Never repeat a tired old formula, isn’t that what they say? Keep it fresh. Resist the urge to repeat the tired old formula because that way leads only to despair. Never repeat an old formula because this can only ever lead to despair, and yet that tired old formula is all I’ve got. You see my predicament, of course.
What happens when we worship the mechanical mode of existence, the miraculous mechanical surrogate for existence? What happens when we worship the Pain-Filled Analogue? What would be the outcome if we were to take it into our heads to do this? And – needless to say – we all do worship the mechanical manifestation (or pseudo manifestation) of existence. We’re mad for worshipping it. Saying how good it is. Saying that it’s brilliant. ‘It’s great it’s great it’s great,’ we say. ‘It’s great and I’ll beat the crap out of you if you disagree. I’ll beat the head off you…’
Who needs existence when you can have the mechanical surrogate thereof? Let us all pray my friends, let us pray to the Principle of Mechanicity and implore it to save us. Save us from what, I don’t know – but save us all the same! Save us from the Weevils. Save us from the lion which roars. Let us pray to the machine and beg for his blessing. Or beg for its curse. Bestow upon us your curse, oh Great Machine – bestow upon us the curse of mechanical being. The blessing / curse – you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Talk about confusing! Put up your hands if you’re confused. Pray you maggots, pray. Give thanks for the abuse that you receive every day, give thanks and praise for your daily abuse.
We are all very obsessed with the outcome of course, we all want the good outcome – we’re panting like dogs, we’re thirsting for the wonderful, wonderful outcome. ‘Oh Great Outcome’, we cry out, ‘You are so great…’ The uplifted voices of the faithful. ‘Give us this day our daily nonsense’. We are longing for the splendid, delightful outcome. The splendid, delightful outcome will make everything okay! Just give the Machine what it wants. The Machine always knows what it wants, after all. It knows what it wants alright – there’s no confusion there! When the wonderful, splendid outcome comes to pass then all will be well in the world and we’ll have the Machine to thank for that. That bloody old machine…
‘Give praise, give praise, give praise, show some gratitude you dogs’, bark the high priests of evil. ‘Wag your godamn tails and look pleased.’ All I’ve got to my name is this bloody old second-hand formula – I use it all the time and it never works. Perhaps one day someone will award me a prize for persistence! ‘Keep on doing the thing,’ my mind tells me, ‘keep on doing the thing so that the wonderful outcome can happen’. My mind is Satan, my mind is Satan in disguise. It’s a crime to stop doing the thing, you know. It’s a sin – you’re obstructing the good thing from happening and everyone will be very angry with you. They will blame you for the Great Pestilence, they’ll say that it’s your fault. ‘Why didn’t you put in the proper effort into doing the thing?’ your friends will ask you, ‘now you’ve ruined it for everyone…’ It’s the law you know. It’s the law and you’ve broken it. Satan is going to punish you severely for that, you realize.
‘Satan save me, Satan save me, Satan save me’ you cry out in your anguish. Your unspeakable anguish. ‘I promise to keep on doing the thing and I promise to be properly grateful this time’. If we keep on doing the thing then the great and wonderful outcome will happen – that’s what I was always taught at school, anyway. That’s what the priest says at the pulpit. A Nameless Evil stalks this land, you know. No one knows where it came from. A Nameless Evil stalks this land and yet it has a name all the same! It has a name just the same as you and I do. Its name is the Truth. A Nameless Evil stalks this land and one day it will destroy us all. It has been foretold. It has been inscribed in the Book of Fate and there’s nothing any of us can do about it…
