I listen to my culture. This is my reply.

Coca-Cola BLM Harvey Weinstein Al Gore Mother Nature Climate Change Greta Thunberg Davos Elites Bilderberg QAnon Antifa Joe Rogan Billie Eilish OJ Simpson Rodney King LA Burning Covid 19 Jeffrey Epstein CRISPR Space X Machine Learning Boston Dynamics Amazon Fulfilment Centres Kim Kardashian Kobe Bryant Myanmar Gig Workers Unions Civil Disobedience Intersectionality Electric Scooters Microdosing Transcendental Meditation Killing It Bio-Hacking 10x-ing Pollinating Bubbling Up Two Rounds Caught Up In The Echo Chamber stick it to your temple and BLAP you're dead on the floor with the zeitgeist pouring outta your skull in an ever-spreading pool. 

Creep down your front steps to the driverless Uber. Stuff your body in the trunk. Take it down to the docks where, in moonlit reflections, you dump it in with hardly a splash. 

Riding back up the hill through the midnight streets, the car plays Ella Fitzgerald and you pop another psilocybin cap and gaze over the rooftops trying to convince yourself that what you did was right. 

Life is a Hollywood Car Chase

What is the best, truest, most insanely awesome shit you can say right now?

Life is love.

Sweet. Let's move on. Quickly now in a car chase through the city. Skyscrapers flash by like ribs in the elephant's graveyard, giant sparkly glass'n'steel ribs, mastodons of modernity caught in their stampede to the sky.

Let's ride in helicopters and fly in private jets. Let's parachute down to our own private island where there's a bumping party 24/7.Let's ride in speedboats drinking champagne and cognac, smoking Havanas rolled around lemon amnesia.

The sun's in our face perpetually. At night, the sky's full of stars and we go swimming in the warm sea and it's exciting and scary when you look down and can't see your body. Feel your feet kicking over empty nothingness.

Feel your bowels tighten as you imagine all the sharks and shit, things that wanna eat you and can swim way faster than you and all of a sudden you're more frightened than you've ever been in your life and you're thrashing back to the boat, grabbing the water, pulling yourself as fast as you can – not fast enough – from the thing bearing down on you, the great snapping evil villainous grinning face of Death certainly looming behind you.

But then no. 

Gasp. 

You're back on the boat. Someone you love's toweling you dry and you sit there and look back at the black water with the moon reflecting and listen to the little waves lapping against the side of the boat. With the engines off it's supremely quiet and peaceful and calm.

AstraZeneca'd

Get sent via text to a university building on the edge of town – a brand spanking new building sparkling in the midday sun and stand in a line that feeds through a double door into the building.

In the doorway, a woman takes temperatures and squeezes dollops of hand gel into palms. Take this and eat it; it is my body given up for you.

Give your name and get a piece of paper in return and told to join the end of another queue of people standing 2 meters apart, waiting to go in one of the cubicles where a masked jabber sits waiting.

In line, bemasked, no one interacts. This all feels highly efficient. Loads of staff. Little square stickers on the floor telling you where to stand. Move forward. Stop. Move forward. Stop. The lines feed into the cubicles.

I read the sheet they gave me: The Package Leaflet: Info for the recipient. COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca a solution for injection (ChAdOx1 – S[recombinant]) Quickly scan – turn over – for Possible Side Effects. Nothing surprising. Vomiting. Nothing about blood clots.

Move onto contents. One dose contains 5 x 10¹⁰ viral particles. ChAdox1 – S recombinant, replication-deficient chimpanzee (chimpanzee wtf!?) adenovirus vector encoding the SARS-Cov-2 spike glycoprotein. Produced in genetically modified human embryonic (wtf) kidney (seriously?) (HEK)293 cells.

I smile behind my mask and shake my head at the awesomeness and ridiculousness of it all. I love how I'm willing to go get injected with some colourless to slightly brown solution with genetically modified chimp cells because my phone told me to.

Then a woman says, 'Next,' and I look round and she's looking at me. 'Me?' I say, pointing at my chest. 'Yes. Come this way.' I follow her into a cubicle and sit. She sits and says her name's Zoe and asks a bundle of adminny questions and I take off my jacket and roll up my sleeve for this 'historic moment,' I say and she smiles and says it back to me then rips open a plastic pack and extrudes a disposable needle.

'Take this,' she says, 'and drink it. This is my blood given up for thee.' And plunges the needle in and rams the hammer home and pumps me full of killer chimp cells and all I can think about is zombie movies and conspiracy theories, news headlines and the chaos behind the innocuous act of mass inoculation.

Then it's over – just a prick – didn't even feel it and I'm pulling on my jacket saying, 'Thanks. Thanks for what you're doing here; it's awesome,' and she's not even looking at me but wiping the seat down for the next schmuck. 

WWIII

What are people actually like? Put em through a pandemic and you'll find out. Jesus Christ, it's been fuckin messy. I feel like every way I turn there's an existential crisis staring back at me, licking its chops, waiting for me to blink or run or make any move whatsoever.

Crises – they can smell your fear. I can never remember, is it play dead or make yourself look big if you meet an existential crisis on the trail?

I think it's actually go bat shit insane then tweet about it. Spray and pray, motherfuckers. Take a load of content to the face every day, every waking moment. Ramp up the data rate! Increase the bandwidth! Pour it on! Hijack the controls! Now, where are those towers?

It's funny. You look at the world in front of your eyes and shit's normal. People say hello in the street; they take their dogs to the park; builders kneel on a tarped-off roof; you can hear the radio playing Justin Bieber, all the mundane shit you should see on a Tuesday afternoon.

Then I jack into cyberspace and it's fuckin WWIII where SJWs from Wokistan are tryna take out Alt-Righters from Magastan. Cancellations and bans fly through the air like bombs, taking out infantrypeople. 

Shitposting on a military-industrial scale. Smoke rises from burnt-out cases and careers crumble to earth. The kids and old people are crying; they've been left to fend for themselves while the parents fight on the front line. We're talking skirmishes, battles, all-out war in virtual reality.

Then you pull out and sit there, covered in sweat, panting like you just got fucked. Grab a quick shower, eat some food, swallow some vitamin D tablets and then jack straight back in.

HCFCs

Is there a way to forget all your problems and move forward with your head held high and a big smile in your heart? Is there a way to press together in a big giant mass so everyone on Earth can touch each other for a second? Is there a right and a wrong here? Does anyone know what the fuck's actually going on?

No one knows what the fuck they're talking about. That's my biggest lesson of the pandemic, my biggest learning point – no one knows the fuckin truth, least of all the ones telling you they do. That is valuable as fuck. It's a little sad too but I'd rather be sad and know the truth as opposed to blissfully unaware.

Tell me everything. I need to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. What is it really like, this human experience?

Each and every one of us is a little walking talking nodule on the brain of civilization.

We ain't pure individuals. Psshaa. I am a nuclear power plant. I am an iPhone supply chain. I am the acidification of the oceans. I am the hydrochlorofluorocarbons, motherfucker; watch me sputter and spore, pinch off into buds and replicate disconcertingly fast.

Missing the Mark

I believe in God and Science.

I believe in empirical-repeatable-evidence-style truth. And I believe in gut-level-catharsis-inducing-narrative-based-metaphorical truth. Two different things but we use the same word because actually, they aren't different things.

Science and religion are the same thing. They're our best questions to the answer 42. Is this the way? Is storytelling the way to the truth? Yes. Is the scientific method the way to the truth? Yes. Is war and murder the way to the truth? No – even though they're some of our most popular routes.

What about denial and depression? Same as war, I'm afraid. There really are only two ways of going about pursuing truth – religion and science. Religion is storytelling at its best. Science is observation at its best.

I like making grand statements. When you write something down, it's one of the better ways to see if it's true or not. Quite often, I'll say something just to see how it sits.

Ode to Steve Jobs

OH WOW OH WOW OH WOW

I'm not gonna be resentful. I'ma be useful and happy and pleasant as can be. I'm gonna make your life a lot easier. I'ma make the emotional, physical, and existential pain go away. Fear not, my friend. You're with a professional now.

There's no need to worry. Just sit back and try to relax. What would you like today, sir, ma'am? What kind of entertainment would you care to endure? Some light green will-o'-the-wisp? Or perhaps a something little heavier like a spike through the face.

Which eye do you prefer, your left or your right? Okay – shloop – I'll be taking that! You see, I am the Master of Eyeballs. Eyeballs, brains, hearts, minds, lips and assholes – everything's mine. Every part of you is hooked up to me.

There's no way to distinguish one from the other. We're two liquids in a jar. We're two gases in a room. Let it happen. Try not to resist. Let my words sink through you like a stone to the sea bed of your soul.

Feel my octopus feelers feel through your holes. There is no Me; there is no You; there is only One. Can you feel it? I'm wrapped around your basal ganglia – the lizard part of your brain. It's evolution, friend. You can't look away.

A Tale of Two Shitties

It was crazy times. It was gnarly times. The craziest and gnarliest of times. People were running hither and thither. People were screaming contradictions. You weren't sure who to believe. Everyone was denouncing everyone else.

To be honest, the best thing to do was keep your head down and keep working, keep practising your craft, whatever it may be. In my case, it's writing and learning what people want to read. I am the voice of the people: hear me roar.