burst your dream bubble but here are some facts. The Spanish Flu killed a 3rd of the worlds population, and COVID-19 has not yet killed 1%. As you might already know I really don’t like facts as they could change (#1), and (#2) I really enjoy living in a dream world. I believe all writing is fiction, and all speech is fiction; everything is fiction, and life is a dream. Nevertheless as I keep saying over and over until you are tired of hearing it — if you’re going to dream then why not have the best dream possible? Another fact, which of course may not be a fact, or may just, well, change, is that COVID-19 has not caused the world economy to collapse. It's just made it better for the rich, and worse for the poor. (So what else is new?) Then there are the riots. I can’t say I love them, because people are killed, and I don’t love riots, I love a riot, having a riot. Okay I’m lying I love riots. I can’t say I’m glad they are happening. Okay I’m glad. No, really I don’t want to see people killed. But then again, I see a riot and then I think -- 'well there’s a few more people saved from suicide.' Because we just can’t live like this. Nobody’s telling you this fact and it is a fact (even though facts don’t exist) but they are rioting like crazy in The Netherlands right now. Yes, Dutch riots. The land of tulips and windmills and those funny little wooden shoes. Those' Dutchies' have had enough. There are countless reasons of course for the riots -- gee, it’s almost as easy as trying to figure out what the yellow jackets stood for. Yellow jackets kind of stood for working class discontent, then again they kind of stood for all discontent. And try figuring out what that ‘insurrection’ at The Whitehouse was actually about! Ask one person, and you’ll get: 'To make Donald Trump King!' Ask another and you'll get: 'So Nancy Pelosi will stop tying up kids and raping them!' (I told you some people’s dreams are a lot better than others!) Ask somebody else and they’ll say 'So they won't take away our guns!' Ask some 90 year old Woman For Trump and she’s liable to tell you it’s about the fact that 'men are men and women are women' (as I say, facts change, but that can be a nice dream sometimes). And, finally someone else will say ‘They've taken away our freedom!' Well, that could be the actual reason. But I want to stick to the facts here -- facts only, (I mean, if you had to be four feet tall, wouldn't you want to be Dr. Fauci?). We can’t live the way we are living now. If you tell people to stay home and never have fun they will riot. Period. There will be violence. Make no doubt about it; and I am not predicting the ‘rioters’ will win. For we have changed forever, once we were sexually liberated, and guiltless, and free - it was called the 60s -- but now we — as F. Scott Fitzgerald said— are ‘born back ceaselessly into the past." Okay, this is how it works. If God didn’t exist, then people would have invented him. And Nietzche said 'God is Dead!' in 1882. So by now God is gone, really gone. But we don't really need him. No, we don’t need spirituality, stupid — people seem to get along very well without that, thank you (except of course for middle class bores who insist on baking bread and doing yoga) — no no no! We can do without God. He took too much time and was boring. What we can’t do without is hypocrisy and righteousness, that is -- judging people and imagining we are better than them (it's a dream again, and this one’s a real good one!). So unfortunately when God died nobody really noticed, but they really missed not going to church, and not getting dressed in their Sunday best, and not whispering -- 'Did you see the red fringe on Cindy Lou's black dress? Does she think that's mourning? Someone please tell her it’s not.’ (I’m not sure why this dream sounds like something from Gone With the Wind; maybe it’s because that movie has been effectively banned by the Woke Young and I’m not afraid to say that I miss it). Yeah, we miss that. Religion gave us permission to imagine that we were better than other people and judge them mercilessly. After all, there is nothing quite like the wrath of God. I must tell you something. (This is a story I've told before in a novel, but you won’t have heard it since no one reads my novels. The only person who might have heard this is my boyfriend but he never reads these blogs, even though he encourages me to write them — 'Write that damn blog!' -- he says -- 'Stop moping around!') So when I was little we used to visit The Crones. Yes, they were descended from Burrill Crone, The Crone who discovered Crone’s Disease. My best friend Thaddeus Alloysius Popcorn Crone (yes, he was christened that) was also my lover when I was eight. And he wouldn’t play tennis with me, although he showed me his penis (this happens often, among homosexuals). Anyway, when I went to The Crones' house one morning they were all eating English muffins smothered in butter. And I came home and told my grandmother (who was staying with us) that we should have English muffins smothered in butter too. She shook her said and said ‘No.’ And I asked why. And she said ‘They won’t live long, Those Crones.’ Now it’s true that most of The Crones are dead, and a few more of The Gilberts (my clan) are actually still alive. Well the moral of this story is that fun means misery and death especially when someone else is having the fun. I’m sorry — I’m sorry to tell you that old story, again that’s all I do these days is repeat myself, I thought it would only happen when I was old and senile. But the truth is (you know this is actually not the truth) there are no stories to tell anymore -- other than old stories. Because nothing new is happening. There. Is. Nothing. New. (pause) The other day I thought I was getting tired of my friends and my lover and writing this blog and well everything, and then I realised that I was just in a panic because I’m a storyteller (I make up lies for a living) and I have no new stories to tell. So I just repeat the old ones.And I'm not worried because I am boring my fiends, I'm worried because I am boring myself. But that’s the way it goes you know? When you’re a storyteller and you have nothing to tell. It used to be called dementia. Now it’s called COVID-19.
