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”.