An excellent rant

[X]

A man is dying of cancer;

"I shall consider myself well rid of this island's pathetic, grovelling population of celebrity-obsessed, superficiality-fixated wankers. I shall not miss the institutionalised servility that is the worship of the royals - that bunch of useless vapid, anti-intellectual pillocks - or the cringing respect accorded to the shitting out of value-bereft Ruritanian "honours" by the government of the day, or the hounding of the poor and disabled and the cosseting of the rich and privileged, or the imperially deluded belief that what we really need is a brace of aircraft-free aircraft carriers and upgraded nuclear weapons we're never going to fucking use and which would condemn us forever in the eyes of the world if we ever did.

I shall not have to witness the drowning or the starvation through mass-migration of the destitute of Bangladesh or anywhere else low-lying and impoverished, or listen to another fuckwit climate change denier claiming it's all just part of some natural cycle, or down to sunspots, or watch as our kleptocrat-captured governments find new excuses not to close down tax havens, or tax the rich such that the fuckers actually have to pay more than they themselves or their lickspittle bean-counters deem appropriate.

And I shall not miss being part of a species lamentably ready to resort to torture, rape and mass murder just because some other poor fucker or fuckers is or are slightly different from those intent upon doing such harm, be it because they happen to worship a very slightly different set of superstitious idiocies, possess skin occupying a non-identical position on a Pantone racial colour wheel, or had the fucking timerity to pop out of a womb on the other side of a river, ocean, mountain range, other major geographical feature or, indeed, just a straight line drawn across the desert by some bored and ignorant beaureaucrat umpteen thousand miles away and a century ago.

None of these things shall I miss. Frankly it's a relief to be getting shot of the necessity of watching such bollocks play out. I would still rather have the choice, mark you, but as this would appear to be being denied me, I am making the best of a bad job and looking on the bright side: I shall be free, at last, of that nagging, persistent sensation that I am, for the most part, surrounded by fucking idiots."

Iain Banks "The Quarry"

My favourite author. His last book. Written when he was dying of cancer.

Say it like you mean it, bro.