Damien Galeone

I am paranoid this week; there are many contributing factors.

I am reading J.G Ballard’s stories and though he wrote them in the 1960s and 1970s, he was disturbingly prescient. His stories warned that social networking was going to lead to massive dehumanization and the violent downfall of man, a thing which many writers say these days. However, he wrote about it in 1964. As a result, Facebook has taken on a whole new meaning as I look for my potential murderer in the People You May Know section.

The sun hasn’t been present in over two months (not an exaggeration); it is gray from the moment dawn breaks to the moment dusk sets. There’s something about staring at a horizonless, bleak grey sky day in and day out that gives Prague a post-apocalyptic Orwellian aura. At the moment, I am spending my days in a bubble of enormous paranoia, a bubble which I am quite adept at creating.

There are external reasons to be paranoid.

Flying spiders are attacking South America. Now, we all knew this was going to happen, South America long being under an arachnid influence. But why do spiders need to fly? This is similar to the paranoia caused by meteors hitting Russia. Sure, everyone knows that Russia deserves to be pelted by intergalactic debris, as though even the universe is saying in a cosmic voice: “Really? Putin again?” But still, it is disconcerting.

A look at the news today will add a few more external reasons to climb under your bed with a shovel. There are couples having Ménage à trois with dead people, there are people killing others and then eating them and Ben Affleck is winning Oscars.

There are internal reasons to be paranoid.

I am losing the ability to spell. My cat has been sending me telepathic death threats. And I have been unable to come to terms with the facts that other people exist, my life isn’t a movie and nobody on TV knows me.

And, really, at the end of the day, Rush Limbaugh is still allowed to have a radio show and be alive.

Then there is the paranoia that you, my heaving masses of readers, are all plotting my destruction. By ‘heaving masses’ I of course mean you, my grandmom and that guy who keeps sending me pictures of Mark Harmon.

As I hide here under my bed, eating peanut butter with a spoon and sharpening a hoe, I can’t help thinking about what I can do to quell your collective coup d’état. This is what I came up with:

I will write about anything you want!

Just tell me what you want me to write and I’ll write about it. Do you want more anecdotes from the land of the Czech, more lists, travel stories, things about writing, trenchant insights into why you suck? I am open to anything.

So, what do you want to read from me?