You know when you’re a human being right, and the next thing is that you turn into a mechanism for perpetuating the advantage, you turn into a mechanism for seeking the advantage, always seeking the advantage. You know how good that feels, right – when you succeed in securing the advantage? You know how good that feels, how good that feels? You know how good. So then the dust clears and the excitement dies down and you’ve been left on the wrong side of the fence. You’re all washed up. You’ve been hung out to dry. You used to be a human being – you know you used to be a human being –  but now you’re walking along sideways on the pavement edging cautiously along crab-wise. You’re watching your back. You’ve become a machine for seeking the advantage and there’s no way back. There’s always a way back, you tell me, full of naïve optimism, full of utopian fantasies. You try to prove one thing and I to try to prove the other; you say that it’s this and I say that it’s that; you make your mark and I make mine. Competition is a great thing after all – isn’t that what they say? It gets people of their arses, gets them up and about, it teaches kids the value of striving after excellence. If you don’t strive hard enough my boy someone else is going to come along and their excellence is going to be better than your excellence and that’s going to make your excellence look like shit! You’re going to be left standing there looking like a right plonker then aren’t you my friend? You’re going to be standing there with what you think is a top rank product and then the next thing is that you realise you haven’t got the advantage after all because there’s a new guy on the block and his product is pissing all over your product! You’re embarrassed in case anyone stops notices how shit your product is and starts laughing at you – you wish you could hide, you wish you that you could dig a hole in the ground and crawl to it. ‘Success is counted sweetest/by those who ne’er succeed.’ Isn’t that what Emily Dickinson says? Advantage is counted sweetest by those whose product unfortunately fails to make the grade, isn’t that the way? We love the product in this slickly packaged world of ours don’t we? We frigging adore it. We’re having orgasms over it. Oh the product is so great, we say, in our stupid affected voices. We’re trying to pretend to be something but we don’t know what. I’m just on my way to buy the product, I say. I’m perusing the aisles, don’t bother me now! Don’t disturb my sacred contemplation. Quit bothering me – can’t you see I’m perusing the products! Get out of my face, you dirty filthy bastard. They’re talking about the Glory you see. They’re speaking of the Glory but no one understands their words. Their words are gibberish to us. Get out of my face you bastard, can’t you see I’m promoting the product?