This is how it Ends.

So this is it.

We are coming to the end of 2016.

We are coming to the end of the world, aren't we? Has it been a bad year? I have enjoyed many good cups of coffee. I have also had to drink some bad cups of coffee. The voters of Britain in a non-binding referendum voted to leave the EU without really knowing what the EU was nor that their vote was non-binding, nor, even, that their vote would make a difference either way. It made a difference either way.

Today I watched an interview where two scientists explained to the presenter of a news programme that they had made a new peripheral to cell phones that would allow people to kiss one another with digital lips. This device was to allow people who were far apart to kiss one another. It was a neural pad. Their research showed that people didn't like it to be too realistic. Will we soon want them to be realistic? Will the neural pad soon become a mouth with a hole or an appendage. Will these things become our lovers? We will all have peripheral lovers, surrogate sexbots and replaceable autonomous fuckmachines sitting next to our Amazon Echo or our Nintendo SmartHouse. The scientist was quite sure that we will soon be falling in love with Robots. We will soon be marrying robots. We will soon be subservient to robots, or sympatico with robots. Was he referring to himself specifically or to all of us generally? I could not say. The presenter was incredulous.  

The peripheral is called Kissenger. It is a portmanteau word of Kiss and Messenger. It is the very opposite of Kissinger's foreign policy. His madman theory would brook no kissing. Was it his theory or was it Nixon's? I can never remember where one ended and the other began and vice versa.

My skin is very dry. The air is very dry. I put lotion on this morning. It did not make much difference.

Is it relevant to write about the dryness of my skin? I started writing about the end of the year. At the start of the year my skin was fresh, pliant and moist. Now it is scaly and dry. Is there a comparison to be made between my skin and the year? No.

We went to The White House and we saw Christmas decorations. We walked through the room where President Lincoln and then, many years later, President Kennedy, lay in state. The table had beautiful Christmas decorations on it. I did not ask whether it was the same table that the two Presidents were lain out on. I didn't think it appropriate to ask that.

There are still a few days left. This election has seemed as if unreal. As if a dream. I came up with the name Dispatches from Nightmare Alley as a means to write fictional surreal satire about America. Now there is no need to write anything fictional because the real is all to Real. We live in the Real. 

Donald Trump has just said that he wants more nuclear weapons for America. 

"The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes"

That is what he wrote. That it was came from his mind through his fingers and then sent out into the world.

This is how it ends. For now. I will write more later. If there is a later.