Peach Feels His Soul Being Slowly Sucked Out, Peach Smiles Politely and Says Thank You Very Much, Sir, May I Have Some More?

Sometimes, I think it would be nice to be irrational. There are entirely too many good reasons to do things we detest, and none whatsoever to do the things that break us out of the everyday banality of life. And when I say the things we detest, I don't just mean those things that are hard or boring - despite what Hillary Clinton might say about the youth of today. I mean those things which trample all over the little child inside us that wanted to be a painter, or an astronaut or perhaps quite simply not an arsehole.

It is not as though we are money hungry - god knows we have enough money being thrown at us by parents, grandparents, the government. Not to mention the monolithic mega corporations with whom we trade time and daylight for some small tokens - which we onsell for booze and peaches in order to lose what's left of the day along with our change as we fumble with the coins at the bar.

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked"

Not much has changed in forty years except that perhaps Ginsberg should have added a postscript: At some point I saw the best minds of my generation learnt to assimilate madness into managerial gibberish: now they run the world.

Most of us have convinced ourselves with nice rational arguments that we really are the best minds of our generation: accordingly, the mad hysteria of the corporate world awaits. For the rest of us, the problem is that we are too caught up in the aesthetics of our forebears - whether it be the Beats or other rebels of yesteryear - rather than forging ahead and finding our own paths. Those well-trodden paths of rebellion are now really just the same as "The Man" they oringinally fought against. And the same tired rationality underpins them both.