I have no idea what's going on.

"I wrote a eulogy for my best friend last week. Then I read it to him. At the pub. On a Tuesday."

He was alive, holding a pint, looking at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I have.

I'm Mick. I'm 70. The man across the table was Barry. Seventy-two. Best mate for 46 years. Met on a building site in 1979. He dropped a plank on my foot. I called him something unrepeatable. He bought me a pint after the shift. Haven't gone a week without talking since.

Three months ago we went to a funeral. Bloke we'd worked with. Cancer. The eulogies were beautiful - people saying what he meant to them, things they'd clearly never said to his face. And all I could think was, he can't hear any of this.

Every beautiful sentence. Every "he changed my life." Said to a room of crying people and a box of wood.

I turned to Barry. Whispered, "What a waste."

Drove home. Couldn't sleep. Because I realised, if Barry died tomorrow, I'd stand up and say extraordinary things about this man. Things I've never said in 46 years. And he'd be in the box, missing all of it.

So I wrote them down. Took a week. Harder than expected - not finding the words, but admitting I had them.

Rang him. "Tuesday. The Crown. Need to read you something."

"Have you joined a book club?"

"Just come."

Same corner table. Pint of bitter. Crisps. I pulled out the paper. He saw my hands shake.

"Mick. What's this?"

"Your eulogy. I'm reading it now because I'm not wasting it on a day you can't hear it."

"Have you gone mad?"

"Probably. Shut up and listen."

I read it. In a pub. To a man very much alive and very much uncomfortable.

I told him about the plank and how it was the best injury of my life. About the night he drove forty minutes in rain to help change a tyre. About how he rang every day for three months after my divorce and never once asked "Are you alright?" - just talked about football and weather, because he knew I didn't need a question. I needed a voice.

I told him he was the funniest man I'd ever known and his jokes were terrible and both things were true. That he'd been a better father than he thinks. That his wife's a saint and he knows it. That I'd have been a worse man without him.

He didn't look at me. Stared at his pint. Jaw tight. Doing that thing men do when the feelings arrive and they'd rather swallow glass than show it.

When I finished, long silence. Then he picked up his pint, took a sip, and said,

"You're paying for the next round. And the one after."

That was his answer. Perfect. Because Barry doesn't say "I love you too." He says "you're buying."

But in the car park, he hugged me. Not the quick back-pat. A real one. Thirty seconds. Neither let go first.

And he said quietly into my shoulder, "Don't read that again at the real one. I want new material."

Who would you write a eulogy for - while they're still here?

Don't wait. The flowers can't hear. The box doesn't laugh. Say it now. At the pub. Over a bad cup of tea. You'll feel ridiculous.

They'll look uncomfortable. It'll be the most important thing you've ever done.

Read them the speech while they can still hug you in the car park.”

To celebrate the reprinting of our anarchist cookbook Recipes for Disaster, we present a guide to installing unsanctioned mosaics in asphalt streets and parking lots:

http://crimethinc.com/asphaltmosaics

Some people know of these as the mysterious "Toynbee Tiles," the stuff of urban legend. Our researchers cracked the method two decades ago. Ever since then, we have been trying to make these as ubiquitous as spray-paint.

Vultures are holy creatures.

Tending the dead.

Bowing low.

Bared head.

Whispers to cold flesh,

“Your old name is not your king.

Vultures are also responsible for keeping diseases at bay.

Vulture stomach acid is so powerful that it can kill anthrax and many other deadly diseases.

So when they consume the carcass of a creature that has died of disease, they actually destroy the disease within it too!

Your country has 2 parties. 2 tracks. One of them has 5 people tied down onto the tracks by force and the other has 1 guy sitting on the tracks with his headphones on. You as a group of 100 spectators can vote on what the engineer will do: either he does nothing and the train continues on its path towards the guy with his headphones on, or it diverts down to the track with 5 people tied to it.

You know for a fact that almost half of this crowd will vote to divert the train and will not hesitate to do so.

Instead of voting to keep it on track and wave to the guy with his headphones on to turn around, you make a big show of angrily huffing and ripping your ballot apart, saying that if you vote at all you are a complicit bootlicker responsible for headphone-guy's death. You run around to as many other people as possible telling them that if they participate in this they will be responsible for his death too. You succeed in convincing 10 people not to vote at all, and walk away with a morally superior feeling.

If my choice is between a candidate/party that actively works to cut lifelines for the most vulnerable, that facilitates the worst excesses of capitalism and big corporations, that acts against progress on the massive healthcare and environmental challenges we face - and a candidate/party that has some dubious foreign policy then I have a moral fucking obligation to vote for the lesser evil.

It is a privilege to be able to not vote. It is a privilege to be so unaffected by the devastation wreaked on the poorest, most unwell, most vulnerable, least secure people by right wing conservative governments that you can deem those governments the same as more socialist ones. Good for you, great that policy affecting the social security net, the security of immigrant life, the reliability of support for disabilities doesn't affect you. Must be nice. But fuck that privilege and get off your high horse and vote for the candidate that will HELP OTHER PEOPLE. People who could be you, if the cards had fallen differently.

The ideal candidate does not exist. Not for anyone. I'm going to hate UK/US foreign policy until I die, probably. Still going to push for Democrat/Labour governments because guess what? They're not actively trying to kill my disabled friends through deliberate neglect; they're not trying to strip rights from women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants; they have some intent to act on pressing climate issues. They're not perfect, but they ARE better. And voting for “better” beats letting “worse” win through disenfranchisement.