An Evening with the Philosopher

Is there an illness common to all of us, something not even medicine can tackle - a sort of incurable, long episode of Love Island?
"Perhaps," said the Philosopher. "But I would rather submit myself to the mysteries of waterboarding than watch an episode of that. You want to challenge me intellectually? Bring me an episode of the Jeremy Kyle Show."

We gathered around the Philosopher every evening, attempting to emulate his almost divine wisdom. Instead, we would end up digesting cheap Aldi wine and wondering why we didn't choose paint stripper instead, as it would have tasted the same. We mostly looked at memes and released drunk farts, whilst the Philosopher described his views on life and occasionally picked his nose in the most serene manner.

"I don't like discussion, especially arguing, as I think argument is an exercise in ignorance. How can someone prove whether they are right or wrong? Opinions are immaterial as we can't prove them scientifically... so what we can discuss are the morals behind each idea  or person. Which is better, Jabba the Hutt or Chewbacca? Corbyn or May? Obi-Wan or Palpatine? A pointless exercise, although I must point out the DUP is to Theresa May what Jar Jar Binks was to Darth Sidious."

We looked at each other silently and heard a rattling noise in one of the bushes nearby as we sat around the fire. I got up to check if it was some sort of wild animal only to find it was nothing as dangerous but merely Hansel, one of our loyal students, masturbating.

"Politics bore me. Unlike Hannibal Lecter, I have very little interest in seasoned politicians," said the Philosopher.

"So what interests you, honorable Philosopher?" I asked. He paused for a second and looked at me with sweet eyes, sweeter than those of a prostitute from Prague who is about to mug you at knifepoint.

"We have been questioning ourselves since the dawn of time: is there life after death? This is something many religions have attempted to answer, and in my view failed. Because perhaps the foolishness lies not in the answer but the question itself. Do we need life after death? Do we need a perpetual cycle of tiny Donald Trump hands sexually assaulting us? Perhaps we don't. But there is a sort of life after death. Or have you not witnessed the faces of these celebrities after a plastic surgery? These people, who clearly belong more in the set of The Walking Dead than on Celebrity Big Brother prove that."

"Life after death is no mystery. A mystery is who the hell is writing the lyrics to Nicki Minaj's songs, these deep and thoughtful poems, chronicle to the life of this somehow famous singer whose butt looks like a road roller. In a  sense, it gives hope to all of us who are intellectually challenged, I suppose."

the comedian and his turtle, number three.

He used to wake up and dream of making people laugh. He misses the days where the skies weren't so grey, the food so shitty, and all the women he had sex with morbidly obese. Life was to him a torture and his existence futile. The comedian hadn't made his bed in months and still slept amidst some leftover cheese biscuits from 1993. He smelled like a rancid scrotum, and that was far from being nice.

Something was missing from his life, something beautiful. A naked picture of Jennifer Lawrence perhaps, he thought. But he already had acquired that because he was a pervert who couldn't help look at titties, no matter what. The whiskey in his cornflakes wasn't helping and as a drop of sour tomato soup fell from his beard into his crotch, he felt a deep sadness.

The turtle had left. His friend and companion of many years had abandoned him. One morning, he had told him he was leaving to buy cigarettes and never came back. He didn't even smoke, but he didn't argue with him. After all, he was a talking turtle and for someone who grew up watching mutant turtles eating pizza, that was sort of okayish.

Now without a soul to tell stories about his comedy misfortunes he was alone. Every day for the last six weeks he had tried to commit suicide and failed. He wasn't very good at anything in particular, apart from playing checkers. He could play that shit really well.

Where could have he gone? The town had only thirty-five square metres and most of that space was occupied by fat people on mobility scooters outside Greggs. Who would know. Plus the turtle wasn't very good at hiding, a fact proven before in a game of hide and seek, where he put himself in between pages three and five of The Big Issue for seven months.

Tired of looking for his Galapagos friend and potential ninja, the comedian entered a strip club. The sight of breasts appealed to him and made him cry for a moment. Then he realized he wasn't in a strip club but merely at his local pub and the breasts belonged to a inebriated football hooligan.

He arrived at an actual strip club at last. After thirty-three shots of Sambuca with a Romanian stripper, he was ready to give up on life at last. He would throw himself in front of a train. Hopefully one that wasn't stationary, like last time.

"Comedian! You twat!" the turtle shouted from the other end of the room. Happiness filled the comedian's face.
"Turtle, you're alive!" he said.
"I was hoping you had killed yourself by now man. You were totally about to when I left, I didn't fancy staying to clean up your corpse mind you. Especially considering I'm only an imaginary turtle and all."
"It's okay, I understand." the comedian said, crying. "I love you!"
"Now that's just disgusting." said the turtle "At least suicide I respect you know. You stop bothering people with your shit. It saves a lot of time and money and there are plenty of people on this planet already, watching Pop Idol and whatnot. I'd rather have you die choking on your own balls or something. Like a man. Because I care about you."

Suppose he was right, the Comedian thought.
He had spent his entire time feeling sorry for himself, when he could have been doing something productive, like catching gonorrhea. He could have had a monstrous baby with a minger, whom he would have to end up drowning to protect the environment.

"You're a downright pussy," the turtle said. "Not like a cat or a vagina but a real fucking pussy."

"All you do is sit at home all day watching porn and as much as I like Two Girls One Horse Plus Three German Shepherds it does get boring after the twelve-thousandth time. Get out there, get drunk, fuck shit up."

Suddenly a glimmer appears around the turtle and he grows angel wings. He becomes like an angel turtle and that's just weird. God must be desperate for recruits. The turtle flies to the heavens, leaving a poo on his way and a very special message in the clouds:

"TWAT."

There was never a turtle. There was only him and his insecurity. His fear of failure. The turtle was a fragment of his imagination, an excuse he had developed to think that he sucked balls. But he didn't. He merely licked them. His dog's. Because someone convinced him the dog's bollocks were the best thing ever. And he believed it.

the comedian and his turtle, number two.

"You know, some days I wake up truly uninspired," I said to the turtle. "Everything I produce seems to have lost quality, to be void of feeling, decayed. Everything just blatantly looks like shit."
"There is nothing wrong with shit my dear," the turtle said whilst playing darts. "Dogs eat shit all the time and they're truly smart animals."

The turtle was right. Even the smart, from time to time, eat their own poo. That thought troubled me, not in the sense of the material poo but the ethereal kind, the poo that isn't truly a large abandoned smelly turd on a field somewhere but those things we allow to be in contact with ourselves that aren't good, the things that hurt us.

"You're right," the turtle said, now using the darts to perform voodoo on a Simon Cowell doll.
"About what?", I said.
"That thing you were just thinking, that philosophical shit you just came up with."
"But how would you know what I was thinking? You're just some turtle performing voodoo in my living room. You have no permission to access my consciousness."
"Oh but you do forget dear, I am a product of your imagination and every single thought that comes through your head, I'm right there, sitting next to it, jizzing in its mouth."

I couldn't help the incessant thoughts about this poo business. Cats are different from dogs. Compared to dogs, they possess an even higher level of animal mental retardation - I mean, they wash using their tongues - but still, they don't eat their own shit.

"You were onto something before that dear," said the turtle again, now running on the treadmill. "Humans do eat shit".
"Not literally," I said. "Ok, maybe except for that time when I was seven months of age and dipped my index finger into a nappy. Although that was in the hope of finding the chocolate mousse mother had promised me."
"Oh but I don't mean that, you see. I don't mean you are in perpetual damnation in the company of Satan ingesting your own special mountain of turds. What I mean is you, as human beings, no longer expect quality. You settle for less."

"You marry somebody that hurts you, you become friends with somebody that doesn't accept you, you try to please those who dislike you, you pollute the water you eventually drink and even the air that you breathe."

As I sat back on the chair picking my nose and eating a bogey, I meditated on what the turtle said. Maybe it was right, maybe we as a species have made ourselves content with impurity, with carelessness. Maybe its a sign that we have accepted our mortal nature, our extinction and have, in consequence, become suicidal.

"But you are wrong about this water I am drinking," I said to the turtle. "It can't be polluted since I have spent a fortune on this very expensive filtering machine."

"Oh, but I know there is nothing wrong with the water when it comes out of the filtering machine," the turtle said, "But what you missed was that while I performed my little pseudo-philosophical speech on you I took that glass of pristine water and urinated in it."



Image borrowed from here

The comedian and his turtle

"Why did you want to become a comedian?" the pink turtle asked, whilst he made scrambled eggs.

"I wish I had a definite answer," I said. "However, the fact that you only seem real due to my excessive consumption of narcotics makes me think you're either a simple fragment of my own imagination or a dissociation of my personality that has chosen to live in the sewers and learn martial arts from some random mutant rat."

Some days I wake up after having had intercourse with a morbidly obese woman and question my existence. Why am I here? Who is this woman? How can I dispose of her body in a manner that won't alert the authorities? As I stare into the morning skies eating some out of date cheesecake, I wonder.

From the very moment I was born I tried to be funny. Had my fair share of success at birth, as one has to admit there is nothing more amusing than seeing an individual like myself, with a face that resembles a messy pubic area, abandoning a vagina. One cannot afford such luxuries these days.

In my early years, Grandmother Zulmira was my biggest fan. With my father's help I recorded what was Ruben's first ever appearance on tape. Terrifying as it sounds, this recording's contents amount to background conversations of my mother and grandmother tidying up the kitchen after dinner, three-year-old Ruben performing swearing duties on a microphone and my dad doing his best to stop me from swallowing that same object.

At the time my dad must have thought either I was going to be some sort of performing artist or just somebody who takes great pleasure in shoving phallic objects down his throat. So far, I must admit to have failed at both. A comedian isn't always an artist. A comedian doesn't always perform. As in my case, sometimes he's not even funny and therefore does occasionally suck. But as Bev from Swindon* once said, you just got to keep trying.

"But why a comedian?" the turtle asked whilst reading War and Peace and taking a shit on my dinner table - quite an exceptional animal, even good at multitasking. "What's in being a comedian that makes it so special?"

I thought about it for a moment then a tear started running down my cheek and I wondered what the cause could be for my incontinent eye. Then I realized I was alone in my living room, naked and chopping onions to the sound of Spandau Ballet's 'Gold'. Mental note: don't consult with Dr. Hoffman during the week.

"It's the laughs," I said to the nonexistent turtle. "I love their sound, the energy. It's really a sad thing. In the end I think it's about acceptance. The comedian is a loner, he just doesn't belong anywhere. Some men conquer by force, some by intelligence, I have none of those. I can only try to be funny. Share the most embarrassing moments of my life and hope that audiences will laugh at my misery. But I will happily exchange my misery for their happiness. When I make that connection with others, when my truth becomes theirs and they laugh and are happy, even for a moment, that makes me happy".

"You're an utopian," the turtle said, smiling. "Maybe one day your dreams will come true without you having to take any drugs. Maybe you'll make that connection you long for, everybody will laugh and not because you have a beard or are remotely funny, just because I'm nice and took a picture of you sucking on my balls."


Image borrowed from here.

* A nice lady that gave me a cigarette on the 2nd of June of 2014 outside the Frog and Bucket in Manchester when I was very, very drunk.