6th March 2023
“I’ve never watched the X Files!”
and other Monday musings from the madhouse
Hey Bubba!
What’s going on in your part of the Matrix madhouse? Are you still keeping a steady hand and setting the controls for the heart of the sun?
I do hope so old friend.
Did you see the football yesterday! I realise this is supposed to be a question but the exclamation mark is correctly in place. 7–0! I was scrambling around for some smelling salts at one stage yesterday, and wondering if it was all a ruse from the Lord Almighty. I know you rarely have time for such fripperies from the bread and circus of sporting contest so I’ll just confirm the team in red beat the team who usually play in red by 7 (SEVEN) goals to a big, fat zero. 7–0 Bubba! And it could have been far, far worse for those devils whom we dare not speak.
It could’ve been worse!
So I spent a Sunday evening penning my usual opus football article that spins out of all control and disappears inside and out of its own tangents, much like Mo Salah did to Lisandro Martínez on 50 minutes yesterday. Sat him squarely on his arse Bubba, and so far inside out he was no doubt still unscrewing himself at breakfast this morning. It was a fun one write Bubba I can assure you. I drank a little too much tea, imbibed on the devil’s cabbage with a side dish of chocolate and sang Bubba, sang, lustily and repeatedly to that old school song I know you hold dear to your heart but if I may, my friends in red have tweaked a word or two:
“Show them the way to go home
They’re tired and they wanna go to bed
Cos they’re only half a football team
Compared to the boys in Red”
I’ve loved hearing (and of course singing) this song for nearly four decades my old friend, and rarely as sweetly as last evening. So naturally I then had to watch that beautiful scene from Jaws where it’s so perfectly captured and then, with an appetite whetted, I simply had to watch Robert Shaw’s unbeatable performance in the USS Indianapolis scene and before I knew it, I was back on Amity Island once more, and still jumping when that head pops out of that bloody hole in the hull of the boat!
All in all Bubba, Sunday was a pip and a dandy.
As you may have noticed, I ventured back once more to my favourite place in all the world this afternoon my old friend, and boy was she looking a picture as always. Bribed with a trip to the “old fashioned sweet-shop” and a bag of piping hot chips and a chat with the “Grand Old Lady”, my lad accompanied me and as ever, the bribes were wholly unnecessary. Jeremy, you remember him? That genial, wholehearted Welshman couldn’t wait to see the lad and give him that most old fashioned of greetings and a firm, sturdy handshake. Jeremy’s eyes lit up upon seeing us (mainly the lad!) and whilst I fussed his dog “Bear”, he fussed over the lad’s grandest of sweet toothed dreams. He then did that trick of his, that dastardly superpower I could never master: the shy looks of an embarrassed teenager being swooned over by the ladies in the chip-shop and Sam in particular who couldn’t stop smiling at him. They’ve seen that young man grow from a young boy Bubba, and I couldn’t be more proud of the way these beautiful human souls appreciate him.
Remember those long evenings as we overlooked the harbour and the setting sun as I regaled you with the outlandish tales of aliens, white lights and the abductions of myth and mystery? Remember how I droned on endlessly about inter-dimensional beings, how life is an endless rhythmical balance between mathematics and quantum physics, two subjects of which I barely understand? Or the megalithic structures found everywhere in our known world that almost without fail all align with the geometry of a night sky and the universe we traverse at “nine hundred miles an hour” according to Monty Python? Remember me freaking out when I told you about the Nazca Lines and how Erich von Däniken must be right, must be, and that these incredible scored lines in the earth must be, simply must be, landing lines for spacecraft beyond our comprehension let alone time? Or how all of the conspiracies upon which I am a Grand Master of knowledge are simply smokescreens for the biggest conspiracy of all and that the truth really is out there, and those damn pesky aliens have been here all along?
You’ll no doubt remember, all those drunken nights ago under that setting sun and the rising of a faint moon hovering high in the distance, that the stock answer and stone cold response every single time was
“Looks like Steve has been watching the X Files again!”
Oh how I laughed in mockery at such a statement Bubba! I had no need for Mulder and Scully for I had books and ancient documentaries on ancient tales of an ancient universe we dare not comprehend. But ever the contrarian, along came Bill Hicks, The Matrix and the writings of a white haired wizard on the Isle of Wight and suddenly I’m convinced we all live within an electrical simulation matrix, the aliens live amongst us (and you’ll piss your pants when you find out who they are!) and they are most certainly not descending from a sky at the outer reaches of a rock spinning through a galaxy and infinite universe, a universe I simply have to believe exists.
So at the age of 51 I finally watched the “X Files” for the very first time and three episodes into season one, I’m not overly impressed. Extinguish that torch Bubba and put away your pitchfork! I, as well you know, have a long way to go on this supernatural odyssey.
11 seasons!
20+ episodes per season!
How many aliens are we talking about here Bubba?
Anyway, Ole Mary Todd’s calling, so I guess it must be time for bed.
Keep your guard up and roll with the punches my old friend.
Send word.
“I’ve never watched the X Files!” can also be also found moonlighting as the lucky 13th chapter of Act 3 within my March 2024 self-published book “Golden Sky”.
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.