Or, perhaps, a post-modernist take on the scraps between lions and Christians that preceded the orgies of feasting and f******, favoured by the Romans.
Closer, though, to some Orwellian dystopia only not in the future but now. This is real life, baby.
You worthless piece of shit. You can’t make money? You can’t make me richer than I already am? You can’t demonstrate the necessary soullessness, the required absence of morality, the mandatory predatory greed?
And if you think the gloating and mean-spirited thrills that run up and down the place where your spine ought to be are grotesque, misplaced and deviant, then there’s no place for you here. Fill your face with food and glug the wine as you thrill to someone losing their job. Cultural values reinforced. The consensus cemented. Tomorrow you can sniff disdainfully as steelworkers cry in the face of Christmas. Get a job! I did! I hauled myself up and made a success of myself! Look at my wad! Look at my car! Look at my house!
If you ever worried, deep into the night, about how the roof over your children’s heads was gonna stay in place, f***you. If you sweated out the money, only to find too much month left at the end of it, f*** you. The only thing worse than having a job is not having one, right?
Like Charlie said, “How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
But they sell that you as a dream. Via your TV. The only thing worthwhile to which humanity should aspire.
F*** your dreams, f*** your hopes and your humanity. If you’ve got any left. The only measure of success, the only barometer of worth, the only gauge of merit is money. It’s all about the money, money, money.
A third-rate spiv, a smug obscenity, more walnut than human, mostly famous for giving the world the worst stereos the world has ever seen, a Lord, no less, will sit in judgment and tell you what’s what. But you know what, don’t you? More money. More money.
F*** you. You’re fired.
Harry Paterson
