Soon, the plan was in full-swing. The orchard filled with complex structures; wooden paths led throughout the trees, the air filled with the sounds of the progress. Monkeys would file throughout the branches high on the walkways, picking every apple they could see before returning to the pit where they would lay their spoils at the edge, ready to be given out before bedtime.

The sly monkey sat at the edge of the pit, drunk with his new power and bloated from eating the finest apples which he would steal at the end of each day. And with this choice of riches, he too could finally get laid. Life was good.

At least, life was good for the sly monkey. By now, time had passed and the troop had all but forgotten about life in the orchard before the progress had started. They led, cramped in the pit, their bodies unfit from gorging on apples and no longer swinging through the trees. Every now and then, one of the old leaders would feel the instinct of leadership and fight for a more comfortable spot in the pit, lashing out at monkeys that got in their way. Younger monkeys would struggle with the knowledge that no matter how hard they worked, they couldn’t sit on the edge of the pit like the sly monkey and would riot with frustration until they were forced into a corner and starved of apples as punishment. Others would look at the twisted framework that now littered the once beautiful orchard and feel the urge to swing through the barely noticeable branches, but would soon forget their wish when they were led out to work for hours each day. And others would sit in apathy; their instinct to swing so powerful that their hearts would break with the knowledge that this would never happen. These monkeys were the saddest of all.

And if any monkey ever questioned why this life was so hard, the sly monkey would sit at the edge of the pit and tell them stories of bears; of horror and death and blood and guts and of times before the progress, when monkeys had nothing – no pit, no walkways… no real leader who would sacrifice for the common good of the whole troop. A monkey whose motto was: An Apple For Every Monkey.

But just as the last memories of the once beautiful orchard were swept away, one monkey took a deep breath. His nose filled with the smell of rotting apples falling from the edge of the pit. The sly monkey couldn’t possibly throw all of the apples into the pit at the end of each day – there were far too many for the troop - so the now curious monkey wondered if collecting this many apples was such a good idea. As he pondered this, he also thought about the orchard and how each passing day it was getting smaller and smaller; the trees being used as wood for the progress. This seemed extremely silly. Why build more walkways? There were already far too many apples collected than could be eaten – most were going to waste. But at this rate, the orchard would disappear and there would be no apples at all! And there had been not a single bear through the orchard in months… in fact, he had never even seen a bear; it was only the sly monkey's stories that kept him in fear. Why have all this protection when there were no bears to get in!? If anything, the spikes at the edge of the pit were more useful in stopping monkeys getting out…

And at that moment, as the curious monkey looked up at his smirking, bloated leader sleeping at the edge of the pit, he understood.

He stood up, his tail unfurling, his fur standing on edge, his mouth dry with the anticipation of telling everyone what he had learned.

“Wake up!” shouted the curious monkey with his arms in the air. “Wake up my friends! I have something of great importance to tell you! Wake up and learn that this life we lead is not a monkey life! Wake up and see this orchard for what it really is!”

As the troupe slowly roused and turned with puzzled faces, the sly monkey shuffled uneasily next to the piles of rotting apples. He edged forward at the lip of the pit, his hand clutching a particularly large and juicy apple which he aimed at the back of the curious monkey’s head. His feet clutched into fists as he waited for the curious monkey to say his piece… he could feel that his reign was soon to be over.

The curious monkey began to talk, his voice filled with passion and vigour. He told them of swinging through trees, of freedom to climb and to play. Of the disappearing forest, of the destruction that the progress was doing, of the wasted spoils of their labour, of the disparity in sharing the wealth, of the lost instincts of monkeykind and of the servitude to which they had succumbed…

The light of morning broke in tangled shafts to the orchard floor below, the haze of day filling the air. As the beams touched the curious monkey, his fur glistened with dew and perspiration, outlining him in a halo of golden sparks. The sly monkey raised his hand to throw the fatal apple... and paused… he knew it was over…

And a voice broke from the troupe; now sat and alert with mouths open at the spectacle before them. It rippled through the crowd in a slow wave, building strength in an unrelenting blast until it struck the curious monkey like a cold rush of winter air.

“shut up and lie down. You think too much”.

The Lotus Position: It's not About Shagging in a Sports Car.

Let’s build a person.

Let’s make them articulate. Let’s give them a bookshelf filled with lefty tomes, feminist literature and Lonely Planet guides. Let’s subscribe them to Amnesty International with a £5 monthly donation. Let’s cover their bedroom in dream-catchers, fabric drapes sourced from a Bedouin trader and a wall adorned with postcards depicting ying & yang or quotes from Anais Nin. Let’s give them the propensity to buy organic foods. Let’s give them a smattering of creative flair. Let’s give them a bi-monthly trip outside of their urban environment to connect with nature. Let’s give them the ability to understand the basic dictionary understanding of ethics just in case it pops-up in conversation.

With me so far? Good. Let us continue and make them a familiar western creature.

Let’s give them sparkling neurosis. Let’s give them a validation complex. Let’s give them a large glut of vanity. Let’s give them a bulging bank account ready to deck-out the 4 bedroom Bovis home with marble statues of Buddha. Lets drape them in clothing that costs more than the average total-wealth of an African villager, but looks ‘ethnic cool’. Let’s educate them enough in spirituality and morality to help offset their raging guilt when it’s made perfectly clear to them that they are – in fact – a knob.

Oh, and let’s give them a scarf. We mustn’t forget the scarf.

Okay, we’ve finished. So, now let’s all stare with fiery judgement at our newly forged Champagne Hippy. Sorry, I typed that incorrectly. I meant to say fucking Champagne Hippy.

Jesus Haych; please stop me from chewing off my own tongue when I read those words. As a fully paid-up member of club-cynic, I have an innate ability to dislike the majority of you. But the Champagne Hippy (sorry – fucking Champagne Hippy) has a unique pedestal of my hatred to stand on, which – if I had the choice – I would stand underneath and shake violently or set on fire until they plummeted to the ground; leaving nothing more than a sticky pool of half-digested chickpeas and corduroy.

General arseholes can be forgiven for simply not having the opportunity to know better. Your average weekend piss-head will smash windows and sing Beyoncé songs full-bore at 3am because they are utterly frustrated with their lot in life. I mean, I’d do more than kick-in the door of Greggs the Baker if the entire sphere of my existence was a 9-5 job as an estate agent and catching a different exotic urinary-tract disease each Saturday in an alleyway behind Wetherspoons. We can put this ubiquitous stupidity down to social environment and the lack of real education prevalent in a culture such as ours. But the fucking Champagne Hippy has - at the very least - a working knowledge of ethics, yet bloody chooses to live a contradictory existence that uses clichéd morality as a cleansing-lotion.

And at the top of the fucking Champagne Hippy pyramid stands the fucking Spiritual Champagne Hippy. Possibly the most annoying of creatures ever envisaged by a groaning universe, this subset of utter bastards can be frequently found dousing themselves in patchouli whilst sitting opposite a gold-encrusted shrine, meditating on a cushion with such an ornate detail that the Indonesian child that made it has to spend their diminutive wages on cataract and arthritis treatment by the time they hit 30. And I’m not even going to mention the pissing joss-sticks.

Usually, the fucking Spiritual Champagne Hippy will have a self-confessed affinity to Buddhism – you know, the bastardised philosophy that has been murdered over the course of time by people selectively taking its teachings and using them as an excuse to sound sanctimonious and smug whilst chowing-down on Waitrose Fair-trade pickled-onions at dinner parties.

To any fucking Spiritual Champagne Hippy reading this; here are the hardcore basics. Buddha did this a little while ago after many years of self reflection, but it obviously didn’t get through. He never had a blog. So I’ll state the five precepts in my own little way in the extremely vague hope that you grow a pair and actually live by them. Either that or you put away the pan-pipe CD’s and oust yourself as the excuse-ridden, guilt-laden, materialistic arse that you really are.

‘I will be mindful and reverential with all life’.
This doesn’t mean that you simply draw the line at waxing lyrical about dolphins caught in tuna nets. It means that you have respect for those poor bastards who live in the tenement block down the road, who can’t afford clothes for the kids because you help perpetuate a society that devalues welfare and rewards profit.

‘I will respect the property of others, I will not steal’.
This includes exploitation. You know; that thing the company you work for does when you sell needless shite to people who’ve had their self-esteem bludgeoned by your marketing campaign.

‘I will be conscious and loving in my relationships’.
This one is simple really. Firstly, don’t feel proud about that situation during your gap-year travels to Botswana, when you knobbed that person who looked at you like a God for the duration of your time together, but died a little inside when you told them to fuck-off for being clingy after you’d finally come. Also, it is not cool to have an open-relationship, no matter how ‘contemporary’ it makes you feel. But most importantly, it means that you should never ruin the happiness of someone you are close to for your own personal gain. Even if they burn the lentil bake.

‘I will honour honesty and truth, I will not deceive’.
The implications of this would be SO mind-bending to you right now that if I explained how this relates to you and your life, you’d explode in a cloud of indignation and demonic laughter.

‘I will exercise proper care of my body and mind, I will not be gluttonous nor abuse intoxicants’.
Gluttony includes that designer handbag and the expensive trips to five-star yurts with the hand-woven ‘rustic’ bed-linen. Do I need mention the wine suggested by Oz Clarke that you keep in a false-aged wicker wine-rack?

So there we go. Buddhism 101. Now that you know how the whole thing works. Ish. It obviously runs a whole lot deeper than that. But now that you have the general gist don’t you dare open your gob about your spiritual ‘connection’ with humanity if I can see a Coco Chanel label or a Mini convertible parked outside. That’s like talking to me about your understanding the painful plight of the third-world whilst beating a Cambodian to death with their begging-bowl.

Now, I’ll be very surprised if any fucking Champagne Hippy has read to this point. They’ve probably retreated to the chaise-longue where they will discuss my bad language whilst valiantly thinking of excuses why I’m ‘obviously wrong’ to avoid having to self-reflect. And fair play to them. Who would want to have to reinvent their life from the ground-up because some jumped-up little prick with a laptop and colourful vocabulary has pointed-out the flaws in their existence with a 1000-word swear-fest? After all, they have a large enough social group to find comfort in each other when they feel threatened – a group of people who will sagely nod in agreement at the ‘injustice in our world’, then open a bottle of £30 Chablis and have a pissing contest about who spent the longest time in a kibbutz when their parents finally released their trust-fund.

I’d have switched off after the first paragraph.

More fool you if you didn’t.

Dee.

How to Alientate Your Entire Readership: Atheism is the New Religion.

The Poor Widow's Offering.

While all the people were listening, Jesus said to his disciples, "Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at banquets. They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely."

As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. "I tell you the truth," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."

Luke 20:45-21:4

And that was me in the corner. That was me in the spotlight, losing my religion. To coin a lyric that probably doesn’t make all that much sense in this context.

Don’t take it too literally and we’ll be fine. ..

I must’ve been about age 6, sat in my Sunday best, quietly thinking about He-Man as a lovely old vicar explained the parable of the widow to a congregation who were in turn thinking about their rickets / the football scores / dealing with the arse-itch that only appears during silent moments in crowded rooms.

So, after picturing Battle-Cat diving off a cliff to bite Skeletor on the face and He-Man jovially dancing at the prospect of no longer having to put-up with being attacked by a bony-faced squealer every time he went to the shops, a slow trickle of clarity entered my little mind. The vicar’s words seeped through the multicoloured cracks of my childish imagination.

The pew I was sat on looked bloody expensive with its intricate carving and deep, waxed lustre. Poor Jesus - hanging there in a mid-YMCA dance-off - was covered in gold leaf; this also looked bloody expensive. The stained-glass window looked infinitely pricier than the three-inch-square door panel that I once smashed for an over-exuberant ‘trick’ during a fateful Halloween excursion. And my Dad explained that replacing that was ‘bloody expensive’. As did the policeman.
In fact, the more I looked around the Church, the more I came to realise that the money we were asked to donate at the end of each service was being spent on making this place look like an incredibly opulent fairground house-of-horrors. Which would’ve been fine if a gore-covered Joseph of Arimathea leapt up from behind the alter during each communion to scare the living bejeezus out of the kneeling masses, before throwing the ‘body of Christ’ at the congregation in the form of dismembered body parts. But this didn’t happen. And I lived in a freezing terrace with a coal fire and was sustained via a diet that consisted of stew, stew and the occasional curry (stew with curry powder in it); so my disillusionment with organised religion sat down, crossed its arms and made itself entirely comfortable.

It wasn’t so much the inequality that bothered me; more the contradictions in the above parable. Firstly, this old lady was giving her money to a temple when Jesus himself was basically saying that accrued-opulence breeds wankers. Jesus then goes on to condone it. If the ‘lawmakers’ were to be distrusted, why give money to a religion that sets ‘law’? Ipso facto the Church then becomes opulent and therefore as distrustful as the wealthy folk he’s criticising. And before you start thinking that a six-year old couldn’t interpret such things, believe me when I say I was a smart kid. Only ONCE did I get a piece of Lego stuck up my arse. Well, okay, there WAS a dinky traffic-cone / nostril incident, but it was all in the name of science. And I probably didn’t discern such thinking via the smart-arsed wording used above, but I certainly had a grasp of the implications.

Maybe it’s counter to standard expectation, but it was at this point that I started to listen to the readings at church. I also spent time reading the bible. The more I read, the more I actually began to understand the concept of the good Christian, and how every single Christian I had ever met had missed the point entirely.
As much as I knew that these people were decent (they were heavily involved in charity work, used to run a meals-on-wheels service, organised bi-annual collections of clothing to ship to Africa), their ‘goodness’ was only ever displayed through their attachment to their religion. They could only work through the cultural collective - ‘in the name of Christ’ - and the rules dictated by it. Not once was humanity mentioned as a stand-alone reason for them to do anything. The religion was the primary objective – a self-imposed segregation that had a tendency to condescend anything outside of itself. Which is entirely un-Christian.

Now I could go on about the negative aspects of Christian thinking (views on homosexuality, reluctance to accept scientific discovery, etc.), but if you think about it, we’re talking about a book based on a 2000 year old philosophy. It’d be like criticising Pythagoras due to his admission that he could ‘write on the moon’. As silly as this statement is, it’s based on his naive understanding of the universe over two millennia ago. It takes nothing away from the brilliance of his theorem. Same goes for Christian philosophy. It misses the mark occasionally due to outmoded understanding, but is sound in its general focus of being nice to each other.

The problem we have is that a good idea is taken, beaten, reshaped, packaged and pitched to become something entirely different and of less use; usually due to a rather unsavoury motive.
It’s like taking a piece of Soap-bark from a tree to wash with. Then adding ammonium lauryl sulphate, glycerine, citric acid, sodium benzoate and perfume, packing it in a lime-green bottle shaped like a thigh and calling it something like ‘Elvino-Lushsalon’. And charging £5 per bottle for an allergic reaction. The original purity is lost in a swathe of added nonsense.

My analogy is closer-to-the-mark than you might think. The motivation for the organisation of religion is not much different to the motives used in corporations. The hierarchical structures are exactly the same, and almost all ‘mainstream’ religions have their workers (church goers), middle-management (priests) and CEO’s (bishops). Also, as with corporations, the original idea of ‘providing for the people’ gets lost in the haze of money & power. Organised religion is the politicisation and manipulation of philosophy for the sakes of control, power and wealth.

Now I really don’t want to sound like I’m Christian-bashing here. The same naivety can be applied to anyone who staunchly attaches themselves to any religion. If you live in fear of a supreme-being and exist to do whatever you can to placate its wraith, then I’m sorry, you’re just being a bit silly. If however, you live in fear of dying before you can truly consider yourself a good human being, then you’ve probably discovered what the majority of religious philosophies were trying to tell you in the first place. Kudos to you – email me and I’ll send you a packet of congratulatory biscuits.

So, you atheists. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Agreed with me so far? Smashing. Now, wipe that stupid grin off your face whilst I explain to you that you really piss me off.

Now, I suspect that this is going to make me very unpopular, but if (as you so vehemently state) you can only live via universal ‘truth’ and scientific thought, you really need to start educating yourself on the concepts of both. There is NOTHING more frustrating than an atheist with thinly-educated reasoning behind their position. It’s not good enough to state that all religions are bollocks, therefore when you die you simply become a rotting corpse and nothing else. Because what you’re really saying is that you have ‘faith’ that this is the case. Without proof, we have faith. And if you try to tell me that you can prove the non-existence of anything outside of the basic nuts-n-bolts of populist atheist opinion, then you aren’t at all savvy in current scientific thinking and are – again – just having blind-faith in something that has a lack of scientific proof. In other words, you’re talking out of your arse.

I agree with Darwinism. I believe in the theory of relativity. I agree with the physicists who state that our universe in its current form is around 14 billion years old. I also think that believing in a deity through blind faith is stupid.

But most importantly, I know for a FACT that I haven’t really got a clue. And neither do you. Talk to someone on the cutting-edge of particle physics and they will tell you the same thing - even science can’t understand its own theories any more. It’s all becoming extremely strange. Don’t believe me? Well, take these 'facts' on board: Everything in our universe is subjective and becoming more so the further we try to understand it – the simple process of human beings observing the universe changes it. Sub-atomic physics tries to explain things that aren’t actually explainable – we have no language to possibly illustrate how mad it all is. Current thinking states that we exist on multiple levels via infinite dimensions, and at the same time don’t exist at all. Any single particle has been discovered to be able to be in two places at the same time. Literally. Things that happen in the future have been proved to directly affect the past - causality can run backwards. The universe is thought to provide all possibilities a fraction of a second before observation dictates the outcome and therefore the physically interpreted ‘reality’.

And these scientific facts are... well... facts. And I haven’t even got into the bizarre interactions between thought & matter. So, is it so hard to believe that there could possibly be ‘something’ that could fit into the realm of us being closely connected to a universal consciousness? Alongside the above, I don’t think it’s too hard at all. Although I’d rather have an open mind and state the only thing that I can truly state as a fact:

As a human being I haven’t got the faculties to prove or disprove my existence in a greater universal sense. And until someone can, I’ll just make the most of now and be a decent human being.

Religion and atheism can both kiss my arse. I'm subscribed to common-sense.

Dee.

The Voice of a Lobster Could Help You Save My Life.

Anyone who has known me long enough will know of my duality. There are two parts of me that have equal status; one side is altruistic, thoughtful and conscience-led, and the other is the anti-personality to this - destructive, free and hedonistic in ways that only Keith Richards knows.

Oil and water? I guess so. But underneath each personality lies the foundation for both. Logic.

Yes, logic. The same thing that the majority of people use as an excuse to live selfish, superficial lives that will no-doubt come around and smack them in the face at age 45 with the baseball-bat of truth and the wagged-finger of reality. Logic.

You see, to me, logic dictates that life should be all-or-nothing. There are no half-measures. If you believe that life should be as happy as possible for everybody - regardless of age, gender, ethnic origin, nationality or sexual preference (and you should), then you must do everything in your power to make this possible. Because whilst you are making life good for others, they are doing the same for you. And nearly seven billion people pooling together to make you a more gleeful individual will most certainly make a difference.

Logic.

You should evaluate each choice that you make and weigh up the benefits it brings you against the impact it will have on others. It makes complete sense. Anything BUT this way of living is really a bit twatty, especially if you’re aware of this kind of thinking. Which you are now even if you weren’t before. To not heed this logic means that you are consciously being an arse, or at the very least disregarding the plight of others. Which also makes you an arse. A selfish arse.

That’s logic.

There is no denying it. Of course, most people will try to deny it simply by stating ‘I’m not an arse’ or making a ridiculously convoluted argument so that they can continue to accrue chrome-plated blenders without having to feel the guilt of truth every time they make a smoothie. Why bother worrying about resources, waste and human inequality when you can sit worry-free with a banana-froth moustache? I’ll tell you why – because for every one of you who’s sitting there burping up fruit, there are a thousand others living next to their own poo or watching their child starve as a DIRECT result of your ability to turn solid foods into slop. This is the inescapable truth. It really is. I’m no spoon-fed leftie with a penchant for conspiracy theories and hemp underpants. It just makes linear, honest sense.

It is, in other words, logic.

And the above logic is what prompts altruistic, thoughtful and conscience-led me into action. Again, anyone who knows me is aware that I will always weigh up the ‘ownership’ of things that I have against the need of others. If someone has a requirement that can be filled by a superfluous commodity of mine, I will happily give it away. Some people need my time; others need my thinking; others may need money or an item that I have in my possession. And all are freely available if I have excess and others needs are greater than my own. It just makes logical sense that if I have something that’s redundant, why not let it be utilised by someone who can use it?

Which is where this logic hits a brick wall and shatters into a million, screaming little pieces.

Because, as much sense as this makes, when it’s only me that’s living this way, everything I own becomes involved in a complex paradox. I hit a loop which leaves me a consistent deficit as nobody will return the gesture and provide for me when I really need it. I therefore need to work my arse off to get money, which then becomes soaked-up by time-off / slowing-down / giving resources away when helping others. And then I start the loop again. Altruism becomes a one-way street that cannot be sustained by myself and myself alone. It’s amazing to watch people become incredibly selfish when all of a sudden it’s their choice to offer the excess. It’s the stuck-record of my life and the reason why at the time of writing this, I live nowhere in particular with a ‘personal’ debt that makes me feel giddy every time I think about it. I am genuinely a victim of being a good human and living via a belief that should only serve to make this world a better place.

So, I’m always left to make a choice. Do I live via something I know is right, or ignore everything in my soul and live much easier in a system that only seems to provide for arses?

Well, the choice is always retrospectively made for me via the soundtrack to the Water Babies.

When I was a wee-pip, my aunt bought myself and my siblings the musical diction to the animated film with a story about kids that inexplicably lived underwater, but had a baffling ability not to go blue and die. Due to not having any other records (other than my mother’s Carol King collection or my father’s Who album with a scary photo of Roger Daltry in a bath of baked beans on the sleeve), it was almost constantly on loop for a good portion of my early days. And for some reason, a lobster with a bass voice had a profound effect on me when it told me to ‘Do as You Would be Done By’. These words made complete sense to me. My logic told me that if we all did this, we would all live equally and fairly. And I assumed that this was a tenet that all people lived by. I believed that I should live to be as good to others as I hoped they would be to me. It made absolute sense. It was flawless.

It was logical.

It was a thorn in my side that dug deeper the older I got. As the beauty of simplistic thought was stripped-away along with my pre-pubescence, reality hit me like a banking crisis. People were shit. People were selfish. And no amount of helping anyone else would change that. But it was too late. I had already realised the truth behind that simple line in the lobster’s song and couldn’t live any other way.

Well, not until I discovered drink, drugs, loud music and an approach to hedonism that meant I could ignore the conflict in my head and have a good time to boot.

Logic made an appearance through the fact that if I made a sincere effort not to give a flying fuck, I could get through each day without wanting to tear my own face off in frustrated anguish. My mental self-preservation became the logical choice.

At the risk of repeating myself, logic dictates that life should be all-or-nothing. Which is a dangerous thing when ‘all’ equates to ploughing through life at mach-6 with a burning septum and waking-up in a hedge. But you have to live like this to understand the sincere relief that can be afforded when an ugly world is viewed through the caramel-coloured-haze of Southern Comfort and openly despising the world enough to not give a damn about consequences.

It almost killed me.

And as my social conscience – yet again - starts to bruise me with the painful beating that logic brings, I find this other side of me creeping up from behind with a dark and enticing grin, tapping me on the shoulder and whispering suggestions that are more tempting than I could ever explain with my limited vocabulary.

So, I ask you a favour. It’s not a big ask. Make like a lobster and do as you would be done by.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Because if you don’t...

You’ll be killing me again. Literally.

Dee.

I'm not a Gay

I am not a gay.

I just happen not to be. In fact, I’m heterosexual if you need to define me via a commonly-used term. I have a tendency to be sexually attracted to females. That’s just me. If I get a bit ‘interested’ in the trouser-area, it’s because I’ve noticed some smooth-bodied, swollen-hipped lady rather than Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. It’s just the way I was built.

I’ve tried to remember when I first discovered I liked girls. But I can’t. I’ve just always known. I can recall ‘coming out’ to my parents when I was still quite young. I told them that I liked girls. Neither seemed to give a shit. It wasn’t a particularly memorable day.

I suppose an outsider may have noticed the signs very early on in my life. I tended to play with Meccano and Action Man figures, or fight with local lads in puddles and muddy patches of grass, before going on to kiss one of the screaming harpies stood at the edge of the green baying for blood. As I got a little older, I covered my walls with pictures of Winona Ryder and Dannii Minogue during her Home and Away years. My father wasn’t concerned in the slightest and even helped me build a go-kart without once mentioning my sexual preference. Thanks dad.

In my early teens, when my brain had developed itself enough for me to consciously start questioning my world, I used to wonder if my sensual response to females was in some way ‘learned’ behaviour. I distinctly remember Biology class in school, a class which sometimes doubled-up as ‘sex education’. In much the same way as calculators produce poetry, these lessons taught me of the ‘wonders’ of sexuality when I was at an age that my hungry little body was caught in the curious loop of priapism. We’d get lengthy lectures about the individual roles of men & women in the sexual process, including bizarre x-ray footage of orgasm, which, according to our state-appointed mentor, existed solely for the purposes of reproduction. I used to think that maybe, just maybe these classes had influenced me in some way. To be honest, I used to wonder if modern culture in general was to blame – there is so much straight pornography just a click away, and many of the mainstream soap operas have heterosexual storylines. It's unavoidable.

But as I got older, I just accepted it. I stopped thinking that it could possibly be something I’d brought on myself. I was lucky enough to be close to a large heterosexual group most of the time, and being straight was never an issue to any of my gay friends. In fact, I don’t think that any of the homosexuals I know have ever mentioned my sexuality as a negative thing. Writing this now, I distinctly remember one of my gay friends persuading me to approach this girl I’d fancied for a while. They didn’t judge my wanton behaviour and it was never mentioned again after I’d copped off with her in the local bus-stop after getting her pissed on Babycham. I remember going back to the pub and worrying that my sticky fingers, light whiff of Chanel number 5 and gormless grin would have them taking the piss.
They didn’t bat an eyelid. I’ll always be grateful for that.

Entering adulthood offered-up the biggest difficulties I suppose. By now, I was fully immersed in my sexuality, and remember an incident when I was studying at university. I was approached to work for a newly-opened gay club - to design a logo and flyer for them, ready for their opening night. Of course, I accepted. I was working for them as a graphic artist, not a heterosexual graphic artist. In my mind, my sexual orientation didn’t come into it.

How wrong I was.

Things started to take a turn for the worse when, after 30 minutes of discussion relating to the project, the owner of the club left the table to go print the paperwork. I was left alone with a locally-renowned drag artist who I’d twigged had been looking ‘suspiciously’ at me during the majority of the meeting. I should mention at this point that throughout my university years I used to dress colourfully and tastefully, was known to dance well, spoke with an extremely open-mind and always took time over my appearance. In other words, I was displaying many characteristics of the gay man. Within five seconds of the club’s owner leaving the room, the drag artist eyeballed me with a sideways glance and asked... “are you gay?”

I was mortified. I remember sitting there feuding with myself to give an honest response. Do I answer in the affirmative and run the risk of being discovered? What if I’m invited to the opening night and don’t give license for someone to cop a feel? Or, flipside, do I just tell the truth and face the prospect of losing the work and being judged as a straight man in a gay man’s environment?

Obviously, gay men are lucky. They have the example of the bible and thousands of excitable people with placards to help them with any ‘confusion’ over their predilection. I had to sit there – nonplussed - whilst this man asked me not once, but twice if I was gay. I wanted to scream at him that I really wanted to be gay, but that I didn’t know how to be anything other than a man that fancied women. I saw how much fun this chap must be having on a nightly basis, and how his world was full of colour, sex, music, dancing and generally having a good time. I cursed my straigntness and my narrow-minded ability to not speak up when someone I know states that Elton John is a ‘fucking poofter’. I sank a few inches into my seat before making my mind up as to what to do.

After two seconds, I realised that there was zero chance of me getting a kicking or a barrage of hetero-phobic slurs if I simply answered with my heart. I said ‘no’, signed the papers and was on my way within 25 minutes. Maybe it was 30. All I know is that it was after having several free drinks and a good laugh. And being offered free entry to the club any time I wanted. It was a narrow escape.

But as a straight man, the hardest times come when I lie in bed at night thinking. When I realise that I am part of a sexual subset that will always make me an outsider to the (generalised, of course) aspects of the gay man. The rather unprejudiced taste in music. The ability to leave the house dressed in any way they fancy and still look great. The uncomplicated sexual freedom that can only come from two people with the male penchant for promiscuity. The ability to truly understand the nature of love without the social expectations of monogamy, making babies and gender definition. The character built from having to deal with a society that still has pockets of belief that it’s a lifestyle choice...

I’ll never know these things.

I’m a straight man. It’s just the way I am.

Dee.