I saw a chapel all of Gold

I witnessed the death of consumer society today; heard the death rattle of a system finally sucumbing to its own inbuilt falability. Felt the iron grip it has on my life weaken to a feeble and ghostly presence around me. Just the fetid stench of its decaying flesh remains – whilst its Ka swims in history’s gutter with its kindred spirit democracy; dearly departed just a few short years ago.

In time I will become a rubber-necker; overwhelmed by the need to slow down and survey its yellowing, bloated corpse. To watch the foul fluids seap from its lifeless shell. To gouge its eyes with a stick to make sure its not coming back.

But not today. Today my role in life changed. I accept I am no longer here to consume. To earn you profits. To be judged by the crap that surrounds me. To pollute. To deal with the rubbish that society generates. I am no longer interested in your lies; the flawed dreams you sell.

I sell my stocks, call my bank, pay off my debts; and just wait. I don’t care if I wait for one month, six months, a year. Five even. I am right, you are wrong. I saw your death today … millions will mourn your passing.

I wake

I hate the weekends. Too much time to think.

Back to work.

Back to the crap. Back to the excruciating pointlessness of modern life

A sheep in wolves’ clothing

Crap decends on you from all levels - they mail it to you, spam it to you, phone it through to you, and in your immediate working environment certain people hand it out directly to you.

Most people work with assholes; violence is a coping strategy.

I work with a guy - for the sake of anonymity lets call him ‘MBA Asshole’. In any free market based democracy people like MBA Asshole are propelled skywards under the sheer weight of the bullshit that they generate. You can reach stratospheric heights if the pile of crap you generate makes you tall enough. It’s a known fact where I work - the more everyone else is immersed in his bullshit, the less likely they are to spot that MBA Asshole is … well an asshole, basically.

MBA Asshole talks a foreign language that nobody else understands; generates shit, wastes my time, packages lies, creates inertia.

Lunch - only two pints today.

Get back to the office to attend meeting MBA Asshole has called to discuss sales targets. Ten people, no agenda, lots of accusations, MBA Asshole standing in front of ‘flip-chart’ with laser pointer in hand.

MBA Asshole, who is responsible for sales targets, is behind target. He has to get us to work harder so he can earn bonus, so he can be recognized as an even bigger asshole than he is now.

Lots of shouting - takes an MBA to shout that loud about things that don’t matter, to people that don‘t care.

I’m asked to present. I walk to ‘flip-chart‘ say nothing. Fumble with laser pointer. Say nothing again. Press button. Accidentally laser MBA Asshole in the eye. Mutter apology. Shrug. Sit down. Still say nothing.

The power of silence. You should try it.

MBA Asshole gets angry. Berates me in front of co-workers. Says I’m lazy - can’t even manage to present without causing injury. Still seeing stars before his eyes. Sweats angrily.

Meeting continues. Nothing achieved. This is yet another attempt to waste my time telling me things I don’t care about.

After meeting stuck in lift with MBA Asshole. Gets aggressive about the laser incident. Shouts wildly. Says I‘m scum. He‘s going to get me - I should resign.

Two floors to go.

MBA Asshole still mad, sticks face in front of mine. Warns me again to be careful. I don’t want enemies like him (apparently).

One floor to go.

MBA Asshole on the floor holding his nose. Blood seeps between his fingers. Crushed tie. Looks up confused.

‘You head butted me’ he shouts.

‘Me?’

‘Yeah you, you bastard .. You head butted me’

‘You banged your head on the wall’ I reply calmly. ‘You want to be careful. Must’ve been the damage to your eyes caused by the laser. You should see a Doctor’

Door opens. I walk out.

MBA Asshole stays in lift. Presses button for the top floor. Hides in corner as the doors slide shut.

First lesson of the day - if nobody witnessed it, it didn’t happen. Second lesson of the day - never be a sheep in wolves’ clothing.

Violence works. I thought you were supposed to mellow as you got older.

Wish I had an MBA.

I wouldn’t be working for this shitty company.

Acquired Tourettes Syndrome


Hatred in this crap generating world intensifies. Opened door today. Only bills. Just crap I have to read. Time wasted writing cheques I don’t want to write, calling people I don’t want to speak to (and who don’t want to speak to me) about things I don‘t care about. I am a source of someone else’s income. That is my role in life. Corporate parasites latch on to me.

Lunch - three pints and a JD and Coke.

A thought occurs to me after pint number two; this crap generating world I live in hates confrontation. It loves to dish out crap but hates to receive crap. It can’t justify why it throws crap at me, why it wastes my time, so at the slightest whiff of protest it clams up, drops the phone line, offers me internet offers. ‘Speak with our call centre ….’

I swore at a call centre operator once. Not at him, but at his role in life. Nothing bad just said ‘shit’ about his employers policy on some crap or other. Saying shit wastes less time than being bothered to argue about things that don’t matter. In that context saying shit seemed to be fairer to him and me; he couldn’t be bothered justifying his employers theft of money from me, and I couldn’t be bothered blaming him for having to pay his mortgage justifying his employers lack of ethics. Shit is quick. It saves debate, saves time, reduces the crap in my life.

Anyway, pint number two and I’m reading a newspaper article about disability law. Disabled people have rights. Employers and businesses now have to cater for your disability - its all about treating people fairly and you can complain if they’re not .

Then I hit upon a way to waste someone else’s time instead of writing my cheques. Speaking to people about things I don’t care about. A way of giving crap rather than receiving crap - in that moment I developed ‘Acquired Tourettes Syndrome’

Finished lunch. Returned to work. Called my bank and asked about insurance. Non specific. Just ‘insurance‘.

Click, click, holding message ‘Your call is very important to us ….’

Call centre guy answers. Sounds Welsh. Could be Indian. I’m a consumer not a language expert. If I cared I’d ask. I don’t (care).

I begin to explain that I need to insure my house subtly announcing ‘Piss, shit, bollocks’ half way through my opening sentence. I try to then proceed to explain my exact requirements.

‘I’m sorry sir’ call centre guy interjects, ‘but we’re not paid to take that sort of abuse. If you swear at me again I’m afraid I will have to hang up’

I was right, this crap generating world I live in hates confrontation.

I ask if the bank he works for has a disability policy.

‘Yes sir’ he replies.

I calmly explain my condition ending with a rather loud ‘Piss, shit, bollocks’ just to emphasise the tragedy of my condition. ‘So you see. I have this terrible condition which means that I’m not being rude to you … under your disability policy if you refuse to handle my call I will be forced to make a complaint. Could I please have your name? Nothing personal but I’m sick of being victimized, you people have no idea ’

Call centre guy changes his attitude.

Spent fifteen minutes getting insurance for I house I don’t even own. Said ‘Piss, shit, bollocks’ at least twenty times. Could almost feel him wince over the phone line. It was funny twice. After that I felt sad that call centre guy had to take this abuse because he had a mortgage, an employer that would fire him if more than two customers complained that he was unhelpful, and a target to sell insurance that nobody wanted. If you give crap, you have to be able to take crap.

My time is free. This is three hundred and sixty degree feedback.

Celebrity Duck-shoot (boredom sets in)

Other people make a point of annoying me with pointless trivia. Filling my life with their crap. Feeding off me for their exclusive benefit. So today I decided to call a production company and reciprocate. To waste the time of others.

I wanted to make a quick buck. Everyone is doing it. Selling reality show formats. Making money doing nothing. Selling tat. Turning tracksuit wearing scum into tabloid icons. Turning minor celebrities into slightly less minor celebrities.

I owe it to my kids to try this fast-buck opportunity. All my income comes from sources that are too legitimate. Its simply too much effort.

And so began ‘Celebrity Duck-shoot’

I called through to the production company headquarters and spoke to a bored secretary. I deliberately called at three o’clock guessing that whoever was in charge of new ideas had probably just returned from lunch pissed, and might take the call. He did, and he sounded like he was.

It is hard to pitch an idea on the phone so I asked him to sit back and visualise. Just imagine I said. Imagine a conveyor belt stuffed with celebrities. A narrow electronic production line crammed with the sort of jet set ‘Shiteratti’ that fill the pages of Hello magazine. All fixed to the conveyor by ankle straps, and all wearing realistic mallard beaks in wipe free orange plastic.

Imagine too, in front of them a handful of contestants wearing burberry plus-fours and NYC hats - each armed with a shot gun - but with only two cartridges.

Their quest?

Not just to shoot at the celebrities - that would be pointless. The goal would be to award more points to the person who bags the biggest celebrity. Like big game hunting. The Z-listers couldn’t resist this could they? Imagine them all waving at the start and shouting things to prove that they were more important than their co duck. ‘Pick me, I did four series of celebrity flatulence farm, and that bloody Alex Best at the front only did one!’ they‘d shout. ’Pick me, pick me’. They couldn’t stop themselves. Imagine too the pride of the guy who realises, momentarily before he collapses in searing pain from a chest shot, that he was deemed to be more famous than Chris Tarrant, Keith Chegwin, or Patsy Kensit. Bang, bang, you’re dead famous.

Its pure genius I assured him; but I wouldn’t put any money on Kerry Katona being worried.

To be fair he didn’t like the idea and thought I was joking. I was not.

I hate the TV industry.

I must stop drinking at lunchtime.

It only costs 25 quid to sell your soul

The crap in my life continues; I am a crap magnet.

On holiday last month - missed sending off a cheque to my credit card company by one day. Statement arrived today - twenty-five quid plus penalty interest, plus they got the cheque anyway a day late and cashed it. I add this robbery to all the other attempts at invading my pocket this month.

People are dying in Iraq in the name of democracy. This commoditized democracy will surely mean that in ten years from now some American bank gets the right to charge each and every one of them twenty five dollars for paying their debts a few hours late. I cry.

I called the call centre just because I was bored and guessed that the operators were bored to. Bored of taking calls from pissed off customers that their company had stolen money from. Bored of their crap pay, bored of their robotic lives. Battery hens crap where they stand, its rare to be forced to stand where somebody else craps for money.

It only costs twenty-five quid to sell your soul.

I wonder where the call centre guy is based. The accent is non-specific and geography means nothing to me anymore. It could be Birmingham, it could be Bangalore. I ask myself if I care as I force him to explain, again, why they have charged me twenty-five quid and why they can’t rescind it.

I don’t (care).

There could be a civil war happening outside his electronic fortress; a bloody coup d’etat. History could be changing at the very perimeter of his carpark. And yet I still force him to explain to me, three times, why I have to pay the fee when they have already banked the money I owed. We are not writing history anymore, we are wasting peoples time, creating crap, franchising fraud.

I wasted twenty minutes of my life talking to call centre guy, and I guess I wasted twenty minutes of his life too. That’s forty minutes of wasted effort. If I cared I could have asked him how he was, learned something about his culture, understood his geography, and religious beliefs. But twenty-five quid is twenty-five quid and that‘s all it takes to sell your soul.

I've snapped today and decided that I have too much crap in my life. To takes just too much effort to just get through the day. I am expending too much time dealing with idiots, stopping companies stealing off me, worrying if I could save 5p by switching my gas or water supplier. Its the grinding pathetic minutae of life that has finally got to me!

Gone are those big serious concepts that used to piss me off - I'm no longer concerned about starving children, I have no fears about global warming, I am de-sensitized by the daily death and carnage in I see in foreign climes on CNN. Democracy is an abstract concept that I no longer even recognise. We all lie, we all steal, and those that don't are stupid or lazy.

But these concepts are too big for me to feel angry about anymore, because its life's pathetic little nuances that have pushed me over the edge - the blinding, crushing, irritating minutae of 21st Century existence has finally turned me angry and selfish.

As Norman Mailer once put it in An American Dream - today 'I could feel all that is good in me going away, going away perhaps forever .... my courage, my wit, ambition and hope. Nothing but sickness and dung remained in the sack of my torso'

Now its only the sickness and dung that I am left with too - the crap of a generation that has sucked the lifeblood from me follows me from room to room. Intellectual detritus follows me at every turn. Society goads me. Sells me false hope, fills my time, emptiess my wallet, pisses on my shoes. I am judged not be myself but the crap around me, and its the crap around me that now overwhelms.

I want to teach my kids to grow up and be honest with themselves, be productive happy people - I say work hard, study. It will have its rewards. But I know this is wrong. High ideals are just baggage in todays society. What I should tell my teenage daughter - drop out of school, celebrate your ignorance, act like a vacant slut on some reality show and you'll never have a mortgage. Sell out, give up, and if you're lucky you'll never have to work again. Because the alternative is 20 years of hope, crap, and frustration and the system will get you in the end. I'm not yet 40 yet my values are old. I have failed to equip my children to succeed in the 21st Century.

Here endeth the first lesson ...