The cult of free will

I have begun to understand something profound about my life...and, for that matter, about your life, and your life, and your life, and I believe all life in general. This something is the cult of freewill. I would like to expose this pernicious cult of freewill for what it is. A big fat lie. This cult is all pervasive in our Western society and this is what I wish to discuss here tonight. It is an idea that is taught us in schools and on TV and everywhere we care to look. We are subconsciously imbibing this cult via subliminal messages every time we act as consumers or view a billboard or watch a movie in the theatre.

We live our lives as if we had a choice in our decisions. As if we have freewill. We are taught this fallacy in schools though it is not a mainstay of Eastern teachings. President Bush defended the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that we have to protect our freedoms. What did he mean by 'freedoms'? What freedoms was he referring to? I am not talking about freedom as a political idea, but rather, as a philosophical one. What I want to know is this: do I really have a choice in what I do? Do I have a choice in what I read and what I watch and how I think and how I spend my time? And I don't mean choice as in a big brother 1984 style Orwellian State, but rather in the sense that: can I be anyone I want to be? Or am I limited to be who I am already? - To be rid of myself and be someone else Is what I am talking about. Can I do that? And if not, why not?

We are not unified free to do as we please

But buffeted constantly

by the currents of the world

the winds of chance & caprice

We think our actions express our decisions. But do they?

Throughout our lives willing decides nothing. We cannot wake up or fall asleep, remember or forget our dreams, summon or banish our thoughts, fall in love with this person or that, by deciding to do so. Deciding counts for little. How do I know this? I know this because we are creatures of habit. And there is little choice or freewill when it comes to habit:

90% of us order the same dish in restaurants

90% of us read the same newspaper everyday

90% of us do the same activity on weekends

90% of us watch the same types of movies

90% of us hold the same beliefs we had as children

90% of us abide by the same moral principles held by our parents

90% of us live and die within 7 miles of the place we were born

90% of us fall in love and marry someone within that same 7 mile radius

These are not statistics of choice. These are the statistics of the cult of freewill. In a world so big and vast and so full of choices - how can we be so insular and predictable?

When we greet someone on the street we just act and there is no actor standing behind what we do. Our acts are end points in long sequences of unconscious responses. They arise from a structure of habits and skills infinitely complicated. By the time you are 13 years old, the chances are, you will have already formed the characteristics and belief systems that will define your life. That is why the Jesuits boast: give me a child of eleven and I shall give you the man. Most of our lives are acted and lived without conscious awareness. Below the radar of self awareness. Much of the greater part of everyone's life goes on without thinking.

We think we are in control but we are not. My environment, upbringing, and genes, and predispositions, and circumstances, all connive; in a cosmic conspiracy, in making me do what I do. I was always going to do what I did. I will always do what I will do. I should not be thanked or berated nor harangued for it. If I write a brilliant book - should I be celebrated? What choice did I have over its contents? Did I really write it? Or was it merely the product of unfathomable forces; inexplicable connections and circumstances strung together like beads, or like knots in a tapestry.

Did I plan what I am writing now? Did I consciously 'will' every word and thought into existence before committing it to this entry? Has it taken on the shape I wanted it to, or has it, like most of my writings, taken on a life and form very different to the one I envisaged?

The most beautiful moments in life happen when we discover something we were not looking for. When through grappling in the darkness we find hidden depths or shades we never knew we had. You'll never find these thing if you only swim near the beach you know. You have to wade out into darker colder waters. And that is what differentiates us from the lower animals does it not? The ability to project ourselves into the future and wonder.

________

Rio Film Club - for dedicated hardcore movie buffs only!

Do you enjoy nothing better than talking non-stop about films to anybody that would listen as well as watching them? Want to meet new like-minded people to talk about films with who won't get bored with your constant mutterings? Then the Rio Film Club is just for you! The Club meets every other Sunday (although this pattern can vary occasionally according to the main feature schedule), for the early evening show and after the film heads to the Evin Café for post-film discussion, where you can also enjoy a drink and bite to eat (30 sec walk from the Rio!) The last and next meetings were and are as follows: Sun 18 Oct 6.00 - THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS Sun 1 Nov 6.00 - TALES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE Sun 15 Nov 6.00 - BRIGHT STAR Sun 29 Nov 6.30 - A SERIOUS MAN ______________

Not sure what to do this weekend? Bored? Well what are you waiting for mankind! Pop down to Stoke Newington this Saturday evening for Darwin Night! - It's evolving man

SAT 21 Nov • Darwin, Evolution & the Movies (@ The Rio)

Darwin influenced fiction as well as fact and the classic literary works of HG Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Charles Kingsley were all directly inspired by Darwin's theory of evolution and they paved the way for later generations of writers whose work has moved from page to screen. Certainly, the threat (or promise) of future evolution, metamorphosis or mans' descent into savagery have been familiar themes since the movies began. On 24 November 2009 it will be 150 years since On the Origin of Species was published. Time then for a selection of classic movies curated by Carole Jahme, filmmaker and Darwinist, who will introduce both screenings and perform extracts from her 5 star award winning comedy show Carole Jahme is Sexually Selected! enabling the audience to learn about their evolutionary sex appeal by discovering some basic instincts! Mmm....Sounds er interesting.

ALIEN (18) 11.30pm (Saturday 21st Nov, 2009)

(UK/US 1979) dir. Ridley Scott 117m.
Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Ian Holm.

In space, nobody can hear you scream! Or so they say. The terror begins when the crew of the spaceship Nostromo investigates a transmission from a desolate planet and makes a horrifying discovery, a life form that breeds within a human host. ALIEN is a landmark triumph of art direction and special effects with a monster designed by surrealist painter H.R. Giger that is a brilliantly original fusion of insect, man and machine. Darwin would have been fascinated.

+ artist’s short film commissioned by the Wellcome Trust

+ introduction/performance from film-maker and Darwinist Carole Jahme

£6.50 (cheaper if you're a poor lazy student. Even cheaper if you're an old age pensioner. Free if you're me)

2012 - The Review

There was a moment during the watching of '2012', when I realised, I had lost something precious. Something I would never get back. The feeling started off as a little kernel of no consequence (like a foetus...sorry, bad analogy!), but slowly, gradually, it fed on the dregs of ones thoughts, and it grew, until finally, it transformed itself into a full fledged storm of the open sea, hurling and burlin' inside the mind. This was not a mere irritable itch like one gets when, for example, one is on a long bus journey and the passenger sitting behind has his knee pressed up against the back seat. Oh no, I had lost something and I was angry. The thought of this loss filled my heart with anguish and my soul with pins and needles. Hot pins and needles. What was this thing I had lost?

Two and a half hours of my life!

Two and a half hours, that I could have, and certainly would have, if only faith did have, devote to other things. But such is the luxury of hindsight. I can recall the exact moment when the realisation of this 'lost time' lifted and touched the surface of my consciousness. It was at the point in the movie, during that scene, when the President of the United States (played by Danny Glover) decides that; contrary to the advice of his advisers, he will not board the Ark (yes Ark!), but that he will go to Church instead and pray. Yes pray! Pray for the salvation and the souls of the denizens of our doomed planet. Now I have nothing against prayer as such. I believe that in some cases it can have efficacy, but only in the same way that a placebo can also sometimes have efficacy. Purely in the mind kind of thing. This was a turning point in the movie because, believe it or not, it had started off rather well. It had started off with a little science!

It started off in India, deep in the bowels of the earth, 10,000 feet below the surface, in a disused diamond mine. When a movie starts off with a little science it automatically warms my cockles. I think this will be an intelligent movie, and as well as being entertained, I will also learn something - well that's the thought anyway. In the movie's beginning, we are introduced to an Indian astrophysicist, who during experiments on massless Neutrino particles, realises that strange things are afoot: the earth's core is melting and it is the neutrino's that are to blame. The earth will die, the mantle (surface layer) will melt like Swiss-cheese under a grill, and eventually after moaning and groaning, it will cave in - taking all of us with it. There will be mega earthquakes and giant tsunamis and super duper volcanoes. Chaos and destruction and black plumes of sulphur will reign maelstrom from the skies and pour forth their fury, and the final curtain will fall on the lease of Man. For it was always a short term lease. Man, in his arrogance, believed otherwise. Believed in the exaltation's of his creation. Such a fine creature he is! So you see I wasn't too displeased to witness his imminent extinction - albeit on celluloid. I rubbed my hands in glee, and my eyes sparkled like diamond cutters, and I stuffed my face full of sweet popcorn. The popcorn's were sticky and they stuck to my palate, and my clothes and my fingers. I took a sip of coke to wash away the stickiness, but the sugariness only made it worse.

It was a nice feeling to be alone in the theatre, just me, the rain and wind lashing madly outside under a dismal sky, but here inside, I was warm and protected from the elements, from the cold; but (and this is the ironic part) a different kind of storm was raging and assailing me inside. A storm of mighty visual spectacle and glorious Dolby digital surround sound. Inside the theatre the world was about to end and I was jumping in joy! This is what dreams are made of! To bear witness to the end. I admit, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that I can sometimes be sick of heart, for I do enjoy watching the race of man utterly wiped out.

Those of you psychologically primed will no doubt conclude that I am not a happy bunny - hence my desire to see human life extinguished. That is not true! Let me explain (and I know I am digressing here, but this is my blog, and I can jolly well write what I want). You see, members of the jury, I genuinely believe that man is a scourge and a blight and a nasty infection upon the earth. Man is the worst thing that ever happened to this planet. I really don't know why we keep elevating ourselves to some lofty dais. We were and are a big mistake. We should never have evolved. We should never have come down from those trees. We should never have heaved our fish like bodies out of the primordial ocean onto dry land huffing and puffing. Hell! We should never have coagulated out of stardust! But it was out of our control. Just like the end will one day also be out of our control. He giveth and He taketh away - without even bloody asking! We never got a say in it did we? Did anybody ever ask us? Did anybody ever ask you whether you wanted it? Did anybody ever ask you whether you wanted to exist? So, why cry when it's all over? And yet! And yet, we are expected to be thankful for existence cos it is such a good thing isn't it? Tell me, what is so special about existence that we are expected to spend our entire existences being so thankful for existence?! Should a lump of rock be thankful for existing? Should the sun? Should this coffee sitting in front of me? Who should the lump of rock be thankful to anyway, and for what? For being a stupid thick rock! It's so silly, and I am in danger of going mad and in danger of loosing you, my dear readers, in the thicket of my philosophical peregrinations. The great thing is that we can think and ponder about all this, and nothing, and I mean nothing, is out of bounds as far as the enquiring mind is concerned. Nothing is sacred. I am Stardust and so are you and isn't it wonderful! - to wake up in the morning and think (or scream if you wish): I am stardust! I am a lump of stardust and I can drink coffee. I am a lump of stardust and my name is Wasim and I'm so fucking brilliant and so gorgeous and I have an ipod I'm so proud of.

Er OK, back to the movie.

There were some good moments in the movie, and I use the word 'moments' sparingly. There was the moment when the President is squished by a giant tsunami. That was a good moment. There is the moment when the Vatican is utterly destroyed by an earthquake. That was a good moment too. There was the moment when a McDonald's is swallowed up by a fissure in the earth. There were some cheers in my heart for that moment. No more McDonald's! Not a bad thing. No more work! Not bad. OK, no more school! Slight tremor there. No more Pepsi or Coke. Big whack there. No more books! Woh, I think I'm going to faint. No more England! Wow, that's like huge. No more America. Yes awesome! Look, it's only a movie and hardly brain food, but do watch it for the special effects porn that it is. But don't expect it to change your life. But why would it? Why would or should any movie change your life? Well some movies can admittedly have that life changing affect, and some (well most of them) are just a waste of two and a half hours of your life. But life is free and you never paid for it so you might as well consider those two and a half hours as free time. Life is free - do what you want with it. Even watch 2012 if you want to!

_______

Decaf thoughts

I'm having decaf thoughts - ideas - weird one's. I'm seated in a cosy cafe enjoying a Sunday coffee washed down with a book. Or is it the other way round? : A book washed down with a coffee? Anyway, never mind. I'm sitting in my usual seat next to the large window that overlooks the windy outdoor pavement scene. Last night it must have rained heavily for the pavement is glossy with a greasy film of water. The sky is a wan blue with the skid marks of aeroplanes criss-crossing it. The trees have shed most of their leaves. Their yellow corpses lie littered on the pavement. I've just realised what I am. I know, brilliant eh?! Do you, my Gentile readers, ever have those abrupt attacks of reality? A sudden gust or gush of fresh air that causes you to inhale a little more deeply than usual; a sudden realisation about something or other that stops you dead in your tracks? Well it happened to me this morning. Well it happened just now actually. Please don't laugh or pity me. I have my moments and I just wish to express them.

You see I was stuffing my mouth full of food and I suddenly realised, when I looked down at my plate, that I was eating dead things! Or to be more precise, things that were once living things. It came as a bit of a shock actually. Let's take my eggs Benedict for example. These once belonged to a chicken and were once on the road to chickenhood, until one day, some farmer who had delusions of grandeur and thought he could play God, decided otherwise, and these eggs were plucked from that noble path to chickenhood, and placed on the less noble path to my plate. The path of platehood! I know what you're thinking gentile readers - Theft!

My toast were once chubby wheat stalks basking in the life affirming rays of the sun in some dusky wheat field until, one day, they were decapitated. And my delicious roast coffee once grew in the slightly acidic soil of the highlands of Ethiopia. And all around me, everywhere I look, I see (no, not dead people) but alive people with round orifices, holes in their heads called 'mouths', through which they shove an endless stream of once living things. And I see two fat women seated to my left, and their mouths now take on a whole new disgusting meaning. The dead food they eat ends up around their bellies. It accumulates in wave like undulations around their waists and backs and under their chins. And they look alien to me now. People look alien to me now. And now, I stare at my eggs Benedict, and I no longer want to eat. And I look at myself, my mouth, my stomach, innards, intestines, and I find myself too disgusting to contemplate. I hate myself. I hate being human. I hate having a body. If only, I was just a brain, and nothing else!

What are we?

What exactly, am I?

Have you never thought about what you are? It's through eating and other such acts like sex, that you realise. Have you not thought about what eating is? Isn't it fantastically alien this eating business? Am I the only one who thinks this?

The unicellular amoeba, when it wants to eat, nestles beside a giant food particle and then changes its shape and invaginates to imbibe it. Swallows it whole. There are some mother birds that store a supply of food in their stomachs and when they go back to the nest, regurgitate it into the mouths of their little en's. There are certain species of ant, whose sole job in life, is to hang from the ceiling of the ant colony, as a source of food for the workers. There is another species of ant that 'farm' aphids. The aphids have teeth and the enzymes that are needed to digest certain leaves. The aphids do the digesting and any excess food is secreted from their backsides in the form of droplets of sugary 'honey-dew'. The ants stroke the hind legs of the aphids and the aphids release the honey dew into the ants mouths. Why? What do the aphids get out of it? Protection. The ants look after the aphids by protecting them from predators and even carry them to the leaf sight. Such relationships in nature are called symbiotic.

And we do the same. We are the same. Certain types of human farm the food, whilst another type, ask the big questions. Inside, we are a colony of cells, and each one of our cells is a colony of bacteria. Our Mitochondria, the power station of the cell, were once free living bacteria, that now live inside our cells. They need the cell as much as the cell needs them - symbiosis. We're all weird aliens you know. We're just too busy to notice. Next time you are eating something think about what you are doing. What are you doing? You are taking into your body, flesh and all, that once belonged to another living being. Do you absorb the spirit, the soul or the life force of an egg when you eat it? Does something of chickenhood end up inside of you when you nibble on a drumstick? No, not exactly. But you do get a lot of calories and protein! And calories are good for they keep you going. You need calories to write stuff like this! You need to eat dead things, in order to power the neurons in your brain, so that they can realise, that you are eating dead things!

And what is the point of that?

Exactly!

___________

Now for something a little different - '2012'

There are movies and then there are Roland Emmerich movies. The former give you time and space to think and make up your own mind. Roland Emmerich movies don't - they pound you into submission. Watching them is like going into a boxing ring and receiving blow after blow of punches. You leave the cinema utterly exhausted and in need of a rest. Tomorrow, Like Dr Faust, I'm going to sell my soul and watch the above Hollywood Blockbuster. The poster, as you can see, features an enormous Tsunami, and a plaintive looking monk (his crimson robe caught in the breeze - how romantic?), looking regretfully on, as the world is consumed by a huge bucket of water. Above the whole the caption reads: 'we were warned'. Yes indeed. Now, everything you need to know about this movie is written in that caption: 'we were warned'. How imaginative. You can just imagine the brainstorming session:

'OK guys, new movie. Worlds about to end. Big Blockbuster. We must come up with something deep for a caption'

'You know, something a little vague and sphinx like but not too vague as to be unfathomable, but simple enough for Mr and Mrs American Public to understand'

'Just a few words, little words, not big words, a small sentence. Any ideas?'

'We were told?'

'No. Good start though. But not sinister enough'

'We were threatened'

'Better but too sinister. Can't go round threatening people these days. You'll get sued'

'We were warned?'

'Mmm, Nice. Terence, your a genius!'

This movie will be an absolute stinker! I can smell it already. Totally rubbish. But I'm watching it anyway - why? Because I enjoy self-induced brain torture? No. Because I have nothing better to do? Er not quite. Because my legs are wilfully disobedient and will take me to it. No. Because firstly it's directed by Roland Emmerich - he of numerous cheese encrusted disaster movies fame (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow). Each one of his movies has been a steadily ascending exercise in outdoing the previous offering in sheer visual spectacle and bravado. Secondly, this movie incorporates the age old gambit that past civilizations have much to teach us and that we ignore them at our peril - Wow, how original man. That's like, so far out there man. In the like, twilight zone man. Mm, where have I seen that one before? Raiders Of The Lost Ark?

Anyway, in the case of '2012' it's the turn of the ancient Mayan civilization of Guatemala to 'warn us' - and they did warn us but would humanity heed? Oh no! Too busy Christmas shopping and stocking up on mince pies and updating their Ipods to care. For maximum effect I'm watching this tomorrow morning at the rather anti-social and nihilistic hour of 09:30am. A time when the streets will be deserted and populated only with the dregs of Friday nights detritus. A good time if you ask me to watch the world die in a glorious death rattle, whilst everybody else in LondonTown is snugly snoozed up in bed.

OK, I admit. I'm only watching this for the special effects! Special Effects Porn that's what this movie is: 'We were warned'

More like: I was warned.

My only hope is that it is not half as bad as I think and believe it will be. Will let you know...if I live to tell, my sordid and gregarious tale. Must go prepared. Will take my Sennheiser noise cancellation headphones along too just in case!

V.

Do Extraterrestrials feel romantic love? / Coup de foudre

How do you get two intelligent organisms to copulate and have children? Remember we are talking about intelligent organisms; intelligent in the sense of being self-aware. There is only one animal on earth that is (as far as I know) self-aware, and that is Man. My female readers I hope will not be indignant at my chauvinistic use of the male descriptive. When I say 'Man' I include them also. In fact, since we are on the topic, when thinking of self-aware Man, I think of my female readers more than my male compadres - but I am digressing. As always.

So, coming back. How do you get two intelligent and self-aware organisms to copulate and have children? Answer: create within their brains the ability to feel romantic love. There is no more powerful emotion than that of romantic love. I say 'romantic' love deliberately to differentiate it from 'other' types of love. Like the love one feels for one's parents, siblings, friends and so forth. The whirlwind of romantic love has shaped and carved our world throughout the ages. It has torn asunder empires, smelted dynasties, ripped families in two, levelled continents, reduced histories to ash and perhaps most important of all, harassed individual lives lived on the edge of obscurity. It has served as a muse and inspiration for our greatest works of art and our dizziest technological achievements. Second only to God, it was romantic love, that beat a path for the Enlightenment.

But that is not what I wish to discuss here. We have all, if we have lived fully, experienced first hand the tug and pull of romantic love. We know what it feels like. We know the powerful grip it can have on us when its potions take hold. And yet! And yet (and here I must whisper lest somebody hears my sodden incantations) we claim to be free, to possess a quality called freewill. When Man (or Woman) is under the iron grip of romantic love, he/she is like the Penguins of the Antarctic, huddled together in a black and white mass, conserving heat against the cold, trying to keep warm, to repeal faith, but ultimately in the end, giving in to the inevitable. When in-love you are like the hedgehog scurrying thereabouts in the undergrowth - seeing only that which lies a few inches from the tip of your nose. Or like the pigeon, pecking away, at little baubles. Are you a myopic hedgehog or an all seeing eagle? Answer: myopic hedgehog!

If life exists on other planets. If, many millions of miles distant, somewhere out there in the starry void, lies a planet, studded with intelligent life, does it I wonder, feel romantic love? And if yes, does its version of romantic love feel the same as our own? Perhaps these beings have bigger hearts on account of the thicker blood that must be pumped around the limbs because of the stronger gravitational field. Does this imbue them with stronger romantic feelings? Does their heart throb and hurt more? Perhaps they have two hearts - what then? The imagination can only wonder! Perhaps they have their own version of Romeo&Juliet that would make our own appear like a tepid midday soap opera. Perhaps they have no stomach, do they then suffer that ignominious knotted 'butterfly in the stomach feeling' that we must endure? Perhaps they are endowed with logic circuits that reduce all love decisions to probability and mathematical certainties, thus doing away with all that tedious mucking about with: dating, anticipation, the gushes, the sobs, the hysterics, the coyness, the meals spent gazing into each others glassy eyes. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...

There is something else I briefly wish to touch upon here. Please observe the man or woman in love. Imagine them in your head. Observe their behaviour. Observe how, when in the presence of their desired one, they shut out all else, all others, the world. Observe, how they react and notice every nuance of the object of their affections. Seeing meaning and purpose where none doth exist. Observe and hear my friends the lilting tones and praise they heap upon their loved one. Praise towers so high they touch the ceiling...of the world. Observe them with their friends talking inanely and non-stop about their loves ones sense of humour, their superior tastes, their bookish charm, their record collection, their clothes, their career, their person, their brain, their body, their tattoos, their earlobes. Observe how their dreamy eyes travel back in time and recollect and congeal a particular moment out of a dense mass of moments. They see all yet they see nothing. That is what love does. How is it, that in a world of 6 billion people, we feel, when under the thrall of romantic love, that we have found the one? That we have by some amazing comingling of faith and chance, found that one singular individual who will complete us, make us happy and whole, and whom no one else on the planet can replace. For that is how love feels does it not? The exclusivity of romantic love. The irrationality of it. The way it subverts our more thoughtful and pragmatic tendencies. The way it barges into our ordered lives and smashes about (like a rabid bull in a china store). The way it lifts us to a vague make-believe place up in the clouds full of fairies and skyhooks. All these qualities and more, tell me; the armchair philosopher, that romantic love is on par, and deserves to be grouped with, and should be treated as, a mental diseases! Ha! Yes, a mental disease!

But to end on such a grim note will not do. I think a little lunacy and frenzy is good in life. Adds a dash of colour, tone and texture to what would otherwise be a rather morose, glum and moribund tapestry. Love inspires! Love kills! Love is the muse of muses! Too much sanity is not a good thing and frankly a little boring. Madness. Madness is good. All forms including romantic love. Revel in it. Allow it the pleasure of deranging your senses. Let its scent rub off on your person, and don't let anyone or anybody say or convince you otherwise of its high glories and lowly pains.

Iseepurplerabbits.com

Ithinkimightbeturningintoapenguin.com

___________

L o n d o n P a n e g y r i c

aDoseOfPhilosophy - On Women

Greetings! -

Welcome again my greedy voracious caterpillar hungry readers. It is that time again, that time when you read the title above, smile, rub your hands in glee, make a cup of tea, sit comfortable, and proceed to swallow another teaspoon, nay another dose, of philosophy. Today's topic is on that wonderful confounded creature that has vexed man since time began, the woman.

Let us begin:

It is often said that women are from Venus and Men from Mars. But I disagree. Men are not from Mars. They are from earth and women from planet GodKnowsWhere.

Tell me, what is the first question a woman will ask a man whom she is considering dating?

Mm?

Any ideas?

Anyone?

No?

Let me tell you. She will ask him that 'find-out-everything-about-someone-in-one-sentence' question :

What do you do?

What do you do?! - in those four words, which, on there own, look so innocent and guiless, lies a whole life's worth of information about you. Asking someone what they do for a living, is the quickest and most efficient way of getting to the root of a person. Are you a teacher? (caring, sociable). Are you an accountant? (dull, precise, good with numbers). Are you a writer? (solitary, schizophrenic, phlegmatic, bipolar). Are you a photographer? (creative, poor, smelly, love cheese). Are you unemployed? (Idle, good-for-nothing lazybones). Are you a philosopher pondering life's mysteries? (mad, loopy, strange, wonderful, sexy?)

When a girl asks you what you do, you should reply as follows:

[girl] 'What do you do?'

[boy] ‘Well I er, don’t actually do anything'

[girl] 'What do you mean you don't do anything? Everybody does something'

[boy] ‘Well, I erm, don’t do anything - I’m just Me!’

[girl] 'Well how do you eat?'

'With my mouth'

'Yes, I know but with what?'

'My teeth?'

'No but...'

'With my hands?'

'Yes I know but with what?'

'I eat food'

'Yes I know! But what do you buy it with?'

'Oh! er, money'

'Yes, but you just told me you don't do anything so how...?'

'Oh I see. Well my tummy is so small, and my body so minor, and my wants so tiny, that I don't need much to live on. A hunk of bread, a bit of cheese, maybe a tomato, a spoonful of honey and water from the stream'

'But where do you sleep? You must have a roof over your head?'

'Yes I have a roof. It's called the sky'

'The sky?'

'Yes you know, the sky. It's up there!'

'Yes I know where it is! What about your bed?'

'The grass'

'And for light?'

'The moon and the stars'

'OK, but what about friends?'

'The crickets, the birds, the caterpillars, the insects and the worms that crawl through the soil and the hedgehogs and the monkeys...'

'Monkeys? What Monkeys? There's no Monkeys in London?

'In London Zoo they're are'

'What about companionship, like girls...female company???'

'Well, funnily enough, you're the first ever to show interest!'

[girl blinks]

[she blinks again]

_________

And then she turns around and slinks off. The man sits there scratching his head wondering what happened. He scratches his head and finds a big fat louse in his hair. He watches it wriggle between his fingers wanting to escape back into the greasy warmth of his bedraggled hair.

'Mm, protein' he says. And puts it in his mouth.

-THE END-

Coming soon...Is your job big enough for your spirit?