the future is back!!

the new york times style magazine is always a treat and today i received the "women's fashion" edition for this year and that is always one of my favorites...

in a stuning journalistic coup the times informs me...stylishly...that the future is back...i was somewhat surprised since it had seemed to be coming at me day at a time in the standard fashion all along...this is the times we are talking however so it must have disappeared at some point and i have been clearly delusional about its continued presence...who kwew? the times seemingly...

the future may be reinstated but it seems a bit muted...the most opulent expression of women's fashion i detected in the pages was going for a paltry $13495...a severe price cut given some of the costs in previous issues...the pandemic may be at fault in this...its impact is everywhere...even among the style-setters and influencers...

you could raise the opulence stakes however simply by accessorizing that outfit with this wonderful wicker purse from hermes for a rock-bottom $7650...a steal for the chic brigade...and you thought you had all you needed...that forthcoming $1400 stimulus would make an ideal down payment on these necessities...bear that in mind...it is what the times ( and their advertisers who are on the editorial board ) want you to do

my utility company is worried sick about the postal service

i'd chalk it up to imagination if i weren't quite so familiar with the corporate mentality so instead i will call them rat bastards who either 1.) think i am a completely mindless prole or, 2.) are so narcissistically arrogant they are not mindful of exactly how transparent they are ( or, is tranparency the aim? nah... i'm running with arrogant...we just had four years of a ceo presidency and we know from hubris )...in either context they have sent me ( for the second time ) an email expressing their deep concern...except their real concern is a subtext glossed over by snazzy graphics...

we will all receive our "last bill" one fine day...mortality ( or, possibly, free energy ) is not what they are on about...they want to make sure i am current with what i owe them for helping to warm the planet ( even though i pay a premium to receive [they say] wind generated electricity )...they are concerned and want me to "take steps" because...

"customers have recently reported delayed bills and payments" because covid-19 is jacking around the postal service and we cannot have the overworked and underpaid carriers fucking up the cash flow...no sir, that will not do...

so, generously, they have offered me a "$5 gift card from amazon, wallmart, target, starbucks, and more" ( possibly from the recently demolished joe's crab shack...who knows ) if i enroll in paperless billing by the end of the month...that they would save $6.60 on poatage in a year and be up $1.60 for each enrollee in unstated...add in the adminstrative costs of paper bills and we see who wins here...true, there would be less transport costs involved which might give the carriers and the climate a smidgen of a break..i am inclined to believe it is the shareholders we are really concerned about here however...eventualy they will follow the lead of others and simply slam us all into paperless billing...wondering if all their customers are wired to the net in these increasingly troubled times.

what was the work for?

“at bottom, one now feels when confronted with work, and what is invariably meant by work is relentless industry from early till late, that such work is the best police, it keeps everybody in harness and powerfully obstructs the development of reason, of covetousness, of the desire for independence. for it uses up a tremendous amount of nervous energy and takes it away from reflection, brooding, dreaming, worry, love, and hatred; it always sets a small goal before one’s eyes and permits easy and regular satisfactions.” fred Nietzsche___________ “i am trying to consider the social significance of a plongeur’s life” “a slave, marcus cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. it does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good, for slaves at least. this sentiment still survives and it has piles up mountains of useless drudgery. i believe this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, fear of the mob. the mob ( the thought runs ) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if the had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think.” george orwell__________ “what was the work for?” wiliam t. vollmann__________ fred george and bill are certainly coming down in opposition to established wisdom in questioning the efficacy of work as it is now constructed…it is true that we all need material goods to survive and in the capitalist world that means we all have to have money and the accepted way ( the way that meets with positive social sanction ) is through work because then the hegemons can extract both labor and lucre from the proles as they mindlessly brand themselves with coke/pepsi ford/chevy and whatever else you’d care to name in the way of consumer goods and political buzzwords that pass for thought on public issues…nietzsche, orewell, and marcus cato all see work as an effective mechanism of control…let the proles exhaust themselves meeting those engineered desires and let them snipe ( figuratively and literally ) at one another, rather than us, over those branded divisions...the difference is that cato is one of the hegemons …which should be a line of evidence in favor of fred and george …who are asking you to stop and take a closer look at exactly whose favor this all works out for ( and here I should mention bob black’s outstanding essay “the abolition of work” from back in the reagan days…like bill vollmann he is putting the question in a broader context of the entire paradigm of work as it is now practiced...they both move beyond fred and george’s theme of control of social behavior and pretty much question work as a concept )…how much stuff do we really need and does it make us happy ( epicurus…you should have a look at his ideas too…the questioning how much material stuff we need and whether it generates happiness or buyer’s remorse is an old question ) or does it just make the oligarchs wealthier?