So there I was, straight back home to the Ronald Regan memorial hospital for failed writers and the incurably insane. Hasn't changed a gram, I tell ya. Same people, still spouting the same brown fountains of shit they used to say, and here's me, once again, riding into town on my signature horse of raw sewerage. Detecting the passage of time in Christchurch takes some serious heavy duty scientific equipment. It's like one of those pick-the-difference-in-the-picture old people puzzles they have in the last few pages of the womens magazines, 'cept the only real difference in the second picture is that we're all older and getting progressively less attractive.

The way we want to define ourselves, and the way we are, are often, more often than not, generally always, completely and totally, extremely out of sync. Different people, ostensibly, pounding out a sense of self on the marshmallow punching bag of common communal discourse—or else vice-versa, the clubs of discussion pounding out all sense, the very self out of them; yes! I'm like that! I agree with you.

It's bullshit, but it's our bullshit, which, of course, means everything. How I yearn for simpler times. A fist to the face would bring me to my senses, slipping into my nihilism like some see-through negligee, see me, split-crotch, panties down around my ankles, yeah, why not, yeah, do it. Santa Claus is doling out the thick eyes this Christmas.

When I complained about the lump of coal in my stocking they first put me on hold, then told me to complain to my local political representative. Of course I tried, wrote strongly worded letters etc. but to no avail, no reply, not anything.