The Dream Generator is humming away in the background, like an old fridge trying to keep cool on a hot day. I wonder if you can hear it? Probably you can’t – most people I meet don’t seem to hear it. They look at me as if I’ve gone soft in the head when I ask them that question. I can hear it though. I can always hear it.

‘Shit just got real good buddy,’ my new-found alien lizard friend confided in me, throwing an amiable arm around my shoulders, ‘you just wait and see…’ I had no reason to place credence in his words however. I had yet to see shit get real, much as I would have liked to. Everyone wants to see shit get real of course but it never does. Shit NEVER gets real does it? That is one thing we can always rely on in this world – the fact that shit never gets real. That doesn’t stop us hoping though. Rumours abound. Rumours keep on popping up and folk keep on believing in them. Something new is going happen, something amazing, something that’s never happened before. Things are going to get real!

That’s never going to happen however. It never will, it never could. No way no how. That’s just the way things work – the Dream Generator can never produce reality, no matter how much you turn up the dial. You can crank it up as much as you like but you’ll never get it to produce anything that isn’t a dream. It’ll be humming and shaking and it’ll be lurching crazily this way and that, threatening to pull out the heavy steel rivets that are securing it to the concrete floor, but it’ll still never give us what we want. ‘Crank it up, crank it up!’ we shout, heedless of the consequences. We’re impatient to wrap everything up once and for all. We just want it all done and dusted.

Do you know that thing where you are serving Satan in all things and your only will is that he should tell you what to do? That’s your only desire. You are in a state of Satanic Abandon in other words – you’ve abandoned yourself to the Will of Satan. I guess that’s a kind of familiar story to us all. You lie every time you speak, you’re constantly deceiving not only everyone you meet but also yourself as well. In short – not to put too fine a point on it – you’re going to hell in a hand basket. You’re going to hell in a hand basket but you won’t admit it. No way will you admit it. You’ll deny it every step of the way. You’re going to lie your damn head off right up to the bitter end. I guess we can all own up to that one, right? There’s a ring of familiarity to that story for sure…

I’ve forgotten the point I was trying to make. I’ve lost the gist. ‘Do you know the thing, do you know the thing?’ I ask. ‘I do, I do,’ you pipe up eagerly, ‘I couldn’t know it better, I couldn’t know better!’ You’re lying though – you don’t have a clue as to what I’m talking about. You’re confabulating.

I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to say. I genuinely was trying to express something. My confusion, perhaps? The state of growing bewilderment, frustration and fear that is constantly threatening to engulf me? The sense of being completely and irrevocably lost in life? The intuition of the fundamental disconnect from reality that is been caused by all my interminable lying? It was something like that, anyway…