Perry Iles

Adam and Evil

If the Citroen Picasso had actually been inspired by Pablo the Painter, it would have both its headlights on one side and its radiator grille on the roof. Who decides what cars are called? Is it done by the boys in the advertising section, in a blizzard of cocaine? Let’s follow it up with the Citroen Dali, a five-wheeled elephant on long spindly legs disguised as a fish, with internal sprinklers inside so it rains onto the back seat passengers like the Cadillac in his museum in Figueras. Or the Dodge Warhol, which looks like a soup can with Marilyn Monroe driving it and has all its safety features removed so it can feature in spectacular accidents and you can silk-screen the mangled school-run photos mauve. But no, there’s no imagination at all. We’ll have the Renault Ennui, the Volkswagen Smegma or the Nissan Insipid instead. Or one of those eco-cars like the Toyota Supercilious, whose onboard computer prevents it from starting until you’ve set the programme to Cute so that its exhaust system shits out a small bowl of peonies and a little fluffy kitten every second month. Park it in your driveway and its air-conditioning system will cause it to produce a mini rain forest overnight, complete with chimps who will pelt next door’s Range Rover with rotten mangoes every morning and masturbate onto its windscreen when the neighbours are trying to take Jemima and Tristan to their ballet lessons.

Look at this little ball spinning silently in space. Isn’t it pretty? If you were an intergalactic tourist, you’d want to stop here for a picnic, wouldn’t you? Look, there’s blue bits and green bits and a white bit at the top and bottom, and all these lovely little clouds spinning about. The kids in the back seat of the spacecraft want to play. Let’s get a bit closer…

Gosh, mountains! Big patches of forest! Lovely sea! Closer, dad! I want to see it! But hang on, what’s all these patches of grey? What’s all these scurrying things? Oh, shit, there’s six billion of them. What a shame. It looked so nice from a distance, too, shame about the skin-disease. Can we get rid of it? Let’s see if there are any organisations down here that could help us get rid of all this shit so we can have a picnic in peace. Ah! Friends of the Earth. That sounds promising.

So really, Friends of the Earth is an international terrorist organisation, isn’t it? They want to kill us all. They’re Friends of the Earth, not friends of its dose of crabs. And what happens when there’s no people left? When the cities are grass again, when the Rio Tinto Zinc Mines have reverted to rain forest and clinging vines grow across the big red and yellow arches of our diners and all the sails on the windfarms are spinning uncontrollably in the nuclear wind, feeding electricity into a void? Of course, there’ll be one person left – the head of Friends of the Earth, and it’ll probably be a man, a new man of course, the sort who in the days before the great eradication would have done the shopping and accompanied his wife to the ante-natal classes. Imagine the conversation:

“There you go, I’ve done it. It’s just you and me now, and I was wondering if…you know…in the circumstances and everything… we could…maybe be a bit more than just friends. I’ve always wanted to be a lover of the earth. I mean, I’ve always respected you as a planet, and you’re really pretty – not that I’d like you any less if you weren’t, of course, because that’s what they taught me at the women’s collective before I killed all the women. But I really like what you’ve done with your hurricanes tonight.”

“Oh, that’s sweet, I was worried my equator might look big in this.”

“So, do want to come in for coffee? Just coffee. I mean, you could stay the night but we wouldn’t have to do anything, and I’d still like you in the morning.’

“Well, you’d better, because I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at Saturn, with all those fancy rings and moons. And you’d better not tell anyone, because I don’t want to wind up with the sort of reputation Venus has got.’

“Reputation? Well, I don’t think that’s really important, because women should be free to express themselves in any way, including sexually. Mind you, she’s got a thing with Mars now, and they’re kind of suited. Right pair of hot little planets. I’m sure they had a threesome with Mercury last week. The way they took advantage of that last eclipse had the whole solar system shaking.”

“Except Pluto. He’s got a learning disability and he was too far away anyway.”

“Pluto’s a retard. What did they expect, naming him after a dog. Poor little thing.”

“A dog? I thought they named him after that guy Popeye doesn’t like.”

“Can the chat and come here, big boy. I’m getting all swampy in the Amazonia. Hey! What’s that? What the fuck do expect me to do with that? If you want me, you’ve got to be hung like Florida. Piss off! Go play ring-ding with doughnuts. Go take a flying fuck at the moon.”

That’s the trouble with Earthly relationships. They’re just not to scale. The women always make us feel small. And when they finally build the motorway between Betelgeuse and Alpha Centauri, they’ll turn the Earth into a Happy Eater Service Station.