The future

Driving home from rehearsal and listening mindlessly to National Radio I suddenly found myself in the middle of a rather astonishing half hour of women discussing the Brazilian Butt Lift or BBL, a cosmetic operation which reshapes the body into an ‘ideal’ form:  big bum, narrow waist and with breast implants as well, big tits. It seems that African, Afro-American and South American women seek the operation for ‘cultural reasons’. Snapchat and Instagram are the social media villains for spreading the desire for this particular craziness.

Unfamiliar with these apps I spent an hour before bed trying them out. After BBL and a plenitude of before and after photos of bums I tried the Californian fires and had a somewhat terrifying glimpse of the future apocalyptic times – as the planet wreaks revenge. Endless photos of fires were interspersed with prayers, praise for the first responders, information about welfare centres for those forced from their homes or whose homes had been razed, photos of the threatened Ronald Reagan Museum, photos of planes dropping water bombs, instructions about the use of face masks to prevent damage from smoke inhalation, plus ads about whatever – a chaos of information about chaos. The Los Angeles Times digital edition was free for a day, but pleaded for donations.

From there I turned to Greta Thunberg’s progress through North America in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s electric car and her retweeting of images of climate strikes from around the world, resolute fighters of chaos, led by ‘the woman from heaven’, the name the Native Americans have given her. And always in the comments section a hate filled rave: ‘go home bitch’, ‘a rubbish dump of lefties’, ‘yachts have been known to sink’, from bitter and twisted men who I hope don’t have access to weaponry.

NZ seems particularly placid in comparison, apart from a section of the farming sector who seem intent on creating hysteria.

But as things fall apart, the left in the States seems increasingly left. The next morning, having a pee in the museum toilet, I examined the slogan in the 1920s Buffalo Lodge Certificate on the wall: ‘In things certain, unity; in things doubtful, liberty; in all things, charity’.

Not bad really.