Level forty poo
A good friend of mine has always been a little on the unstable side, but somehow despite his deranged megalomania and manic-depressive tendencies has always managed to hold down a fairly good career and family life.

So I was to say the least a bit surprised when, about six years back, his mum & girlfriend contacted me to say they were a bit worried about him, as he’d got involved with a strange bunch of people in London who kept dragging him along to “seminars”, “weekend workshops”, “life courses” and various other loads of old bollocks which were draining his wallet pretty quickly – it clearly had the word Cult written all over it and they were becoming increasingly concerned at the gobbledegook he had begun to spout at great length.

They asked me if I wouldn’t mind helping the situation by, so to speak, going in after him and rescuing him. So I went for a beer & smoke with him and sure enough soon enough we got chatting about this organisation (the Landmark Forum) and he told me all about how wonderful it was, how they really helped people to improve their lives, become happier, how he realised now how empty his life had been, etc and fucking so on.

I remained straight faced and feigned a strong interest – even when he told me how they help people discover their unique talent and gift which they are able to share with the world – and how they’d helped him discover that his gift was - I jest not - being good at playing fucking video games.

A few weeks later I went along to one of these “seminars” with him, and I have seldom had such a whirlwind of emotions –astonishment, disbelief, pity for some poor suckers, and a huge amount of amusement.

They sat everyone in this hall where myself and the other obvious newcomers (wearing white badges with their names in BIG BLACK LETTERS) were tactically surrounded by the non-newcomers (gold badges, staring eyes, permanent shit-eating grins and nodding heads) – and one by one they got these gold-badged fools to take the stage and spout some old bollocks about how they hadn’t spoken to their dad for two years before they spent £2000 on the “discover your true self” course, blah blah quack quack wank wank wank.


After about 3 hours of this incessant tidal wave of brainwashing shite with no break for drinks, toilet, time to scratch your arse or nothing, they split the room up into smaller groups of about a dozen – two novices and ten cultos apiece. Each group then went into a smaller room where us newbies found ourselves immediately surrounded by a group of baying quacking acolytes employing staggeringly heavy-handed pressure sales tactics trying to force us into signing on the dotted line.

To be honest I felt in my element; I took pity on this poor little personality-void fella who was the other newbie in my group being cajoled into signing away his money and soul, so stood by his side and launched into an impassioned tirade to these fuckers about how it was an utter crock of shit delivering nothing except an obvious exercise in soul-destruction to rake in money for the shiny-toothed blonde-wigged Yank (natch) twat who headed the whole operation, and there was no way they were going to get their filthy claws into him.

This didn’t go down very well. Not very well at all.

One fella comes up to me, looked quite familiar as it happens, and started bleating you’re wrong, look at me, I used to live such a terrible life before I discovered the Landmark Forum, I’m now the perfect human being – AND I SHOULD KNOW – I USED TO BE THE KEYBOARD PLAYER IN LEVEL 42!!!! And it was. It really was him.

So I said maybe you were once, tell you what you are now though mate – you’re a fucking cunt.

In the hushed silence that followed, I heard a familiar chuckle behind me. I turned around, a little surprised to see the size of the hostile crowd that had gathered to see what the fuss was about, and there amongst it was my mate, laughing his arse off and walking towards me with his hand outstretched. Normal service had been resumed.

I took the terrified little novice by the arm and me, him and my newly-recovered mate left the building to a torrent of ill-will I have never encountered before or since. The last thing I heard from one of them was a terribly cry of “YOU’LL NEVER BE HAPPY!”

My mate turned round and shouted back “You’re pissed off, I’m laughing. Who’s the happy one you cunts?”
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(Ali Bongo 9000 Ali Bongo 9000, Fri 27 Jan 2006, 14:00, Reply)