It is said that the law is made to protect the few from the many. We are therefore all obliged to follow the rules in the best possible way, or else we’ll get squeezed in the almighty clockwork of justice. It has been so since the dawn of civilization when the first people joined forces and shuffled the cultural building blocks of right and wrong. Once in a while, however, it is necessary to adjust the clockwork so that it reflects our ever-changing reality – or as the Great Dane and his truthful followers do, help civilisation to grow by letting a little part of the world’s madness in behind civilisation’s thick, safeguarded walls.
The Great Dane is in court, dear readers. Yes, that’s right – the Great Dane has been sent to court for disturbance of the Public Illusion. It is the breaking news of the day, and many both righteous and wrongful citizens of Berlin have come to watch the show: small and tall, thick and thin, poor and rich, the early sleepers and the twenty-four-hour party people, the sausage eaters and the veggie preachers, the constipated politicians fighting for freedom of speech and the religious fanatics with cultural colic, the swell-headed kids and the cock-eyed teachers, the café latte drinkers and the drunks who sleep on public benches, the comforting nurses and the sadistic dentists, the representatives of multinational corporations trying to be local and the local hairdresser dreaming of going global, the ones dying too young and the ones only living to have fun, those who break your bones and those from broken homes, those who are many of a kind and those who are nothing at all but somehow still manage to shine – and a sad orphaned boy with his stuffed worn-out parrot.
Also, the editorial team of the Magazine is here – still doped, drunk, and dressed up from yesterday’s staff meeting, where the Great Dane experienced one of his notorious out-of-boredom carnival revelations and, for the sake of civilisation decided that it was time to reshuffle its very foundation. His great revolutionary vision was, according to the bleary-eyed editors’ testimony, carried out in the following way – of course, against their will, intellectual capability, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
The Loss of Self-Control
(Or: Open up Your Mind and Let the Sun Shine)
To achieve a clear view of reality’s actual condition, it was necessary to dissolve the grey depressing clouds that throughout the whole editorial meeting had been hanging over the Magazine’s headquarters in Neukölln – a task that was carried out with ease by consuming all alcohol, drugs and household chemicals at hand.
Rethinking Status Quo
(Or: In the Name of the Great Head of the Revolution)
Having cleared the command bunker of any immediate doubts and narrow personal perspectives, it was time to distribute the most essential tasks among the members of the Revolutionary Committee. Born as a true leader, the Great Dane appointed himself the Great Head of the Revolution, hereby exercising unlimited powers over all matters of historical, substantial, and transcendental importance. The other members of the committee went through a process of strict natural selection, only influenced by the behavioural gravity coming from the great spinning head of the revolution. Unfortunately, none of the members turned out to be suitable for the position of the Right Hand of the Great Head – an important position, which demanded an innate understanding of the Great Head-in-itself, an unreserved desire to serve the will of the Great Head, the ability to lose oneself in the genius ideas and doings of the Great Head – and last but not least, the ability to deny everything else but the Great Head.
The Means and Ends of Mental Expansion
(Or: Shaking Hands with the Edge)
With the Great Head and the other crucial parts of the revolutionary body in place – except the missing Right Hand – it was time to acquire enough supplies for the forthcoming journey towards the next level of human evolution. But as usual, the revolutionaries were all broke, since the Great Dane once again had persuaded them to throw their money into one of his bulletproof gambling schemes. So it was the season for improvisation. The Great Head stopped his spinning for a moment and stared with great wisdom and arousal at the young and only female member of the committee – which, as he rightfully thought, turned out to be a real femme fatale, once she had been dressed up and conveniently drugged.
First, she was sent down to the local pawnbroker with all the office gadgets of value to get some quick cash. Then she visited the Bank Of Fortune and convinced the manager to increase the credit significantly on the Magazine’s bank account. Once loaded with a big bag of money, she straightened her dress, put on a new sharp line of red lipstick, and took a long sip of some cheap Albanian plum brandy before she swayed over to do some exclusive shopping at The Edge & His Tiny Friend Charlie Brown’s Non-prescription Drug Heaven in Görlitzer Park.
The Birth of the E.N.A.D.
(Or: A Recipe of How to Extract the Truth)
Back in the command bunker, the Great Head of the Revolution was feeling the inspiration roaring through his great evolutionary brain. The members of the committee had already consumed a reasonable share of the supplies from the Non-prescription Drug Heaven in an attempt to overcome their personal struggles, between, on the one side, the limitation of human behaviour and on the other side, the lurking possibility of mental expansion. So while waiting for some kind of breakthrough that would enlighten them on behalf of civilisation, the Great Head hooked up with the local newspaper boy and a litre of lighter fluid in the bathroom to make an extra spin towards a higher revolutionary truth – and, based on the young boy’s newspaper experience, get some straight facts on how to deal with the reality of the outside world.
But after they had discussed the world situation back and forth, and also had done some joyful jumping up and down and tumbling around, the Great Head still hadn’t come any closer to finding the truth. It was as if some kind of evil and corrupt force inside him tried to prevent the evolutionary process from getting up in speed by causing him terrible stomach pain. Fortunately, the newspaper boy found some ampoules with liquid laxatives that the staff of the Magazine used to accelerate their creative process, and this seemed to be a possible way out of the deadlock – for, as the newspaper boy pointed out: “No matter how much an asshole tries to hold back, it will always end up telling the truth.”
And as it was said, it was done: with tremendous pleasure, the Great Head of the Revolution soon freed his bodily vessel of what felt like all the depravity of civilisation – also referred to as the largest burden known to mankind. He was so pleased with the newspaper boy’s approach in this (for him) delicate matter that he, in the end, made an honorary anal salute and stroked him three times with the toilet brush, thus appointing him the Right Hand of the Great Head – giving him the exquisite responsibility of wiping out any dirty asshole that could compromise the revolution.
Having emptied his body and mind of all the depravity of civilisation, the Great Head now entered a state of absolute positive flow and soon conceived the entire revolutionary manifesto, which the Right Hand scribbled down with much skill on a roll of toilet paper. After that, they proudly announced the birth of the E.N.A.D. (Evolutionary Notes about Assholes on Drugs) – the very foundation of the revolution, summarising the Great Head’s ideas and theories of how to make the transition to the next level of human evolution. And with all such serious matters in place, they celebrated the triumph by inhaling half a litre of lighter fluid, while using the rest to ignite the toilet – thus beginning the final distilling process as described in the E.N.A.D. manifesto: to separate all the depravity of civilisation so only the pure revolutionary truth would remain as the potent raw material to perform an evolutionary dance act.
A Big Leap Back for Humanity
(Or: The Making of Fools)
Once the distilling process in the toilet was finished, the Right Hand had the honour of being the first to taste the result. He found, however, that something must have gone wrong in the process, as the potent raw material to kick-start the evolution had a strong rancid aftertaste of depravity, and could therefore not fully meet the E.N.A.D. standards for being the one hundred per cent pure revolutionary truth. After serious consideration, the Right Hand suggested that they gave the truth a sweeter and slightly bitter flavour by adding the chocolate he had stashed away in his bag for the daily morale boost when his newspaper route reached its peak – a procedure which was not described in the E.N.A.D. manifesto. Why, there could be serious unintended side effects. But as always when dealing with revolutions, the end justified the means, so the chocolate was at last added to make the truth more edible.
They then left the bathroom with the sweet revolutionary truth and found the members of the Revolutionary Committee lying half-naked and drooling on the floor while watching homemade bicycle porn. This was considered a clear violation of the E.N.A.D. concerning passive interaction with the outside world, so the Right Hand immediately gave them – including himself and the Great Head – a large antidote of the revolutionary truth to straighten them up and get them back to the revolutionary reality. But in their current state of mind, the sweet truth was too much. It struck everybody with such terrible force that they at once began to perform the most grotesque and inhumane evolutionary dance act, whereby the evolution of human behaviour took a big leap back and turned them all into a bunch of wild, raving fools. And after having trashed the command bunker and wiping each other’s asses with the E.N.A.D. manifesto, they danced out in the Berlin night.
Sailing the Ship of Fools
(Or: Next Stop Paradise)
What happened after the defendants left the Magazine’s headquarters in Neukölln is still uncertain. According to several eyewitnesses questioned by the police, the pack of fools danced deranged through the streets, howling and screaming while collecting all kinds of garbage and junk: abandoned bicycles, broken shopping carts, discarded furniture, outdated consumer electronics, worn-out household machines, rusty car parts, leaking batteries, broken toys, empty cans and bottles, and various objects of shiny metal. They seemed completely ignorant of their route. The only thing they had in mind was to create a monstrous urban ship of the junk they found. It was a both comic and absurd sight that sailed through the Berlin night: the Great Head sitting exalted in front on a throne of empty beer cans, holding a toilet brush named the Sceptre of the Divine Toilet. He posed as a mystic prehistoric king, a shaman of the wild urban jungle enlightened by flicking televisions without signals, chaotic red-white flashing bicycle lights, and a symphony of blinking cell phone screens and ringtones. The Right Hand stood beside him, playing evolutionary transcendental sound waves on a malfunctioning toy piano and preaching about how anyone who joined the true revolution would achieve salvation when they reached the new shore of human evolution: the Eternal Paradise of the Great Head.
There seemed to be no end of lost souls who wanted to join so they could leave for the promised land. And as soon as they, with a stroke by the Sceptre of the Divine Toilet, had been turned into followers of the revolution, they were sent out to acquire more junk and more followers to help sail this steadily growing Ship of Fools.
The Great Karl-Marx Straße Sideshow
(Or: The Loss of All Dignity)
The great sideshow continued steadily down Karl-Marx Straße until it reached Neukölln Town Hall. Then the ship suddenly stopped, and all its inhabitants stared in ecstasy at the Great Head, who had arisen from his throne of empty beer cans. Holding his divined sceptre high in the air, he made a marvellous speech about the revolution, telling them what better future for humanity there soon was to come – but that the right evolutionary path also required sacrifices from everybody, that no person was indispensable so long as it served the greater good of human evolution.
Everybody was thrilled by the revolutionary wisdom that had come out of the Great Head’s mouth. They clapped hard on their chests in triumph until it started to hurt – everybody, that is, except the Right Hand. He did not at all like what the Great Head had said. The speech was not only in conflict with the E.N.A.D. manifesto on several points, but he also felt that it was a direct threat to his position as the Right Hand – whose most important task was to protect the purity of the revolution from any dirty asshole that would try to compromise it, even if it was the Great Head itself.
So within minutes, the Right Hand gathered his most loyal henchmen and, with their help overthrew the Great Head and seized the revolutionary power. Hereafter, they began an obscure cleansing process by using the Sceptre of the Divine Toilet to purge every sign of depravity in all potential enemies of the revolution – beginning with the Great Head and the members of the Revolutionary Committee. They had just gotten their hands on the first common follower of the revolution when the representatives of the Public Illusion made a counterstrike by sending in a huge police force that immediately dissolved the crowd and stopped any further public cleansing.
It was indeed a sudden return to the order of the Public Illusion. The Great Dane and the Magazine’s editorial team were shown no mercy. They were arrested while lying with their pants down and their bottoms pointing nice and shiny up in the air after being cleaned by the toilet brush. The Right Hand miraculously managed to escape the Long Arm of the Law.
What Do We Understand by Human Behaviour
(Or: How The Judge at the Court of Justice Chose to End the Story)
The following inappropriate ways of behavior reported by members of the public were summarized by the court: reckless bicycling, street racket, heavy drinking, use of too-long joints, continual urinating, making of monkey faces and strange animal noises, shooting of mockingbirds, horrible piano playing, compulsive swearing, loud public farting, dancing on somebody’s grave, big ass shaking, very bad natural perversions, disgusting eating, filthy habits, bad taste, stinking breath, smelly feet, surprising exposure of the naked human body, having too much fun and being contagious happy.
Then it was time for the judge to conclude this rather bizarre case. He was, however, not sure that there was a case for him to judge at all, since he found that the whole series of events on which the case was built lacked both realism and hard evidence. The weapon in this case, the infamous toilet brush, was never found at the scene of the crime – which in itself contained a fundamental contradiction regarding the charge with disturbance of the Public Illusion. The judge sat silently for some minutes and thought it all over. He then raised his voice and said:
The conclusion in this unusual case will not be a verdict, nor a public condemnation of the series of events, but my reflection of what we understand as human behaviour in a civilised and democratic society.
The well-being of society should not only be about what is best for the overall common good but also how we can ensure the acceptance of anomalies, making room for people who are different or even show a bit of madness, even when it is contrary to what may be seen as optimal for society. The limit for personal freedom consists perhaps of not doing anything that harms others. Nevertheless, under no circumstances should people be forced to do only things that benefit others. Therefore, we sometimes must try to overcome the entrenched conceptions and stagnant practices that keep us trapped in our preconceived illusions. This is not a task for society or this court, as it is the responsibility of every individual to choose their actions and moral opinions.
Even so, to emphasise that our society is based on a law that must be respected, the defendant, in this case, is ordered by the court to pay an appropriate fine regarding the disturbance of public order and for the unauthorised use of a vehicle on a public street.
Finally, the court would like to note that the local newspaper boy is still reported missing, and the court is convinced he could have shed a clearer light on the case. The young boy was last seen climbing the roof of the Neukölln Town Hall while howling madly and making wild gestures with what was probably the missing weapon: the toilet brush. Further information about his whereabouts will be met with gratitude by his family, the court, and the many local subscribers who have not yet received yesterday’s newspaper.
Court adjourned.
© sa@enuk.dk – Steen Andersen
Illustration by Wild A.I.