‘What does it mean to be a living human bean?’ I bark out impatiently, sowing terror among the lesser creatures – the creatures that live in my hair and beard, that is. I shout at everyone I meet – my impatience is infinite, it is absolute. I am a rogue philosopher, roaming the ancient decaying streets of my hometown, waving and gesticulating as I go. My body is awkward and cumbersome, and draped in expensive silk sheets, my mood erratic at the best of times. My reasoning is nuanced but largely incoherent, my speech overexcited and made up almost entirely of blasphemies and expletives. My tone is hoarse and uncomplimentary. I no longer care about my life, nor that of my enemies, of whom there were many. Did not the great teacher and benefactor of all mankind tell us that all living beings will in time become our enemies, and that we should submit joyfully to them? Was it not written that your enemies shall become your friends and your friends your enemies? I roam the streets and all flee from me. I have cut my teeth in the Great Psychic War (the war that none may remember) and ordinary scoundrels and ruffians no longer held any terror for me; I roar at them when I meet them, ropes of sticky saliva pouring from my mouth as I do so, and those who see me are filled with fear. Great indeed is their dismay – they wet themselves involuntarily as soon as they behold me. They call me ‘Laughing Boy’ because I am young and unruly. I hang around with my buddies in shopping malls, partaking vicariously in the sacred rites of conspicuous consumption, despite having no socio-economic status of my own. I’m a celebrity chef – I cook unfashionable food and make it fashionable again. Chicken Maryland, broiled mullet, gammon steaks with pineapple, and such-like. I have served my time in the Psychic Wars and now I roam the by-ways and alleys of my own subconscious, scheming and plotting insurrection against our hated Rational Overlord. My memories work backward – I remember the happy times that are yet to come and I feel nostalgia for them. I anticipate the terrors of the past and dread the unavoidable day of reckoning that has already come and gone. I experience the exquisite terror of moving closer and closer to a past that we cannot avoid, an infinitely predictable past. My mind walls itself off in terror and builds its own world, a world that exists in denial of the frightening truth that it does not ever want to see. It’s an old story of course and I won’t bore you by harping on about it like a fool. My mind straightaway freaks right out and proceeds to seal itself off in a private universe full of bullshit. It flips out big time and goes mental. It starts babbling nonsense as fast as it can and that nonsense creates the world. There is no need for me to keep banging on about that of course – we all know the score at this stage. We’ve all been around the block a good few times by now, I’d say. We have made the trip more times than is good for us probably. There’s no point in me reiterating the obvious a million, million times! We all know the story by now and that’s a fact. I think we can all agree on that…