Stand and Deliver

It recently occurred to me, whilst seated upon my porcelain throne and preparing to drop the 'big steamy' -that toilet paper is next to useless. Allow me to explain.

Toilet paper has one primary function - to clean the anus. I used anus because it is a fantastic word. However, on a sheet by sheet comparison - taking into account softness, durability, and political ideology, it is actually far more effective to use the Daily Mail, or to accumulate free Metro's on the bus to work every day.

It's a TRAP!

Alright, so the reason I'm writing a blog update on how to wipe your arse is probably confusing a lot of people. Let's return to the bathroom. I'm perched comfortably, trousers adrift, staring at the wall and realizing with a sinking feeling that there might not be enough toilet roll for me to adequately clean myself, and that perhaps a bidet would be a far more economical solution. And since you can't actually eat toilet paper, and it doesn't absorb enough to be Kitchen roll, it is rather a luxury.

Which got me thinking some more.

We live on an island, completely surrounded by a substance that makes up two thirds of our planet's surface and quite regularly falls from the sky. It is also necessary, along with food, air and shelter, for human life. And yet we actually have to pay for water. We have to pay for one of the most abundant - besides oxygen and stupidity - resources that our planet has to offer. Which got me thinking some more.

We have human rights, as outlined by the UN Declaration of Human Rights. As is espoused and championed by our liberal democracy. But when you actually think about it, we do not have the right to life. We have the right to not get killed. The right to life would imply that we had the rights to things necessary on the most basic and fundamental level for human life - water, food, air, shelter.

Now, inflation is now at 3.7%, which means everything costs an obscene amount of money. We have a 20% VAT rate. We get taxed. We then pay National Insurance contributions, and probably towards pensions which will then be denied us by some sort of legal loophole - or more commonly, an evil money grabbing bastard stealing everything.

So we have no right to water. We have no right to food, which is incredibly expensive, but we do have a right to air, because fortunately it is a little difficult to control. We have no right to shelter, certainly, because we have to pay a lot of money for that one. And when we do get shelter, we can't actually leave it, because we're paying so much for the privilege of staying alive that to leave our four walls and go somewhere else would be economically stupid, because we'd just have to keep paying for it.

So we'll reiterate. You pay for water. You pay for food, most of which just occurs naturally and falls from trees. You pay for shelter. You pay for the power to your shelter. You pay for the gas with which to cook the things you've already paid for. You pay to rent a phone line that basically requires next to nothing doing to it. You then pay for a contract - rent, mobile, Internet ect - which you will continue to pay for, for a predetermined amount of time, whether you use these services or not. This is to protect the interests of the people you are paying. How stupid is that? You are legally obliged to keep paying for something you might not want, use, or need, because to not pay for it would leave a huge business - that is absolutely milking you - a trivial amount of money worse off.

Then you get a television. Which you pay a huge amount of money for, so you can better fill your free time with mundane rubbish. But fortunately, you have to actually keep paying for the television. Again and again, year in and year out, as some sort of bizarre tax so that another company can make a bit of money in exchange for what is quite frankly an appalling service. Frustrated, you get in your car, only to realize that you are not only inadvertently destroying the planet by frequent use, but you are forced into paying compulsory insurance based entirely of some random numbers.

I could total a car seven times and not achieve it's worth in insurance premiums. My compulsory insurance, for which I can be thrown in prison for not having, is actually there on the assumption that I will wreck someone else's car, and their car will be really expensive. So unless I purposefully ram a good couple of BMW's and Jags, I'm not really getting anything out of this deal, because I'm forced into paying a lot of money to ensure that if I damage something worth more than me, I can pay for it. So I might as well go ahead and do it, right, or its just a waste of money.

Finally, at your wits end, you decide to flee the country. The thing is, you can't actually leave without paying for a piece of paper that says you belong here in the first place. Then, you can't go anywhere without paying a lot of money to be strapped into a metal coffin and hurled across the ocean. So you have to pay to be here, and you have to pay to leave. And if you ever reach Nirvana, you have to pay to stay there too. And not only that, but there are other people who - if you do not pay - are not only empowered, but obliged, to turn up at your house, beat you with clubs, steal you from your friends and family, lock you in a cage, ask a complete stranger in a stupid wig what his professional diagnosis is, and based on his decision, throw you into what is not essentially, but exactly, a dungeon. But that is somehow all right, because somewhere along the line, we all agreed that this was okay, didn't we?

It's enough to want to blow your brains out, except you need to pay for a gun, a bullet, a license, and then some other poor sod has to pay to put you in a box. Once in this box, they then have to pay extra to set fire to your corpse.

I'll write that again.

Someone has to pay to set fire to your corpse.

All this came to me on the toilet. It might seem rather obvious to everyone else. But have you ever wondered why we actually do this? I mean, what is the point? You can work your fingers to the bone, but at no point in life do you ever, ever, ever stop paying for anything. You are nothing more than a unit of consumption.

And on that depressing note, I've got to go to the supermarket to ensure that I definitely eat one meal today. I always think the shopping experience would be so much more enjoyable if everyone dressed in period costumes. The cashiers could look like Dick Turpin, and when it came time to pay, they just produced a handgun and told me what I already knew - that it was going to have to be my money or my life.