“We should be owned by now”

 The sad and disturbing case of the metropolitan elites

Back in the day, when the seemingly endless post world war economic growth had come to a screeching halt and unemployment benefits offered youths the chance to use their brains for independent thought, the metropolitan elites were quite sure that capitalism had run its course and should be replaced by a more inclusive system, a bit like communism as it existed in Eastern Europe but without all the mind-numbing and fruitless control mechanisms. Everybody poor and happy in a harmonious society which was developing only ever so slowly. Imagine, the metropolitan elites’ favourite car, the Deux Chevaux, would never go out of production! What joy! What insignificance! For a while, we seemed to be going in this direction and new metropolitan cohorts enthusiastically embraced the idea. No future! Poor and free they sailed through the nineteen eighties, denying that around them the capitalist engine was restarting under the impulse of neoliberalism and its absurd premise that greed and disregard could ever be the lubricants of human agreement. Then came the nineties. New money was pouring into the economy and everybody was invited to take their little part in the great global grab fest. The metropolitan elites, still convinced that one day the system would fail, found arty niches for themselves where they could pleasantly spend their days and make only just enough money to pleasantly survive. While financialised globalisation was taking the world in a wrong direction, at least it wasn’t their fault. They were in and doing fine, just not quite that radical anymore.

 

And so the decades came and went. Crises, too. Every ten years, it seems, something nasty is befalling humankind, something organised and executed from above, something that hurts. First, the monied interests and their minions pulverised some skyscrapers in downtown Manhattan and blamed it on their good friend Osama bin Laden, who was living in a cave in Afghanistan at the time. Then they crashed the stock market and ran off with the loot, leaving ordinary wage workers around the world to foot the bill. And finally, they gave us covid, the perfect excuse to lock us up and destroy the remains of our livelihoods. You would be forgiven to think these people really hate us for our freedoms. Yet, the metropolitan elite no longer felt aggrieved by what was going on in their world, since they mostly had managed to steer clear from the real pain, living in the West after all. They had gone making kids round the turn of the century – often with their best friend’s ex – and they felt their old perspective was not the ideal atmosphere to have a child grow up in. They used to have it nice and easy in their youth because their world was expanding and they wanted to give their offspring a mimicked version of that. So, they began thinking positively. They chose to want to understand how country management works, rather than criticise it. They became moderate, and middle class. They had nice incomes and nice apartments and they preferred to look the other way when disaster struck.

 

Apart from all the other havoc it is wreaking, covid is having a devastating impact on the intellectual capacities of the culturally advanced middle classes in our metropolitan centres. They have seen themselves forced to go along with a narrative spun by a government and some international voices that simply had to be true in the name of uninformed consent. Don’t worry, our leaders know what they are doing. Yeah, sure, I just would like to be informed a bit sooner, sometimes. Well, you can’t know everything, you know? Nevertheless, authorities clearly can. And so, it has become accepted wisdom that government is basically good and merely needs our full support to get us through this ordeal as quickly as possible. Whatever the rules in the country you happen to reside in – wear masks in the street, stay at home in the evening, have a stick shoved up your nose every now and then – they are necessary to conquer the invisible and so far unproven menace. The unwashed masses that somehow feel things are not quite right and start gathering in the streets to protest the ongoing bullying, well, they are just that, unwashed. They have most likely been led astray by attention seeking internet bloggers who think they know better when they clearly lack the information our leadership possesses. You don’t honestly think these people can be right, do you? And if you do, you obviously also believe the Earth is flat. Come to think of it, you’re a dangerous fool and I don’t want to know you any longer.

 

All it takes is a deep breath to forgive such harsh words. I know that you are scared. You’re often not that young anymore and you’ve had your fair share of substance abuse in the day and you’re not so sure you can still trust your body’s inherent strength. Yet that should not be an excuse to hide behind when you see the elderly suffocating on their religiously worn mouth masks, steadily filling their old lungs with a deadly mixture of bacteria and fear, being left alone all of a sudden at an age when they are needing our support ever more. Or when you hear how children are instilled with guilt for their grandparents’ survival chances, forced to be living already for a year – sheer forever when you’ve only recently joined the party! – behind masks and screens when they should be jumping about like the little lambs they are, meanwhile slowly losing their interest in life. What about small businesses suffering from arbitrary closures that one by one disappear? When so many are losing perspective, can you still be on the side-lines? Let’s be clear here, - with due sympathy to the poor souls who’ve lost their lives or their health – overall death numbers show covid was under control as of May last year and we could have gone for herd immunity and kill the motherfucker before it could further harm us, being summer and all and there being a window of opportunity to face winter with a more resistant population. The powers wouldn’t have it, of course not, as they were busy pushing their injection, and neither, unfortunately, would the metropolitan elites, afraid to put their savings on the line. Revolution will inevitably destroy small fortunes, ask the Russians, which is why your hypocrisy is understood and certainly not looked down on. It’s just that we’ve been suffering for a full year and nothing good has come of it, people still dying in larger numbers than they should. That’s from the measures, mind, and the absence of health care.

 

And now the metropolitan elites want to get the jab when they have nothing to fear personally. They even line up their bloody children! This, in my mind, is simply too much, this is sheer madness. It is abuse of one’s body without gain. I do not usually submit my mind to the Abrahamic god, but I do believe we ought to celebrate and nurse our mother, Earth, the life giver, and live in harmony with Her, and I don’t see where changing her design is going to contribute to this idea. Creating life is not a pissing contest. So, I cannot consent with any mad GMO experiment. It’s against my convictions. I probably should leave it here. I have a family to care for, I have my own reasons for hypocrisy. Still, it hurts to see life being destroyed for younger generations. I’m sure there will be space for most of them in the new society, if it were coming to pass, but they’re not going to have the fun we had and we’re not going to mimic the coming control state away. Yes, I know, they make it look cool, our cities are getting greener and cleaner and not having to travel is a great idea, but there won’t be room for all of us inside the new world’s walls, not by a long shot. I wrote a novel about this phase we’re heading into, some years ago, no virus in sight but with similar results. I invite you to read it. Write to coospalmboom@gmail.com

 

 

P.H.E.A.R., a future message

In his quest for underground realities, the subterranean traveller chanced upon an alternative reading of events that are currently harassing human brain functions and our belief in sanity as a mental concept. It was a glamorous story, a bit like a seventy’s social drama sci-fi movie, and it ventured into the future just that bit faster than officially ordained reality, so that by the time things were seriously going down the drain, as in now, the film version was more or less a decade ahead of perceived cutting-edge foreboding. The traveller loved it and decided to disseminate his feelings about other people’s bright ideas at that precise moment in time, the sensation being that his body was somehow worth it. So here is how stuff went down.

 

In the early 2020s, a terrible crisis befell planet Earth. People started dying by the thousands and millions, even billions. That’s why we are living under Machine Assured Realtime Safety (an Elon Musk initiative) today, because of what happened then. It all started with a huge mistake, something which became later known as the COllective Viral Infection Delusion. People all over the rich world were freaking out over a virus their media told them was all around and extremely lethal. Frightened and obedient they accepted every rule foisted upon them. Anything better than having to think and take a stand, as thinking quickly had become quite dangerous. It could easily cost you your job and your family, just for being a fool with an opinion. People, as it turned out, were too Wilfully Obscuring Knowledge Examples to handle reality. They had their favoured dreams to live by and they weren’t going to trade them for facts or figures.

 

Mistakes are not usually made without a trigger, and here it was a declaration from the World Transformation Forum, a wealthy debating society of self-declared societal transformers with a surprising hold over the minds of most politicians which quite suddenly, in late January, issued a stark warning. Soon, the message read, hospitals around the world would stop functioning as usual because of a Public Healthcare Event with Astonishing Results, an acronym that read like a rapper with a scary name and which quite rightly was understood by the general public as a ban on demanding and receiving ordinary medical assistance. At first, this seemed just a minor nuisance to the majority of the public who were not in need of regular care, although of course for the old and infirm it meant a severe strain on their survival chances, but then a rumour started spreading on social media: smack in the middle of the healthcare event a new and as yet poorly understood virus was making the rounds and presumably killing people by the thousands. Within days, television and politicians took on the story and the COllective Viral Infection Delusion was born. We were all chased by an invisible enemy right at a time when hospitals were off-limits. Where could we hide? Luckily, our brave politicians soon found the answer: go home and lock the door, do not go to work or school or gym or bar, avoid contact with family, friends and strangers alike, and if one really had to go out, to go shopping for food, wear a diaper over one’s face to prevent the invisible fiend from entering your body, where it may do unspeakable harm. Religiously, the people followed up these proposals – and those who wouldn’t were heftily fined – with predictable results. Whole sectors of the economy, the arts, entertainment, tourism and local business, disappeared, while people’s health was quickly deteriorating through a combination of isolation, fear, excessive alcohol consumption and continuous diaper wearing. Come the next winter, many people died from being unprepared for colder weather, with the blame of course put on the unseen enemy instead of the COllective Viral Infection Delusion. In a desperate attempt at stopping the onslaught, untested vaccines were rolled out, but as no one knew what virus to beat, the inoculations were both useless and dangerous, killing even more people, which were again blamed on the invisible one.

 

And so it went, season after season. First, the octogenarians died in large numbers, then they were the over seventy, then the over sixty as well as many disabled and other people dependent on state allowances. Meanwhile, unemployment soared and once thriving neighbourhoods made Eastern-Europe in the 1980s look prosperous. Our brave politicians were seen on television crying hot tears over the terrible ordeals they were forced to put us through. Think of the children, one stammered between sobs and wails, their childhoods are destroyed and their futures are taken away from them. When they grow up, many will end up in a life of crime and drug abuse, and all of that because of this horrible invisible danger we must fight all together. Inevitably, some people lost their appetite for the unstoppable descent into hell and with that their belief in the existence of the feared disease. It’s all a delusion, they cried, we just need to resume our old ways and all will be fine. Luckily, the police were able to teach such foolhardy snobs a good lesson, and those who still believed could feel assured the strong arm was fully on their side.

 

Nevertheless, such episodes made it clear to the WTF that the COVID cycle was coming to its conclusion and that new scares were needed if they wanted to keep PHEAR alive. By now, few people still were in contact with their general practitioner, with many dying at home from once curable cancers, heart conditions and infections of all kind. A clever moniker should be able to join such wildly diverging health problems and focus the public’s attention again on the necessary destruction of everything they once held dear. Where previously the blame was put on an invisible enemy, this time it was the most visible of all, the one in the mirror, your one and only you, the person you perhaps held dearest of all. And it went like this.

 

They said you were a danger. It wasn’t the virus, after all, which had been an illusion all along (we are now able to confirm), it was the person. And some persons were more dangerous than others. They were considered a Transmitting Human Emergency Menace. This indisputable fact made clear that undesirable types were not going to be rescued. It was the ultimate guilt trip many had been waiting and sometimes even longing for. Just to not be one of them! The false escape from fear such thinking offered, drove many people insane. They were on a high they knew was sustained by nothing but temporary lies. So, they became unreasonable. It was not nice.

 

With the West sinking into despair, countries in the Southern hemisphere started wondering why they were taken for a ride. One by one, their peoples rose up against the needless and very harmful measures in the name of COVID, with their governments often too weak to resist popular revolt. It happened just before the internet turned 100% nationally oriented (something I predicted in my novel Jungle Town would happen), and the story spread so fast it became hard to know where it had actually originated, though most accounts spoke of an African beginning. Initially, the Western sheeple ignored the ongoing liberation of large swaths of the planet (the few reports leaking through were considered fake news), but lately more and more individuals have been waking up to what has been going on right under their noses. Perhaps, they will recognise their Southern brethren’s collective power and finally (after hundreds of years) decide to grant them the initiative, with Astonishing Results.

 

 

Strawberry Fears Forever

Music to go: strawberry fields

 

Nothing’s real anymore, have you noticed? Life is merely a mirror image of what we held for true until very recently. Social relationships, especially the looser ones, have suffered greatly from people not daring to approach. Tucked behind our masks, all we can give each other is the eye, a fearful, hungry, obedient eye with only a touch of anger mixed in. It’s not enough to make things happen. Neither do we want anything to happen. When things are getting worse, let tomorrow be today. We are going through the motions. We are living in a dream, all of us. With society breaking down under isolation and poverty, we are quickly losing our culture. There are lots of incomprehensible and repulsive laws and regulations imposed everywhere, but what really strikes is that the rule of life has gone. There’s no logic to our existence any longer, no adherence to a guiding principle, be it politics, religion or selfishness, other than fear - fear of disease or fear of repression. We are lost in our private interpretations, deprived of bars and shops and busy streets to monitor our sanity. What we’re left with is an exercise in self-assessment. Howdy, mirror image, do I still look sane? Can I still pretend? ‘Cause that’s what it is about, this so-called new normal. Let’s imagine everything is like it always was, even though nothing is. And see if we can maintain our mental well-being in the face of total madness. Jay Krishnamurti said: it’s no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Yet, we see people everywhere do whatever they can to adapt. Look at me, I can wear a mask, I can stay away from you, I can shame myself, I can even hate myself. How am I doing, overlord?

 

Following the leader in the face of a great, unknown fear hasn’t turned out to be a very wise tactic, has it? Ten months in and counting, we haven’t got any closer to the end of our ordeal. Rather, people are being told to get used to permanent lockdowns. By the way, the vaccine is not going to save us, the virus has been mutating a lot lately and we can’t guarantee it will be of any use. But take it anyway, you know, it’s new and it’s been paid for. By you. So shut up and lock up and stay put till we tell you to come out again. Don’t blame or sue us for any damages your inactivity may have incurred, we all accept these measures are necessary. Wouldn’t want anybody to die this year, would we? Not in the news, that is. Not from fabled covid, the grand executioner. The silent killer of alcoholism, drug abuse, eating disorders, depression, auto mutilation and suicide is not taken into account. Who cares about losers who can’t cope? The new normal is here for the successfully desensitised.

 

Pardon my sarcasm, I do understand why people want to follow the official explanation. There are so many stories these days and so many of them are challenged, it’s very difficult to come to some sort of understanding of what’s going on in the world. Besides, we have been conditioned into trusting authority. For thousands of years we used to place our fate in the hands of Gods, and when we had enough of their dictatorial ways there were peers and icons to look up to. Yet, many of us were groomed in a society that had managed to secure certain freedoms for the individual, the most important being the right to be who you were and put faith in your own decisions. Don’t follow leaders, Bob Dylan warned around the time it was becoming clear in certain circles that progress and prosperity could not be shared by everybody on the planet, as our poor mother seemed incapable of carrying such a heavy load, and ideas for serious population reduction began floating. Think for yourself, the reasoning went, make up your own mind. It proved attractive but not easy to realise for many. Now, we have obeyed under threat. As the director of one of Netherland’s leading newspapers recently said (and I’m not straight quoting): since nobody knows what’s going on, we found it wiser not to criticise the government in any capacity. Indeed. Soon, people will start to regret this. Some already have. They understand they have gained nothing with giving up their fundamental civic rights. They realise all this is not going to be over until some hotshot says so, whenever that may be. Perhaps some even see they should have known up front this might happen. This is not the first time a crisis is being used against us, though it certainly is playing out to be the most devastating to date.

 

It is difficult to pinpoint a precise starting date, but let’s argue things began changing by the end of the last century, somewhere during those comfortable nineties. Little by little, carefree Western consumers were being lured out of their comfort zone and acquainted with a rougher reality where life is not always as shiny as advertising still would like you to have it, where bad luck and severe consequences are to be accepted as what inevitably will happen to your loved ones. The first big whammy came with 911, which led to a lot of those carefree freedoms getting lost and irritating rules implemented, life having the fun taken out of it to a certain extent. But hey, we were strong, we knew how to persevere, individually, we would come up with practical solutions to our first world predicament. Next, they stole our money, or part of it, with the Wall Street induced worldwide financial contraction whose consequences were placed on the weakest shoulders, as always. That made many people dependent on government largesse, with those who so far had escaped the blade fearing the next round of quantitative tightening. Easing is only there for the already rich. As consequences go, suddenly it wasn’t so thrilling anymore to oppose the official version (poor man bad) as it might get you into trouble with your bank account feeding institutions. Many people kept quiet and accepted they were being skinned by their overlords, who now had them out of peace and out of money. Then came the third blow.

 

Yes, covid. There’s nothing accidental about it. She was meant to be. It is debatable whether fate interfered with her release or it was all human engineered, but no questions can arise over the abuse authorities are making of her. Highly arbitrary decisions wipe out whole business communities and nobody is thinking any of it. Children are melting away before our eyes. Meanwhile, we are being ridiculed with those facemasks, now compulsory anywhere outside the home in many places, though their influence is close to zero. They tell that we are sheep, those masks, and it is true. We place enormous trust in a government that tells us we can’t trust ourselves any longer, let alone our neighbours. But we don’t care about such inconsistencies; all we seek is comfort and relief from fear. Let it be over! We have become too weak, too civilised, to see that we are being had. By the time sufficient people understand what’s going on, we will be atomised into our private rooms which we may not leave, hooked on censored internet and regular doses of poison, for our own good. We will be locked out from any physical contact. If that doesn’t kill us, then what will?

 

Desperate thoughts should not seek their final outcome, so I will try to end on a more positive note. These are revolutionary times. The elite are ahead, as they made the revolution, but they equally grasp for control of the chaos they deliberately created. We know, whenever there has been a chance of change, it was in difficult times. We have failed, so far. We never even came close. Now we are closer to the end of our era, our world, our lives, then ever before. I’m not talking linear time here, but the eb and flow of history. So, can we do it? Can we get rid of this parasitic bunch and create the world of ordinary people, the vast majority in any country, who have come to get to know each other a bit through internet and who have realised that within money differences most citizens around the world live in comparable circumstances? This is our task. This is the enlightenment of the human race. A world without oppressive leadership where people make informed decisions and share as much as they can. In a way, it is the world of Klaus Schwab without Klaus Schwab. Or any other Klaus Schwab. Let them eat cake.

 

Get yourself a copy of The Price of Return

When Pep Gun receives a visit from a lookalike robot who quickly copies his mannerisms and claims to be instructed to take his place as the lodger of his flat, Pep understands the best he can do under the circumstances is run away as fast and far as he can. With the help of a colleague from work he manages to escape to the countryside, away from the city and the internet of things which is able to track his every move. Pep becomes the unlikely hero of his own story, an anxious adventure which lands him under a tree with a bag of food and utensils. With the promise of regular refill Pep begins laying out a place for himself, a total nobody but free from the super brain that’s following most of us and deciding for us what our lives should be like. Pep knows, as soon as he becomes somebody, showing even the slightest trace of a somebody, police will quickly be all over him and anything could happen after what has already happened. Or so thought Pep. Police were not impressed and charged him with trace and retrieve costs, but that happens only later on. First, Pep has to learn to love his dirt floor den under cover of plant life and to do so he will have to control his fear of nature. Luckily, there seems to be very little wildlife around, insects also notably failing, giving the city dweller he is much needed respite.

Pep is a healer of sorts in his spare time. He sucks off negative energy from depressed and otherwise unhappy people, to give them a short look into a happier version of themselves, which they then must see to extend up till the next session. More than anything, Pep sees the robot’s appearance as interference with his well-established private practice. Some people perhaps didn’t like him keeping individuals away from pills. It’s easy to get paranoid when you are trying to be totally alone because it’s really the only safe thing you can do. Nobody to talk to and no alcohol either, unless you had brought a bottle, so you had better find something to keep the mind busy.

Pep needs focus to keep himself sane and he chooses to write the story of his escape, the one he is at that very moment experiencing, hoping success may render him immune from the law. Nobody wants to see a beloved author get into trouble, do they? Even so, there doesn’t seem to be any other way out of his predicament. So, Pep starts writing. He is turning his adventure into a story for popular consumption.

 

In spite of all the hardships, The Price Of Return is a funny story, full of crazy situations as they happen when you’re out of place in a place where there is no place to go. For instance, people do the weirdest things when they think nobody sees them and for some the great outdoors are the best place to freak out, so there are lots of cyclists and other intruders of his initial hideout habitat he was told would be remote. Pep witnesses plain repulsive stuff and everyday madness and even steaming sex - so as not to forget the good sex thriller fans - and he is close to interfering a couple of times, but it would be the immediate end of his escape. And he’s not ready for that, yet.

 

Want to read the full story? For only € 4.49 ($ 4.99) you can order The Price of Return as e-book from Kobo, Scribd, Barnes & Noble or Apple. Pdfs for phone reading or printables can be ordered straight from the author. Send an email to: coospalmboom@gmail.com, stating the preferred format, phone, A5 or B5.

 

10.6 seconds, an instant T-shirt moment

 

I was there, on the 22nd of June 1986. Well, I was not present in the magnificently looking Azteca Stadium in Mexico DF, of course, I was at home in front of a giant black-and-white tv set, what we considered giant in those days. Colour tv’s were still expensive back then, whereas a second hand black-and-white one could be had for the equivalent of fifty euros. Besides, watching television was a much more relaxing activity without screaming colours giving you a taste of reality. So I was sat in the sofa on a balmy summer’s evening, noon in Mexico, ready to watch Argentina consume their revenge on England, the country that four years previously had fought what looked like a colonial war to retain its possession of a group of tiny islands off the Argentinian coast after the Argentinian army had occupied them in a move of gratuitous aggression. The nationalist frenzy England were being served as a reaction by Margaret Thatcher, managed to severely dent my enthusiasm for that weird and wonderful island which had given the world great pop music, bizarre food and a style of football which on the continent was considered ridiculous, out of fashion and counter-productive. Little wonder, that most of us rooted for Argentina to give perfidious Albion a good beating, and our hopes were resting on the shoulders of that diminutive star of nineteen eighties’ football, Diego Maradona.

 

The first half, in my memory, was nothing special, England well-organised at the back and Argentina seeming to lack the inventiveness to get behind. Then came the second half. Five minutes in, Maradona was approaching the English penalty box. He played the ball to I heard was Valdano, who scooped it up for Maradona to jump for the header, a great jump but never high enough for the overplayed pass. The English goalie, not expecting to be troubled by the 5-foot 5-inch finest footballer of his generation by a long shot, readied himself to calmly collect the leather sphere with a lazy show jump. But then the short guy raised his arm like a ballet dancer, straight and purposefully, and let the ball ricochet off his hand into the net. It was a handsome move and it was the clearest example of handball ever, yet the linesman stayed mute and the referee conceded the goal. Argentina were one-nil up. England were fuming.

 

It was a brazen act of gamesmanship and should have been punished with a yellow card, yet the fact that Argentina were winning was just what many had been hoping for. Let those English go to hell, if they couldn’t be defeated in a fair way, then an unfair one would do just fine. This was knock-out football and we wanted to see England sent home. It is also true that having a corrupt worldview was considered cool that year.

 

Just a couple of minutes later, Maradona received a short flick in his own half, elegantly avoided an opponent’s challenge with a double back flip which left the other look the wrong way and then set off on a rush which would leave football fans mesmerised. Cleverly looking for space to avoid further challenges from those big, strong, well-trained English players, Maradona ran towards the English goal, having to change direction a few times to keep them away. The ball, whether it was on his golden left foot or just a few feet away, always seemed to do as he wanted it to behave. This was classic Maradona, no other football player had such complete understanding with the ball, such technical and mental command, as if both were cut from the same cloth. Platini and Van Basten come to mind as challengers. The inseparable duo nearing the penalty box, I unconsciously sat up straight. This had to be a goal, it just had to. Anything less would be utter disappointment. Fate, the stars, the gods of sport, whoever were in control of destiny at that very moment, simply had to guide the player and his ball past the final obstacles to a point were a shot at goal couldn’t go wrong. People around the world wanted it that way, and in their common desire a worldwide instant admission was expressed that a wonder was happening before our eyes, the start of a cult. The moment seemed to come four yards into the box, with the keeper rushing out and a clear gap left to the far corner. Yet, Maradona chose to play it safe and round the goalie as well. My heart stopped beating for a split second, as the daunting figure of one of those big English defenders loomed large just to the right of Maradona. He wasn’t going to tackle him of the ball, was he? With so much weight attached to the moment, these crucial two seconds seemed to drag out into what felt like a minute. Argentina clearly needed a second goal, as they were not the better side and there was the ongoing danger of Blighty scoring themselves (as they would a good ten minutes before the end). Also, the fate of a nation was hanging in the balance. Were they going to get the satisfaction of having sent a promising English squad home, and receive at least a minor settlement for their failed efforts to kick the Brits off those rocks, a stupid move in itself by a bloody regime that felt unwanted, or were they heading for double defeat?

 

Ever so slowly in that timeframe I was in, Maradona went past the keeper, now only having to find the right balance to shoot the ball into an empty goal. Already, the charging defender had initiated his final desperate lunge, going to the ground and stretching his leg towards where he targeted the ball to be. Maradona really needed to act quickly now, or the ball might be picked off his feet. There was a clear possibility of a penalty here, but after such a magnificent rush that would have been an anti-climax, even if no one expected the golden boy to miss from the spot. No, he had to score now. Football demanded it, his country demanded it, history demanded it. The clichés were dripping from my black-and-white screen.

 

And so it was. While never totally clear whether it was Maradona himself or rather the defender’s toe that sent the ball goal bound, it definitely went in and the world erupted in joy and celebration. The globe’s finest football player had scored the greatest goal. It was the total instant T-shirt moment. Never again would we see such a rush, until some twenty years later another magical player copied his compatriot’s effort with a remarkably similar run, albeit against an opponent of lesser calibre. But that was still very far in the future on that sunny, miraculous day in the summer of 1986. And now he is dead, too old to die young and to young to die old. Gracias, Diego, por su arte.

A lopsided history of the last 50 years

I wrote this story two years ago. Time to publish it again

I was six years old half a century ago when youths around the world caught on with the new craze which had sprung up the year before in USA and perhaps England: if we all take enough drugs to be peaceful, we might live life in a completely different way, not just the common people but the chiefs and the bosses, if still needed, as well. Now ain't that a gas? This wonderful sounding idea was pushed upon the nascent anti-Vietnam war movement, brought along by spaced-out eighteen year old nitwits who could only talk about music and love as a concept, with the express aim to dillute its resolve with indifference and inaction. Peace, man, all you need is love. 'Cause that's the thing, music was heavily involved in this scam, this psyop as it would be called these days. In Los Angeles in 1966, a number of bands were readily formed to convey carefully scripted messages, and thanks to lots of airplay and lavishly positive press they were big from day one. The whole show was organised and paid for by the CIA and involved talented children of families belonging to the higher ranks of military and intelligence. Famously, The Doors singer Jim Morrison's father was commander of the fleet which performed the Gulf of Tonkin false flag, and there were many more with funny stories. But things didn't exactly work out as planned. The youths, uneducated and unknowing, weren't necessarily stupid. So they did pick up on the war thing while perhaps some musicians forgot their designated role and became true spokespersons for the new generation, paying for this sin with their lives, and by the early seventies society in its majority felt it was time for a new approach, away from the war for profit scam. According to gonzo reporter Hunter Thompson, then US president Nixon at some point understood he couldn't fight the swelling tide and had better channel it into calmer waters. And that's exactly what happened in the next five years: everybody took a break from reality. The seventies (74-79) were a totally weird and goofy adventure where only fun and nonsense counted. The western world became a giant Brady bunch (and me desperately trying not to be one of those boys). It was all paid for by non-existing money of course, so when Wall Street invited Iran to pull the plug on them the wonderful dream quickly evaporated, leaving us with the cold turkey of a short deep crisis and a decade long aftermath.

 

With the new reality, no work, no housing, cheap drugs, came the need for new music as well. The pullers of strings had already set up the scene with the introduction of punk in 76, another hike at giving no shit, followed by a turn to computers as the saviour of pop music, and of the rest of society also. Punk was fun for a year, rolling out across the channel in waves and reaching the outlying shores latest, both in shine and demise. Yet again, the masses proved smarter than their overlords wish to see them. They understood punk's message as having nothing to expect from those in control. It's you and what you do, nobody else there, and many young people went for that idea. It took the nineties to cash in on the effort, suddenly there was money around again, but the attitude was born in those bleak early eighties.

 

Or perhaps they do know, our controlling elite. After a couple thousand years of manipulating society they perfectly understand our nature and that is why they like giving us hardship to get us back to work after we have once again become too complacent, which is of course our preferred state of being. Remember the noughties, anyone, how comfortably we were waiting for the next crash to happen? Well, it came when some started believing it might never happen after all. End of history, endless controlled growth, that kind of dangerous nonsense. They are poachers, our leaders, they hide behind trees and start financial crises, invent sanctions and declare war to get us off our lazy arses. You might think, if we were more responsible, wouldn't they have less need to unleash their wrath? 'Cause that's the thing, it's all so unappealing, so very byblical in its approach, full of moral outrage and deliberate punishment of the innocent to induce maximum fear, as if they honestly enjoyed the good book. I actually don't mind people being led by their beliefs, I like to think it is indeed a natural state of affairs for most. They are busy running everyday life and find letting other people have a go at organising the set-up a practical solution. They have always lived by this principle. This is why I don't believe people are easily desillusioned when an unexpected dream of honest affairs dies out, something our treacherous media love to stress, as they were sufficiently prepared for the coming disingenuity. Nothing new, here. People believe because they want to believe. They are sad, yes, an opportunity was lost, but they happily move on to the next challenge. This is how most people live their lives, full of love and energy, waiting for the day their leaders will finally understand those angry parent methods are absolutely dysfunctional.

 

Many ordinary westerners have sworn off their gods and try to live by the heavily pushed ideal of universal brotherhood, another psyop if ever there was one, deliberately blind to the immediate effects on their personal situation this position creates. Mind you, being a well-embedded big city professional is not the same as always being the last to find work, in this respect. It's all too easy to tell off the downtrodden who feel they have little to gain from the deliberate mash-up of the world's cultures. To them it's just new rules and more competition. Why can't the lords come up with a better script? one wonders. If we all work together in smart ways and stop reproducing for a while, we might sail those rocks in unison. No need to cut away at the playground. Unfortunately, the master's image seems to be the total opposite: just them in their computer generated garden of eden and the memory of us some old fable about how we did it to ourselves. Not to be repeated, precious children! You can see the little ones chilling at the thought of having to live through such horrible times, not yet aware that with ten parents each they should be cool on the matter. Next phase: population reduction is so successful that it becomes a hype and all types of back to zero cults spring up. And, by the way, should it all come to a sudden end, they can forget about surviving anywhere beyond ten years in their South Island hide-outs. A droplet of time in eternity, is that worth mocking nature for and bringing it to its final destruction? Only to those who don't believe in survival, one would say.

 

 

Dirt

 

as sung by Iggy Pop back in 1970

 

 

image by BrittPM

 

In the midst of the covid craze, the subterranean traveller could no longer go underground, as there was nowhere to go anymore besides the metro, which was forbidden territory for him as he wasn't going to wear a fucking facemask. No cattle yet. So he cruised the streets and the parks of his city, the latter pleasant and cool hideouts from the ticket police. He saw people everywhere wearing the mask, some he knew and some he thought he knew. It got difficult to recognise people because so many adapted their behaviour to the new rules. No contact? Fine, then it's just us and the internet and the neighbours we quietly pass by. Poor subterranean! In his measured existence, there was no room for obedience. He had always roamed the lower circles of society to come up with stories of resistance. He was a mood reporter and it was all he knew. He wasn't a real human being and he was aware of that, so how should he make the change-over normal people so easily seemed to make? The traveller was who he was made to be and he certainly wasn't ready yet. Remember, you can't change attitudes all the time as a character. It's like a Hollywood make-over, they don't usually go back. Besides, it wasn't even September, so enjoy the summer a bit more.

 

There were some beautiful girls in his neighbourhood. They were still walking up and down the high street, showing their amazing legs and laughing together. Their boyfriends were often busy with their telephones, causing the subterranean in passing to search their eyes for a moment and mutter a few words with marcello innocence. Now that they were wearing their mouth masks, his interest was changing. He couldn't talk to them or even come near – which was a good thing in itself – so what he was left seeing were their bodies. Long, tall bones and cutie eyes, but no expression. To be sure, even as a character the subterranean traveller considered himself a bit old for these gazelles, he just loved having small talk with all women he happened upon, an impossible ideal which nevertheless deserved being pursued. Or so he felt.

 

The subterranean meets his equally unreal friends when they appear in a story together and he hasn't seen any of them for a while, his entertainer busy understanding reality. He feels he has no other choice than to go out and meet real people. But those masks! And the fear behind them, or the sullenness, the bored acceptance, the miraculous hope that this will soon be over, a message many parents feel pressed to tell their suffering children. Six-year-olds tortured at school while there are hardly people dying anymore! All these emotions are related to the mask. It has so far proven devilishly difficult to see people with masks as people without masks, a necessity if we ever want to recognise each other again. Fortunately, there is the internet. Depending on your connection, you get to see slightly weird images of your contacts with telephone quality voices. It's similarly not real, but it doesn't seem to affect people's thinking so much. In the end, the traveller needs his neighbours, plain and simple. He can still go to bars, but if he is the only one sitting there's nobody to listen in on. So there's the street and the masks to get round to. The subterranean traveller suddenly feels a strong urge to grab the first person and hold them tight to his aging breast. Might get him in all kinds of trouble though.

 

There's people in cars who all are wearing breath masks, even the little ones, and the windows well-shut. They usually drive very unsafely. These people don't believe the government. They check the internet for the harshest measures anywhere in the world and they apply them on themselves. Ain't no virus gonna catch us, they think. At the grocery store everybody is wearing masks, as has been customary in shops since day one, but at least distancing is impossible, so some smells are exchanged in passing, even if we don’t fully notice. There's a mother of two outside waiting little ones whom the traveller fancies. He pretends to be looking for a peach opposite her apples and gives her his curious look, once again marcello style. She smiles under her mask, he can clearly see. His return smile tells her to liberate herself from the signal cloth for a moment, but she can't. Mothers can't make mistakes. That's okay, the subterranean acquiesces, take care of your babies. It could have sounded condescending and it would have in previous circumstances, but her guilt stigma made her embrace the traveller's outreach with unrestrained desire. Not to be outed, of course, this desire, as desires were dangerous, but heartfelt nevertheless. Don't worry, she smiled again and this time the subterranean traveller saw she had a really nice face.

 

People who can't breathe behind the damn thing often free their nose and sometimes even their mouth, having it hanging below their chin as if they were back in school again. Others wear it on their wrist, elbow or even ankle during off limit activities. These are exercise, eating and smoking. People love off limit activities. They can be free again as long as they have the occasional beer and snack. Bars without terrace meanwhile are quietly closing. The measures favour some businesses and kill off other ones, it's easy to imagine many owners nervously awaiting the next rule jumping out of the hat. Will it crush me or do I get to live another day? It's all becoming a lottery. On a long ago written novel the traveller's entertainer had glued the title Tombola!, an in those days perhaps not fully understood description of fate which was now coming apparent in rather perverted fashion. Then again, the novel did not pretend to go beyond cynicism as a solution for human suffering.

 

The subterranean traveller is ready to get hot over those mouth-masked girls. There's the mother whose life he is not going to upset, not unless she pertinently so wishes, that is. And then there's the girls, the only other ones who seem to be aware of his presence. He sees them one night at a sidewalk terrace, showing each other their smiles, and manages to share their table. Boyfriends are out of sight. Tonight they are their normal selves, as they engage in two of the off limit activities. The idea of some exercise suddenly nestles in the traveller's brain. He gets over it by giving them a funny old geezer story and elicits some laughs. Paqui, the one with the beautiful face and not so beautiful legs, hits back with a story of her own while Elsa, the pretty one with the amazing legs, is throwing him all kinds of assurances, using her whole face and personality to lure him into her world. The subterranean feels totally intimidated. Not so fast, girls, I don't think my entertainer had such developments in mind. Then again, they could be equally unreal, put here to give his report a needed edge. So he is bungling between two possible outcomes, as is his preferred stance. He asks Elsa if she has an adventure to share and she has. She tells it straight to his face and it's about sex with two men at the same time. The subterranean traveller smiles and tries to hide his growing interest. All ears. And something else too, laughs Paqui. The traveller is now wondering whether he will soon be introduced to the other man or that Paqui turns out to be the number three. It's a whole new bungle position and a good lot further down the road. 

 

Nothing happened in the end. The subterranean had an entertaining evening with two early tweens who told him a lot about young people's thinking and after he had paid for their drinks, he said Elsa and Paqui goodnight. I'll be waiting for the next time, Elsa said with a hot kiss and a shameless hand in his crotch. Smelling her sweat, he promised somewhat stupidly to keep the dream alive. Paqui then did exactly the same, she was the better kisser in fact, leaving him aroused and assured Elsa's story was about them and those girls had a clever way of operating together. Need to plea with my maker, he thought. After a deeply satisfying sleep the subterranean traveller once again hit the streets of his sterilized neighbourhood. All wearing their fig leaf, forbidden to breathe and speak, forbidden to make contact, forbidden to work, forbidden to make money and live. Our new safe world is as empty as a stock photo, laced with fear and disinfectant. Angst essen Seele auf (fear eats your soul), as the ever more popular and accurate Fassbinder quip explains. Meanwhile people are being expelled from consumer paradise in growing numbers.