My friends and I used to smoke cannabis repeatedly and complain about it’s effects but ultimately come to the same conclusion – We didn’t know if we’d be smarter if we didn’t smoke as much cannabis as there was no way of knowing. It’s a stoner logic which reassures you, but shouldn’t probably be applied elsewhere. For example, it’s a bad defense of climate change. We know that human activity has increased global temperatures with such a high degree of confidence that it’s silly to suggest it hasn’t. But imagine there is alternate world, running on steam rather than petrol. Or a bright, virgin mind sat behind a screen in some other dimension typing out the next ‘War and Peace’ rather than this garbage.

Wait, does that mean I shouldn’t have blazed it so?
It’s probably fine.
I’m more concerned about the eccies. And the repeated blows to the head.

Anyway, where were we?

That happens a worrying amount.

I’ve just realised that both Twitter and Facebook have been disconnected from the page for a while now. So have I of course, but that’s not really the point. Think of all that growth we could have been squeezing. Think of the content. I’d have been convinced to see through the Mr Hummels Podcast and The Hummel Universe Ideas. The App. This is probably for the best then as I would have gotten myself cancelled and become a right wing nutter. Of course any right wing position I’ve ever held is ironic or uninformed – which doesn’t adequately separate me from the truly mad people cynically turning a buck.

The grift is inevitable. Sign up now to see more.

I just finished reading ‘Brickmakers’ by Selva Almada which follows a equally weighted pair of young men flowing through their respective lives as invisibly bonded rivals. It manages to cut through time and space to give an insight into competition, betrayal and eventually a simmering hate. When it was successful, the book made me remember growing up as a younger and living in the pocket of your fated twin. Unfortunately for me, my twin is now a Hollywood movie star. Thanks for the reminder, Selva.

The strangeness of that encounter and that world, which can only follow me psychically until the bitter end, is glorious. It’s a dangerous game to be drawn into. I’d done my best to forget and to move on. To disavow the logic of the game as folly but its not that simple. It doesn’t take much to get dragged back in. From what I understand, Naomi Klein describes a similar encounter in her new book ‘Doppelgangers’. I’ve heard her speaking across a few platforms and she couldn’t help but be drawn in either.

Well, here I am. And he is out there. Living.
(That reads like a Mark Chapman line).

I still need to consume Doppelgangers (I will probably use audiobook for that one, so not read). But if I can be so bold as to say what I took from her podcast appearances (Blindboy, Politics Joe), I can shamelessly jump on the back of another and make a mint? If I remember rightly in the case of Naomi Klein and her doppelganger, there is no outright claim from one to be the other. (Could be mistaken, haven’t read yet If Sloavoj can get away with this then I can). I aim to explicitly steal my entire being from this mysterious A-lister who I was catapulted into an eternal 2p charity drop with. Why would I waste an opportunity like that!

Thinking back to Brickmakers however, that might not be the best idea. That may embody the toxic masculinity that isn’t convincingly put across in the book. (Zing – Sorry). Thinking back to other good doppelgangers it’s a recipe for disaster. Here, I’m thinking of Twin Peaks. Every David Lynch film actually. Every father son relationship. Every bro.

So, what is the conclusion? Well, I think my conclusion is to piggyback off of fame and power. Use the SEO’s and harvest the likes. Or use some of the aforementioned names as a blueprint of sorts.
Get yourself a custy wee number by churning, burning and ultimately earning. Imagine the life Blindboy lives, or Slavoj even? There is hope yet.

So, who was the Hollywood star? The A-lister the cosmos threw me into gyroscopic, gravitational orbit? The Anti-Matter to my don’t matter…

Need you ask?