Happy people often say happy things, I reasoned with myself. I was reasoning it out. Happy people often have happy lives. Happy lives, happy lives. They often have happy lives. The thought made me envious of course – the thought of people having happy lives made me envious. It always makes me envious. I find myself wondering what it feels like to have a happy life. What’s it like, what’s it like? The question is burning into my brain. It’s boring into my brain like some kind of incredibly persistent boring insect. Happy people say happy things, happy people, happy people. Happy people can often have happy lives but who knows what that’s like? Not me anyway. My brain is working so hard, so feverishly, trying to figure that one out. I can’t rest until I know the answer. That’s not true really of course – my brain isn’t working hard at all. It never does, it’s too lazy for that. My old brain is far too lazy ever to be bothering itself with anything like that. I actually think that my brain is the laziest thing in the whole wide universe! Sometimes I get angry at it for being so lazy, as I’m sure you can understand. It’s as lazy as bedamned I’m telling you. It has ideas that go back forty or fifty years that it will never ever look at or question because that would be too much like hard work. ‘We’ll keep them,’ my lazy brain says, haven’t they worked well enough for us all this time?’ The real reason is of course because it doesn’t like to stir itself – it’s stuck in a fusty old time warp. It knows where it is with its old, old thoughts you see – it’s comfortable with them. Pretty sad, huh? It’s a bloody travesty if you ask me. Those old thoughts were dumb the first time round I can tell you but dumb isn’t the word now. They’re beyond dumb. I’d like to creep up on this lazy brain of mine and give it a tremendous kick in the butt when it isn’t expecting it. Do brains have butts? Probably they do. I expect they do. Everything has a butt. Every creature has a butt of some sort or another would you say? My life’s a travesty really of course and it’s no good me trying to blame my poor old brain for it. It’s no good trying to shift the responsibility. The ultimate responsibility lies with me. The ultimate responsibility, the ultimate responsibility – ultimate responsibility is a terrible thing, wouldn’t you say? Can you think of anything more frightening than that? I can’t. I surely can’t. That’s the Number One Frightening Thing as far as I’m concerned and that’s why I have been on the run from it my whole life. I might be lazy in other respects but I’m not lazy when it comes from running away from responsibility! I’m like a frikkin Olympic athlete I am. I’m like an Olympic athlete on Methedrine. You’d have to get up pretty early in the morning to catch me out I can tell you!  Farting in the morning, farting in the night; farting because you’re happy, farting because you’re so incredibly sad… I was making up nonsense rhymes in my head. It’s a thing that I do. It’s a thing I do. I was repeating words to myself over and over again for no good reason. Another day has dawned you see. Another day has dawned and I don’t know what to do about it. I have a vague feeling that I should do something and that’s unsettling me.