Work! Consume! Die!

Conditions at Heathrow were described as ‘Third World’. ‘Every day little Mr Alan Thomas has to walk 500 yards for water. Down to the gents past Tie Rack and Garfunkel’s.’ Can you imagine being one of those families stuck at Heathrow on Christmas Day? Waking up your 5-year-old to tell him that Santa has been, and he’s brought a ploughman’s sandwich and a pair of socks. Heathrow looked less like a Third World country and more like Heathrow airport exactly 12 months ago.

Apparently a flight to Newcastle was cancelled seven times – although that may’ve just been because the plane itself simply refused to go there. One passenger said it was ‘absolute mayhem’. Weird – my idea of ‘absolute mayhem’ isn’t a load of people sat around looking grumpy. It’s an astronaut indiscriminately firing a custard gun in Debenhams. I was upset that all those flights were cancelled. Anything that slows down the approaching death of the planet is a tragedy in my opinion. The snow caused quite a few injuries round my way. Apologies, but if you will keep saying ‘So much for global warming’, I’ve got no choice but to punch you.

My favourite Christmas game is hide and seek – last year I was undiscovered until New Year’s Eve. People worry about the elderly being lonely at Christmas, but the old woman next to me got loads of cards. They’re piling up on her doorstep since the letterbox got full. People were unable to buy presents due to online stores shutting down delivery. Mainly because people confused ‘some snow’ with a deadly stream of radioactive lava preventing them from walking further than their own door.

It’s definitely worth a deliveryman risking his life on treacherous roads so my missus can get Sex and the City 2 on DVD. Royal Mail postmen did their best to clear the parcel backlog – helping themselves to a couple of packages whenever they knocked off a shift.

Why does everyone always say there’s no grit? I saw loads of grit – granted, it was all in a van surrounded by bewildered council workers. They couldn’t find enough salt in Scotland? Surely they could have flushed the inhabitants of the motorway services onto the roads and opened a few arteries? I’m pleased they haven’t gritted the pavements; sliding into strangers is the only physical contact Glaswegians get.

A great-granddad nearly froze to death when passers-by ignored him after he slipped on ice and lay on a city street for nearly five hours. It’s hard to believe he lay there all that time and nobody stole his shoes. Happily, he got back home, where he’ll spend the next three months being ignored before freezing to death.

The head of British Gas said their profit margins are smaller than Marks & Spencer’s. I think the difference that he fails to recognise is that thousands of old people don’t die every year because they can’t afford to shop at M&S. Despite making £2.2 billion in profit this year, British Gas executives say they have been forced to pass on to customers some of the rising costs of heating their country mansions.

So, farewell then, News of the World. ‘Thank You & Goodbye’ was the final headline. Apparently, ‘You Can’t Sue, We No Longer Exist!’ wouldn’t quite fit onto the front page. If Rupert Murdoch had been allowed to take full control of Sky, it would’ve been great. You could’ve pressed the red button and it’d have given you 24-hour coverage of Gordon Brown’s bins. The whole Murdoch business reminds me of Grima Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings. Formerly a tenacious-looking, sharp practitioner, whispering poison into the ear of power, suddenly this arch manipulator looks like a fucking Tequila worm.

The politicians, of course, are more like Denethor, whom Sauron drove to despair with images of his swelling armies. Looking deep into the palantír of the media, our leaders thought it showed them reality, when it actually only showed what Murdoch and his like directed their gaze towards.

I’m so disgusted with News International that I refuse to read anything they print. Including my own column in the Sun, which is why I write it with my eyes closed. I say ‘write’ – I mean, I let my cat run across the keyboard and then clean it up with the spell check. If it’s good enough for Dan Brown, it’s good enough for me. Just to be on the safe side, I’ve never given the Sun my mobile number. In fact, every week I dictate the column onto the voicemail of a random victim of crime. Of course, it’s easy to learn the precise details of people’s mobile-phone messages. There’s the high-tech procedure where you hack into their SIM account, and the lower-tech one where you somehow lure them into a giant imitation train carriage.

The hacking story took an explosive twist when it was alleged that the News of the World hacked into Milly Dowler’s phone. The police are investigating – which shouldn’t take too long. Officers, flick back your diaries to 2002 and see if any of the entries read ‘Helped News of the World hack Milly Dowler’s phone’. Some policemen were so sickened by the News of the World that they refuse to even line their budgie’s cage with it. Instead, they are using used bills with non-sequential serial numbers.

Ford cars halted advertising with the News of the World when the Milly Dowler story broke. Nice showing solidarity by ceasing to advertise the one thing that kills the most UK teens every year. Orange and T-Mobile also pulled their advertising. Makes sense – the News of the World had shown their products to be a little flimsy, security wise. Mumsnet cancelled £30,000 worth of advertising with Sky. Money they raised by selling their collected bile to the Chinese medicine industry.

Glenn Mulcaire, who’s accused of hacking Milly’s phone, asked the press to leave his family alone. I’m guessing he then went to look up the word ‘irony’.

Does anyone else think Rebekah Brooks looks like the exhumed Milly Dowler? It’s so sad that the mobile phone of a murdered teenager was hacked into – a life cut short before her natural death from a radiation-induced brain tumour in her 30s. Listening to a murdered girl’s messages. It’s a new low. Whatever happened to the traditional methods of tabloid journalism? Nicking stories from regional papers and doing Select All/Copy/Paste from Britain’s Got Talent press releases.

We celebs must take precautions. I urge any I meet to follow my example and make themselves a carrier-pigeon runway hat. The only tricky bit is training the mouse in the control tower. The News of the World hacked Lembit Öpik’s phone messages – after six months of waiting, they rang him just to check he was still alive. Apparently, Chris Tarrant’s phone messages aren’t very interesting – it’s mostly just people saying ‘Sorry I was out. I don’t know what the capital of Ecuador is.’ At least I know the newspapers will never listen to my answerphone messages, as no one ever calls me.

Rupert Murdoch appeared at a parliamentary select committee and some very important questions got answered. Such as, how hard can a Chinese woman punch a man in the face? Rupert said he’d never felt more humble – which is saying something. He owns the TV channel that shows Fat Families and Gladiators.

The committee room was full of searching questions. Well, apart from ‘Why are you carrying a plate of foam?’ The amusing thing about the incident is that normally, if you want to see an old man, a younger Chinese woman and a cream pie, you’d have to turn to channel 973 on Sky TV.

After the fight, the MPs missed an opportunity by not asking Wendi what her surname was. She’d answer and then they should’ve asked her to repeat it. ‘Deng. DENG!’ And then Tom Watson could have shouted, ‘Seconds out. Round two.’ Shaving foam in the face. What’s the big deal? If you read the side of the can, that’s the manufacturer’s exact recommendation. I could understand the outcry if it were toothpaste.

Before this incident the rest of the world only associated the Brits with Benny Hill. This won’t have helped. We might as well have ended the proceedings with Murdoch pulling his trousers down and chasing his wife around the room while intermittently being slapped on the head by Tom Watson MP. Jonnie Marbles (which isn’t even his real name by the way, it’s Jonathan Marbles) said that he wanted to shove a pie in Murdoch’s face, ‘for all the people who couldn’t’. Well, Jonnie, after your piss-poor attempt, you can now join the ranks of those people who couldn’t.

Of course, Jonnie Marbles should’ve stayed perfectly still – Wendi’s vision is based on movement, just like a Tyrannosaurus rex. After the attack it was difficult to tell if the white stuff on Jonnie Marbles’s face was shaving foam or if Wendi had slashed all the way through to the bone. Everyone’s lost interest in the hearing now and just want to see a UFC cage fight between Wendi and that other high-profile bodyguard, Sinitta.

I actually think Murdoch made quite a good impression. Of a garden gnome in a hospice. I’m starting to wonder if we’re actually dealing with the ghost of Rupert Murdoch. In the select committee I expected to see him starting making a clay pot with Rebekah Brooks. Met police chiefs resigned and Rebekah Brooks was arrested over the allegations. Talk about the pigs and the vultures being thrown to the wolves.

Sir Paul Stephenson was Britain’s most senior policeman – he’s so important he even invented the phrase ‘Evening all’. With Stephenson and Yates having quit, it means a dinner lady called Trisha is now the country’s highest-ranking officer, outranking Rav Wilding and the guy who does the funny noises in Police Academy. In Sir Paul’s defence, on his watch crime in London fell – well, apart from among policemen. After the stress of resigning, Sir Paul probably needs somewhere to relax for a few days. I hear Champneys Health Spa is quite good. What? Oh.

I liked former Assistant Commisioner Andy Hayman’s reaction in the select committee when asked if he took money – ‘I can’t believe you’ve suggested that.’ The fact that it came as a shock to him to be asked if he’d done something wrong gives us some insight into how the investigation might have fallen down. John Yates admitted that he didn’t investigate thoroughly because he had a lot on. Come on, mate, you’re not redecorating the back bedroom – it’s a criminal investigation. Not exactly Columbo is it? Just one more thing – I can’t be arsed to read all of that.

Surely the easiest way for the Met to prove they weren’t being bribed by the tabloids is to point to all the newspaper sellers they’ve killed.

Strange times. If you can’t trust the police, politicians and journalists, then who can you trust? Police officers have been resigning, politicians have been compromised and journalists are being arrested over the phone-hacking scandal. So it’s reassuring to know that their conduct is being investigated by the police, parliamentary committees and the Press Complaints Commission. There really needs to be an inquiry by a less corruptible group, though, like FIFA. David Cameron said the hacking inquiry will widen – or in other words, he shouted, ‘What’s that over there?’ and ran off.

Of course, let’s not forget that Murdoch’s decline will largely benefit the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail. Papers whose worldview could best be summed up as mentally ill. I also catch a slight air of monied celebrities and critics telling poor people what they should be interested in. Inequality in our country is so rampant that a big chunk of what was the News of the World’s circulation isn’t literate enough to read a broadsheet. Also, broadsheets are partly about consumption. Who wants to read about box sets, holiday homes and beauty routines they can never afford? Much as the whole thing was hugely enjoyable, I feel a slight prickle on my scalp wondering who might replace Murdoch as an owner, and how many decent billionaires there are around.

It would be great if the tabloids went back to being investigative, campaigning papers, but I think that muckraking and perverse nosiness are actually part of their function. Maybe the tabloids are a kind of Jungian ‘shadow’ of intelligent inquiry, addressing the wearying and disappointing part of ourselves that wants to see who Rio Ferdinand is fucking. The newspaper proprietor William Randolph Hearst pursued a vendetta against Mae West because of the forthright sexual confidence of her work and because he was appalled by how much money she made. Meanwhile, he had affairs and built a business empire. Perhaps we just project hatred onto things we see as embodying what we hate about ourselves, and perhaps tabloids simply embody the worst of us.

‘Haye punches his arm so hard that he falls over screaming’

First thing I do when I get back to Glasgow is I phone this drug-dealer lassie and get some pretty hefty Valium and some acid. We walk round a park for a bit before she hands them over. I’d always felt guilty about the chit-chat with a dealer, trying to hide the fact that you’d just like to buy the drugs. For the first time I’m aware that she is doing the chit-chat but would just like to sell the drugs. I gub two in the local coffee house and everything, the fact I’ve left my bike on the other side of the park, the fact I’ve agreed to do 8 Out of 10 Cats, the rapist, everything is OK. In a way they are all positive developments.

I’m trying to place some short stories I wrote ages ago. My agent is struggling to get me on anything (‘They’re scared’), and tidying them up is something to do. I get a big bag of Diet Cokes and chocolate at the newsagents on the high street.

‘Some rain, eh? It looks crazy out there!’ says the young assistant lassie and I switch into banter mode. A mere observation about the weather turning her from drone snack-parcel conduit into chatty fuck-target.

I sit in the kitchenette and go through the net-checking procrastination I always need to do before work. Some guy has Facebooked me about Tramadol Nights. His daughter is disabled, blah, blah, he’s going to kill me, blah, blah. Of course, I can’t really say that I think some people get sympathy and attention from their link to a disabled person. That (like anything) people laughing about it dilutes the horror but also dilutes the attention those people get. That all the disabled people I’ve met hate those people, blah, blah. Instead, I befriend him on a page where I’m pretending to be a woman and think listlessly about destroying his marriage.

I understand but genuinely despair of people speaking up for the disabled. They have enough taken away from them in our society without taking away their voices as well. People like that sector of society to be invisible. I had a lynch mob on my tail for making a joke on tour that wasn’t disablist in any way and that nobody had heard. Luckily, I’m mature and sophisticated enough to realise that being given a hard time by the papers doesn’t mean you’re a bad person (I’ve read a lot of Spiderman). Rather than feeling prejudice, I’m just someone who doesn’t see why there’s anything that shouldn’t be talked about. I was criticised by people who stereotyped the disabled as ‘weak’ and ‘vulnerable’, something I would never do. People with disabilities are people, just like anybody else and, strangely, that is a real taboo.

We live in a culture where the only time you see someone with a disability is on a freak-show documentary. The Man with an Arse for a Hand and a Hand for an Arse, that kind of thing. Is that really where we’re at with this? Where the Victorians were? I’m generalising, but disabled people are often more fully realised human beings, in that they have been forced to think about the nature of existence a bit more. It’s the ‘average’ person that should be in a freak show. The Man Too Busy to Love His Kids. Show that on Channel 5.

I get a cab down to BBC Scotland studios. It’s brand new and at its centre is a big staircase with bits off it with couches, tables and so on. The idea being that people meet in a village-type way, sharing ideas and energising each other. There is no cunt there.

My company is making a game show for Scottish TV called Dullion. It’s based on a dead-arm game from school. Contestants can win the opportunity to punch their opponent on the arm before they perform a manual-dexterity test.

Kevin Bridges is doing a fine job of hosting it. A gallus local DJ contestant is well in the lead until the other contestant plays her joker, which here is called Hauners. World boxing champion David Haye comes out to deliver the dullion. The DJ is not that bothered, clearly thinking it’ll be a bit of a love tap for the cameras. Haye gets a big laugh by putting in a gum-shield, then punches his arm so hard that he falls over screaming. We make the cunt try to play a game of Operation afterwards and it’s hilarious.

I go home and try to have an early night but there are big scratches on the front door. I think someone tried to break in, so fuck, it’s normal for the area. Then I go back a minute later and they look like animal-claw marks or something.

I take two Valium and try to sleep but downstairs is blasting out cheesy Top 40 pish. I will try to buy downstairs’ flat off them in the morning. I go through to the stateroom and get the model of the guy downstairs and I think I’m cool about everything but I end up holding him up by his wee neck, this tiny wee man, and punching the fuck out of him against the wall.

I used to think that we live in a wedding rules society. Like the way that the playlist at a wedding will be a load of shit records that nobody really likes. Because, while everyone can be disappointed, not one person can be offended. Conversations at weddings have the same rules … conversations everywhere have the same rules. So we all go through the motions, while the DJ plays ‘Born to Be Wild’ and some shit from The Commitments soundtrack.

Sat on my bed feeling the actual throb of those records, the hum of that conversation, like a spider at the centre of a web of banality, it occurs to me that it’s less than that. Most people don’t give a fuck what records get played or what gets said, so long as they can get drunk and have some prospect in the future of fucking a stranger/the wife of a work colleague/a slit they have cut in an uncooked steak.

The guy puts on a Daniel Johnston record and I feel sorry for having hated him so intensely. I remember this old Daniel Johnston drawing of a guy choosing to put on his happy or sad mask for the day. I text a few of my pals and suggest that they come round tomorrow, and we scoff in the face of reality. Stewart texts back, ‘You mean take acid?’ Yes, now that I think about it, I do.

The guys come round and we have a cup of tea and watch Florence and Connell in this BBC Scotland sitcom about an unemployed former metal band called Bitches Buroo, and drop the microdots I scored. It starts as this philosophical, futuristic buzz and when the show ends Stewart goes over and puts Dr. Octagon on the stereo.

Paul has this completely asymmetrical face. He got a bad eye injury as a kid, which exaggerates it, but I start to think how it’s expressive of him, the bit that wants to visit the 23rd dimension and the tense bit that wants to be normal. His face, it suddenly occurs to me as I come up, is a yin–yang symbol.

Stewart is talking about Terence McKenna, who he’s got right into. He starts quoting this thing about how we can choose to enlarge our consciousness or remain brutish prisoners of matter.

‘Yes!’ I laugh, as the acid drips me that loose physical buzz. ‘That’s that quote I used for that HMV thing! They wanted a quote from someone who’d inspired you for a poster campaign at Christmas. I gave them brutish prisoners of matter!’

Stewart: ‘That’s cool man!’

Me: ‘They didn’t use it – they used someone quoting Ferris Bueller.’ I’m overcome with the giggles.

Stewart is grinning. ‘That’s fucked … these fuckers are … brutish prisoners of matter!’

I shrug. ‘I dunno, man. I think you can choose to be amused by the hopelessness of the world. Laugh at every … crass awful thing, it’s like this fucking universal armour! You know that Buddhist thing where they say you can’t choose what happens, but you can choose how you react to it? You can choose to just laugh.’

Paul is struggling badly to make a joint and looks up.

‘“You can’t choose what happens” sounds kind of apolitical … like, laugh at stuff instead of doing anything about it.’

‘I’d love to debate this further but I seem to be losing my mind,’ I interject in an English voice and lurch towards a porthole.

Sheets of rain are lashing down and I feel a surge of excitement. For some reason it looks like it all starts below us, like we’re above the weather system. These flats sway a bit and we’re all standing there, and I know we’re all thinking it’s like a ship.

‘Haharr!’ I turn round roaring like a pirate waving a rolled-up notebook as a cutlass, but they’re laughing and giving me a look like What the fuck?

I’m still kind of high in the morning and go for a walk up the Necropolis. I meet this girl I know walking her dog, and we have a joint behind a gravestone and I start necking her. She starts wanking me off, her hand inside my tracksuit bottoms as I look out across Glasgow, breathing the cold morning air deep into my lungs. I stand up to get a better view and she just stays on her knees, reaching up. I feel like a post-millennial Tom Weir, my face proud and unreadable on a book jacket.

What I think about during the whole thing is Superman. He saw his whole planet die and became this force for good. Batman just saw his parents die and wanted revenge; it was all about him, his ego. Superman saw his whole world die and realised you need to transcend what you want, transcend the ego. Perhaps now, as our world dies, we will be forced to become good, to have perspective, to be Supermen even.

And I know it should feel sordid, this whole thing. But it doesn’t. Even with the dog there, it feels tremendous.

Capitalism only supports certain kinds of groups, the nuclear family for example, or ‘the people I know at my job’, because such groups are already self-alienated & hooked into the Work/Consume/Die structure.

Hakim Bey, Immediatism

From the moment of birth, when the Stone Age baby confronts the twentieth century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence, called love. […] By the time the new human being is fifteen or so, we are left with a being like ourselves. A half crazed creature, more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present age.

R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience

Chapter 3

The old cliché of men saying their partner ‘doesn’t understand them’ comes about because we deliberately look for women who don’t understand us, who don’t understand what cunts we are. Women who have insight? Perceptive women who see through us? We run like hell from those women. No man wants to hear the truth. That after 40 nobody desires you – they put up with you because you remind them of their dad. Don’t hate yourself for struggling in relationships, it’s tough. Only being allowed to fuck one person – and that being the person whose farts you’ve listened to for the last ten years – is the sort of abject test that you would be set in hell.