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Monday, October 18, 2004
Person U-B
source: The New England Journal of Personnatude
posted: Oct 18, 2004, 4:01 PM
by: djs
The person you had to be to walk out the door walked down the stairs and out the door.

Earlier, that same person, who didn't have to be anything except what it was at that moment, had tried talking itself into willingly participating in the person it would have to be later (the person you had to be to walk out the door) when it walked out the door.

"What/how/why should/could that person be?" it had thought, albeit not explicitly. And what, if any, of the bits of what it actually was, should/could go along for the ride with it/you when it/you walked out the door?

Because, see, there aren't any sequences that haven't already been played out multiple times and found wanting in every fucking one of them. So why bother being one more fucking person running one more fucking instance of the same fucking sequence ONE MORE TIME?

Of course, according to urban myth (remember THEM?), the ONLY real alternative to that is just to be nothing but utter fucking noise. And why waste your time doing what the wind and ocean have already done to death.

Fortunately, The Institute for Suburban Fact, has been submitting urban myth to rigorous testing, in laboratories set up far from the distortion, duplicity, and decay of the city.

So, to find out how we'd better live before it's just too fucking late, we sent a camera crew to the institute to film this report, but unfortunately the researchers there smashed all our equipment in the process of looking for the bomb they thought we'd come to blow up their leader with under the guise of "journalism".

This report is therefore taken from handwritten notes, as the video footage that would normally accompany it does not exist. We spoke with Dr. "Hands-On" Christian Anderrs.

ARTC: So, like, how come everything sucks, and always has and always will?

[ Unfortunately, Dr. Anderrs had just resigned from the institute and wanted to tell everybody why.]

ANDERRS: I am resigning from the institute today in order to spend LESS time with my fucking family. Without this fucking job I can afford to travel and get the fuck far far away from THEM, the buncha losers.

ARTC: Uhh, so does your decision you think have anything to do with WHY everything must suck -- I mean on a profound philosophical level, not on some petty soap opera level about you and what you do with your, you know, dick.

ANDERRS: Look, I'm on the verge of becoming one of those guys who calls up 2AM-radio-call-in shows and says "hey, I'm on the verge of doing something that, if it works, all mankind will be sitting pretty -- but, at the same time, many people will want to kill me for it. Therefore, I must maintain my anonymity and I can't really tell you what I'm about to do or who I am or what I'm talking about, otherwise I'd be putting you in danger of being tortured to death by those who'll stop at nothing to track me down. Therefore, in what follows, I will be necessarily vague, albeit highly (as compensation) emotional."

ARTC: OK. We can relate to that. Here at ARTC we try to respect anyone who's on the verge of anything, regardless of what it is. So let me put the question this way:

Mathematically and ideally speaking, there is a space of all possible slogans for all possible products or ideas.

So why not set the population of the world, in its role as massively parallel computer, to discover as many legal slogans in this space as it can, and then turn these slogans back on the 6.5 billion person world population, in its role as focus group, and have it decide which slogan is the most likely to con the consumer into buying, and then turn this slogan back again on the population of the world, in its role as consumer, so it can freely buy up all the product, which it has not only just created and selected the optimal slogan for, but also, thanks to globalization, has had a hand in producing some tiny fraction of, and without this contribution there would have been no product or slogan or desire in the first place?

And, if this happened, wouldn't it just be capitalist-communism perfected -- i.e. the people using themselves as a blunt software instrument to figure out how best to sell themselves (in their role as a seething bolus of desire) on the product the production of which gives them all their livelihood (in their role as respectable standup human being supporting a family, etc.)?

ANDERRS: Yes. It would.

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copyright © 2004 by HC