Ah, housework. It’s the unwelcome guest at the party that is our daily existence — a guest who refuses to leave, despite our polite, increasingly desperate, attempts to show them the door. You know the one. The person who arrived under the guise of “I’ll just pop in for a quick drink,” but, five hours later, is still sitting on the couch, blabbering about their garden renovation plans while you passively (and very nearly imperceptibly) edge towards the door.
I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that there exists a mysterious, nebulous thing called “cleaning,” a force that looms in the background of one’s existence, like a rogue planet. It orbits your life, ominous and ever-present, occasionally pulling you into its gravitational field with alarming, irresistible force. Some days, it’s dusting. Other days, it’s mopping. And let’s not even speak of the laundry — a task so multifaceted, so long-winded, it could be a novella if it were a bit more coherent and less riddled with wrinkles.
There’s a particularly charming irony in the way cleaning works. You finish one job, proud of your accomplishment, only to look around and realize that, rather than having removed the grime from the universe entirely, you’ve merely nudged it along to a new location. You vacuum, and suddenly it seems as though a thousand more crumbs have been unleashed in your wake. Where were these crumbs five minutes ago? Were they waiting in ambush, biding their time under the furniture, waiting for you to make that brave, half-hearted attempt at domesticity? The truth is, housework is like a Sisyphean task, but less poetic and more domestic. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder uphill for all eternity, only to watch it tumble back down again. This, surely, is the destiny of anyone who tackles the laundry pile. Or the dishes. You wash the dishes, and the next thing you know, you find four used mugs dotted around the house. Before you know it, you’re in a situation not entirely dissimilar to those eternal looping train rides that never seem to end, the same track, the same repetitive clankclankclank of reality.At times, I find myself questioning the point of cleaning. I mean, why do I keep vacuuming the same rug? It’s not as though the rug is going to become a person and return the favor with a bit of light housework. No, that would be absurd. If rugs could clean, they’d probably spend their days getting underfoot and critiquing your cleaning methods. “You’ve missed a spot, you know. I’m just saying.”
But then there’s the other side of housework — the one that’s more sinister. The “all-consuming” side. You start with a simple task, like scrubbing the bathroom sink, and before you know it, you’re elbows deep in the fridge, debating whether those olives are still edible or whether they have transformed into a sentient penicillin colony. And yet, there’s a certain satisfaction to this madness, isn’t there? The feeling that, for a fleeting moment, the world has been put to rights. The tiles have gleamed, the laundry is folded, and perhaps, just perhaps, the dust has temporarily been vanquished.
Then you sit down on the couch, feel a deep sense of pride, and are promptly greeted by a mountain of paperwork you could have sorted out last week but opted not to. The cycle begins again. So we carry on, don’t we? Every now and then, perhaps with a sigh of resignation, perhaps with a brief and fleeting moment of joy, we continue to tidy up, knowing that the broom will forever chase us through the house like an obedient, if slightly overzealous, dog. And yet, in our hearts, we know we’ll never truly win this battle. We can only delay the inevitable, and even then, only for a very short time. Such is life. Such is housework. And such is the human condition.
It was once a simple matter. Thousands of years ago, people worshipped the Sun as a god, making sacrifices of all sorts—virgins, goats, perhaps even a few particularly enthusiastic charioteers— everything from which you could extract a still pulsating heart to appease the giant ball of fiery gas that could make or break harvests and tans. The Sun, ever the attention-seeker, didn’t mind. In fact, it quite enjoyed the praise.
It gavee life to everything you see and you can feel its warmth on your skin, and – in exchange – it only demanded that a ribcage or two were cracked open like a walnut she’ll at Christmas time, every now and again. It sounds like a toxic relationship, but these were different times. The good old days.
Then, as history often does, it got complicated. Along came a chap, no less that on the day of the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti – or the “birthday of the invincible Sun” – on December 25th, and said “Why are you all celebrating the Sun? Today is Jesus’s birthday! Always has been! I mean, not always, maybe, but, you know…” and suddenly, the Sun’s big day was overshadowed by someone else’s birthday. The audacity of it all! After millennia of being the center of attention, the Sun was unceremoniously shoved aside by a bearded carpenter, a man who wouldn’t have known a solstice if it slapped him across the face.
A man so obviously less powerful than the Sun. And the Sun knew it well. You can’t stare at the Sun for more than a second, you can stare at a crucifix until you fall asleep, because there are sunglasses, not Jesusglasses. There are solar panels, not Christ panels. The Sun gives you skin’s cancer, Jesus cannot cure it.
There’s simply no context.
At first, it didn’t seem so bad. The Sun still got some mention in passing, perhaps as a metaphor or a glowing reference in a sermon or two. But no hearts were ripped from ribcages to praise it. It was simply no way to live. But the Sun wasn’t the type to forget a slight. Slowly, over the centuries, a subtle resentment began to simmer. Instead of openly confronting the problem—perhaps sending a few angry rays to scorch the city of Rome—the Sun took a far more calculated approach. It did what all truly passive-aggressive entities do: it started to make life uncomfortable, just enough to make you think. It was a slow burn. Literally. Every year, a fraction of a degree warmer. “Oh look, still no sacrifices, let me turn up the thermostat!”
Cli-click.
Minor heatwave here, a summer that was just a little hotter there. It wasn’t immediately noticeable. People simply chalked it up to “weather patterns” or “human activity”—foolishness, of course, because we all know that nothing in the cosmos happens without some sort of celestial motive behind it. The Sun, with all its solar flare and fiery bravado, was sending a message.
Eventually, things heated up. Politicians, ever the experts in obfuscation, began blaming either climate change or telling us that global warming was a myth. Meanwhile, the Sun, content to let its heat rise a degree or two every year, sat back and chuckled.
Like that chap at the office that keeps cranking up the heat until everyone else starts sweating bullets and looks at each other wondering who is going to say something. And still, we didn’t sacrifice even a chipmunk to the Sun.
And so, in a rather quiet and entirely undignified fashion, the Sun exacted its revenge. Each year, another degree. The ice caps melted.
The Sun is reminding us, one degree at a time, that it would not be ignored.
No one likes a birthday party hijacker, and the Sun was no exception. But instead of an all-out tantrum, it’s decided to take the long game approach.
Now that we finally realised we’re all sweating buckets under the Sun’s unrelenting glare, it is too late to send an apology card.
Am I suggesting that we should bring back human sacrifices?
Yes.
That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. After all, what’s the point of being all-powerful if no one’s paying attention?
It’s a tough day for the Devil. You can tell by the way he is brooding over his desk, shuffling through what used to be the most valuable commodity in the universe: human souls. He’s not happy. Not because he’s out of souls – far from it. No, it’s because he’s come to a brutal realisation: souls are now utterly worthless. They’ve been devalued. And no one’s even noticed.
It wasn’t always this way, of course. Souls used to be the currency of damnation. People used to sell them like it was a get-rich-quick scheme. A quick little path here, a Faustian bargain there, and bam, eternal suffering in exchange for a shiny new car, a successful marriage, or a mildly successful music career. The Devil’s business was booming, everything was going according to plan. Hell was packed with the whiny, the selfish, and the ethically bankrupt – the usual clientele.
But now? Well, now the Devil’s sitting there, looking at his soul portfolio, and it’s like he’s holding a bag of expired coupons. The market has crashed. People are still signing contracts, sure, but what they’re offering isn’t worth the blood it’s written in. The souls have been diluted, rendered meaningless. The Devil’s got an office full of souls, but they’re like crappy timeshares or a cheap knockoff handbag you buy in a back alley – everyone’s got one, no one values them, and they only lead to disappointment.
He’s pacing around his penthouse in Hell, thinking that – the way things are going – he won’t be able to afford anything better than a shack, soon. Trying to figure out what happened. The thing is, souls have always been the commodity. They were sacred in their misery.
But now? Now souls are like a blue tick on a social media handle.
The Devil knows who to blame, of course. And of course it’s Him: God. Back when there were only two souls, the original two -Eve and Adam- back then, yes! Souls used to be true Wealth. The Devil’s chest still puffs up at the memory. He managed to corrupt them, to make them eat the apple, and to mark them with the original sin.
But, oh no: ever the sore loser, God couldn’t accept it. He wanted to keep playing, so He had created more souls. Eve gave birth with great pain and so on and so on, and now there were – how many billions of souls on Earth? Seven, eight, nine? Even the Devil couldn’t be arsed keeping count, anymore. They kept growing exponentially, anyway.
Back in the day, there was a king. From where again? Phrygia or something. Anyway, he was called Midas and wanted to turn to gold everything he touched, so Dionysus granted him his wish. The gift became soon a curse.
If everything gets turned into gold, soon the market gets saturated, and the gold becomes pretty much worthless.
It was genius! This is still studied in Hell’s schools. Turn the greed of humans into their ruin. The Devil used to laugh at Midas and his short sight.
You know what the Devil doesn’t find funny? When it’s God Almighty making the same short-sighted mistake, and souls now are worth as much as a fistful of Monopoly money.
“Almighty my bollocks, that’s like the first rule of market they teach you in business school” the Devil curses under his breath, as he watches the stock arrow of the souls market plummeting down to an abyss that even the Lord of Hell finds to be too deep.
The Devil doesn’t know what to do with Himself. He thought about pivoting into something else, maybe offering “eternal pain with an experience package” or selling VIP access to personal damnation tours, but everything is so commodified now. Hell has become a subscription service, a streaming platform for your worst nightmares, with way too many ads.
Maybe the worst part of it all? The Devil looks at humanity and realises they don’t care. They don’t need to be tricked into selling their souls anymore. They’re already doing it willingly, like they’re on some kind of endless, dopamine fuelled treadmill.
People don’t need an eternal afterlife of suffering to ruin their existences. They’re perfectly capable of doing it themselves, one bad decision at a time. Gambling, shopping spree, career choices, the irrational hate – it’s all a slow burn, and the Devil isn’t even the one holding the match anymore. He’s just a passive observer now, watching humanity self-destruct.
It isn’t even funny, in a B-horror movie kind of way. In fact, it’s fairly pathetic.
So here he is, sitting there with his stack of worthless souls, wondering if maybe the end of the world isn’t the worst thing after all. Maybe it’s time for a career change. Hell’s not what it used to be – not when you’re competing with 24 hours news cycles, reality TV, oligarchy being paraded as democracy, and influencers promising you the “ultimate experience” for just a low, low price. The Devil realises that in a world where people are selling their happiness for the smallest thrills, the soul has no intrinsic value. Maybe it never did, even when there weren’t so many around.
At this point, the Devil just shrugs. He’s already got the soul of humanity – and it has been paying dividend for centuries. But right now, he’s got a stack of paperwork to burn, an inbox full of apocalyptic memes, and no one left to torment.
I wish I could claim that politics is terrible in a specific country.
It isn’t.
The world’s eyes are trained on American politics. I’m not going to spend a lot of words on it, but if you work as a P.R. for any organisation and- before the welcome party is even over – you’re already pulling overtime deciding how to dress up a Sieg Heil salute for the media, you might want to open Indeed and update your CV, because it’s going to be a long four years.
But I live in England, and politics has been ridiculous for a while, here, too. I used to live in Italy during Berlusconi’s prime, and guess what? It was terrible, there, too. And somehow it has managed not to improve after he died, either.
God, I just turned 36 and – in politics years – I feel like I’m aeons old. I spent 20 years under Berlusconi’s shadow alone. You get a lighter punishment for killing someone.
My point is that watching the electorate choosing a leader feels like watching a post apocalyptic soap opera. Not a good one, either, with clever writing, plot twists, and tridimensional characters. No. We get the villain (the politicians who will inevitably get elected) telling the hero (the electorate) to slathe their body in honey. Then the hero gets swarmed, stung and bitten by wasps and flies, like in the third canto of Dante’s Inferno. Every episode for twenty seasons. And the hero still hasn’t connected the dots.
After twenty seasons of the villain telling the hero to cover themselves in honey, the hero finally understands why they’re always tormented by insects: it’s because women have a right to abortion! And the villains gets elected once again.
Sometimes, the villain will openly post pictures of them with the CEO of Asbestos inc., and tell everybody that they will start shoving asbestos into teddybears.
“But they mean well,” the hero will coo.
After a lifetime of this, I’m starting to see democracy akin to placing a group of toddlers next to an infinity pool filled with fuel, shoving a box full of matches in their pudgy hands, and then congratulating ourselves because this is clearly the best system we can come up with.
But the truth is that I’m just being unfair and jaded. This could work.
This could work, but.
We’ve all had to deal with people. We’ve all heard comments so ignorant that left us speechless. Comments that are followed by an awkward silence broken solely by the sound of your bollocks cascading to the ground.
There’s a reason why, election after election, we’re getting closer and closer to totalitarianism. We can still save ourselves, but if you think that doing nothing and hoping that a collective consciousness will be suddenly ignited by mainstream media, then I have some flying pigs to sell you.
There’s a famous, very old book called The Betrothed by Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni. In it, a guy called Renzo needs to see a lawyer because of reasons, and decides to bring him some chickens as a gift (it’s set in the 17th century.) So he grabs a couple of chickens by their feet, and goes. As he walks, the chickens – now finding themselves dangling upside down and facing each other – start pecking at each other.
We’re like Renzo’s chickens.
Instead of focusing on the hand carring us as an offering to a rich somebody and start a class war, we’re too busy pecking at each other in an endless culture war.
The problem isn’t just that we are gullible; it’s that we actively choose not to learn. The educational systems, which were once designed to foster critical thinking and debate, have become little more than factories churning out passive consumers rather than informed citizens. The irony is that in an age of unprecedented access to information, we seem more ignorant than ever. We are so overwhelmed with data that we can no longer discern fact from fiction, truth from spin. Worse still, the tools designed to help us learn — social media, news outlets, online forums — have become instruments of manipulation, drowning out any meaningful discussion with a cacophony of misinformation.
And so, the cycle continues. The electorate votes, the politicians continue to lie, and the machinery of totalitarianism grows ever more efficient. One right at the time, freedom is shaved off. It doesn’t come in the form of a dramatic coup or an overt military dictatorship (not yet, at least,) it comes in subtler way.
Like a predator that doesn’t shove you in a van to spirit you away, but undermine your confidence with venomous narcissism, controls who you can see, keeps you financially dependent… until fear of upsetting the captor becomes the only reality we know.
No one’s stopping you from speaking out, they’re just making it so inconvenient that you stop doing it.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. The electorate can still save itself, but only if it wakes up and takes responsibility for its own education. The real work begins now — outside the classrooms, away from the politicians, and in the places where actual knowledge resides: in books, in conversations, in critical thinking. It’s time for a revolution of the mind, one that demands self-education, asks uncomfortable questions, and, above all, refuses to be spoon-fed lies.
There are books, there are podcasts, there are actual experts out there, and, no, they don’t appear on your social media feed between influencers doing the Macarena.
Surround yourself with good people.
Organising is the next step. Once the electorate begins to understand the depth of the problem, it must come together to challenge the system. The power lies not in individual protests or isolated cries of dissent, but in collective action, in the shared will to demand real change. No more blind obedience. No more accepting the status quo. The future of democracy depends on the ability of the people to recognise the wolf in sheep’s clothing and to say, “Enough.”
If we don’t act, we’ll find ourselves in a society where questioning anything is considered subversive, and the only “truth” is what’s been handed down from on high. If you want democracy to survive, you need to read, you need to ask questions, and most importantly, you need to start holding politicians accountable.
Or soon, we won’t be in the driver’s seat anymore.
Or rather, we’ll still be.
Like a toddler holding a steering wheel while the car’s being driven by a drunk uncle who’s just trying to get to the pub.
Becks couldn’t tell what annoyed her more: being the human who finally made first contact with a race of superior aliens or having to work despite this.
She could remember her abduction, a combination of a spaceship that underwhelmingly looked like a cyan FIAT 126 crossing her path and a violent impact. As she lay on the road that would lead her to the corner shop, her mind had time to register the embarrassment of being splayed on the tarmac in a hoodie, tracksuit pants and flip-flops. Then the cyan 126 hovered above her and – under its chassis – a passage shaped like a doorframe opened, a rectangle of blinding white light breaking up the dark colouring of the car’s underbelly. And when – stereotypically – she was tractor-beamed across its threshold, she found herself standing upright in a very posh office, way bigger than logic would expect from the interior of such a small vehicle. Mahogany wooden floor, walls and a desk of the same material. The only accent of colour, strongly contrasting the room, came from two bright yellow upholstered wingback chairs.
The room was very well lit, despite a lack of windows, by a series of chandelier-shaped lamps hanging on the walls.
She took a step forward and twisted her ankle, “Fuck…” she muttered, as she looked down: she was now wearing a pastel pink power suit and black heeled shoes.
She couldn’t walk on heels and she hated it.
“Ms. Rebecca Stafford?” A voice that sounded like five different children with a Scandinavian accent talking in chorus made her jump out of her skin.
She looked towards the voice.
On one of the chairs – empty just a moment ago – sat the most singular being Becks had ever seen. Clad in a blue suit with pineapple prints all over and a yellow shirt, there was a scrawny… man? His face looked gray / greenish and gills were intermittently opening behind his ears. On his face there was a pair of those joke glasses, the one with a fake nose, eyebrows, and ‘stache incorporated, and the lenses were covered by some cardbox with very badly drawn eyes upon it. The top of the head was covered by a bald cap.
The hands were hidden by blue latex gloves, of which several fingers were obviously empty. Around the midriff of the suit, something kept flopping under the clothes.
Becks stared at the figure with ping pong ball-shaped eyes and a slackened jaw until he repeated: “Rebecca Stafford?”
“Y…Yeah…”
“Rebecca! I am Bobby! I just want to say congratulations! You’ve been selected for a very exciting business opportunity!”
“Okay, sorry… No offence but…”
As she stammered some excuse to turn down whatever scam this creature was trying to pull on her, Becks slowly moved toward the door of white light she came from, keeping her eyes on a sprig of hair of the fake eyebrows that was stuck to the slimy skin just under the bald cap, but – as she turned to leave – she was confronted by the black mahogany wall.The door was gone, and they were boxed into the room.
“Hey… where is the, uhm…?”
“Rebecca.”
“Hm?”
“Why don’t you come here?”
Becks approached very slowly, both out of fear and because of her shoes.
“Here,” the four or five different voices of the creature named Bobby said, kindly, as one of the mostly empty gloves pushed a tall glass of water towards her.
Rebecca looked suspicious. As if in answer to that, the strange man said “I mean… why would I spike your drink? I’ve already abducted you.”
Becks shrugged at this and accepted the glass. “Thanks?” she said, confused, but kindly.
“Rebecca, you’ve been selected to represent your species in what is probably the biggest court case in your history. I think. Well, either way, it’ll look good on your CV.”
“My species?”
“Gonna explain something to you real quick. Rebecca, do you know what sea-monkeys are?”
Becks was blank for a few second. From when the weird flying 126 had hit her to now had only passed, what? A couple of minutes? And in that short period of time, the amount of absurd stuff she had to process was so enormous, that – after a few beats – her brain just decided not to process it. To stage a strike. So, she suddenly calmed down and decided against logic that what was definitely a non-human in a bad disguise asking her about sea-monkeys, of all things, was just another Thursday.
“Yeah, those weird prawns that come to life when you add water to them, aren’t they?”
Bobby was delighted, “Excellent!” he clapped his mostly-empty gloves, then pushed the joke-glasses up to his face.
“Well, brine shrimps, to be pedantic,” he carried on. “But still. See, you’re my client’s sea-monkeys,” he blurted out, letting a nervous laugh ending the sentence.
Becks looked at Bobby.
Bobby looked at Becks.
Bobby coughed to break the silence. It didn’t work.
“May I call you Becca?” He tried.
“No, I prefer Becks.”
“I see. Well, Becks, would you like to take a seat and a sip of that water?”
Becks nodded, plopped on the yellow armchair and took a gulp from the glass without moving her eyes from the indefinite spot she was staring at without blinking.
“Is there anything you’d like to say about what I just told you, Becks?”
“Well…”
“Yeeees?”
“When you say you, do you mean I am your client’s sea monkey, or all of humanity?”
“All of humanity. I did say Sea monkeys, plural.”
“That’s true, sorry.”
“Not a problem.”
“Ok, soooo… all of humanity is one individual’s pet?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Right.”
“I’m glad you took it so well,” Bobby beamed, ignoring the fact that Becks’ eyes had never moved from the spot on the wall they were staring at nor blinked.
“BLOODY WHAAAAATT??” Becks snarled, suddenly.
“Well, I thought you guys would have understood, by now, that you haven’t originated on planet Earth?”
“What the bloody hell are you talking about? Planet Earth has the perfect conditions for our species!”
“Does it?”
“Duh!”
“Well, think about it: the planet has temperatures that range between minus eighty something and plus fifty something degrees Celsius, and you guys are only happy between seventeen and twenty-five-ish. Not to mention that seventy percent of the planet surface is covered in water that you cannot inhabit nor drink.”
“Yes, b- but…”
“BUT!” Bobby interrupted Becks’ stammer, “it’s good that you think that Earth is a suitable habitat for your species.” He concluded with a smile that threatened to dislodge the fake nose, which was promptly pushed back on the fish-like face.
“Snack?” one glove pushed a bowl of fish flake food towards Becks. When she shook her head, Bobby shrugged, scooped some of the food and fed it to the inside of his shirt collar. His midriff flopped squishably.
“Are you a bunch of fish in a suit?”
“A school of fish.”
Becks raised a warning eyebrow, so Bobby answered the question with a sigh: “We find that species are more comfortable dealing with representatives that look like them.”
Becks looked at the pulsating gills on Bobby’s neck. “I see,” she said.
“Hang on,” she carried on, her eyes narrowing with suspicion, “why is it good that I think Earth to be a suitable habitat for us? What is this biggestcourtcaseofourhistory you mentioned?”
“Oh well, it’s just that the UG has sued my client for animal cruelty…” Bobby trailed off.
“The UG?”
“The United Galaxies.”
“Right. And we are the animal who’s been mistreated.”
“Yes, we mean no offence by that.”
“None taken. So…?”
“So, my client has sent me here because we’d like you to officially agree that humanity has been taken care of in the best way possible and that my client doesn’t need to make any further arrangements moving forward.”
“Well… Society is a bit fucked up at the minute, and the planet is dying… so.”
“I’m confident we can get to an agreement.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, I do hate this part,” Bobby said, grabbing a heavy tome from next to his upholstered chair and dropping it open on the relevant section, on the sleek wood of the desk, “but as per interstellar law, we’re bound to conduct a good faith negotiation with a qualified member of the species…”
“I… I am the qualified…? And… and this is the good faith…?”
“Exactly! But you see, during the negotiation, the parties have no duty of care towards each other, and my client, unfortunately, does own the oxygen present in your atmosphere…” the fishes making up Bobby’s body made a sound like they were sucking air through their teeth, as if they were sorry to say that.
“Your client owns the oxygen? And… what? They’re just gonna take it?”
“Between you and I, you’re much better off just making a deal with my client.”
“But… how is this a negotiation? We’re going to die! Our planet is frying, our resources are running out! The ones in power aren’t giving us healthcare but are building space hotels…”
“Yeah, but that’s symptomatic of your society…”
“Society must be changed, then!”
“Also, we have to do this within today.”
“WHAT??”
“If an agreement isn’t achieved by end of business hours today, the case is dismissed.”
“Listen, I can’t do this… I do traffic tickets, why pick me?”
“We’d love a signed agreement immediately.”
“Oh God… You didn’t pick me because I am a good lawyer. I bet that you could pick anybody, as long as they’re technically qualified…”
“There were a lot of moving parts that our team had to consider…”
“You’re taking advantage of a loophole!” Becks stood up in the excitement, a finger pointing at Bobby.
“And it’s only good business to do so.”
An awkward silence suddenly exploded inside the room. Becks let herself fall back into the chair. She kicked the heeled shoes off her feet.
“You know…sometimes… You feel like you’re rubbish at your job. But – you know – then you tell yourself: ohno, you’rejustdepressed, therehastobesomeoneworseoutthere. I also have PMT today, this is really not the right time for me to realise this.”
“May I offer you a chocolate hash brownie? Is it too early for your species to do drugs?”
Becks looked at the clock above Bobby’s head. It said 9.29 am.
“It’s late enough,” she muttered. Bobby brought her a hash brownie.
As she chewed, Bobby tried to console her: “Oh come on, I’m sure it is just a coincidence you’ve been chosen. Maybe this is not your field, but I’m sure you’re good in what you do.”
Becks smiled a sad smile: “Well… I win sometimes…”
“You see?”
“Mainly when the cop doesn’t bother to show up… gotta love a no show!”
“See? Celebrate your victories!” Bobby cheered, pawing another fistful of fish food down his collar, as Becks finished her hash brownie.
For the next forty minutes or so, Bobby compiled the agreement that was to be signed by Becks, involving her in the process, though she only contributed to the conversation with groans.
Suddenly, her pupils grew very large, like a cat’s when focusing on a prey.
“Let me see that,” she said, grabbing the book Bobby had dropped on the desk.
“Hey, just a minute…” Bobby tried to protest.
Becks ignored him, instead making noises with her mouth as she hovered her finger above the page looking for something, until: “Here it is!! Whendisputingthesuitabilityofahabitat, thedefendingparty – that’s your client, he has been sued by the UG – willhavetherighttoahearingin the jurisdiction of said habitat. That’s Earth. You’re the representative, but your client has to actually be here to get a deal signed.”
“Well, I represent them…” Bobby said, but the squishy noise grew louder from inside his suit.
“And we must come to an agreement before the end of business today, you said. Earlier, you also said that you were sent here by your client. I take it they’re not local?”
“Well, they’re not in the galaxy, at the minute… some important business had to be taken care of…”
“And how long would it take them to come here to sign the agreement?”
“In Earth’s days?”
“In Earth’s days?”
“Please.”
A massive sigh escaped Bobby’s gills and after a long pause, his voices croacked: “About six thousands years.”
“A no show!!!” Becks jumped from the chair, both fists held up high in celebration.
Bobby shouted his frustration at losing the case, tentacles erupting from his collar, sleeves and from under his jacket.
Becks recoiled in horror.
Then he recomposed himself, “Sorry, that was very unprofessional of me. Congratulations on a successful negotiation. You’ll have to email the UG with the changes that you’d like for my client to apply to your planet. I’ll give you their email address.”
*
A few months later, Becks received the following email from the UG:
“Dear Rebecca Stafford,
We’ve reviewed the changes you’ve requested to your own natural habitat.
They were the following:
1) TV programs are not to invite as guests populist politicians. Alternatively, do not invite populist politicians equipped with mouths.
2) Both religious and secular authorities can wear funny costumes only during Carnival or on Halloween, exactly like everybody else.
3) All racists must become the ethnicity they hate. For white people hating black people, this will not extend to their penises.
4) Any person believing in a deep state can use the term “they” to indicate the hypothetical, evil, secret masters who control everything only the same amount of times they use the same term to refer to a non-binary person. If they run out of uses for the term “they,” the believers in the deep state will have to refer to the evil masterminds as “magic meanies.”
5) Whoever kneels to accept a knighthood from a royal figure anywhere in the world, won’t be allowed to stand up again.
6) Every singer, poet, and writer will be allowed to use the word “love” up to ninety-nine times. At the 100th use of the word, they’ll be punished by execution.
7) All of those who will try to convert other people to any religion using the phrase “It’s impossible that the perfect beauty of the universe was just random and not the creation of a divine mind” will be instantly infested with the taenia solium, colloquially known as the pork tapeworm, so that they can observe the perfect beauty created by the divine mind of their god from up close.
8) Every time a person will try to convince a person who isn’t their partner and didn’t ask for advice to have children, a kid from foster care will be immediately dispatched to their living room for them to parent for life. This will be repeated for every unsolicited sentence such as “Who will look after you when you’re old?” or “You will love kids when you’ll have yours.”
9) Every person who listens to music or watches videos loudly in public will get a pair of headphones welded to their ears.
10) For intellectual honesty, every video or program about UFO, ghosts, or miraculous apparitions, will have to feature a laughter track.
11) Every worker working for a business that they don’t own and votes right wing must have their wishes immediately granted: halved salary, sixty weekly hours, unpaid overtime, and two white hot pins in their nipples.
12) Deflect the orbit of the asteroid Apophis on Prince Andrew.
13) Every cliché, spoken or written, will cost £13 per letter.
14) All national anthems must be played with the anus.
15) Every man who puts his hands on a colleague, even “as a joke,” and even on “innocent” places such as arms, back, shoulders, or hips, will become fluorescent yellow for a week.
16) When someone is delivering a homily, a lecture, or any moral-ish sermon, a number of how many times they’ve masturbated in their life will flash above their heads. This is to maintain the right perspective.
These possible changes are pending reviews and the process will take between six and nine Earth’s decades.
You will be notified with the outcome as soon as one is reached.
Yes, yes…I know l we don’t know each other. In fact, I don’t even know what you look like. Not really sure which shape you are.
But this is exactly why I love you: you see, if I knew you, I would probably not love you. If you knew me, surely you wouldn’t love me.
You know what they say: “I’d like to know you better.”
NO! It’s always worse.
NOT knowing each other is better. Because a person you don’t know cannot disappont you.
And I will never disappoint you.
Because, as long as you don’t know me, you can always fantasise that I’m different. While if you got to know me, you’ll discover I’m the same. The same as the others, or worse, the same as you. Soul mate and soul twin.
While if we keep on not dating, we’ll never get together. And if we never get together, we’ll never break up.
It’s everybody’s story: you meet a person, and fall in love. Then you get to know them better, and you’d love to piss on their shoes.
You see why it’s different between us? Because I don’t know your shitty taste, you bullshit ideals… I don’t even know your name.
That’s why it can work between us. The secret of eternal love is this: remain strangers.
Eva Brown stayed at Hitler’s side because she thought until the very end he still painted watercolours. Even when, at the end, he suggested that they both committed suicide, she didn’t suspect anything, she must have thought “it’s typical of artists to have this kind of romantic ideas.”
Love is blind, so you and I will never see each other, I promise.
Ours will be an eternal long-distance relationship. Isn’t that romantic? We’ll go to Venice, Paris… I’ll go to Venice and you’ll go to Paris, it’ll be wonderful.
Sex with me will be amazing, because with me it’ll be sex with a stranger. But to let it be as such, we’ll never do anything, it’ll be platonic sex. We’ll never talk. It’ll be perfect.
Whoever you are, whatever you’ll do… I don’t know. Nor I want to know. As you can see, I’m not even jealous. It’s simply that you’re special to me. I finally feel good with you, because tonight you can shag whoever you want, or being ran over by a car.
I mean, don’t get the wrong end of the stick, if you’d die, I’d be sorry.
But also not.
I mean, I’d be sorry for you.. but to me… relatively. With all respect, but I don’t know you.
You see why it works? Because with you I’m not anxious, I’m not scared about losing you… who the fuck are you?
Thanks for being you. Because if you weren’t… meh.
1% of the world population is richer than the remaining 99% put together.
I don’t know if we can wrap our heads around that, it’s a gigantic disproportion.
ONE percent of the world population is richer than the remaining NINETY-NINE percent.
It’s obviously the biggest disparity in human history.
But it’s only fair.
It’s fair that things are this way.
I mean: if all of us get together, we’re more than the majority. We’re more than 50%, more than 70%, we’re even more than 90%… we are 99%, meaning basically everybody.
Now, if all of us, everybody, united, can’t be richer than a measly 1%, we should just…
…be ashamed and admit that maybe we’re the dildos.
We’re dildos, let’s admit it! Let’s look in the mirror and say it: we’re the dildos!
Rich people are rich because they’re better than us.
I feel like I lost you. Feel the social envy how it chaps your ass, eh?
But it’s true, that’s clearly the case: rich people are rich because they’re better than us!
“But, Gab… I mean: are you on the rich people’s side?”
Of course, I am! I am not a fascist like you guys: I always side with minorities!
And today rich people are the minority more minority there is.
Do you know how many rich people are there, in the world? But rich for real, those that even after you tax them, they’re still rich?
2,275 people.
THAT’S IT!
2,275 people.
At any given moment, there are more people having sex than rich people.
There are more people with diarrhea than rich people.
There are more people having sex with diarrhoea than rich people.
And not only rich people are very few, but they’re getting fewer and fewer.
If you check the Forbes ranking of the richest people in the word, every year that list gets thinner, thinner, thinner…
Do you know what that means? That rich people are facing extinction.
And so we must save them.
As we did with pandas, today we must do with rich people.
It’s our generation’s mission!
We need to create a safe zone, a habitat ideal for rich people: no tax zone, I imagine, then – I don’t know – some Jacuzzis, a few supercars… then, what do rich people eat? Ehrmm… Champagne, lobsters… caviar… anyway, let’s create this protected area, and once we have it, we put all rich people there. And once all the rich are there, they need to do only one thing:
SHAG!!
Shag a lot! Because rich people need to reproduce, need to have more kids! They need to have kids like poor people back in the days: 12, 15, 18 children. Rich women are super-rare, they’ll get uterine prolapse for how many rich kids they’ll have to drop!
It’s a sacrifice, but the world needs rich children, because we need arms that swipe those credit cards. We need rich people, otherwise who is going to pay our salary? The poor? The poor?
Enough with helping the poor, please! Enough! Enough!
We’ve been helping poor people for years now, and what did we obtain? That help after help now we’re poor as well.
Us poor people are really bloody annoying! We’re really bloody annoying, still asking, complaining… but what? WHAT!? We’re the majority! 99%! We conquered the world! What more do we want?
Cantankerous Cockerel 