Cranky Bastard

I was cranky in myself because the bad thing was happening, cranky because all the bad things were happening again. I was as cranky as hell. Super-cranky. ‘Will we never get a break from this bullshit?’ I complained, full of resentment. Full of resentment towards life itself. I myself was one of the bad things that I was complaining about of course, which only made it worse. It made it a lot worse. That was the icing on the cake, in fact. Cranky like the worst cranky bastard you could ever meet – that’s me. Cranky as fuck. ‘For fucks sake’, I moan, in a self-pitying kind of a way, ‘someone should do me a favour and put me down. I’d thank them, I swear to God I would. They’d be doing me a good turn…’

 Dancing to the music in my own head, singing along to a song that only I could hear. Getting pulled in by the relevant and appropriate authorities. Being assessed by the mental health services and getting a biochip inserted into the base of my skull. Because of the new emergency laws. A neuro-linkage, an interface giving the security agencies direct access to my every thought. And people still try to tell me that I’m being paranoid! It’s not called paranoia when they really do put a microchip in your brain, it’s called ‘state sponsorship’. The guys looking in on you right now are real, not figments of your imagination, in this case. They are working for the government, or the ‘health service executive’, or something like that. They’re working for the man, you know…

‘I notice that the bad things are starting to happen again’, says I, full of chat and banter. No one takes any notice though – people walk by without even looking at me. They walk on straight by like I don’t exist. I’m a broken record, a damaged machine… We’re all broken machines here though, just as the man in Midnight Express says, but the sad thing here is that we don’t know it. We think our lives are meaningful. The bad things and the sad things. The bad things and the sad things. ‘I can’t help noticing that the bad things have started happening again’, says I conversationally, like the broken record I am. Like the defective machine I am. We are all ‘broken records’ here, of course. Every last one of us. Going through our pre-programmed little routines, over and over again. Mechanically, like. Obediently. Hoping that what we’re doing is going to get us somewhere. Somewhere better than the place where we already are. Which is a shit place, as you know. Pathetically hopeful, we are. Not realising that we are repeating ourselves in some kind of endless error. Some kind of permanent malfunction. We gather together in groups, validating ourselves – rehearsing for the main event. Rehearsing for the Big Event, the long-awaited Big Event that will never actually get to happen.