The ‘Me-Thing’

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There’s this kind of a thing that operates my body – I call it the ‘me-thing’. The me-thing makes my body do stuff – it makes it go here and go there, it makes it walk and it makes it sit down. It also makes my body say things. Pretty stupid things, generally. Crass inane things, on the whole. Dumb things. Very little that is sensible or actually helpful about them. It might sound as if I’m trying to be clever here and that actually I’m talking about my brain or something like that. I’m not. People generally have the idea that their bodies (and also their thoughts, speech, attitudes, etc) is controlled by their brains. That’s bullshit. I’m not talking about my brain here, I’m talking about the goddamn me-thing. That’s something completely different.

 

I envisage the me-thing as a kind of goblin or gnome sitting there in the dark out of sight, lurking unwholesomely in some kind of secret nook or cranny. Or maybe the me-thing is like some kind of sneaky sociopath sitting in its office, screwing with people’s lives just for the fun of it. It is perennially bored and listless with a well-developed tendency to be malicious. The me-thing isn’t a very pleasant entity, you see. Oh no indeed it’s not. Far from it – it’s sour and bitter and incredibly vengeful when crossed. It’s innately cantankerous too – God knows you can never please the me-thing! Or if you can it’s only for a very short time by continuously bending over backwards for it. And then it gets fed up and cantankerous again and you have to go about pleasing it again so as to avoid its bad moods. You can never win with the me-thing. That could almost be a song couldn’t it?

 

As you can see, I’m not particularly enamoured of the me-thing. This is actually putting it mildly – I loathe and despise it. I see it as a sly and deceitful kind of creature, manipulating away the whole time, pulling this lever and that lever, pressing this button and that lever. Wangling things one way and then wangling them another. And the key fact to understand about all this is that it never lets on what it is doing – it is never straight up, never honest. The me-thing couldn’t be honest if it tried. It never lets on that it’s doing what it’s doing, not even to itself. It always pretends to be doing something else and it even manages to fool itself with this sickening charade. I ask you – what’s to like about this?

 

The more I study the me-thing the more I find to dislike about it. I often wonder why it does the goddamn stupid stuff that it does, why it always has to be conniving this way and conniving the other way and not letting on to anyone (least of all itself) that it is doing so. It’s such hard work for one thing, and for another thing this sort of carry on creates all sorts of shit to be dealt with afterwards. Shit that you can be sure it isn’t going to clear up after itself!

 

That’s another thing about the me-thing – it won’t ever do anything difficult. It won’t ever bite the bullet. It’s as lazy as bedamned – it’s astonishingly lazy, horrifically lazy, appallingly lazy. The me-thing has evolved laziness to the level of an art form. Laziness is everything to the me-thing – it is the beginning and the end. And as well as being incredibly lazy it’s stupid into the bargain – it’s as stupid as shit. As I have already said, its habitual deviousness creates no end of messes that need to be cleaned up and this – as any fool can see – makes life harder not easier. Any fool can see this but the incorrigible old me-thing can’t, that’s for sure…

 

In short, I find the me-thing to be exasperating and beyond measure. It sickens me. I am just staggered by its malignant perversity in all things – even the most simple of situations it screws up. It’s like that bumper sticker that says – “Here comes another perfect day – now watch some bastard screw it up” only in this case it’s “Now watch the me-thing screw it up.”

 

If I hate the me-thing so much – I hear you ask – then why am I watching it the whole time? Why am I so obsessed with it? Well, I don’t know if you were really thinking that but if you were then it would be a very good question. Why in the name of God am I hanging around watching every single bloody move the me-thing makes if I hate the bastarding thing so much? Am I mad in the head or what?

 

Well the answer to this question is very simple if rather difficult to own up to. The truth is that I am actually a kind of a dissociated aspect of the me-thing. In other words, I am the damn me-thing but I like to pretend that I’m not…

 

 

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