Ode to Any Unhinged

I have held my tongue long enough. And in the matter of the sweeping conspiracy to manipulate us commoners into passivity, you have all remained silent for far far too long on this topic. Why won't our spray pump bottles work?

 

More importantly, why do we keep buying them in full knowledge that we'll end up pump pump pumping,  holding the bottle this way and that, and at best manage to get one pathetic stream for every eleven pumps? And when that stream comes, what are the chances it will hit where you wanted it to, hmm?

Don't think I haven't already searched for an answer to this question on the world wide web. That's how I know you've been silent on the topic. Naturally Google should take some of the blame for listing and even promoting all of those cloned helpful hints. I found plenty of nifty little drips and drabs on self-styled home hack websites, but they're obviously controlled by Big Spray Bottle, if that's their real name. How do I know? Because none of them address the actual problem! Their sole purpose is to gaslight us into thinking we're too stupid to understand the modern marvels of engineering. Okay, we are too stupid. BUT THAT DOESN'T MAKE US CRAZY!!!!11

Yes, the tube is submerged in the liquid. The problem always begins before the bottle is even half empty! No, the nozzle is not clogged. Hence it still sprays once between every gazillion pumps!

 

Let's face it, just like the extreme weight of the amplifier, which's gotta be heavier than the sum of its parts, and the brief life of the battery, the length of which defies analog comparisons, this technology has reached a ceiling to scratch your head on.

 

It's all fine when your bleeding the audience's ears except for those in the nose-bleeds, but if you can't afford a roady, you may as well call yourself a weight lifter, a mover, and a musician, in that order.

 

And the status of the amount of juice remaining in whatever you're looking at, or, more to the point, whatever it is that's using just as much of your brain power because, left to your own devices, you'll forever be thinking about wherever the nearest electrical outlet is or will be when the time comes, which is very soon, if you're not actively seeking one out right now. Handy means always in your hand, and never not tightly lodged in the back of your mind.

I mean, since we've already committed to 5G, which, as we know, does, indeed, cook us just a little bit, why can't we turn our overheated atmosphere and internal organs into a charging station akin to the cloud?

 

And then there's the spray bottle. We've clearly become reconciled to sub-sub optimal utility on offer by Big Plastic, or whatever they go by these days. And this really brings the hammer down on the point that all these little problems are indicative of more important ones. We have so many bigger fish to fry. And yet, rapidly decreasingly, not literally.

 

Wait a minute. You don't suppose Big Rich People are holed up in their gated heavens cleaning the surface of their self-cleaning perpetual motion devices with fail-safe pump sprays whose triggers actually pull their fingers and whose bottles are made of a non-degradable plastic that never finds its way into the air and water supply? It fucking figures! Not only do they have all the best stuff but they sleep better at night.

 

What is the psychological effect of knowing what we ignore and ignoring what we know? And how long before the majority of the bad shit we read about reaches the land fill because it's where we dump our Pampers? 

Not as I do

Be careful what you wish for. Don't parse that to the exclusion of everything but that some things aren't what they seem and might not be worth wanting. Maybe better's the admonition to take care of each wish come true, as if it's hard earned, or would be a hard loss if its advantage were not preserved.

 

Be mindful of what you worry about. Worry never resolves, it just moves to a new dwelling. A steady state of hoping the next thing doesn't go wrong is a wishing well without a bottom. There are so many coins down there, removed from circulation. Untold deflation.

Employment Figures

There's this thing called the supervisory board, whose job it is to look away on behalf of a formerly non-existent agency whose nature it'd been to accept its position. That's germane to here. Over there it's called a commission, whose job it is to be seen getting to the bottom of a barrel of conclusions and to issue a declaration of authorship on behalf of an unknowable hallowed authority. The question as to whether an additional level of oversight leads to better or worse self-control guarantees what one sees as the existence of a difference.

 

There're these people called representatives, whose job it is to represent one thing on behalf of another thing whose job it is to become the thing more worthy of representation. These invariably represent both public and private interests. Should the matter at hand be of public interest, decisions of private concerns can serve as guiding precedent. Should the matter at hand be of private interest, it's none of the public's business.

 

There's a logic that says it's preferable to pool public resources to pay the cost of collective private venture, whose job it is to grow at all cost. Should the former resources become outstripped, the collective can afford the public the extra credit. This magnanimity knows no bounds.

There's this thing called a supply chain, whose job it is to link production and all its rent-seeking part producers to consumption and all its shifty cravings. Should some links be broken via an act of apparent public writ, the way around it comes at an increased cost for the hooked, whose lows, even more than their highs, driven to drink by creative creatures, whose job it is to liquify & carbonate dreamlevel unique selling propositions, spell the perfect alibi for increased margins for recession-proofed industries, which, if you believe what's taught at business school, include alcohol, tobacco and firearms. And make-up. Bottom end lipstick must paint the perfect bullseye on the target market. The question as to whether these profits of boom and doom are sustainable underwrites the longing for the good old status quo, whose job it is to lie in the muddle of the business cycle.

 

There's this thing called war, whose job it is to be waged and the wages of which spoil the rich, whose job it is to build associations of nations of oh geez, whose job it is to build blame campaigns and erect oppositions. The question as to whether a side's gone too far is a cry that'd show why the dissonance is hushed.

There's this thing called intelligence, whose job it is to infiltrate and filter, pose penetrating questions of straw to subvert the subversive, in turn turning causes into causes for alarm that spook the general public, which is sure to make a certain kind of certainty out of their ignorance. The question as to whether a certain outcome is a question of right or wrong may be the wrong question, but it's a timely one.

What's your job? Ignoring Ignorance, Sir!

Der Parkbank Pinkler Kapitel XXXIV: Privatkunde gegen Geschäftskonto

„Ssfie, dUnterschied zwischen hinzugeben und hinzugeben. De Zweite iss hingeben mit „zu“ hinzu, derste macht mehr Spaß, essei denn, essissne falsche Entscheidung gewesen.“

—G. Bechertwern

XXXIV.

 

»Tu deinn Job, Mensch, iss mir ziemlich schnurz. Du hasss sichtbar nicht grad so gut durchgedacht. Denk langsam nach: Wasss, wenn ich reiner Formalitäten nicht zustimme? Hab dir schon gesagt, Handy bei mir gibs nicht. Dass du das nicht sofort voraussehen könnst, insofern wie ich so aussehe, issne Andeutung, du biss hier falsch angestellt. Also, von vorne wieder: Sonst was? Geld bei mir gibts, dank der Bank da. Das geb ich dir zu. Aber wieviele? Das sag ich dir nicht. Doch, denk ich, wennssich lohnt, dann wieviel iss egal. Stich einfach zu!«

 

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xxxiii. << -- >> Kapitel ??

Lid Richer

Sure, allergies in springtime are common enough, but when Shakes Beer foretold the seizures of the hives of March, how could he have known unless he was the Toothfairy himself?!

Addiction Eyrie: The Viral Mint

Man is probably not a machine, but he behaves as such in a situation where the machines impose his operating rules. Indeed, the progress of technology should not be understood as necessarily being the progress of mankind: far from it, they are not accompanied by a progress of thought, reflection and responsibility, since they eliminate their intervention and even often make them impossible.

—Günther Anders

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Home is too familiar and being away always alienates. Alienation can be romantic. Without the romance. I usually long for home when away from it, but a bizarre bed and bath is better than bupkis. A fake free star accommodation provides the respite of exotic solitude not found in either. Home is too familiar and being away always alienates.

 

Whatever variation on the theme, it's unfailingly wrapped in foil. The wrapping is protection. From dust, though that'd be a bad sign in a hotel room. From the germs on the gem placer's fingers, though we've fingered each others' fingers as an extension of cordiality, to a fault, most of us, without thinking about washing immediately after. Years ago an acquaintance of GDR extraction remarked annoyed that it was no wonder so many co-workers would inevitably fall victim to whatever cold virus was currently going around, because they'd shake hands with everyone every single morning. I noticed this distinction between former east and west employees at the workplace. You cannot foil an illness with that kind of hands on collegiality. But forgoing the prevailing culture can be downright rude.

 

I centered the pillow prize on that book left behind in the bedside table drawer. Nudging to fudge this complement into a relationship resembling an ankh, I amused myself with the thought of unwrapping it instead and closing it into the pages the way one does to preserve the luck of the Irish. How this sweet tempered circle would blot a random sect of text and lead the next guest tempted to open such a book on a superstitious quest to find the obscured words to complete the passage. This would certainly reveal the single central meaning of life to determine the next move of the Discoverer of.

 

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While it's too easy to chalk up individual violence to the availability of the tools for the same, it's silly to say said tools don't have their role to play. Still, a background check to ensure the safe transfer of tools involves a kind of case prevention that would be a drop in the bucket compared to the larger issue of an individual's will to use tools to kill in a way virtually no other individual would consider considering. And this against the backdrop of a sovereign state that transfers a scaled up version of that destructive power around the world with greater non-partisan approval than it debates any of its other self-claimed responsibilities. In other words, it's a drop in one pail of water from the well.

 

That these horrors are anomalies could be why they reportedly make such waves of incomprehension. That they hit home is why they reputedly capture the imagination — not in the captivating sense, but in a way that holds the imagination captive as the anomalies accumulate and take on another quality. In spite of all the odds in their favor, I cannot imagine most parents who send their children off to school every day don't imagine they might fall victim to a single attendant of mass destruction. So I can also imagine they'd feel safer if that one wayward whim, who they imagine is able to get any tool with the ease of the licensing of the driver, had a hurdle placed in front of him, imagining, as I am now, that even if only in the most rare of instances, one just as randomly might decide not to carry out one's rampage because of the extra effort required. Or just kind of forget one'd wanted to.

 

Put this way it sounds absurd insofar as it's a poisonous drop that will find it's way into the water supply eventually. Or maybe not. Maybe one out of however many such ostensibly wayward whims are suffering a temporarily intense emotional response that would evaporate into the ether of post-pubescence once they had time to reason, join the Army, and never return home to use his driver's license.

 

Or all such anomalies are demons. This is a symbolic allusion to something whereby the human capacity for empathy is damaged at a level resulting in having what seemed like an anomaly becoming endemic to human nature. To use another biblical metaphor, imagine one person's values entail the worship of mammon. Any violence that accompanies this fixation is unique to criminals of the state, for the state has its monopoly on legal violence ostensibly to secure what belongs to the individuals who make up that state.

 

But wait. What if society's values are sanctioned by the same fixation and agents delegated by the same state can secure special access to this mammon? I've read this results in a sort of era independent Roman rot.

 

The current iteration sees structural bruises untaken for their rotten values. That these could be to the detriment of others has been an issue for advertising and entertainments. See the hippy in an SUV clear the beach of all its plastic waste. Watch the athlete doing vaguely identifiable community center stuff with families in his hometown not seem entirely out of place with a soothing voice-over speaking some slogan for booze. Observe the sublimated patriot imply that, yes, Virginia, you can do the feel-good patriotism, equal opportunistically smiling behind the greenish glow of your army's radar or even snagging the helm of the battleship whose one-time sci-fi-like progress need not person the guns. Think of that the next time you hear a witness of some traumatic tragedy say it was all "like a movie". Don't get it? Don't worry, we'll tell you when it's safe to stroke your apps to place your bets or invest in something called crypto. By branding alone we prove we would like to think something else, whatever 'tis we're apparently compelled to do ourselves.

 

Anyone not feeling so good might feel effectively branded something else. The difference between our youngest legal warrior wasting unarmed non-combatants and a delinquent gunning down school children: one year, ten thousand miles, the number of meetings and the amount of paperwork, and the flavor of sanctioning that can't see the solution for the drops. Whoops. You're soaking in it. Surroundings.