I Tried Virtual Therapy

I’m on the phone to a remote therapist whilst driving down the I90 drinking a red bull.

“If your village was on fire, would you pray to the god of flame or the god of water?”

“I’m not sure. Probably the god of water, maybe it would rain.” I say.

“ERRRR-wrong answer buddy. You need to pray to the god of flame.” Says the therapist.

“I wouldn’t be praying, I’d be trying to put the fire out.” I say, overtaking a truck. The therapist laughs, though the noise cancelling effect on the video call software makes it crackly and empty.

“This makes sense based on your personality type.”

“I don’t believe in that shit. I don’t believe in psychology.”

“Why are you using BetterHelp then?”

“I wanted to see if I was wrong.”

“And?”

“No. Turns out I was right about everything back when I was a teenager, but its always good to check.” I say. I pass Belgrade, Three Forks.

“Do you want my honest opinion?”

“You can just say opinion, its okay. You could just say, ‘here’s my opinion’. Or even just, ‘Opinion;’. What do you think?”

“I think you need to attend your nearest mental hospital and check yourself in. You’re kinda crazy low key.”

“I once visited an asylum, covering a story back when I worked at a newspaper. Was one of my first jobs, I was still a little green you know, still wore a suit to work. They called me Suit Boy. Anyway, there was a patient in there, claimed to be the reincarnation of Sigmund Freud. A lot of the staff stayed away from him, same with the other patients, he was basically isolated in this wing of the mental hospital. I went to his room, he was wearing a straitjacket and drawing on the walls with a marker he held between his teeth.”

“What was he drawing?”

“Scribbles, shapes, nothing really. He turned to me and I thought, he looks nothing like Sigmund Freud. The famous bulging forehead, strong nose and neat beard were nowhere to be seen. In fact, he bore a much stronger resemblance to Frank Vincent.”

“Was he in The Sopranos?”

“Yep. We get talking. Turns out this guy thought he was the famous psychiatrist, complaining they had locked him away in this Nervenheilanstalt and he wanted to get out. I calmed him down with a few cigarettes. This guy then starts to psychoanalyse me, right? Asking me about my unconscious mind, sublimation, superego, that kind of thing.”

“Did he use an accent?”

“He started in Viennese German, switching to English, sometimes Italian when discussing Dante. But by the end of the interview, I knew this guy was a fake. I even called him Sigmund Fraud.” I say, steering the Hyundai off the interstate and towards the Golden Sunlight mine. I pull the car up, crack open the door and light a cigarette.

“How did you know?”

“When you get reincarnated as someone, you look exactly like them. That is how your soul transfers from body to body. You seen that Tom Hanks movie, Cloud Atlas? Its like that. And the guy in there didn’t look anything like the grandfather of psychology. He looked like a mafia boss guy from The Sopranos, .”

“That’s not how reincarnation works. I’m actually a Buddhist, I can explain the concept of samsara to you.” The therapist says. I shake my head, blowing smoke out.

“Just let me finish the story. As I was saying, I called him Sigmund Fraud and started to leave but he called after me, going ‘nein, nein, du must mir glauben!’ and I turned around and then I saw something that I wish I didn’t. All those marks on the walls weren’t actually scribbles. When you stood at just the right angle, all the lines and shapes aligned to make a new image. It was startling, seeming to appear from nowhere, standing behind the man knelt on the floor who was shouting at me in eight languages.”

“It was a drawing of Sigmund Freud?”

“No. It was a drawing of Jacques Lacan. I then understood that this man wasn’t the reincarnation of a dead psychiatrist, but somehow had become supranaturally influenced by the famous French philosopher to make him believe as if he was in fact, the reincarnation of Sigmund Freud. Upon realising that, I managed to cure him.”

“Amazing.”

“He just needed six courses of CBT and he was back at home looking after his wife and kids and returned to his job on a production line, counting pieces of metal. The story made front page, I even got a promotion. They stopped calling me Suit Boy and started calling me Slick.”

“How did that make you feel?”

“I felt…absolutely nothing.” I say, ending the call. I get out of the Hyundai Sonata, walk to the edge of the open pit mine. The shape of the ground, the cuts in the rock, reminded me of ancient pyramids. I take a selfie with the cig in my mouth, then look at it for a few minutes, zooming in to my face and look at every pixellated bump, shadow, pore, reflecting in the horrible sun. A bird starts to scream.

The Wayne Factor

In the beginning of the 20th century Sigmund Freud proposed a theory in which a man would subconsciously want to kill his father and have sex with his mother. This was called the Oedipus Complex, named after the famous myth of Oedipus Rex, and was a cornerstone of psychoanalysis and, in turn, a building block that makes up contemporary society as informed through pop culture. I believe that we have entered a new paradigm, that in which a man wants to both be Batman whilst having his father as Batman. This is called the Wayne Factor.

The Wayne Factor is a more concentrated idea of Freud’s in that it examines the particular personalities of people who divulge in media starring Batman. It is estimated roughly 95% of the American population know who Batman is. Unlike Jesus or even Father Christmas, Batman transcends cultural and theological borders. Part of Batman’s success is in his name. Without even seeing him, you can image a man that is, at least in some way, like a bat and it is this whimsical image that makes him well known. With billions spent on superhero films every year, Batman is perhaps the most popular with Joe Q. Public who prefers his humanity moreso than that of the Ubermensch from Krypton, Superman. Iron Man and Captain America are both human and therefore popular, and so far it appears as though the superhero films contain relatively little superpowers when compared to their comic book counterparts. Instead they are films about men struggling for identity and deciding on becoming a hero, and exploring that theme ad nauseum. Yet who can really say they identify with either being a hero or wanting to be heroic? It is less the concept of what heroism means to the modern man than it is that these heroes can be idolised as potential saviours for those that need it. This anxiety stems from wanting to be rescued by one of your parents as a child and them failing you, which is one of the first steps in separating the concept of a parent from the person that is your parent. The conceptual parent then becomes an idol in which faith is applied to, which is common in religious people. I suspect religion itself came about due to the strong biological link between parent and child brought about by the helplessness of newborns compared to that of almost every other animal on the planet. In the life of an adult a child is a novelty, although to a child the parent is godlike. If a parent should fail their child, the child will then seek a new figure. For thousands of years this desire was manifest in a pantheon of gods. Now it has become Batman.

Consider Batman. Upon the death of both parents, billionaire Bruce Wayne trains all of his life and dons an animimal costume in order to fight criminals from a working class background. It is the costume itself that makes Batman who he is. This costume or ‘bat-persona’ is in order to mask the true identity of the wearer and so, by becoming anonymous, allows the potential in which Batman could be anyone. Fans of Batman often like to imagine themselves as Batman, perched on a tall building dressed in a cape, their muscular bodies protected against the battering rain by a second skin of body armour. At the same time they may imagine themselves victims of crimes and Batman arrives to save them. In the phantasy of the films this is Batman’s most useful skill, his ability to save people and in doing so he becomes a paragon of masculinity. If we consider a few attributes that we would consider masculine, such as physical strength, emotional resilience, fecundity and so on we can also see that these are attributes desirable for a father. It is the parental attributes of Batman that people probably find most appealing, hence his popularity amongst those who have difficult relationships with their own fathers. They love nothing more than settling into a folding-down seat with a box of popcorn, watching Batman loom over them in glorious 3D for hours at a time, trying to ignore the desperate need to be loved by an older man.

This brings us to the psychosexual elements of Batman. It is a common idea that Batman is a gay man, having sex with Robin at regular intervals in the batcave. Why not? I feel as though the idea of Batman being gay is so intrinsically tied to the metanarrative of Batman that this leads to a simple conclusion. The Wayne Factor of a person shows their inclination to desire sexual intercourse with their father whilst also being their own father, in order to have sexual intercourse with their mother. Also that during these acts, both parents are dead. The incestuous love triangle is complete and in the centre is Batman,
slowly rotating,
face hidden in the shadows,
his body pulses.

Money Review: The Five Pound Note

B2B is dead, P2P is the future (people 2 people), it's easy nowadays to run a sql server at home with three dimensional data storage, in both cloud and metacloud. Beyond the stratosphere is Moon 2.0, designs for newspapers on other planets, the working class in spaaaace.

Here are 5 tips to make your business healthy;

1. Optimize search engine results, especially paying attention to the russian and even chinese internet.
2. Content is king, but who is God? George Washington's face on a hundred dollar bill y'all.
3. By upgrading your internet connection to the new 'broadband', you can upload at a basic 526kb/s.
4. Remember to print out business cards at home and hand them out at corporate events. Save money by being sponsored by a paper manufacturer.
5. The fifth tip is just have fun.

Do you want to make money by working from home? Simply click on advertisements on the internet. You're making someone money but that person isn't you, so think outside the box. Start making up your own advertisements and post them to your friends, earn £1 with every 1000 clicks. That means after roughly 10,000 clicks you'll be earning £10,000.

The thing I love about the Apple Macs is the designing. It's cool, it's hip. Young people love it, good brand recognition. The PC on the other hand has the image of being something found in the homes of sex criminals. Here's a tip for Bill Gates; make computers out of gold. That way they will be very expensive. It's important nowadays to get tattoos. Tattoos are a way of archiving the viral. Charlie bit my finger. Fastforward twenty years, Charlie killed someone. Why? He had been programmed to do at an early age by cannibalistic projection.

You ever lie in bed and wonder what you did that got you where you are today? You might think back to some key moment then remember something before that happened that set the event in motion. In fact you could go back through your entire life, then your parents, and your ancestors but guess what? They have nothing to do with you lying in bed. Reaching financial independence isn't a luxury, it's a fashion statement.

Maybe you should re-mortgage your house so you can get hair or breast implants? A little money saving tip that does me good, for every £1 I spend I put £2 into a savings account. That way I barely have any money and sell Christmas presents in order to fuel my drug habit. But what about the recession? Turns out it never happened. Just a bunch of jerks started talking about politics because talking about something important made them feel important. Why not empathise with your bank? I encourage readers to sneak up to it in the middle of the night and start smearing themselves against the windows.

Notice the women in the centre of the five pound note. They are crying because the babies are being drowned. The aristocrats on the left are overlooking the scheme. A woman watches a child and a dwarf wrestle. The shapes on the inner wheel arch are reminiscent of the sayagata pattern, interlocking swastikas. Elizabeth Fry has hair like Marge Simpson. Overall a fascinating design, perhaps some of the best money around. 5/5 stars.

Christmas Cuckoo Land

The Manchester Christmas markets are nestled in St. Ann's square, just by the newly refurbished town hall and Manchester's only public toilet. At this market extravaganza one can sample the tastes of a Christmas that never was at faux-cabin retail stations that labyrinthiate the markets, selling goods such as vintage clothing, e-cigs, pork and ornaments to thousands of pedestrians moving along at a speed more akin to the dynamics of liquid rather than humanoid locomotion. There is a rustic bar which sells the finest arrangement of booze seen in the run-up to Christmas; mulled wine, German beer and American ale all can be bought at great cost whilst one relaxes against a post, admiring the other drinkers cluttering up the place. Enjoy the sound of children running around combined with the aroma of boiling wine. Sample at the arrangement of Mediterranean food for sale, treasuring the stone fruits as you peruse your recent purchases. Perhaps a hand-knitted mug warmer is resting in the paper bag, peeking from behind the corner of a block of smoked cheese made by Kurdish goat farmers on the slopes of Mount Strandzha. Maybe a piece of upcycled boat jewellery made of finest steel awaits a loved one, maybe even a chain-link owl to hang above your bathroom door. It is a truly magical place in which communities come together to enjoy Christmas, not to mention bringing in a decent revenue to local businesses and independent creatives. All of this is watched over by a fifty foot Father Christmas sat on top of the town hall like a psychedelic gargoyle, it's festiveness overpowering.

After arriving in the early hours of the morning and having to wait outside I took stock of winter in the city. In the history of painting there were many landscapes about the Earth being closer to the sun, yet there weren't many Classical paintings of cities beneath the frost. How did Manchester look five hundred years ago on the site of the Christmas markets? The Britons, Angles and Danes perhaps met on this very spot and traded goods under the midwinter sun, preparing for Pagan and Christian feasts. A ram would have been killed in the fog, it's freshly skinned head emerging from a hessian sack as a sacrifice to the Gods of Yule. Meanwhile the Britons would celebrate Saturnalia by doing the opposite of what was normal. War hardened soldiers would wear women's clothes and dogs would act like pigs, each gave presents and passed the berries of mistletoe by kissing one another. Bonfires would be lit and epic poems would be told of Norse ghosts made of mud and of the giants D'Frigga and Yol-M'nnstatr sleeping in the earth. Nowadays the city slowly begins to wake with the smell of Greggs and bus exhausts, commuters beginning to flow in from primate nests and jauntily begin to jog up and down the pavement jostling for a free copy of the Metro or a cup of hot java. The workers of the Christmas market begin to arrive wearing bubble vests and bobble hats, faces pinched red from the cold and stained with iron oxide. I walk across the cobbles like some kind of prehistoric bird, head swivelling from side to side as I admire the warez being offered.

The hours pass by with ease as I make my circuit, snorting down hotdogs and talking to the city folk about whether or not it was about to snow, mind frantic at the Christmas shopping opportunities around me. 8.3% of your life haunted by a festive holiday. 8.3% of the twentieth century, of television, of conversation. I begin to climb the walls of the town hall, shouting at the people below.
“Cease sublimation!” I cry, heaving my entire body up using my fingertips, carefully picking my way up the brickwork. Eventually I reach the enormous Father Christmas and look down at the shoppers below. Some are jeering, others call for me to get away from Father Christmas. I take the fictional man in my hands and begin to shake and pull at it, trying to dislodge it.
“Is Father Christmas just an elf?!” I bellow, managing to tear the festive sculpture free from the steel supports. With the groaning of metal it begins to tip down towards the crowd. There is an enormous crash as the Santa lands on top of the market. I look down, suddenly aware of what I had done.
“No...no!” I say. But it appears as if a Christmas miracle has happened! Father Christmas has been impaled through the head with a gigantic crucifix brought in by religious extremists. Everybody is saved! I jump for joy.
“Looks like the son of God didn't die in vain after all.” I say, unzipping my jacket. I am wearing a Big Face t-shirt with Nelson Mandela on it.
“Silent night, holy night,
Son of God
Watched at night.
Crowning angels are silent at bed.
Holy Mary, mother of grace.
Rest in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.” I sing beautifully.