I had cobbled together a brand-new ego. The old one had been trashed, it is true. The old one was broken – there was no more mileage to be had in it. It lay abandoned upended in a ditch, wheels spinning uselessly in the air. My old ego was defunct, it is true, but the new one was looking pretty good. It was sleek and shiny, free from rust and decay. Like a shiny white molar in a toothpaste ad! With a lovely new ego like this I was bound to make many new friends. ‘Out of the ashes of defeat, huh?’ I say to myself. Out of the bitter ashes of defeat shall come a rebirth, a renewal. A resplendent new ego shall come into being. It felt almost mystical. Perhaps, I thought, this was the ‘spiritual self’ that people sometimes talk about? Perhaps I’d invented the ‘spiritual ego’ – shinier than most and much more durable! It keeps on going where other egos wear out. Beating its little drum, beating its little drum. Singing its little song. Singing its victory song. With a lovely new ego like this I was bound to make many new friends! Free from rust and decay. Free from unsightly cellulite on the inner thighs. I miss my old ego of course – we had had many good times together. We had had many bad times, too. Very many bad times. And yet politics dictates that I distance myself from that old ego. Politics dictates that I distance myself from the old order and pretend as best I can that I had nothing to do with it. I had all my lies rehearsed. ‘I had nothing to do with any of that’, I was going to tell them, ‘none of that stuff had anything to do with me.’ On this day, as on all other days, the time had come to talk a lot of bullshit. Everyone knew the necessity for this and no one was going to complain. Not in public, at any rate. People love to talk about spiritual things and I can appreciate this as much as anyone can. Spiritual things are good, people say. It is always good to do spiritual things. It is very good. We should all aspire to raise our level of vibration – I can understand that as much as the next person can. My old ego was defunct, it was true, but I come prepared with a brand-new one. I’d rehearsed all my lies. I had distanced myself from all my wrongdoings. In a previous life I’d been a demon. My hunger was abnormal, my hunger knew no bounds. I had witnessed horrors that the average man could not even begin to conceive of. I lived a type of life that the average man wouldn’t even be able to dream of. The normal rules did not apply any more you see; instead we had to have new ones. I was to be interviewed on daytime TV; they wanted to know what my life was like. I had rehearsed my lies too well – nothing I said was ever true.