My proclamation to

 Matthew on Saturday night was ‘I will only look at younger men, I will only screw older men.’ It really was very wise and continues to be; I am too old — the younger ones can see that, there is that turkey neck and frankly all my skin is starting to sag noticeably (most pitifully on my ass). I am no longer as pliant, I don’t bounce back. I'm assuming you adore hearing the details of my decrepitude, and if you don't, I don’t care -- stop reading, really. A journalist read this blog recently and said (in print) something like ‘Sky’s blog has turned into some sort of personal diary’ implying of course that it is useless. Well yes what I write here is useless; God help me if it was useful, there is nothing worse (as Wilde said) than writing that is useful. That might as well be an instruction manual, which is never entertaining (even when the the cartoon figures are having fun putting together that f-ing wardrobe, while you are still cursing IKEA over a missing bolt). So no, this will not, God help us, be useful. And it will not contain information — except about my increasing dementia.  Only joking (it was a poor joke) or maybe not — perhaps it was very apt— after all, one never knows. As you get older two things happen:  a) you must gradually separate from your body (that must happen, your body is not of much use to you anymore, as you will be leaving it relatively shortly, anyway) and b) you find yourself alienated from from the young, which is a good reason not to chase after their bodies. (Has any of this been useful so far? I do hope not. Hopefully you have already discerned that these observations are nutty, irritatingly personal, extreme — at least they are meant to be). So on Friday night (this is the diary part) I was chasing after the young. No, to be perfectly honest, it was worse than that. I was chasing after poppers. I must have let 20 guys into my room at the baths in Montreal (only one at a time, I'm still a lady, don't you know!!) only to reject them summarily. I rejected them because they didn’t have poppers. (Ergo, they can hate me instead of their feelings being hurt.) But of course I would have been pleasantly surprised if they did in fact, turn out to have poppers. So I rejected men who were attractive and probably nice, because I deemed them not attractive  enough. This is gay lunacy, and it's rampant on a Friday night at the baths, especially now as we all have COVID-19 PTSD in the form of ‘I’d better find a beautiful one now, because if I don’t, there could be another lockdown at any moment.’ (I hate Dr. Isaac Bogoch! I hate his ugly face when it appears at a movie theatre, siting stiffly in the trailer that features aptly diverse persons talking about COVID-19 safety measures! Get out of my face get out of my life get out of my movie Isaac Bogoch! You deeply unattractive, sad, self-important careerist fart! It’s Isaac Bogoch who drove me to this, rejecting men willy-nilly and then happily pouncing on poppers!) Well anyway I won’t tell you who I ended up with, but he wasn’t my dream man, and it was 4 in the morning. (Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?) I got up the next day; hung over, depressed and very unhappy with myself. So on the following night, when it came to the witching hour — instead of retying the birch bristles with new willow wood on my broomstick -- I made promised myself and Matthew that I would only screw older men, but continue to look at young ones. Lo and behold, beauty came my way. I must assure you that it was inner and outer beauty in the Neo-Platonic tradition. I knew he and I were meant to screw each other — not just because of his tight muscular body and petrifying ass (more about that later) and sweet face, but because he just radiated sweetness. When I started kissing him he let out an audible sigh that said: ’Oh, you kiss, thank God, and thank God you do it well!’ When you’re having sex with a nice stranger — and you happen to be sexually compatible — everything falls into place --there is no embarrassment (fear of embarrassment is key to my sexual fuckedupedness) it just happens inevitably, and yes of course, you both come when you want, how you want. Of course he may have just been pretending to be my perfect fantasy come to life.  But he was flesh and blood and goddammit I deserved him! I deserve beauty, we all deserve it. But would he have been beautiful if I had been desperately searching for the perfect younger man? (He was young by the way -- I throw that in just to brag -- and to confuse you!) And it’s not that the lighting was finally right or that I managed to finally successfully suck in my gut at the right moment. It’s that my energy was so friggin’ generous that I was open to beauty, and so beauty was open to me. Yes there was some face-sitting involving his gorgeous furry butt (You knew we’d get to that, didn’t you?) Perpetual readers of this column — and there are some, believe it or not — know that in the end, it must always comes to this.  I rid myself of my Norwegian Wood and and take a deep breath, at last, the way The Beatles do in ‘Girl’; i.e. more like a prolonged sniff, a gargantuan whiff, of love. I'm not size queen, when it comes to love; it can last only 15 minutes. And if you are skeptical of that it's you I pity, because, after all, there's more than enough pity reserved for me.

I have such

contempt for people these days. No, not all of them — well, MOST. I'm at the the train station and they are flooding onto — and off of —trains. For most, it is the first time in a very long while — these are the fragile ones, the careful ones, the special ones, I can tell as they venture forth, fully masked, (outside) with their brave little families. All is safe now; the doctors have told us we may step out into the world, so these vulnerable folks finally do, with some trepidation -- they take a breath, take a step (we can do it!). I can smell the fear— for there is so much for them to be afraid of. I, too, am afraid for the children, not because of COVID-19 no, they never had much chance of ever being sick. And yet that didn’t stop parents from worrying (and even now, the school boards warn us — might it be too soon?). But I know how these children will grow up — anxiety ridden, with ADHD, depression, gender identity disorder — painstakingly politically correct, unthoughtful — somewhat stupid in fact, but prone to pontificating endlessly in moral and political cliches — triggered by nearly everything, they will remain at home forever (even though the outdoors beckons and is permissible) in their sweatpants (a damp brown stain on the rear, but who cares?) curled up in their beds, with fake cats, or real ones, or YouTube cats, it’s all about cats —or kittens; being cozy, munching, getting fatter by the minute. Gay men learned earlier -- from AIDS -- how toxic the demand was that we cocoon.  I don’t think anyone else knew what was going on. We saw portents of the impending new isolation: the dire warnings, the unprovable conjecture that everyone believed (you may be able to get it from blowjobs, at least no one can prove  that you can’t!) the lies (I’m a virgin, and yet I have AIDS!) the forever proclamations (that’s it for me, I’m never ever going to a bar again!). But most of all, gay men watched -- less surprised than most perhaps -- as  fear took over our lives. There are now two distinct types; the frightened and the unafraid, the pessimists and the optimists. The pessimists are young, millennial, liberal/woke. The optimists are truckers, viewers of Fox News, and your Dad. To be a credible lefty now you must be afraid of everything (as you are the ultimate victim) but specifically climate change, COVID-19, racism and now, of course Russia — and you must take it all very personally. After all, you were groomed as a child to nurture your vulnerabilities, to gather a list of reasons why you would not be able to finish that assignment or do that job. Despite how hopeless it all is, the pessimists nevertheless struggle on, avoiding plastic bags, sipping from paper straws, castigating those who do too much air travel  — and who don’t have ‘diverse’ enough friends — basically all those who don't care because they are not afraid enough. I am an optimist. It’s been tough leaving ‘the left’— I still believe in social programs, and I’m an anti-essentialist (your physical body does not determine who you are) but alas, years ago I realized that I am not fragile, but strong, and that the world is a battle that must be met. And though each of us is destined for our not so unique individual tragic ending, we must try not worrying about that -- every single day, in fact it’s best not to think about it at all. Because 'living every day as if you will die that day' is not after all so much unlike living every day as if death does not exist. It will not do, to worry. I had anxiety attacks as a teen, went to see Dr. Gordon W. Tisdall who convinced me I wasn’t a homosexual (You get erections dancing with girls, don’t you? That’s a good thing!). But even after I came out the anxiety didn’t completely disappear. So to keep it at bay I now confess endlessly, it’s the only way — you have to hear it all!  You may not approve — or may not even been listening — but that will not stop me from confessing. I’ve been writing about a boy recently -- I can’t be with him now because I’ve written too much about him, what’s that about? I’m seriously considering the idea of 'fuckbuddies' again — oh dear, they never work for me. I’ve been having unsatisfying evenings in the back room at my favourite bar, but maybe it’s because I’m so drunk when I  get there I can hardly stand up (yes, that’s a double entendre!), but also (importantly) because I’m fighting the fear that is projected daily in the news; some dark-souled doctor predicting another lockdown, which may be my eventual demise...because NO —  I can’t live like that! -- I can see no better reason to stop living than when all that is important in my life has been taken away. It’s the demonization of hippies that did this to us. No one really remembers them. I met an ex-hippie the other day.  I knew him back in the hippie heyday — when I was in my early 20s — I thought then he was crazy, then. Now I realize he was just living. Yes — laughing, yelling, screwing, singing, drinking, acting, getting drugged up, disagreeing, dancing, doing things you wouldn’t ordinarily do but now do all the time, hugging strangers, screwing strangers, having orgies, casting your fate to the winds, venturing out into the night half naked on the hunt for adventure, not remembering what you did last night, being worried about what you got up to and the next day calling friends paranoid and asking them -- ‘How much of an idiot was I? Did I spit on Monica? Did I insult Austin?' ('Did I take out my dick again?')  We cursed the hippies and forgot them, but those were the days — and still are — for those who never grow up. You have to congratulate J.,M. Barrie; Peter Pan got it right. But now, most of us are very VERY old, even the young ones; they are so afraid of death they can taste it. Instead, you might try living. Pretty much nobody one else is doing it anymore, so it might offer a nice change. 

Tamara Lindeman knows

which side her bread is buttered on; these days, the road to stardom is paved only by a clearly articulated dedication to social justice. One can be assured of Tamara’s self-sacrificing nobility, as (in a recent interview for NEXT magazine) she is excessively generous in her self-denigration: "It’s been really difficult. There’s a strange thing connected with activism, especially  climate activism. If you say you care about something you’re immediately put in a box as some sort of paragon of virtue. The perception is, If you care about this, you must be a better person than me. It’s weird.”

    Poor Tamara! It’s tough being good! Whatever you say about her (and I’ve never heard her music, but her hit album is, I suspect, aptly titled Ignorance) — Tamara Lindeman has mastered the requisite rhetorical tricks; she could give Trump a run for his money. If Hermogenes taught Shakespeare one thing it was that humility is the duty of the rhetor; if we are to sympathize with a speaker we must believe they are deeply flawed and humble.

Much in the same vein,Tamara alerts us to her victimhood, grabbing for the hearts of the ‘No Worries!’ generation: “Most of the musicians I know are men… something I share with most women in music you don’t receive the encouragement to play guitar or write songs or any of that” and here the interviewer intervenes: "she  says, alluding to the often problematic cultural practice of socializing children differently based on their gender." 

        Thus, the author of this manipulative puff piece (I wish I could find their name) positions Tamara craftily not as a ‘feminist’ but a social justice activist, who is also — alluringly — possibly, trans. But the author/interviewer reaches a certain zenith of poetic subtlety when they describe Tamara’s home: "She zooms me from her kitchen, and the background reflects the unpretentious, earthy warmth of her demeanour — softly glowing fairy lights, a dried bundle of lavender, a  couple of mugs, and a carton of eggs from the breakfast she presumably just finished eating."

    Lavender, fairy lights, and well….eggs? Need I say more? These are, in case you missed it, symbols of a very sweet -- somewhat magical -- person, soft, gentle, unassuming, well-meaning and yes -- we assume -- fertile.  Tamara Lindeman (a.k.a. The Weather Station) is just one of many ‘artists’/ entertainers/ celebrities who know that these days it doesn’t much matter how good your work is, it only matters that you are on the right — or one might say more accurately — the left — side of social justice issues. I, for one, will try my best never to inflict upon you a play novel or poem about gay rights, or any other rights for that matter. I’m all for social justice, but my creative work has never been sufficiently politically correct to satisfy the powers that be.  (For instance, Toronto’s gay Xtra magazine refused to review my drag queens when they were ‘on trial’ back in 1985, wondering if drag queens are a respectful enough representation of gay men). I can never seem to tow the party line, and I’ve never been able to hide my contempt for the gay ‘lifestyle,’ while being at the same time openly addicted to it — and thus habitually and compulsively alternately venerating it and attacking it — forever. Gay culture — like democracy — is horrible and dysfunctional, but it's the best we have.  Gay porn, bars, bathhouses — and even the judgey, prissy, anti-sexual sensibility that sometimes surrounds HIV  — are ultimately necessary, as a lot of people will never get their minds around male cock-suckers and ass-fuckers, period. Trans-activism is popular these days for the precise reason that it is not in any way sexual  — as trans activists go out of their way to desperately reassure us over and over — ‘it’s not about sex it’s about gender!' This grants parents permission -- at last -- to love their femme boys and butch girls without ever even tangentially making reference to the dreaded 'nether regions.' It’s not trans people I have a problem with, it’s the ‘no gender’ politic, which is as dangerous as climate change activism. In fact, it’s not at all odd that Tamara should yank these two equally trendy but equally dangerous issues together in her quest for fame. For though the concerns about gender and climate may be in certain ways  valid — a militant obsession with them can and will lead to chilling interventions on the part of the government. I, for one, am shell-shocked after COVID-19 -- for we now know that if Trudeau is feeling self-righteous he may use anything as an excuse to take away our rights. This is why so many now despise him. His father insisted government stay out of the bedrooms of the nation, but 'Trudeau nouveau' thinks the government might just close your family business at any time, without warning, and is trying to get into your children’s underwear and help them sort  out their gender (or lack of it). It’s all pretty scary. 

Being good never

mattered as much as it does now; it’s become a kind of mania and it’s destroying our society. Well good, you may say, our society needs destroying; but I’m not so sure. I remember when I was being ‘cancelled’ by Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 2018 I had an intrepid journalist ask me,with some frustration “Can you at least admit that you have some privilege, Sky?” I told them that yes I do have privilege — as I was born into the middle class — but I don’t necessarily think that is reason enough to silence me. Today, when I turn on the television, and I see all the propaganda about Ukrainian orphans, you will have to accept (well you don’t have to, really) that I am hard-hearted enough not only to call this out as the propaganda that it is, but to challenge the zeitgeist which has made Ukrainian orphans the focus of our news media. What has happened that the only thing that is going on in the world is suddenly the Ukraine, and it’s all pity porn, Anderson Cooper speaking with sad, fat grandmothers whose houses have just imploded? Far be it from me to deny that we should have sympathy for fat Ukrainian grandmothers, but frankly on the privilege scale they are not, after all, BIPOC or trans -- and they certainly look well fed. Am I being sarcastic — well yes, and far be it for me to state my opinion outright here, I would ask you to search for it in the miasma of innuendo that I offer, not so regularly (hope that will now change) in this very personal and private public display of my disaffection. The point is that there are (if we may be intersectional) people other than Ukrainian grandmothers — whose unfortunate lives deserve our attention and who (if you are fond of the ‘privilege’ scale) much more deserving of our attention. The war in the Ukraine is a war over oil, pure and simple. We are much more concerned here in Canada about gas prices than we care to admit, and so, ultimately is our virtue signalling Prime Minister (certainly the nicest, goodest, most virtuous prime minister we have ever had; remember - he did apologize so many times for the blackface!) and all Russia is really concerned about is the fact that after the wall fell, they lost their world monopoly on oil and gas. Alight, yes, they are also quite concerned that NATO has been pressing onto their borders, deliberately provoking Putin (like poking dog with a stick), and it’s no wonder that he feels he has to firmly set the border of Russia yet again. Yes, there are orphans looking for homes and yes Ukrainian grandmothers are crying, but — look. I just refuse to play this game anymore. Alright I admit it. You the reader, are a much kinder, gentler, sweeter, nicer, and ultimately far far gooder person than I will ever be, let’s just get that out of the way. There, are you satisfied now? I’m essentially evil and you are essential good. Okay let’s start there. Now may I continue prattling on about how incredibly hypocritical the essentially ‘good’ society we now live in is? Take The Batman — a prime example of the bullshit now being dumped on us by the arts and the entertainment industry alike. So Bruce Wayne (sorry if I haven’t followed the superhero bios closely enough)  comes from some sort of a rich and corrupt family but in this movie we are supposed to see him as a hero. Why? Well he’s an outsider, you see? And he supports social justice causes. We know he is an outsider because when he walks by, people consistently call him ‘freak,’ This means that all the kids who identify as trans -- or just different--  may wear purple loincloths and knee-length wool batiked sweaters to school, and be safe in the knowledge that they are just expressing their inner selves and their gender (it’s not about sexuality it’s about gender, why do I have to keep telling you that  over and over again, jeeze!). It means that anyone who chooses to dress differently than the norm has a right to display themselves in such a manner, and they should not lack privilege because they do so. Bravo, Batman, for you moral courage in donning that sexy outfit. Wayne’s privilege as social justice warrior is also proved by his support for the black candidate for mayor of Gotham. This is a woman who we never meet -- and hardly hear speaking -- but is nevertheless black, and a candidate for mayor, and Bruce Wayne bravely and virtuously and I must repeat right-mindedly supports her candidacy for mayor. Oh yes, and he is madly in love with Zoe Kravitz, and is obviously deeply disturbed (not because he is sleeping with Kravitz - any man in his right heterosexual mind would want to sleep with her) but because he walks about with a furrowed brow. So Bruce Wayne -- white, rich and corrupt -- gets off the hook because he has social justice sympathies, has a furrowed brow, and is turned on sexually by a woman played by an actress who is admittedly non-white -- but also Hollywood royalty (in the manner of Meghan Markle)? Art and entertainment are no longer about any content -- other than how good the creators are, and how effectively they manage to portray that goodness in their films or plays, and how often they express quite explicitly that their films and plays and novels and poems support the right social justice causes. Whatever happened to madness, inspiration, irrationality, sin, desire, the inscrutable, the invisible, passion, depravity, impulse, drunkenness, animality and whim? It’s been eaten by virtue. But I have tried (valiantly, I think!) to offer you a taste of it here. 

Our dystopian future

Is on display at your nearest GO station. I suggest you drop by and get a taste of it. I stepped off the GO in Hamilton, and boy -- was I in for a surprise!  (Or perhaps I shouldn’t say that, as service has seriously deteriorated during COVID-19. And during COVID, of course, there was ample excuse.) Well, anyway, I was very afraid when — on my return to Hamilton last weekend —  I stepped onto the hard cement of the new station at West Harbour. I hadn’t taken that particular train in awhile. As usual for GO there is no signage — or, if there is —  it’s in some sort of cartoony language with illustrations of people in dresses or pants doing odd things. These are incomprehensible unless you think in pictures (which I imagine some people do). I didn’t know how to make my way up to the the James Street exit of the station, and there was no one around — except a couple of guys in construction vests. None of them was from Hamilton though. Finally someone leaving the train yelled at me ‘It’s that way!’ so I made my way to the end of the platform. I know that the station is six flights up, and I have arthritis, so I wasn’t  about to attempt the stairs. Alas, the elevator was broken. So, I pushed a button and asked the person who answered what I should do. He seemed  annoyed that I had bothered him, and reminded me with some irritation that ‘This is the GO emergency line!". There was nothing about the sign above the buzzer to indicate it was for emergencies, just a picture of someone yelling into a speaker. (Is that universal sign language for emergency? Sorry, I was not informed….) So I had to struggle up the stairs. I opened the door to the stairway. It looked like someone might have thrown up there-- i.e. not quite digested their minestrone soup. I climbed the first flight of steps and there — on a window ledge — was a rather frightening array of drug paraphernalia. As I continue to struggled up the stairs, I heard boisterous noise— someone was certainly having fun — and when I reached the top I could see  that it was a crack party of some sort — there were a couple of guys dancing around, shirtless — and of course maskless. Wow. They seemed not to take any notice of me -- which was good, because there was no staff around, as usual. That is basically the case at all GO stations. I’m sure if you phoned GO  -- (don’t do it, I’ve tried, it’s useless) -- they would tell you they are short staffed due to COVID. But what has obviously happened is that GO has decided to go ‘people-less.' This is what our dystopian future looks like folks — there are no people in it. The atmosphere at most GO stations resembles the  famous Twilight Zone episode A Kind of Stopwatch. (In case you missed it, it’s about a man who owns a stopwatch that permanently freezes time —  he tries to talk to people but they are frozen in time and cannot respond). GO is terribly fond of its recorded announcements (“Just a reminder, to take all your belongings when you leave the bus! And don’t forget to tap off!”) which have the unfortunate effect of making me feel as if I'm in a concentration camp. But it seems GO now believes that recorded announcements and ticket vending machines will permanently replace real people. What if you’re an old woman (or a young one) taking GO at night? Are you expected to party with the crack addicts? I suppose one could. Certainly at the Hunter Street GO station they are having a very good time. As far as I can tell, the crackheads have taken up residence there. I guess that -- in what appears to be an ongoing crusade to help the homeless and addicted -- GO has made stations more hospitable for drug users — in the following ways. First, (as mentioned above) there is no staff (except for slightly frightened looking young women in vests who no one expects to control the often massive, tattooed, usually nutty crack guys who are high as kites). Second, GO has gathered most of the seating and tied it up. This means that if you are waiting for a bus you will end up sitting with a crack addict (they will probably try and chat with you — or with the air — it’s best to just smile and nod). And last but not least, GO has installed ultraviolet lighting (it kills germs!) in the washrooms. (Yay! Party!) This makes the GO washrooms look and feel a little bit like Studio 54. You may not be aware -- but homeless people are queer too -- and the last time I was in the washroom at the Hunter GO station in Hamilton, I’m pretty sure the guy living in the stall was getting it off with another homeless guy. More power to them, I say. It really is nice and thoughtful of GO to singlehandedly take on the dire, twin social problems of homelessness and crack addiction by making these guys so welcome at GO stations! A heartfelt thank you, GO!  I, for one, never had the opportunity to visit Studo 54 in New York City in its heyday -- so I am very grateful to GO for setting up a kind of pseudo-Studio 54 in the washroom at Hunter GO! Because despite COVID and lockdowns and ‘staff shortages’ people still need to live. Somewhere. And they will. And there’s just no stopping them. 

I guess that’s why they call it ‘GO.’

What masks mean.

Masks have meaning, they are not — as the press insist daily — merely a medical or practical measure. Like illness, masks are not only a scientific phenomenon, they are a metaphor. Everything is a metaphor actually, and you ignore this at your peril. Today everyone competes for who has the most ‘facts’ or is the most ‘scientific’ or who has the most truth; this is invariably toxic because we are creatures of lies, stories and fiction, and we are merely setting our lies against each other. It’s important  to understand what we are talking about here. I certainly believe masks can help to keep illness under control. But to the devoted mask-wearer, the mask is something else. It is a kind of blessing upon them, it is the hand of God touching their forehead and telling them they are good. We are told again and again that masks are not about protecting ourselves, they are about protecting others. In this way masks bestow upon the wearer a kind of mystical seal of approval; a mask-wearer is one who cares about others and is inarguably unselfish, one who puts their own feelings last, as they themselves don’t care about their personal appearance, or inconvenience (Where’s my mask? Oh it’s caught in my glasses…) in the face of altruism. It’s all about altruism really, and ultimately about living in a world where we finally come to realize (good luck with this!) that our own happiness is less important to us than the happiness of other people. Masks say; there will come a day -- no — it is finally here  — when I give up my life for you, when I not only do unto others, but will abandon my own comfort and pleasure to make you happy. As you might well imagine, for the anti-masker, the mask means something else; it’s about freedom, or the lack of it. To an anti-masker, the mask-wearer is a hypocrite, a person who may wear a mask but probably beats his wife or kills helpless animals for food; the mask bestows nothing and it is at the very least a lock a chain, a pair of handcuffs — no worse than that — a stranglehold on one’s life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You are of course permitted to ignore what I am saying here (and you will) as it’s much more fun to go around patting ourselves on the backs for each of our competing ‘truths’ — as my truth is right and yours is wrong. Unfortunately, ignoring the narrative meaning -- the mythical meaning -- of masks will make us all hate each other more, because unlike in the old days (pre human consciousness) when we all believed in the same God, and in effect, were connected to the same digital channel (i.e. mystical intuitive truth) we are now all on different channels and our Gods and truths are vastly different depending on whether you use Google or DuckDuckGo. This explains why we presently celebrate the deaths of the anti-vaxxers who die of COVID-19. Wow. This is a beaut. I simply can’t believe this is happening, or that people are actually defending it. Yes, the maskers say, it’s okay to be happy when anti-vaxxers die of COVID, and it’s okay to celebrate their deaths online and make fun of them. Why? Well obviously because they are evil and deserve to die, many times over, for spreading the virus. This reminds me of my dear friend Rob Johnston who was an AIDS ‘denier’ I.e. he dared to suggest that AIDS was not precisely not what Antony Fauci said it was, that perhaps there could be alternative interpretations of the illness, related to homoeopathy and drug use — in other words various factors other than Fauci’s much vaunted virus that transmits HIV. At any rate, when Rob died, many in the gay media celebrated his death. I would say there is no justification for celebrating the death of another person, no matter how evil they are; they deserve what we all deserve -- respect, because they, too, are human. We are all human (just a reminder). I was having a drink the other day with a woman who was my friend, and when I mentioned I have another friend who is an anti-vaxxer —her eyes glazed over with hate. I could tell she was suppressing the urge to ask me to leave. How did we get like this? From forgetting how much we all adore our own personal fictions. Because, after all, it is not reason that separates humans from animals, it is our ability to lie.

We love Digitalcapitalism,

 there’s no two ways about it. It is the way of the future; it’s all about convenience and pornography. Basically we all love pornography and we all love convenience and everything is to be sacrificed on the alter of that. Digitalcapitalism -- i.e. Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta, Instagram and Tiktok etc. -- all know this.  If you once imagined that the digital world was a place to learn, expand your horizons, or open your mind to new ideas well forget it. Now that capitalism has a hold of the digital world, your computer has become immoral — or perhaps amoral is a better word. The worldwide web is now fundamentally corrupt. Don’t get me wrong I’ve got nothing against capitalism, except that we like to think of it as inherently ‘good.’ Capitalism is not good, or noble -- it is simply greedy and pragmatic. As long as we remember this we will do just fine. When we imagine capitalism is good for us or has noble intentions we are sauntering down a dark road. Digital ads these days suggest that living salespersons in stores are trying to corrupt you; you are safer online. (This is similar to the myth that education is  better online; a toxic idea -- we know that now after trapping the kids in online education during COVID.) It started with the CARVANA ads. CARVANA ads make fun of car salesmen suggesting they are sleazy, pressuring liars. This is supposedly unlike online shopping for cars—where you will be treated honestly and not pressured. (Right!) Now you will find this notion everywhere; apparently going out to a store to buy something is automatically a nightmare, immediately a phalanx bevy of greasy manipulative sales people will descend on you and perhaps physically attack you in order to force you to buy. But online, of course -- you can make independent decisions without pressure. (So true, eh?) Digitalcapitalism is working towards the day when you don’t even have to point your phone at a cash register; there will be chips in our brains and if we think about a product or service long enough we will have bought it. It will all be magical, fantastical, and oh so convenient and filthy as hell. Because don’t forget pornography—  the motivating force behind Digitalcapitalism. You think I exaggerate. Well  my boyfriend gave me TIkTok as a gift last Christmas -- just to keep me aware (I’m very old you see, and these things are liable to pass me by). I watched it for 45 minutes— that was more than enough. I soon realized that I could have watched it all day. And then I realized that the more I watched it — the more shirtless cute boys kept appearing, over and over. I talked to a young straight guy about TikTok and he said: ‘I hate it, but I’m on it all the time’— this is akin to the way a heroin addict might talk about his needle. TikTok is Brave New World’s ‘Soma,’ we feel alive and fascinated even though we are actually being hypnotized by the flashing lights and appealing skin reveal, until we will eventually become immune to real human emotion and real life in general. Anyway the young straight guy I talked to said that he had noticed that a lot of cute girls were showing up on his TikToks, I said ‘well that’s pornography.’ Digitalcapitalism can read your mind, and unless you’re half-dead — and even some half-dead people still seem capable of getting vaguely horny — you want to see flesh, because we all respond —whether we are in denial or not — to physical beauty. It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve been told that beauty is only skin deep and that we are all truly deeply interested in the inner person not the outer, we are biologically programmed to respond to tits, ass and dick. Period. That’s what computers are about really; a hugely efficient delivery system for an entirely private voyeurism; when we open that computer we filled with tingling expectation  because we know that there is the possibility we might just accidentally see some human nakedness somewhere; we may pretend we are looking at celebrity photos or family photos or reading gossip — it is all really soft core pornography because ultimately it’s just there for us to wank off to really, in one way or another. I must admit that I have tended to get furious lately about  the young and their addiction to Digitalcapitalsm, but I recently chatted with a very philosophical friend of mind who calmed me down. He is a brilliant stand up comic. Brilliant standup comics are all fundamentally motivated by a deep inner melancholy — it drives them to cheer the world up. When I started ranting about the young rejecting reality and living in an onlne fantasyland, he just frowned at me in his somewhat goodnatured way. “It’s funny!’ he said. ‘Just laugh at it, I do!. Don’t bother getting mad.’ I asked him how he achieved this admirable state of equipollence (that’s a skeptical term for calm) and he said ‘well didn’t you do a lot of crazy things when you were young?’ Unfortunately I didn’t. That Is why I am now presently so screwed up— still discovering love and sex always for the first time. (I was a very good boy — and that can only lead to villainy later in life.) Nevertheless his point was well taken. My attitude now is this: if the young want to live their lives online, well more power to them. Let’s just see how that works out. I will amuse myself watching; let the bodies pile up where they may. I recommend we all recline on our elderly divans and enjoy watching this divine decadence, as the world ends gradually not with a bang, but a whimper. Let the young have what they want, as long as I'm alive, I will be amused by their suicidal online obsession.  If you catch me cursing the little darlings again, please stop me. I won’t mind.