I was writing a guidance manual for all the young and inexperienced people who are just starting off on their journey in life. ‘Rule Number One,’ I wrote, ‘Don’t be a dumbshit’. I paused for a moment and then carried on, ‘Rule Number Two,’ I wrote then, after thinking for a while – ‘Don’t be a dumbshit,’ and so on and so forth. It was a relatively straightforward manual, you see. Fairly easy to grasp, even for a beginner! But do you think it made any difference? Did it fuck! No one took the slightest bit of notice – they carried on regardless. It didn’t put them off their stride at all.

I decided that individual sessions might be better. I would see them one by one and have a bit of a chat with them. A bit of a heart-to-heart. ‘Look’, I said to each of them, ‘just don’t be a dumbshit, right!’ I wagged my finger at them as I said it, the way people do when they’re making an important point. All perfectly futile of course. I couldn’t have spelled it out any clearer and yet they all just carried on the same as always. They carried on regardless…

I’m great at giving advice! I can recognise that about myself. I can own that. If I come across someone who is acting like a bit of dickhead then I go right up to them and I tell them straight. ‘Look geezer’, I say to them, ‘you’re acting like a right cock and that’s really not going to have any benefits for you in the long run. It’s not going to have any benefits for you in the short run either, come to think of it. You’re not going to make friends or influence people by being a total cock and so I’d advise you to rethink your strategy in life…’ I always tell people straight, you say. I always tell it the way I see it. In addition to all my other splendid qualities I’m also a terrible liar. Lying is like breathing to me – whenever I open my mouth a lie comes out!

They call me the Hooded Assassin on account of how I wear a hoodie and kill people for a living. Only that isn’t true. That isn’t true at all. I don’t wear a hoodie and I don’t kill people, for a living or otherwise. What’s more, I’m not even a human being. I’m what you might call a ‘semantic ghost’ – I’m a malignant phantasm made up of words that have been used too often, and too unreflectively. I hang around in the corners of rooms where people have talked too much. What is it that Kierkegaard says about language being bestowed upon humanity by an ironic deity? I like that one! I find it particularly relevant to me, you see.

Talk is cheap, and so are thoughts for that matter, and there’s got to be a price paid for that! Did you ever ‘come to’, in a busy place, in the middle of a conversation, in the middle of a crowd, in the middle of lots of talk, and suddenly realise that life is a grotesque nightmare? I’m very interested in that type of thing you see. I’m very interested indeed. I’m doing research into it. I wear a lab coat wherever I go. When I meet people I tell them that I’m doing research into why human beings are so remarkably stupid (given the relatively large size of their brains, that is). It’s a cosmic problem and it needs to be sorted out before it’s too late. Human beings are producing too much entropy you see – they’re bringing the universe into ill repute.

The universe was under threat from the entropy being generated by the human race and so a task force was dispatched to investigate the problem. It was a cosmic conundrum and no one could figure it out. All the highly advanced races in the galaxy were baffled. Something had to be done however and soon – the fabric of reality itself was under threat. Christian fundamentalists hate all talk of evolution of course; they hate all talk of evolution because they don’t like to hear that they have descended from proto-amoeba. This makes them feel bad about themselves. This makes them feel stupid. They feel that this makes them a laughing stock and so they are very offended. What they fail to realise is that amoebas can be pretty damn smart, pretty damn smart altogether! They don’t produce shitloads of entropy wherever they go, at any rate…