A few things before I jet to the fish fry.

I ran into an old high school graduate - Anne Brennan - in the elevator leaving work. Looks about the same.. she said she was temping at my building. I pounded it because I am a contractor. Small world. (Thank you 1997 edition of the year book entitled "Schoool" for the last name hookup).

Through out the day one of my forums was in a mild debate about life in prison or death. Hit the jump for the fun.

For some reason I fixated on this quote:

so you'd rather live like a caged animal than be free?



And birthed this:

You already live in a cage like an animal. The panopticon is increasing every day. Surveillance - passive or active; monitoring of your activities and life. Analysis of your patterns. You are a number, a data point, something to be manipulated and controlled. It may not be a prison of your mind or bars you can see, but reassured they are there. Shut down your brain, go with the flow, consume, and herd like the passive fearful sheeple they want you to be. Spam, consumer electronics, soldiers dying in far away lands, and engineered weather. They - they in power - the marketers, the profiteers, the politicians, and the leaders. The systems are designed to keep you on a perpetual brink of poverty, raging avarice, and compliance. Control is taken out of your hands and replaced with a bag of groceries from Whole-Paycheck or a once-a-season lawnmower from Wallyworld.

Your life is tracked and you are pushed into chutes. Do not look left, do not look right, and assuredly do not look up. Straight ahead - follow the waddling ass of those in front of you. Do not wonder why - let us plug your cake hole with a delicious serving of reality tv and hyper processed foods. Oh yes, processed foods are bad for you - head to Wholepaycheck! What is that you say? You can't afford that? Take another job! Health is not cheap! You are too tired to head to the gym - spawn another child. We'll help pay juuuuuust enough. Die an ignoble death, your time as biomass is done. Your litter of offspring will pick up where you left off. To trudge the ruts you have put down. Turn the wheel, mill down hopes and dreams to grist. Maybe they are in a modicum of a better spot, but by then the messages and artificial reality will have numbed them.

The real is out there, but the simulacra is well in place. Lacquering over the Truth. Strangle the senses and bleach the brain. Attempt to step out side the system and they will throw you in a dark dark hole. Max security prisons where you will be swallowed up by the mass of filth and insanity. At least in there - you can see the bars. The rules are clear and rarely shifting. The power of your own existence is in your hands. What happens when prisons are more Real than this simulation of life outside the walls? Condensed real locked away, or are they on the outside looking in at us?

One two - skip to our loe! Three four - ignore what we keep behind the locked door. Five six - new neighbors will not mix. Seven eight - consume and lay prostrate. Nine ten - never wake again.

Cliffs:
- they can by pass your tin foil hat!

This announcement was brought to you by Coo-coo puffs. "Coo-coo puffs - when electroshock isn't quite doing it anymore. Now sit down and eat your bowl of social disturbia. The dog knows!".



In response to this quote:

I find your existential meanderings arousing modi. Now I want you to dress up like Nietzsche and preach dirty drunken nihilism while Barry White albums set the atmosphere.


This spewed forth:

Hardly existential, but a quick ice cream splat of information to shake loose the atrophied crunch berries slowing down the Nesquik willed human spirit. Nietzsche was never really my racing horse. Soured grapes from clinking the tinklies with too many feasting on the corpse of a god they didn't have the respect to ask before sitting down to dine. Heidegger, or just "The 'Digger", was a dark horse for a while that is to say until I needed some glue to hold a genocide pie together. One could only follow a Nazi down to the bramble thicket to play "I'll show you my Being if you show me yours!" before have it penetrated and eclipsed in a most uncomfortable spot. I won't expound on my... appreciation... of the chesty frenchie Baudrillard, but suffice to say I would proudly thrust a hand woven merkin of his finely cut hair at any and all.

Ultimately no - not nihilism. I don't believe in silly isms that have ultimate no action. I leave that up to the ferret companion of mine called "Trent: The Horse". He likes lounging in his Oakland Raiders hammock professing the alternative is to rethink. I am tip toe through the graveyard with the hopes that we can pry this gilden bear trap from our leg lest we gnaw it off and club the great coyote with our burning limb.

One last thing - Barry White is the mole.



That felt good. Really good. Now to fuel that with some religion! Let's hope tonight wasn't like last weekend!