I’m getting off the point here. We were thinking about people vanishing into thin air. Not that that’s necessarily bad, especially if I get to write the list, but it might happen to people I like. God knows there are few enough of those. With this in mind, I thought I should offer a few guidelines to living in the Irony Age. You’re all bursting to know, so I’m here to answer your questions.

How are we on material goods these days?
There is a bumper sticker that reads ‘I shop therefore I am’. Now that’s modern philosophy. World poverty - Jesus! Don’t you just hate it when they put those features slap-bang in the middle of the Lifestyle section? Spiritual wholeness? I know this very chic little temple and I’m learning how to chant for a BMW … Shopping is where it’s at and, luckily, that’s at anywhere near you. Shopping is good for your self-esteem. Does everyone ignore you at work? Can’t make your voice heard at home? Never mind: you can get complete, unquestioning obedience from your credit card. Repeat after me: Buying things makes you happy.
Ironically, while shopping has never been cooler, the business of actually owning things is regarded as a very low quality experience. Good homes have very little in them. The very best homes are largely imaginary. Personally, I have no furniture at all. I just have a Japanese monk who rakes patterns into the living room carpet.
Of course, there’s a paradox: how to shop till you drop without actually accumulating stuff. One way is to buy only the most exquisitely expensive items and very few of them. This is in keeping with a minimalist interior but unfortunately doesn’t allow for many shopping trips. The best method is to only buy clothes. Clothes are exempt from the ‘no belongings’ rule and it’s important to own as many as you can. The rule with clothes is this: the smaller the garment, the higher the price. You should exercise caution though. Garments should never be so small as to leave no room for a label. Of course, truly chic designers are making their labels smaller this season.
Still, one should never let clothes accumulate needlessly. Once you’ve worn them a couple of times, give them to charity. Just think of those little Colombian children begging for a living in a witty little Gaultier cocktail shift.

I thought the whole world revolved around money nowadays?
No more than ever before. The rich and the poor still know that money is just a means to an end and treat it with the care that that warrants. Those in the middle still think that a bank balance is an index of personal worth and integrity, an unbecoming behaviour. The correct modern way is to affect contempt towards money, treat it with a healthy dash of abandon. You know the thing in supermarkets when you pay with a card and the teller says, "Would you like any cash back?"
Tell them, "Yes, every penny that my divorce cost me" or "Yes, everything I ever spent on whisky and prostitutes." Or you could scare them and say, "No but I’d like back all the jewellery I sold to buy crack."

I hear communication is important…
You bet. As the world becomes more arbitrary, we need to talk to each other more. Otherwise none of us would know what the hell was going on. I know someone (we’ll call him Karl because that’s his name) whose pager goes off every twenty minutes, telling him what he should be wearing now. At least it did until one time his pager told him pagers were out, out, out. He hit critical mass and - ping - he just vanished. It’s how he would have wanted it.

Mobile phones. Well, you say, communications anytime, anyplace. Relativism in a black leather carrying case? Not a bit of it. Mobile phones interfere with our ability to be arbitrary. What the hell is the deal with being contactable the whole time anyway? Look at it this way: your mobile goes off halfway through the afternoon. It’s your boss. "We’ve been looking for you everywhere. The network is down and no-one is sure how to fix it. I tried finding you in Personnel and then in Accounts but they hadn’t seen you. Where are you?" "Uh… I’m in the Menswear department." "We don’t have a Menswear department. We’re an insurance company."
The best thing ever to happen with mobile phones was when people started selling them for 99p. Anything that costs 99p is plebeian by definition. If you still think you look good talking on your mobile, it’s time to get over yourself. And get over the eighties while you’re at it.
There is one exception to the mobile phone rule. You’re allowed to use it to connect your laptop to the net so that you can surf pornography on the bus home. Very arbitrary, full marks.

Speaking of which, we should consider relationships at this point. There was a time when boy/girl/whatever would meet boy/girl/whatever else, smile shyly, kiss chastely and declare "I wanna tell the world that I love you!" Nowadays, you can post the videos on the internet and the world can replay your love at its leisure. I think you’ll agree, this is a terrific advance. If you have a literary turn of mind, you can write graphic descriptions of your antics and post them on a BBS. I can think of no higher compliment. No-one ever completely trusts the person(s) they’re sleeping with. Everyone, at some time, turns to their lover and says, "How was that for you?" And when they answer "Fantastic!", you look them in the eye and think, "You lying bastard." But if your lover writes it up and posts a file entitled the-hottest-sex-I-ever-had.html, you know you’re on to a winner. Mind you, if your lover is posting stories called ‘First Time with Charlie’ and that’s not your name, you might want to start following them inconspicuously. If they’re really working so much overtime, how come they’re not getting paid more?
(I’d like to make a request here. If you’re going to write porno, remember: spell check and proof-read. If you’ve ever scooted round the archives I visit, you’ll know what I’m saying. Some of the people posting are barely literate. They seem to think that grammar is the old lady in the corner who makes the room smell. Either that or they’re typing whilst they’re actually doing these things. If you have trouble spelling AC/DC, get somebody intelligent to edit it before you post. And proof-reading is an absolute necessity. Spell-checkers only pick up words they don’t recognise. If you need an example, here's an absolutely genuine one which could throw you if you’re reading 'one-handed':

‘"You want my duck up your ass; I can tell," he said, coming up for air.’

I swear to God that’s a genuine typo. I never download anything with the word ‘farmyard’ in the title.)

Man, you read some weird stuff.
And I suppose you don’t?

Nothing that weird. Have you talked to anyone about this?
I think we’re getting off the point here. Could we get on please?
OK. I’m a little concerned about my body image. What do you suggest?
Aren’t we all, darling? One eating disorder was just voted the most desirable fashion accessory ever. And these things are competitive; you must be thinner than your friends. Remember Karl who disappeared? One time someone maliciously paged him to say that marijuana was in again. Within the hour he had a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter inside him. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, particularly when dining Korean.
Now that men are into body image, it’s got more competitive than ever. Misperception of what you look like isn’t confined to teenage girls who could double their body weight just by getting wet. Bodybuilders have the weirdest self images. "I weigh five hundred pounds and my arms are thirty-four inches around. Don’t I look great?" When you factor in all the steroids that this involves, what he’s actually saying is more like, "My liver is the size of hand luggage, my penis is smaller than when I was four and I lactate. Attractive, eh?"
And this sort of narcissism is rife among the muscle marys too. You know the sort of man - he thinks his gym membership card is a vital organ and shouts out his own name when he comes. The worst part is that they think having defined lats means everything else is bigger too. My friend Sarah once observed that men with big thighs almost always have tiny genitals, and you know something? She was right. One time recently I was enjoying ‘working late’ with a guy when he said, "Could you try and get them both in your mouth at once?" I looked at what was in front of me and thought, "Sweetheart, with a minimum of effort I could get them both up my nose."

Incidentally, the condition of male bodybuilders lactating, through over-exercise and steroids, is known as ‘bitch’s tits’. Think what that says about their view of women and then see if you still believe they’re working out to impress girls.
 

You’ve just reminded me - gender politics. Any thoughts?
My advice is either keep the hell out of it or invent your own. That’s what everyone else seems to do. And if you can’t manage to invent your own gender politics, invent your own gender and fuck up everybody else’s politics. That’s not as ridiculous as it sounds. Gender isn’t about what bits you have, it’s about social roles concerning sex and sexuality. And frankly darling, if you’re stuck on male and female you’re gender-illiterate. The Inuit, I’m told, recognise at least nine distinct genders. That’s what comes of having to find new ways to keep warm the whole time. I suppose it beats thinking up new words for snow. Mind you, I just took two minutes to think about gender and came up with thirteen. And I don’t think I included some that the Inuit have.
Basically, both gender and gender politics are your own choice these days. They can either be a battleground or a playing field; it’s up to you. If you’re interested in gender politics but don’t understand the history, you can still participate. Just learn a few of the words and make the rest up. If anyone contradicts you, yell at them to stop being oppressive. If you think your sexuality is sufficiently exotic, there’s no reason why you can’t start your own gender identity. People do it the whole time.
If you read through the contact ads these days, you’ll come across a brand new term: bi-curious. This never existed before. It seems to be just straight people who have got to wondering what it would be like to sleep with someone their own sex. I always thought that was a perfectly ordinary part of being straight but apparently it’s got a name now. I’ve had sex with rather a lot of straight men and never thought of them as anything other than straight. Neither did they and I don’t think either of us felt the need to give the experience it’s own special name. Your sexuality, after all, is what you say it is. It’s a word you use to identify how you think of yourself. It’s shorthand for a whole range of changeable feelings and desires. It seems like so much trouble to have to reclassify yourself just because you got loaded one night and stuck your hand in a friend’s underwear. Or didn’t but wanted to.
And bi-curious is such a wishy-washy phrase, isn’t it? Curiosity is a mild thing, like looking on from afar. It doesn’t make any room for fantasy or passion or abandonment or any of the other sensations that make up sexuality. It sounds so indecisive, so unraunchy. What about bi-fascinated? Bi-passionate? Bi-"up for it at the moment but I might change my mind again afterwards"? I suppose that would be too wordy in the contact ad. And think what a nightmare Pride would be. It’s already Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual Pride or something equally cumbersome. If we have to include anyone else the banner’s going to be longer than the parade.
Oh yes. Bi-curious makes it fourteen.

So identity is all relative then?
Oh lord, are you still here? Yes, identity is relative. Everything is relative. The identity of everything - every object, every action, every classification - is in flux. That’s why irony became so important: it allows us to smile at the confusion instead of having the total, three-ring fit of the screaming ab-dabs that is the alternative. You can see it in everything around you, and I could go on pulling subjects out of the hat forever. But I’m going to stop here. Arbitrarily.