One evening, somewhere in our hemisphere, a strange series of events take place: a clerk is made redundant in a degrading manner, an immigrant is violently attacked in a street, a magician makes a disastrous mess of his act. In the midst of this mayhem, one person stands out: it is Karl and his face covered with ashes. He has just put a match to his furniture store to get insurance money. No one gets a wink of sleep that nigth. Next day, the signs of pending chaos are starting to be felt as the madness grips a board of directors and the city itself is paralysed by a horrendous traffic jam. While everyone is losing it at the beginning of the millenium, Karl is gradually becoming conscious of the absurdity of the world and realises just how difficult it is to be human.