A Worm in a Wild Apple

Maybe it's the constant rain, or the virus I haven't been able to shake off for three weeks or the fact that nobody pays you on time when you're a freelance. Maybe I've been reading too much Robinson Jeffers. Whatever it is, I'm just pissed off today. Sometimes, it all gets on top of you: the grind of existence augmented by the depressing stupidity of humanity. There are so many examples. How is it possible to even open a newspaper without screaming?

This morning alone, I feel like screaming at:

1. The risk-assessment of mince pies. Don't even get me started on how Health and Safety Culture is sucking the creativity and individuality from formerly free people. I mean it. I can rant for England.

2. Kate Barker. The steely-eyed economist who, two years ago, recommended a massive increase in housebuilding across Britain, to accommodate the 'needs' of a (over) population we can't sustain anyway, has now recommended easing the planning laws to make new developments easier. Not useful new developments like low-impact homes or smallholdings, or anything like that. We're talking profitable, redbrick, greenfield monstrosities. Yippee.

3. Bono. What a cunt. I am virtually speechless when I even begin to contemplate the vile, boneheaded narcissism of this unutterable tool. I know I've said it before, but I will say it again, and I will keep saying it until SOMEONE BLOODY LISTENS. I bring this up because, yet again, Bono's pointless consumer brand Red has been making a public fuss about saving Africans from AIDS. Now, don't get me wrong: saving Africans from AIDS is one of humanity's greatest current challenges, and deserving of time and energy. I just feel that perhaps it will require, ooh, some political will, some radical changes to social mores, some willingness to challenge global pharma corporations and decades of investment.

Why, then, does it instead get idiotic, apolitical pop 'stars' trying to sell us crap in its name? Why the fuck has preventing mass death become a consumer trend? 'People who can't afford AIDS medicines are going to be able to afford them if people buy a red phone, get a red American Express card', says the ageing, leathery fake American twat. Yes Bono. Of course they are.

So let's see how this works: idiot spends $199 on a twatty red iPod. A pathetic $10 of this is then given to the global AIDS fund. Said idiot could of course, have spent less - or even nothing at all - on a twatty red iPod, and given the money instead to the global AIDS fund. But he wouldn't do that because he isn't actually interested in curing AIDS. He's interested in swinging his twatty red iPod around in front of his friends and looking 'compassionate' when he goes to the vile yuppie bar with all his vile yuppie friends. Consumer politics. Don't you just love it?

4. Stupid cricketers who can't win even when they've basically already won, the blimmin idiots.

5. Banning Christmas parties at work. OK, so they're always psychotically depressing anyway, and since I am self-employed I never get invited to any, but that's not the point.

I could go on, but I have a book to write, and at this rate I'll just give up instead.

Humans. Cah.

Original Sin

The man-brained and man-handed ground-ape, physically
The most repulsive of all hot-blooded animals
Up to that time of the world: they had dug a pitfall
And caught a mammoth, but how could their sticks and stones
Reach the life in that hide? They danced around the pit, shrieking
With ape excitement, flinging sharp flints in vain, and the stench of their bodies
Stained the white air of dawn; but presently one of them
Remembered the yellow dancer, wood-eating fire
That guards the cave-mouth: he ran and fetched him, and others
Gathered sticks at the wood's edge; they made a blaze
And pushed it into the pit, and they fed it high, around the mired sides
Of their huge prey. They watched the long hairy trunk
Waver over the stifle-trumpeting pain,
And they were happy.

Meanwhile the intense colour and nobility of sunrise
Rose and gold and amber, flowed up the sky. Wet rocks were
shining, a little wind
Stirred the leaves of the forest and the marsh flag-flowers;
the soft valley between the low hills
Became as beautiful as the sky; while in its midst, hour
after hour, the happy hunters
Roasted their living meat slowly to death.

These are the people.
This is the human dawn. As for me I would rather
Be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man.
But we are what we are, and we might remember
Not to hate any person, for all are vicious;
And not be astonished at any evil, all are deserved;
And not fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.