Hi, everyone. Wow - there sure is a lot of you. I'm so glad to see so many of you out here tonight, and I know that it's hard because you've got to organize babysitters, and find parking, and you don't even know if it's going to be worth it - but you're here, and so am I, and for that, I thank you.
You're all looking at me, which is good - that's exactly where I want you to be looking, and at this point, I have to ask you to sit back, relax, and hopefully you'll get as much as you can out of tonight's lecture. I'd just like to mention that we'll need all mobile phones turned off, if that's possible - and I want to remind you that after we're finished, there'll be tea and coffee in the foyer, and I'll be on hand to answer any questions to may have about tonight. So, don't be afraid to come and talk to me if there's something you need answered - I promise, I don't bite, and I'm more than happy to find out who you are, and hopefully, to get to know you a little.
So, you're out there - presumably - because you decided that a motivational lecture was something that you could get something out of, or maybe you were forced here by your spouse, which is something that is far more common than you'd imagine. That's, in essence, what I'm here to talk to you about tonight - I'm here to turn your lives around, and hopefully show you a path to success and personal fulfillment. After all, the world's a busy place - and it is difficult to find your way all the time. That's where I step in. For a bit of background, I've been doing this for ten years - prior to lecturing, I was the head of a multinational financial institution, and I quit my job in order to pass on what I learned with as many people as possible.
I usually like to start these things with a bit of a story, so that's what we're going to do - so relax, and let me tell you a little fairy tale. I heard this one a long time ago, and I think it's still fairly relevant.
There was a little boy walking through a park, on a warm, crisp Spring morning. He was holding a red balloon with a ribbon tied around the string, and he was wearing his brand-new gumboots that Mum had bought for him a few days earlier. He was so proud of those boots, which were blue with a picture of a rainbow on the side, and he was determined to show Timmy McVeigh from down the road that he wasn't afraid to climb the tallest tree in the park. He ambled along the path, past the slides, past the roundabout, past the swings, and there - in the corner of the park - was the tree. It was a huge oak, it seemed to Timmy to be a hundred miles high, and it had thick, emerald leaves which stretched up into the beautiful blue of the sky. He stood beneath the tree, and he realised that something was different today. Up in the tree, was a man. He was sitting on a branch, sawing at the branches. Ladies and gentlemen, he was pruning the tree. The little boy was shocked. And he looked up at the man, who was strapped to the trunk, the chainsaw chewing through the wood.
"Hey, mister!", he called out.
But the man didn't hear him.
"Hey, mister!", he repeated. The man saw the little boy waving, and he turned off the saw, lifting his plastic goggles and looking down.
"What is it?"
"I have to climb this tree, mister. I have to show Timmy that I'm not scared."
The man smiled at the boy. "You can do it in a little while. I just have to finish cutting back the tree. I won't be long - scouts honour."
The little boy was disappointed, and he looked up at the man.
"Hey, mister. How about we compromise? You stop cutting for a while, and I'll climb the tree. And afterwards, I'll help you clean up the mess at the bottom. How's that sound?"
The man thought about this for a moment.
"Kid, I'm in the middle of doing this. Either wait, or get the hell out of here - I'm busy."
And with that he started the chainsaw, and continued cutting.
The little boy was saddened, but that tree was so high, and he knew that he just had to get started climbing it before it got too late, and Mum wanted him home for lunch. So, ignoring the man, he began to climb. He put one foot against that trunk, and wrapped his hands around the bark, and he pulled himself up. One branch after another. He could see the top, he was sure of it. He started to sweat, but it felt so good climbing that big old tree that he didn't care - as long as he made it to the top, that was all that mattered.
The little boy was grinning, and pulling himself up - and as he reached up for a new ledge to grab, he didn't know that he had grabbed a piece of the belt that was holding the man to the trunk. The man was shocked and surprised, and he yelled out - and do you know what happened, Ladies and gentlemen? Do you know what happened next?
The man was so startled that he dropped the chainsaw, and it fell through the air - burying a whirling blade in the little boy's head. The little boy didn't even have time to think about it before it sheared through his face, and he fell, crashing against the branches as he went, breaking his body in multiple places. The man looked down, and was sickened by the sight of the little boy, lying dead at the bottom of the tree. And do you know what he did?
He buried the little boy in a shallow grave, wrapped in an old tarpaulin, and then continued to prune the tree as if nothing happened. The little boy's mother - to this day - sits in her window, waiting for him to come home.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is essentially how life works. You can try and try and try to reach the top of your tree, but no matter what happens, someone higher up than you is going to knock you off - permanently, if they possibly can. Life's a hunt, and the only way you can address the issue is by deciding from the outset whether you are going to be a hunter, or whether you will be the hunted. That's a choice that all of you out there have had to make at one point, and you may be sitting there, thinking that you're locked into your choice. If you're the hunter, you're probably quite happy about that - but if you're the hunted, I'm here to tell you that it's not too late.
We've all learned a lot of lessons over the last few years, ladies and gentlemen. It's one thing after another, isn't it? Learn to feed yourself, learn to tie your shoes, learn to cross the road, learn to drive, learn to drink, learn to pick up girls, learn hook turns, and it's simply one thing after another after another. You might be at the age where you think there's nothing left to learn, ladies and gentlemen, but I'm here to tell you that it's not true. You're alive, and you've got to move forward, and tonight - we're going to do that. We're going to learn how to climb that tree, without being sliced in half with a chainsaw - and hopefully, we'll figure out how to push the worked out of the tree as we go on our merry way to the top.
Firstly, it's important to have a clear objective in mind. You have to be aware that life doesn't care about you - and, for the most part, people don't care about you. We're going to do a little exercise, if we can. I want you to look at the person next to you. Go on - go ahead. It doesn't matter if you don't know them. I want you to look straight at the person ahead of them. Now - take their hand, and hold it. It's okay if you're two guys, it'll only be for a second. Is everyone doing that? All you people at the back - I'm sorry, I can't see you because of the lights, but... everyone done it? Good.
Now, look that person in the eye, and say this:
"I don't give a fuck about you."
Excellent. Didn't that feel good? Give yourselves a round of applause - you've just made the first step.
What you just did, ladies and gentlemen, is to say possibly the most honest thing you've ever said. You don't give a fuck about each other. I don't care if the person was your wife, or your daughter, or even if it was a stranger with sad, kind eyes: You don't give a fuck about each other, and nor should you. Ladies and gentlemen, if the building was burning down and you were stuck on the top floor, and there was only room in the fireman's crane for one of you before the building was completely engulfed in flames, who would you really want in there? Someone who at one point in your life, you never even knew - or you. Beautiful, cosmopolitan, hard-working you. Now, there's going to be some of you out there who will claim that you'd put the other person first, and that you'd give your life for your kids, or your wife, or your husband - but, seriously, is that true? When push came to shove, is there ANYONE you'd rather see surviving than you?
Honestly, ladies and gentlemen, I want to let you know this. If I had to kill each and every one of you - right here, and right now - in order to be financially successful and sexually satisfied, I'd do it without even breaking a sweat or having my pulse raise. It would be the most natural thing for me, and I wouldn't care if you screamed and begged for your lives - I'd open fire on you with a gatling gun if I thought it would get me another Lamborghini with a stripper in the passenger seat.
I hear some of you sounding a little shocked at that. Why is it so shocking? Can you look me in the eye and honestly tell me that you don't feel the same? That's the problem with the world, ladies and gentlemen - we've been conditioned with this taming device called a 'conscience'. In reality, the entire concept makes no sense. You are you. You're an island. Sure, everything you see, hear, and feel is - in actuality - sensory data that is collected by your sense organs. Your eyes, your ears, your nose, your tongue, and your skin. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the bottom-line, ultimate reality of the human condition. Your job, as a properly functioning human, is to ensure that all of these senses are 100% satisfied all the time. You need the job, to get money, to buy the television for your eyes, the stereo for your ears, and the lobster for your tongue. You need your partner to have the fake tits for your skin. You need the freshly waxed and detailed sports car for your nose. Anything else is simply extraneous bullshit which wastes everybody's time and serves no purpose.
I don't want to sound like Henny Youngman up here, but - take my wife. Or, rather, my ex-wife. We were married shortly after I turned twenty-five, and she turned twenty. At that point in my life, I believed in all of those ridiculous, immature buzzwords that people like to throw around like 'love' and 'family' - and that is the reason that I married her. But, as time went on, I began to realise something that was essentially true: I married her for the sex, because although masturbation is a wonderful thing, I wanted to have something to have sex with as often as I wanted, at any time of the day or night. I wanted a second wage. I wanted to be able to tell the boss that I had a wife that I could take to corporate functions so that they didn't have to waste money hiring an escort. I wanted a whole bunch of things out of my marriage, but the one thing I didn't want was her. And, ladies and gentlemen, that's the fundamental truth about human relationships - the people involved in them, that aren't you, are ultimately irrelevant. All that matters is how they stimulate your sense organs - and anything else is just too much gravy and not enough meat.
So, ladies and gentlemen, there is a word I want to focus on tonight, and I want you to take it away with you and repeat it over and over again as you go to sleep. Every morning, I want you to stare at yourself in the mirror - and I want you to hold your breath for twenty seconds; hold your breath until it begins to hurt. And then, exhale as hard as you can and say this:
"ME."
Me. What about me? Where's mine? Where is it? What can YOU give ME? If the answer is nothing, cut it out of your life, ladies and gentlemen. Cut it out as you would cut out a malignant tumour. We have 75 years, on average, and there is no room in our lives for wasted time - and wasted time generally involves having your life sapped by other people who have nothing to give up in return. Life is brutal - I didn't make it that way. It was brutal before I came along, and it will be brutal after I'm gone. The sooner you accept that nobody gives a fuck about you, and that the only way to counteract that is by reacting exactly the same towards the rest of the world, the sooner you'll reach the top of that tree.
When my wife left me, she said I was cold. Cold, ladies and gentlement - cold. She took the kids, and expressed disbelief when I told her that if I never saw any of them again, I didn't really care - I had a big-screen T.V, a Porsche, and enough money to hire as many prostitutes as I wanted. I took it as a compliment, ladies and gentlemen - a compliment. I realised that everything I had been aspiring to become was in my grasp, and I was sitting at the top of the little boy's tree. I'd knocked off every workman in my way - and my wife was the final body to hit the ground. And that's how you have to be, ladies and gentlemen. That's the key to reaching the top of that tree. There are no friends. There are only enemies - enemies which need to be eliminated. As I said, I'd have absolutely no qualms about killing all of you if I thought it would lead to the stimulation of any of my sense organs in any way - be it economic, social, or sexual; but since I already have your money, that kind of drastic response is unnecessary.
So, ladies and gentlemen - remove the word 'enough' from your vocabulary, and learn that the only way to reach the top of the little boy's tree is to unreservedly gorge yourselves on everything you feel you want - and let nothing stand in your way. Nothing.
There's a lot of P.C talk about the problem of young people. Kids coming out of university who can't find jobs, or who are having trouble getting experience, or who simply are finding that getting that first step on the road to success is becoming increasingly difficult - even frightening. I do understand that this is a very real and serious problem, which society has been trying to address. I acknowledge what's happening, and I have a response:
Fuck them.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Fuck them. I'm employed, and I'm happy, and all I'm interested in is making sure that I get my free flight, and my free meals, and my free blow jobs, and my free cable, and - frankly - if some douchebag straight out of university calls me begging for me to take him on, and take him under my wing, and show him the ropes of the business - he can go straight to hell. Do I look like a fucking charity? Do I look like some kind of welfare agency designed to lend a helping hand to the vocationally disposessed? I am neither of these things, and nor are you. We are men and women of the flesh. We are either climbing our trees, or are sitting at the top of our trees and camping our spots - and it is your duty to start cutting off the branches. Ladies and gentlemen, you are irresponsible if you start interfering with the natural order of things - and the natural order stipulates that the ruthless survive, except in the case of nepotism. And nepotism is something that you should only consider after factoring in what is in it for... who knows? Come on. Anyone?
You there, in the front row.
Exactly. After what is in it... for... me.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to take a short break so that you can relieve your bladders, your nicotine addiction, and your caffeine dependancy - and we'll reconvene here in twenty minutes.
But, before you go - I want you to take what I've said to heart. If you go out into the foyer, I want you to stare at the coffee machine. I want you to look at the line of people queueing up for it, and I want you to do the healthiest thing possible: Push in front of them. Force your way to the front of the line. Elbow an old lady in the face if you have to. And if they say something to you - if they call you rude, or impatient, I want you to turn to them, and say in a powerful, emotionless voice:
"Hey! I want coffee. I want it now. And I'm going to have it now. And do you wanna know why? Because I'm me.
Thank you for your attention, and I'll see you back here in 20.
Okay. Here's how it's gonna work.
For at least the next week, I'm not going to talk to you. Not in any conventional sense, anyway. I need a break. You need a break. So, instead of my usual complaining and whimpering, I'm soliciting some outside work. I am tired, and I don't want to do this for a while.
So, kicking off today, I give you - the people - The Metal Monologues.
You can reach me at the usual address. I'll talk to you soon.