Towel dispenser abuse. What was up with that? Whenever you passed the office restrooms, invariably you heard the towel dispensers being pumped madly, repeatedly, of course followed by the abrupt tear of the full brown sheet of handwipe, then the frenzied drying of the hands, the crumpling up, and the disposal, then the emergence of the user from the latrine, refreshed, purged of all office animosities, at least for a moment. This wrenching of the towel dispenser was universal, too. Everyone did it. Anton tried to be more gentle, but he found himself jerking and yanking like the others. Perhaps this really had some cathartic value, and prevented people from going postal.
posted at 10:33:20 AM

Anton realized that he had walked into a trap, into Ernie's domain, his territory, his MBAssholiness. Sun-tzu bitches. I guess I'd better brush up on my "Art of War," he thought. Anton had gone into the spanking machine with false consciousness, all the way. And Ernie was only to happy to "lower the boom" of reality-check. To wit: You are not a well regarded member of this esteemed team, but actually completely expendable. You are only here because of some minor benefit to the bottom line, but should that benefit reach zero, or go into the negative, we will not hesitate to sack you. And, like an irate spouse in an argument pulling out all the bad history, the flaws and failures of the battered half, Ernie had to express utter disappointment with Anton's performance, from the very beginning of his employ at PSI. The bonus and the chump change raise and encomiumacious rhetoric had all been bullshit. Were they then both in the same rut, habituated to one another?
posted at 8:10:42 AM

Anton had stepped over the line of business-talk, of office gentility and phoniness. And Ernie, predictably, had to retaliate. He used the "retreat to win" technique, that new agey, "look how bad I have it, and how disappointed I am..." Ernie played victim, but with a kind of suppressed anger that gave his stance as the weaker party away. And he was good, Anton had to admit this; like an adept politician, Ernie knew how to make his points, mainly through exaggeration and pathos. You sat there, spellbound. "Salaries are actually going down, not up...." What bullshit! And promulgated with a straight face! Anton could see that he was getting nowhere, treading the same nowhere path, and maybe even digging it deeper, entrenched.... Never talk about money, never complain of overwork, or being tasked on too many disparate jobs.... In effect, the gist of this talk had been "shape up or ship out, or perhaps we'll ship you out." This was called a "reality check." Anton would have to cease some of his sabotage on the job and engage in real company endeavor for a while....
posted at 6:47:32 PM

Anton remembered back in elementary school, when the teacher would announce an artsy-crafty or writing related activity. The majority of the class would groan with displeasure and squirm in their seats. For Anton, these little announcements were what made life bearable at the little penitentiary once called "grammar school." He looked forward to engaging his creative faculties, even if it involved sprinkles and paste. Writing assignments he relished the most, though; opportunities to play with words pleased him more than anything else, even heated tetherball tournaments at recess. He thought back on those days. Why had his peers so feared creativity? And why did most people still allow the media to literally mediate creativity for them? Ready-made imaginations were manufactured and moulded most effectively through Saturday morning cartoons. Anton's love/hate relationship with television began early. He liked the "vegetation" aspect, that TV could just act as an anesthetic in a stressfull world; but he hated that the content was so utterly insipid, so inimaginative, and so very crass.
posted at 3:24:11 PM

Random blast from an unknown past:

More personable, yet less trusting of humanity in general. Can that be achieved? I can wrap words around the thing, but my mind? My end? don't know about that. no net is not nine, but nein.

Apparently as the creative myelineates towards heaven, corollary roots grow and tentaclize in hell, the trap of polarities. And as sweet as heaven may seem, it's polar can loom and seem to completely eclipse the previous glory....

Yeah yeah. Musin on the way to work this morning: screenplay. Rashomon at the office. Can you hear the drums, Fernando? Everybody wants to rule the world...Boss...Robert Stark, workable name. Commute. First scene, black screen--zoom out and you see it's a car; license plate: Progressive Sciences Incorporated--and corny motto of some kind....Witness the commute, different angles, juxtapose expansive vistas with claustrophobic nature of office, the cubicular colony....flesh out different characters, international cast, so to speak, "International Threads" perfunctory can do the sound track, with special guests Abba and Tears for Fears (yuk yuk). Gotta have some foo fighters too probably. Perfunktory spoof...goof...Squeaky markers, mice, bats, juxtapose the serious intent with comedy, with the laugh of nature, of physics...particularly of the physic inside me head...

We shall think more on this, of course...

Superficiel - french
oberflächlich - german
Lessons in Turd Polishing

well before I was so rudley interrrupted by that anxiety attack.... breakdown, go ahead and give it to me.... vertiginous and shaky per usual. How much longer am I to bear with this, with a sober front? Methinks the front erodes day by day. I am not comfortably numb, but am willing to learn...

The "calm" after the storm is nothing more than a capitulation of the nervous system. At least some of my neurons comply with peace, eh? Or they are simply beaten into submission. All hail systems theory....

Deke was looking a bit frayed around the edges as of late. On one occasion, he had actually stormed out of the building. After much asskissing he was coaxed back to the neurotic fold. But now he had that trapped rat look. Furtive eyes, virtually no expression, he didn't talk anymore. Sure, he was moody, but this was something different; he had distinctly gone to a new level...a new level of malaise, discontent.

Please, do not forget the intense political melodramatic angle for DT; office politics--none could be pettier, or provide better fodder for fiction...Yes indeed don't forget. What happened to all those clever thoughts I had walking down the hall? He walked on down the hall...I created new character but seem to have forgotten his or her name. Oh yes--the store clerk with the passive agressive tendencies, the small acts of violence perpetrated on assembly line dividers, the impulse buy line the tabloidian screaming surround sound. Venting just enough to not have to commit any 'cides. What better arena for cynical commentary and buffoonery? The SuperMarket. Tony hUBERt. Glazed donut, glazed eyes...

My best deleted lines from emails, from memos and letters--maybe the basis for a good story. what up, dogma? dogpa? dogpile, ah there you go. Too bad it wasn't dry...
posted at 8:16:38 PM

Ernie had his moment of clarity at an odd moment: while passing another car on the freeway, during the diurnal commute. What was this all about? Usually he never thought along these lines at all. In fact, he usually drove without any thoughts in his mind at all, kind of a blank meditation that lasted for fifty miles. He insisted upon doing eighty MPH the whole trek, and automatically passed anyone traveling slower. The mechanism of "getting ahead" had to be obeyed, even on the highway. And yet it occurred to him at that instant as he passed a silver Honda Accord, that the whole thing was absurd. "Unheard of, absurd...." from Fiddler on the Roof flashed through his mind for some reason. He completed the rapid pass and shook his head, as though trying to shake away these bizarre thoughts.
posted at 7:30:21 AM

Anton's review had gone well, for the most part. However, he once again found himself characterized as being a "sad sack." Ernie encouraged him to take a more positive stance, to be more cheerful. "I know it's just a perception, but people find it hard to approach you. You can seem real gloomy." Anton thought this just too ironic. Nobody enjoyed greater amusement at the company than he; simply because he didn't bubble with that phony joire de vivre exhibited by everyone else he had to be branded "difficult." Ernie's new buzzword was "powerful." (Last month the shibboleth had been "attributional"). "By being positive, you're much more powerful, you increase your power." Good god, had Ernie been reading Anthony Robbins?
posted at 8:17:58 AM

Ernie gave him yet the same speech given the previous year, with the same apologetic tone, the same rationalizations, the same bean counting reasons.... He even affected a manner of candidness, in which he essentially admitted that PSI was a "cheap company." The words which popped into Anton's head were "Chicken Shit Company," "Hierarchical," and most fitting, "bullshit." In All Hand's Meetings, the company of course was always "picking up" and "exceeding customer's expectations," and "doing very well." Beneath the hyperbole, however, behind the closed door of a performance review, the ugly truths were unsheathed. However, Ernie had learned in some seminar or other how to make underlings feel sorry for him, and sorry for the company, rather than expect any appreciable raise in status or in pay. He adopted a tenor of familiarity in voicing to Anton, "You know how we are around here...." Indeed he did. Anton wanted to say, "Did it ever occur to you, you ignorant MBA fuck, that spreading income just a bit more evenly throughout the company might decrease the general enmity and invidious distinctions between employees and management; morale would improve, productivity would increase, and the company as a whole could do so much better--not just at the dumbshit level of "bottomline," but in terms of it's humanity as well?" But how could he offer this idea to such a superlifer, committed to digging the same hole as every other corporate slug in America? Anton fantasized about holding Ernie up in his office at gunpoint, making him read Thorstein Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class," until Ernie was able to detect irony within the dry, sesquipedalian writing style of Veblen ("Pecuniary emulation"--for example--and his definition of religion: "The expropriation of vendible imponderables to the nth degree" [a paraphrase, admittedly]). "Have you found irony yet? No? Keep reading. There's a dictionary on the desk if you need it."
posted at 9:01:21 AM

Chapter One. Satori

Why the beetle in my square of banana-nut bread? Sprawled out and still, the thing lay embedded within the rich brown fiber, surrounded by almonds and pecans (and a few azoic black walnuts). Crushed antennae poked through the strata.

Satori created the bread. I'd overheard her in the kitchen "claiming responsibility." And while it seemed a random insertion, I wanted to believe she'd given me the beetle piece personally. What did this mean? I searched the room for other banana-nut bread eaters: no looks of alarm, merely the standard locomotion of jaws, effecting the casual ballet of masticating and generating small talk. Satori herself, that beautiful perp appeared not in the room.

My mind drifted to the movie Papillon. In a squalid jail cell on Devil's Island he had eaten a beetle (or a bug comparable, maybe a cockroach). Protein. Survival....Then I thought: if Satori walked up to me and asked me to eat a cereal bowl full of beetles, I might hesitate briefly, but I'd do it.

Hands gripped my shoulders, began a sloppy massage. A nasal voice carrying a pungent wind of beer and liverworst blew into my ear. "Ha-a-ackerrr...What's up?" Paul hung his drunk head on my shoulder.

"What's up, you ask? It's an interesting question. One may as well ask what's down, or sideways, or lateral. All are spatial concepts of a most Aristotelian orientation, made for our convenience. In the real world, there are no such things as up and down."

Paul released his grip on my clavicle, moved in front of me. Weaving like a dazed boxer, he cast me a gaze of incredulity. "Man I'm too fucked up to get into this heavy shit right now. "

"You have spoken rightly," I said. "Looks like you've been guarding the keg again."

"With my life..."

"Where's Karen?"

"Karen?"

"Yeah, Karen, you know, that beautiful women who babysits you and loves you for whatever reason and who you don't even deserve."

"Oh, she's working. She's an assistant manager now..."

"Who brought you here? Or were you lame enough to drive yourself?"

I could see the wheels spinning inside Paul's head. I was making him think about something that occurred hours ago. It could have been a hundred years ago.
posted at 9:27:05 AM

Anton did his best not to laugh. They were so serious, so deadpan, so very earnest. What he regarded as their unintentional punning, they projected as dry, business-like endeavor. "I tried to set up a three-way..." He meant of course a three-way teleconference, but of course Anton's mind went gleefully to a more salacious allusion. Then, remote superlifer wanted to go over the website. "Let's see if I can get it up," he says. Anton bit his lip. The urge to burst out in laughter he had to suppress.
posted at 9:19:44 AM

As he entered the building, a wave of malaise swept over him, and through him. Anton realized in full just how much he loathed the place, and in turn loathed himself for establishing such an entrenched rut at PSI, and that he had yet to effect a means of escape. There were so many excuses, of course. But the rut-ine (rude teen) was primarily a subscription to habit, a degree of predictability (seen as "control"), and the old primal concomitant--fear. Anton felt a carpal tunnel closing in on him, eclipsing his mind, foggying up his dreams, draining.....Repetitive stress didn't involve the physical so much as the repetition of absurdity, which had to be met with equanimity every day. Sure, he could minimize this, and even keep a sense of humor about it all; but inside baked and quaked an inner reality, gestating and simmering, preparing to burst unless he soon chose a different path.
posted at 8:40:35 AM

The world be content to pour old wine into the same wineskins. It regards spillage and spoilage as part of the game. Wine "tasting" and the decadent fields of vineyards scream out their redundancy. A truly civil world would never have anything to do with such utter waste; waste of space, and waste of purpose. The creation of an elite brigand of idlers, yuppie scum, classist buffoons. These acres of sybaritism can all be torn down and homeless shelters put in their place.
posted at 8:47:18 AM

Anton glanced over at Ernie's office, and smiled inwardly at the dark, unlit, inert room. Then he groaned as he heard Ernie's brash voice, booming from across the building. The ultimate superlifer was uncharacteristically late. This would not be a day of slack, after all...
posted at 8:24:23 AM

Contempt breeds contempt. This Anton cogitated as his hands swiveled with the subtle movements of the steering wheel. He once idealized that he could be like the character in that Tolstoi short story who is able to keep a candle burning in the wind, who is able to "render unto Caesar" with ease, who can submit to the general pinioning of wage slavery (in his case, just slavery sans wage) with an inner equanimity, the captain of infinite space--this cosmic largesse brought to you by the savior who told you so, three times before the redneck cockadoodle-dood. But alas, he was no contrite Peter, and no myrmidonic peasant in the fields, no "Job." He felt more as Jonah, only rather than dwelling within the center of the whale, and being spat out (more due to cetacean indigestion perhaps), spat upon by the leviathan itself. This was a goopy saliva, copious, gelatinous, and looming, consuming. Rapid blinking of the eyes failed to clear one's visage from such a slime.
posted at 7:56:38 AM

Were the superlifers absent today? Anton could only hope. He tried to open Ernie's calendar to check, but apparently the email server was down. Shit. The dark offices inspired hope. No doubt they were at some conference, schmoozing for those government pork contracts, the "other white meat."
posted at 8:09:12 AM

Anton thought about the peculiar secular numerology embedded within his diurnal routines, beginning with the morning hygiene. He rolled the deodorant stick up and down each underarmpit six times apiece, then sprayed five moderate squirts of cologne on his stomach, genitals, neck, arms and face. Brushing of the teeth involved a specific circular vigor of twenty-five, throughout the entire set of remaining molars, cuspids, bi-cuspids, and mutations. One large gulp of water, sloshed through the mouth, gargled briefly, then spat into the sink. He considered himself neither superstitious or anal-retentive, nor compulsive, but it struck him for the first time that he adhered to a certain numerical system with regard to toiletries. Lately he had been studying the labels on all his clothing. Not surprisingly, all were manufactured outside of the United States, in countries like Honduras, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Bangladesh.....And no doubt these materials came as the result of probably terrible exploitation. He wore the threads of suffering. Everyone did, but no one thought about it, in the same way that no one thinks of a dead cow when chomping into a QuarterPounder with cheese. Ayn Randian/conservative "objectivism" was regarding all "things" as merely "objects" to be used, abused, manipulated, to serve one's own purposes. Ironically, when one embraces this subtle form of insanity, one becomes an object as well: an object seeking to exploit other objects. In this realm, nobody exists. No PERSONS exist. Only bodies, only LABOR power, the capacity to extract work from the disenfranchised, at a very low cost. Anton thought then that all these "American" companies were scum. And the fact that he wore their products made him scum, too. How was one to break free? Go about naked, or with "homespun"? That might have worked for Gandhi, but Anton Hacker?
posted at 11:44:46 AM

Her name? Amy Jai, cynical psychologist, originally from Viet Nam, moved to the states in the early seventies when she was about 6. Father? American GI named John Mooneyhan. She had never met him.
posted at 11:37:05 AM

Slight putrescent ideation occupying Rankin's deem meaner. He had received an "A" in Apathy 101, and was ready for Stoicism 202, though his slack level might prevent entry to such a course. The working for grades, ultimately degrading, sickened him. "If you liked school, you'll LOVE work...." Rowed and columned, calumniated, calamine lotioned, yet still poisoned and oaked, yoked to the desks, tables, chairs, black and white boards, squeaky, fetid dry erase markers.....You later advanced to cubicles. One entity amidst a latticework of partitioned space, neatly arrayed, every cubie dimensionally comparable to every other.

Testosterone as overcompensation…. Unecessary lift…All people are scum until proven worthy of a modicum of respect. Forget trust altogether…

The over-frenetic tequila induced dancing to Prince's "Head." Vicky. Pretentious. Vomit all over. Not so pretentious. The Medium is the message, or Massage? Short piece or novel? Bias of Communication? Not Howard Innis…Understanding Communications, I believe is the title you're looking for. Or Ain't nobody bad like me…Does the sky care? Does the body care? The body is at the very same time incredibly smart and incredibly dumb…

Darling, I DO know why I go to extremes-and why so many are in constant flight from themselves. All a retreat from pain; the extent of pain determines the degree or magnitude of escape needed. Forced oblivion, even against one's "will," or "better judgment." Yet the body was able to prioritize, and heal me hand first….Testosterone based society must die, and be reborn with a full balance between yin, yang and the funk brothers. Recline of the West. Spengler write awn the moonay. More personable, yet less trusting of humanity in general. Can that be achieved? I can wrap words around the thing, but my mind? My end? don't know about that. no net is not nine, but nein. Apparently as the creative myelineates towards heaven, corollary roots grow and tentaclize in hell, the trap of polarities. And as sweet as heaven may seem, it's polar can loom and seem to completely eclipse the previous glory.... Yeah yeah. Musin on the way to work this morning: screenplay. Rashomon at the office. Can you hear the drums, Fernando? Everybody wants to rule the world...Boss...Robert Stark, workable name. Commute. First scene, black screen--zoom out and you see it's a car; license plate: Progressive Sciences Incorporated--and corny motto of some kind....Witness the commute, different angles, juxtapose expansive vistas with claustrophobic nature of office, the cubicular colony....flesh out different characters, international cast, so to speak, "International Threads" perfunctory can do the sound track, with special guests Abba and Tears for Fears (yuk yuk). Gotta have some foo fighters too probably. Perfunktory spoof...goof...Squeaky markers, mice, bats, juxtapose the serious intent with comedy, with the laugh of nature, of physics...particularly of the physic inside me head... We shall think more on this, of course... Superficiel - french oberflächlich - german Lessons in Turd Polishing well before I was so rudley interrrupted by that anxiety attack.... breakdown, go ahead and give it to me.... vertiginous and shaky per usual. How much longer am I to bear with this, with a sober front? Methinks the front erodes day by day. I am not comfortably numb, but am willing to learn... The "calm" after the storm is nothing more than a capitulation of the nervous system. At least some of my neurons comply with peace, eh? Or they are simply beaten into submission. All hail systems theory.... CS most incredible....most immoral support, strength....superlatives don't even do the form justice...indeed...weeks later I still concur....not enough testosterone in the universe to do justice....hyperbole? Deke was looking a bit frayed around the edges as of late. On one occasion, he had actually stormed out of the building. After much asskissing he was coaxed back to the neurotic fold. But now he had that trapped rat look. Furtive eyes, virtually no expression, he didn't talk anymore. Sure, he was moody, but this was something different; he had distinctly gone to a new level...a new level of malaise, discontent. Please, do not forget the intense political melodramatic angle for DT; office politics--none could be pettier, or provide better fodder for fiction...Yes indeed don't forget. What happened to all those clever thoughts I had walking down the hall? He walked on down the hall...I created new character but seem to have forgotten his or her name. Oh yes--the store clerk with the passive agressive tendencies, the small acts of violence perpetrated on assembly line dividers, the impulse buy line the tabloidian screaming surround sound. Venting just enough to not have to commit any 'cides. What better arena for cynical commentary and buffoonery? The SuperMarket. Tony hUBERt. Glazed donut, glazed eyes... My best deleted lines from emails, from memos and letters--maybe the basis for a good story.
posted at 12:20:54 PM

JC Pennies from Heaven, the ultimate hemophiliac, clotting is not an option. Crossing, genuflecting, reflecting, kneeling, doing the kneebone bend, sheep sheep don't you know the road, Zachariah, won't be water, but sparkling mineral water next time. "Cancer might be too hard for the doctor, but it's just right for God...." (Well, having created the pernicious substance, it's not a stretch to assume he could break it). Aren't we being a little hard on the believer? Just the anthropomorphic, the reifiers, the idolatrous, homo analogous.
posted at 8:05:41 PM

Ron read from the Playboy interview of John Lennon. Rankin barely paid any attention. "You gotta hear, this, Rank---" Rankin looked up from his Twilight of the Idols. "Yeah?" Ron continued, with suppressed glee, "quote--'which see'..." R. Buckminster Fuller, Synergy, synergetics, wholism, Koestler (Act of Creation, Ghost in the Machine), Maslow, Darwinian Hypothesis, Self-Actualization, Indica, stochastica....
posted at 8:28:43 AM

Mooneyhan first encountered teeth grinding in basic training, years ago in the army. He had never heard anything so remarkably bizarre in his life. The first time he heard it, he could not discern it's cause or it's nature. But a quick study on an otherwise cadaver-like private in the bunk next to him, solved the mystery. The jaws moved up and down and side to side, somehow generating a grinding sound which was alarmingly loud. Of course the stresses of basic training had to exacerbate the condition, and in an open bay the din of mass molar grinding could be deafening.
posted at 7:38:30 AM

IIS really blows. Front Page server extensions and NT, Win2k? Utter frustration getting them to work. What a kluge-fest....
posted at 4:20:08 PM

Anton looked at the book checkout list. Every one who had checked out a book had since been laid off or fired. Was there some kind of connection here? Like the FBI, were they paranoid of people who appeared to be literate? That perhaps literate people might think too much, or of greater threat--think independently?
posted at 10:29:37 AM

Did you know that the middle of "salvific" is "if"? Or maybe not the middle, but the latter few letters? Just thought I'd mention that...sometimes I feel like we are like that old guy in the cell who in Papillon who sticks his decrepit head out of the hole everyday and asks the other convicts, "How do I look" to which they rep-lie, "You look fine." We don't want to face deterioration, the ineluctable fate....
posted at 8:19:46 AM

Do you prefer metal or plastic paper clips? I myself am partial to metal....
posted at 8:37:59 AM

Anton reflected that nothing had really changed. He'd had a breakdown, taken some time out to recover, and had returned to the same sinking ship, the same chicken-shit outfit. Truly it was time to make an exodus...
posted at 3:45:05 PM

Anton felt like an new automobile where the owner hasn't made the payments in a while. The finance company gives you a certain "grace" period (actually the time before the bureaucracy finds out y' ain't been payin') before taking action. It was all a matter of time. Things would come to critical mass eventually....Once the poobahs reconvened, he would make his retreat....or rather, evacuation...
posted at 8:36:59 AM

Rankin had heard someone in an NA meeting say that being clean and sober was like holding your breath until the next drunk or fix. How he could relate to that all of a sudden, after being abstinent for 90 days. And how he wanted to breathe deep....But fear remained the gatekeeper of his place on the wagon.
posted at 10:56:05 AM

Even though Anton considered himself completely "over" Dora, he felt strange seeing her kiss another guy. She had her mouth pressed against another, exchanging passion Anton had thought seemed once reserved only for them. How naive, he thought, yet that didn't make him feel any less strange. His lips, mouth and body had once interfaced with hers, but now that had ended. Apparently Dora had made the transition to another body quite easily, with all the passion intact (unless it were an act, which was not unthinkable). Anton didn't think he'd be able to engage with another so easily, and so quickly. He acted as though he hadn't seen her and walked past the meld into the auditorium.
posted at 9:18:16 AM

He wanted to check out early, so he took a tour of the building to see the present placement of the poobahs. Ah yes, they were all congregated in the conference room, listening to each other prattle and give crappy PowerPoint presentations. Good for them. But he would be able to beat that hastiest of retreats, with neither remorse, or compunction.
posted at 2:20:11 PM

Anton didn't know how much longer he could keep up the charade. The work had run out, and shirking had become tiresome--nearly a job in itself. Parkinson's law mocked him. He knew if he said anything one of two things might happen: 1. they'd sack him or 2. they'd give him some more meaningless work. No the plan for the moment was to lay low and appear busy. Shirk, malinger until the ennui eroded your being, perhaps even pricked one's conscience, if only a little. Suddenly the them from "HR Pufnstuff" ran through his head...Surely this was the theater of the absurd.....In cubicles...He hoped that his application for the job might be accepted, but he also hoped it would be rejected. The latter result seemed the more likely, and he smiled at the thought. What also occurred to him was that he could just leave, any second, if he wanted to. The odds were slim anyone would even notice, would even care. Accounting might get around to noticing, eventually, since they were commanded to let no bean go uncounted.
posted at 9:53:34 AM

Rankin had read all the "great" mystics, both eastern and western; had practiced hatha and raja yoga, including pranayana, had even at one time been baptised in a presbyterian church (a desperate move to get laid--which did eventually pay off, though with longer adverse consequences, which we may discuss at a later time). He had read Ouspensky, dabbled in the fourth way, Shambhala, and the Art of War, the Tao and so on and so on. But what he really wanted, rather than an enhanced consciousness, was oblivion--lack of consciousness. For this, there were terrestrial means, both explicit and illicit. Both were difficult to obtain, and had their peculiar avenues for procurement. Alcohol, the one time great liberator and obliviator, ceased to work it's magical powers, and only exacerbated the condition. Heroin--the ultimate train was far too difficult to obtain and socially disparaged. What remained were the explicit pharmaceuticals--valium, librium and the like. For these one had to be clinically diagnosed with something--which in Rankin's case was not a problem, for he really did have a panic disorder. Originally he had "self-medicated" with grog, but the grog no longer worked. Benzodiazapines were currently the only tablets the medicine man could issue that held any efficacy at all, that could make the difference between a freak-out and a "normal" and even slightly sedated state. However, these tended to "fizzle out" early, as one developed a tolerance to them. And then, of course because they were CNS depressants, you found yourself depressed. What a surprise. Then modern shaman wished to placate that by issuing a dubious anti-depressant. Good idea, in theory. And if this one doesn't work, we have so many more, oh so many more. Watson, Johnson and Johnson, we have so many more. No matter what irremediable psychological damage they might do, go onto the next one in this pharmacological neurological roulette. Rankin had seen friends (or at least aquaintances or people on the street) go through this spanking machine of the mind. Of course the shrinks are full of white teeth and a plaintive, piteous expression as if to say "this is the best we have...." And it probably is.
posted at 9:24:28 AM

Oh my bloggers I am despairing. The dregs of despair are on my tongue, and making it difficult to swallow. I can't even believe that I am here. My the soup is so hot.... but I need such nourisment...I don't understand this corridor of dysphoria from which I can feel no escape....
posted at 11:38:03 AM

Anton crossed his legs, then uncrossed his eyes before the proctor could catch him. "Why do you want to leave your present position?" Proctor proctored, glasses on ridge of nose. Real Anton thought processes: I want to move from a chicken shit company fifty miles away to a chicken shit company within bike riding distance from my house." Actual Anton output: "Well, I'm finding the commute is really wearing on me, and not just me, but my poor vehicle as well, which as you know is a 94 Camry which I just recently paid off..." Nodding Proctor, good proctor. Scribble in pad proctor. "Hmmmm." This from Proctor. "Otherwise, are you satisfied with your current job?, other than the commute?" Ooh, dig deeper. Anton would really have to engage the fabrication engine. Interior Anton: "well I'm overworked and underappreciated--nothing new for this industry, of course; and the management structure is of course the old top-down pyramid, lip service is paid to "reengineering the corporation" when nothing changes but the rhetoric; management have no vision other than bottomlining, no real imagination, not even the hint of a creative spark; the majority of ideas are completely, utterly stolen, with no sense of guilt or remorse; the only art at Progressive Sciences (good old PSI) is the art of plagiarism.....Moneys are of course not shared equally, even though it's supposed to be "employee owned." People are not paid competitive wages, and in fact the company recruits employees from abroad and pays them sub-industry standard wages, rather than hiring american employees at industry standard pay or better; the way the company stays alive is to 1) squabble with a number of other chicken shit companies for government pork contracts and 2) "generalized accounting principles," that is, "don't pay your creditors until you absolutely have to--at the last minute." When in doubt, lay people off. Don't innovate--even though in every speech you make make sure to include that buzz word over and over....
posted at 11:30:26 AM

Rankin was in a reflective mood. "Most pornography is horrible." "What do you mean?" Adrian asked. "I don't mean horrible in a moral sense, although that could also be inferred indirectly....No, I mean that there's generally no sense of aesthetics involved, no art, I guess If you want to put it that way. There has to be a better routine than 'boy meets girl, meets more boys, boys thrust their puds into every orifice, then splooge all over her body"; god, that is so tired." "What do you suggest as alternative?" "Well, pay more attention to the AWE of sex. I mean, when you were thirteen years old and in the midst of the hormone poisoning, the only thing you could think about was sex, and how magical and wonderful it would be. Well good porno should capture this emotion, and pay attention to how awesome the sexual experience can be. Not just a pedestrian in-out, in-out, splooge fest....So for instance you'd really have to have the camera make love to the bodies, from the best angles; you want to avoid the old Larry Flynt amateur gynecologist angles...." Adrian concurred. "Yeah, I never cared for the "journey to the center of the vagina" approach, you know where you actually get to see internal organs..."
posted at 12:50:09 PM

Beneath the layers and layers of the psyche bubbles a pool of pain; here a maelstrom of shame, guilt, remorse, sorrow, wait to be expressed in tearing and blubbering so utterly sincere you are not the same person after experiencing this primal pool. Much that was suppressed becomes clear, it's pain acute, demanding; after all, it's waited a very long time. All the masks and illusions of control fall away, at least for the time being. The "company" and it's meager aims---how truly chickenshit it seems in comparison to bare, emotional truth. The company is the very antithesis of the authentic life--hence the amount of stress involved, the number of type A's going thrombosis in their early forties. The company is truly an extension of the family, like high school was merely an extension of kintergarten, with it's "pushy pigs" and "tattle tails" and "bullies" and "popular ones...." Of course you're told, so the rubric goes, NOT to be a pushy pig--but in reality you won't get anything unless you become said oinker, pushing your way to get what you want. We teach a simplistic morality, but we practice watering hole savagery. These contradictions are immediately apparent to the young. Compassion 101 isn't a class. The cooperative paradigm is paid lip service, but never adopted.

How long can the shields last? Can we get Scotty to give us a bit more slack? Even then, will they hold?

Ernie was clearly feeling imperious today. He had that look of aloofness, the look of faux-command, of a general out inspecting the troops. Never mind the familiarity he might have shown you yesterday. Today he was a rock, stoic, an honest to goodness type A Bozo. You probably weren't even on his "shit list," hadn't even registered. No, he had other much more grandiose things on his noggin, perhaps concern about his hemorroids, their itching, swelling, bleeding, their goddamned inconvenience. Ernie had never read "The Death of Ivan Illich," much less Ivan Illich of A History of Needs infame. Ernie watched Baywatch--sometimes with the sound off, and sometimes with the sound on. His boys, aged 12 and 13 of course watched it with the sound on, and of course Ernie would "sit in" to get some "quality time" with the boys as well as some casual concupiscence at the same time. If he were alone, he'd have to turn down the sound and put on some music instead--even Ernie the buffoon had his limits, even he knew the teleplay to be pathologically moronic.
posted at 10:41:39 AM

I feel like my bureaucracy is crumbling. All feedback mechanisms point to reality, instead of away from it. Bureaucracy is supposed to insulate one from such brutality. Being on The Periphery, of course, having eaten fried onions for long periods of time, you get a different perspective. Once on the periphery, always there, no matter the concerted efforts to be an inner ringer. Once in a while one finds oneself in the inner ring, through some adventitious circumstances or misunderstandings. 'tis usually the latter. Frequently denizens of the periphery are called into the circle to "jazz" up the surroundings (those surroundings being designed chiefly more marketing purposes). This is known as "selling out," but really it's more "selling in." Of course the expropriate of "cool" has been frankly done to saturation levels by Frank and other bafflers and non bafflers like Mark Crispin Miller.....
posted at 12:11:46 PM

Something peculiar had seized Anton. He traipsed the halls of the office, quoting Jim Morrison, "What have they done to the earth? What have they done to our fair sister?" At first murmuring, as he existed the copier room, his voice steadily increased in tenor and insistence upon the mantra during the trek through the central hall of cubes, past management offices to the "art" department.
posted at 10:36:54 AM

Shatter limbo, risk another fall. Flatline is only easier in time, but time ticks away, eviscerates, leaves stark, bare, decision making time, deciding for a reprieve, for more glaring perhaps, more slam of doors, flight of objects....
posted at 12:52:05 PM

Oh my god. I've become the old man. Inherited and implemented all of his "failings." Perhaps the one difference may be that I become bereft of family, truly isolated and alone without their physical presence, rather than hanging out as an undesired authoritarian ghost of an asshole, where people breathe easier without your presence....
posted at 12:57:54 PM

All one ubiquitous chemistry set. The monadic nature of the elements and their peculiar admixtures, atomic numbers (take an atomic number, please and wait thy tern) resembles a casino-like environment, complete with spilling over ashtrays surfeit butts, coffee gulpage, desk poundage, the tinkle, jingle of change, of that most atavistic of icons---lucre---all filthy but washed clean through desire, through context of sliver of maya. Neurons fire as they are wont to fire, via algorithms called out by genetic sirens, they don't really CARE, how could they? Yet how do they aggreggate or play a part within a vehicle which as a personality, as an entity, attempts to CARE?

The cheese stands alone, and triumphs, repeatedly, like a serial killer, always successful, always insuperably victorious. No ravishing of flesh, mind you, or refrigerated appendages (nothing to shock the Maytag monkey) but complete domination of the worlds within each micro-world within each person. This is a form of control Lenin and probably other historical nincompoops like Gobels would have relished. Of course, I spit at a great distance on these presumptious clowns....Ah, but we'd better return to the melancholy mundane, and forget being a captain of infinite space; the bad dream is every keystroke here for the company....
posted at 8:46:04 AM

Shit, I think today I might go ahead and see Shaft. I'm sure it'll be predictable cool violence with some even cooler jams, but what the hell. Sam's the man...However, everyone appears unmotivated now because of a misconstrued argument regarding whether the film is a "guy" movie. Testosterone pushed the envelope too much and now all are disenchanted. Sea heavy sighs.
posted at 10:23:03 AM

Maude Lynne just checked out, before the sex change operation from the hotel room with oh so spacious rooms and cable, with HBO to boot. She/he luxuriated in watching Lifetime television, just numbing out on all that drivel....What bliss...How appropriate that the pipe was called "cable," in fact the overall experience could be called "cable," like a kind of umbilical tethering to this artificial reality, insular, insipid, yet strangely encompassing, almost like Chamomille tea flooding the synapses with their purring noises....
posted at 11:09:45 AM

Feeling so very retired today; like a reader of Modern Maturity oh the banality of it all. Baudrillard's America, so right on, man. Can one be liberated by theology? Can an atom be split by desire? (I still have an old bottle of unopened Hai Karate--wonder what I could get for it on E-bay? Probably about the same as that ancient tube of BrillCream I auctioned off last month). Inchoate substrate grape jello, instant, gelatinous turn-off, aversion to the substance forever more.
posted at 2:33:40 PM

Anton passed the "hall of macho cologne", made a face, then an about-face and a column left to arrive at his cubie. The rank blend of Old-Spice, Aqua Velva and LecShave clashed in the hall offices occupied by managers, all white, male, and predominantly (if nominally) protestant. All of them were over 50, losing their hair, and all drove large gas guzzling behemoths to work.
posted at 9:13:27 AM

The Metaphysics of Flatulence. RiboNucleic Acidopholus....We are turning in a different direction today; synapses point to the left; otolithographers migrating south.
posted at 10:12:28 AM

Rankin said that there were, for him, five oblivion factors. Number 5 was music; Number 4 and perhaps most innocuous (though some would disagree) was television and movies; third was sex; runner up was alcohol and other drugs; and numero uno of course was the big "out," death. One could count on the latter four to survive, sustain some level of sanity, to become "comfortably numb." The ultimate out, of course, was the ace in the hole, or the ultimate oblivion, final checkout when all other oblvions had failed. Little did he know he'd had to give up all oblivions and face himself squarely....
posted at 4:24:10 PM

Byron became a cartoon character before my very eyes. His face assumed a willowy, goofy mass of features. Ears, nose and mouth appeared in orbit around that puss. I reared my head back slightly, as if repelled by the force of the apparition, and tried to focus on the mouth as it spoke. "Anton," it said,"you gotta read this book, 'Dianetics,' it will change the way you think..." As he raised a finger to his temple, the cartoon character spell ended abruptly, restoring the imperious but terrestrial expression of Byron. He was clearly high, but in a pontificatory mood, enjoying the lecture circuit for the moment. "It's about all these memories, these feelings that are bottled up, that fuck you up, man. You got to get clear of all that---woah!" A moth flew, in it's erratic trajectory around the speaker's head and Bryon leapt to get out of it's way. Byron feared insects, and the ocean. Insects were "little demons," and the ocean was just "too much water." But he was still "the immovable object."

The immovable object appeared quite flustered. I am immovable, impermeable, impervious. Stoic. Marcus Aurelius himself couldn't be more stolid or bucolic. But I can be persuaded to receive warmth, and on occasion reciprocate it. Like most tepid blooded folks, I can respond to certain stimuli...
posted at 2:00:54 PM

I saw a title for a class in a college catalogue--it said "The Administrative Assistant." Boy wouldn't that be a great title for a movie? They've already had "The Temp," so why not "The Admin"? Totally stressed-out admin finally goes nutzoid. The degree of the mania would have to be determined... I certainly have some experiences from which to draw. Exaggerate just a bit, and hell the thing writes itself...
posted at 4:31:37 PM