‘Come’, I spoke wisely, ‘let us go and buy some products. First we shall peruse the products, and then we will select from them, and then – after we have done this – we can go ahead with confidence and make our purchase. Thus it was, thus it is, and thus it ever shall be.
I am a true and honourable Servant of the aforementioned Corporate Overlords, you see. My role is to tell people that true happiness can only ever come from never questioning the insane dictates of our Corporate Overlords. That is pretty bloody basic, I would have thought. How basic can it get? What’s not to get, after all? I can’t simply comprehend the wrong-headedness of those people who refuse to accept this time-honoured truth. I would like to see them meet their comeuppance – I would love to see them meet their comeuppance. I can’t imagine anything I’d love more, in fact.
‘Come’, I intone sanctimoniously, ‘let us stir ourselves and get out there buying the Dirty Filthy Sordid Products that are so characteristic of our dreadfully corrupt age. These shall be counted by one and all as supreme emblems of our unique and triumphant personal success in the face of stultifying universal conformity.
I am a High Priest of the New Revelation and I bring hope and a sense of direction to the Narcissistic Hordes, who know no other meaning to their wretched lives other than the meaning of self-absorption. Each one of us constantly at the centre of countless petty dramas, each one more epically stupid than the one which preceded it – our lives are indeed an exercise in the purist folly. ‘Is there any end to this nonsense?’ you ask, overcome with emotion, ‘why do we human beings insist on turning life into some kind of cheap and tasteless farce? What do we hope to gain from this?’
You ask these questions, but no one ever answers. Folk carry on as always; they persevere with their infernal stupidity right up to the very end. Right up to the very end, I say – they never pause to consider what they’re doing. How do you explain that one, huh? How the hell do you explain that? Folks inevitably carry on as they always do and who would expect anything else? Who after all would expect them to behave otherwise? Folk will carry on with their infernal stupidity no matter what and there’s nothing either you or I can ever do about that. It’s hard to hear I know, but we have to face up to it – it is our onerous duty to face up to it, however reluctant we might be.
I’m a High Priest of the Church of the New Revelation and it is my thankless task to ask the questions that no one else will. It is my task to harshly berate the wilfully ignorant. I am the one and the many – I am every animal that ever was! I am the otter and the moose, the wolf and the aardvark. I am the sheep which bleats in the field and the dog which barks sorrowfully in the night; I am the lugworm which hides away deep in the turgid estuarine sludge and I am the hawk which soars resplendent high above the forests and fields. I am all of these creatures and – yet – I am none of them. I am the Cosmic Manatee…
