End of Crohn's Log

I decided it wasn't important enough to post about anymore, or that I shouldn't be thinking about it as important enough to post about anymore. So I'm not going to post anymore about it. I'll just live it.

NORTH KOREAN CENTRIFUGES

According to sources familiar with the matter, “an unnamed American academic who has now been named publicly, because he spoke out–a Mr. Hecker—has visited a North Korean nuclear site and found 'a surprising number of modern uranium enrichment centrifuges. What I expected was not what I found; likewise what I found was not what I expected. I was pretty sure what to expect.'” When contacted by the BBC, Mr. Hecker could not be reached for comment. Messages were left at both his residence and his office, and likewise two letters were not responded to, despite their being sent Royal Mail “Signature Required” AirSure™ with 2.85GBP added for Assured Delivery Confirmation™.  According to sources familiar with the Royal Mail AirSure™ and Assured Delivery Confirmation Service ™, this is surprising, as the Royal Mail service handles these requests all the time and is actually quite proficient in the handling of all types of envelopes and boxes, large and small. According to sources familiar with the matter, any size box can really be sent anywhere in the world with a delivery confirmation. The BBC did indeed obtain such delivery confirmation, but at this time has still not received a response from Mr. Hecker as of the publishing date of this article. Most probably, according to sources familiar with the matter, he did not use Royal Mail AirSure ™ to write back to us, and as a result the BBC has still not received his response. “These centrifuges looked modern,” stated Mr. Hecker in his statement. “They were shiny. I believe they were trying to send a message. A message to me personally, of course, but also to the West in general. I believe that their message was that they have modern uranium enrichment equipment. When I asked if they were trying to send a message to the West that they had modern uranium enrichment equipment, they said the West can think whatever it wants about their modern uranium enrichment equipment. But I don't believe them. I think there was a message in there somewhere.” According to sources familiar with the matter, the most likely message was that they wanted food to feed their starving people and fuel to fuel their working power plants and machines, as their centrifuges, while surprisingly shiny, have still not added up to a full-fledged working nuclear powered electric plant. President Obama released a statement himself, stating in that statement that “he will not give oil to prevent a nuclear bomb from being made unless North Korea first commits to not building a nuclear bomb. Neither will I give food, such as wheat or rice.” According to sources familiar with the matter, this has been America's policy for the last twenty years. It is unclear whether North Korea knows about this policy or not, according to sources familiar with the matter. As of this date it is not possible to send a letter requesting further details to North Korea using Royal Mail “Signature Required” AirSure™ with 2.85GBP added for Assured Delivery Confirmation™, and so we could not obtain confirmation from the North Koreans about anything.

Random Photography

1.  Set digital camera settings to automatic--as automatic as possible.  Set timer to take picture automatically.
2.  Throw camera in air two seconds before timer goes off, letting camera take a picture of whatever it wants.
3.  Catch it before it breaks on the ground (barely a success).

EMBARRASSMENT

Discomfort is our friend, we were thinking. I was talking this over with my friend Gabe the other day. We need discomfort in order to be happy. In order to be happy we always need to feel pressure, otherwise we stagnate and die almost immediately. Without projects, without goals (broadly conceived), I stated, we die an almost instant death. And projects and goals (broadly conceived) make us squirm and actually hurt, they cause us suffering. But not all goals and projects (broadly conceived) count as real goals and projects, I hastened to add. Most just fill time, which is itself a worthy goal but not an honorable one, I added. Honor is important to how we spend our time, I told him while drinking coffee in my apartment. We have to have honor and believe in what we're doing, a certain pride that surrounds the edges of our actions and duties, a certain righteousness without which we're dead, really quite dead. We'd be nothing, I stated, in fact usually we're nothing and only sometimes we're something. All these concepts, I said, are interconnected. He agreed, but responded that our projects and goals vary so much in size and content that there's no way to have a standard set—I interrupted him here, perhaps a it's a defect of mine that I interrupt and finish sentences. Of course there's a standard set, I said, you have to do what's honorable and this is always changing, we're speaking pure generalities, I said, about individual goals and projects, but they always have to have a standard set. Of what, he asked. A standard set of what, he asked. I replied a standard set of methods, of ways of doing things, whether we're doing dishes and doing laundry or writing a novel, everything is the same; the how (I emphasized the word) is the most important part, there's always a way of doing everything, everything needs to be done in a certain way and only in a certain way, though technically there are an infinite number ways of doing everything. But really there's only one way. I said all this while drinking too much coffee and repeatedly getting up to change the record, which was an old, relatively bad Talking Heads album. This certain way is the only way to guarantee that something is done in a real way and not an unreal way, I said while mostly focusing my attention on the music. He responded that he didn't agree, that I was exaggerating and that he didn't understand a word I was saying. I responded that I was an automaton, a clockwork person, and any action I take has to be a certain way otherwise it's just automatic. He shook his head in disbelief, and then, of course, I started to question myself, I think, I started to think I had really said too much too quickly. I immediately felt embarrassed, which was a mixture of both feeling like I said too much to someone I didn't know and also like I said too much to someone I did know, both of which are embarrassing and aren't tolerable. To say too much to someone you know is too change everything, I thought to myself; to say too much to someone you don't know is to disregard the relationship, to forget it and destroy it quickly. It's a mixture of these two feelings that I experienced, which is basically what embarrassment is, a not-going-far-enough mixed together with a going-too-far at the same time. Embarrassment is a not-going-far-enough and a going-too-far at the same time. But then, I thought, maybe sharing too much is good. I asked Gabe if sharing too much is a good thing and he just gazed at me with his coffee steaming up in front of his face, both hands clutching the mug. Obviously I said nothing, and then I thought I'd really done it. Everything was shot. His eyes glazed over and I asked him about the Talking Heads album, I realized it was late and I had to work, and nothing more came of the conversation except more discomfort and trouble falling asleep.

Scenes from the Future: Komar and Melamid

Western Modernism and Russian Stalinism were projects that demanded a denial of the past, a constant movement towards an ideal future. But the past cannot be denied. Like the repressed it always returns…


It is against this somber background Komar and Melamid’s penchant for parody and irony should be seen. It is a device, a way of combating the sense of tragedy. They quote Kierkegaard: “In irony, the subject is negatively free, free from the shackles which in reality restrain him so firmly.” Irony provides a provisional release from tragedy. At the same time it eats away at rhetoric, hypocrisy, and idealization. It corrodes myths, old and new. In his brilliant and path-breaking essay from the late fifties, “On Socialist Realism,” Sinyavsky wrote that “irony is the laughter of the superfluous man who derides himself and everything sacred in the world. Irony is the faithful companion of unbelief and doubt: it vanishes as soon as there appears a faith that does not tolerate sacrilege”—whether, it might be added, that faith is in Stalinism, Old Russia, or free market Westernization. Irony may provide only a “negative freedom,” yet this peculiarly “accursed” Russian irony, this “disorder of the soul,”…is still the only passage out from an epoch of half-measures and half-truths, from a present mortgage to an imaginary future and a future dragged back by the weight of the past. There are no new miracles or new truths to be spun out of new dreams and new delusions. It is better to start the future over with the wormwood and the rust.

by Peter Wollen
 



Isn't it nice that irony finally gets the respect it deserves?  Am I being ironic?  What's cool is that even though this essay is talking about some Russian artists who came to America and how they functioned here, and it specifically mentions how they are dealing with Russia's past, it really works the same way with us here...I'll repeat what I already quoted to make the point:

Irony may provide only a “negative freedom,” yet this peculiarly “accursed” Russian irony, this “disorder of the soul,”…is still the only passage out from an epoch of half-measures and half-truths, from a present mortgage to an imaginary future and a future dragged back by the weight of the past. There are no new miracles or new truths to be spun out of new dreams and new delusions. It is better to start the future over with the wormwood and the rust.

What better description of our present could there be?  Seems particularly timely.

Crohn's Log 7 - Beer

Yeah, guilty. 3 beers.

Update, the next day: the parcel was a Tangerine Dream 2 LP concept album "Zeit." The second side skipped for fifteen minutes before I realized anything was wrong. That's how awesome this album is. (That's a joke, but it IS amazing in its own way.)

VANGELIS / AND THEN THE BALLET

VANGELIS

I'm here talking to Christian, a friend of a friend, and he's saying something about space. He's comparing special and general relativity. I listen silently with one hand clutching my beer. I'm drinking much faster than he is in a dirty shit-hole bar. My eyes wander to a cute girl. Anyway he's comparing the various thought experiments that Einstein did with those of a more pre-Einsteinian flavor, it wasn't Newton but someone else if I remember, but my brain is wrecked right now and the phrase, or rather just jumbled grouping of semi-technical and moderately redundant words, “relativistic Minkowski spacetime” should never, ever be remembered, I deliberately think to myself, and my god the words are bringing something back to me that I don't want to remember, won't. So I drink and speak, nodding my head. He's speaking and he wants to speak, and my actual friends are away smoking cigarettes, and I asked the questions. You can't ask questions and not get responses: it doesn't work that way. So I nod, my god. I hear something about a doctorate in physics and lots of other things and I don't care, really don't care in the slightest, so I'm pouncing at the opportunity to leave. But there's no exit. For all the pennies, dollars, bills, everything in the world—My God!—a Vangelis song comes on the jukebox and I almost jump up, just catching myself, and I'm saved! Vangelis. I have no idea what song this is but the syncopated 1970's junk is delightful, truly a blessing, something I've wanted forever. I listen to this at home, I think. The electronica is beautiful, I think, while Christian is talking now about the twin paradox, which I will have nothing to do with; all I really—and now I'm being directly honest as opposed to every other time when I say I'm being directly honest but I'm really dodging-- Already before meeting someone we're almost always lying to their faces, directly to their eyes and brains; likewise they're lying to us in exactly the same way. But right now I'm being direct and honest. All I want is... All I want is to be at home listening to Vangelis. This is as close as I can get to direct honesty. And my god, the beauty of it. The arpeggios are so absurd and over the top I can't even describe them, and the song titles are—I think the song on the jukebox is called “CONCEPT SPECIES MAN 4” or something similar. I really have no idea but Christian is gone, passed away, dead, deceased. No longer in passing and not mourned. He's still talking, of course, but Vangelis saved me.

AND THEN THE BALLET

In all actuality the whole game of smalltalk is fun. And I think I'm skilled at it. But this is dependent on so many things, most importantly the person I'm speaking at. I can usually find common ground quite easily and fake my way through a conversation. It happens all the time. At work, to bring in a directly applicable example, depending on our jobs, we all fake our way through multiple conversations everyday without the slightest trouble. Really we're all ballet dancers dancing in a minefield. We wonder what's ok to say; what's not ok to say we hold back, and when we need to ask for something from a superior we hold back again, hesitate, meditate, and half-think our way through the request. I say “half-think our way through the request” because nobody fully thinks through these things; this wondering of what's acceptable is always on the fringe of our awareness. Our comfort zones are somewhere else. But this isn't to say that the nuances of work conversations are dishonest or somehow degenerate just because they're only half thought. On the contrary, they might be our most honest and authentic conversations, I think. We're always slightly on our toes and by being on our toes we're forced to become honest with ourselves: we become aware of our motives and our desires for the conversation and this awareness forces upon us our real goals, desires, and acts. When I ask for a favor from a boss I have to phrase it in such a way that I can get the favor, but naturally we're all half-naturals at doing this and so, again naturally, we can't think completely consciously about how to say it. We half-know what to say. This half-knowing keeps us honest in our conversations by making us aware of our real intentions and our own real positions. But then I have a natural aversion to these nuances, I think; I have a habit of tripping up these ballets and actually speaking without even half-thinking. I think I do this deliberately. And so perhaps I'm either totally honest or totally dishonest in these situations, I'm not sure either label works. This is an open question, I think, whether I would call myself “honest” or “dishonest” during these conversations. Whereas I could consider myself honest because I don't half-think my way through these conversations and say only what I really mean, precisely that's what would make me dishonest because honesty in such a situation involves such a half-thinking-through, an actual person-to-person conversation within the game of work, and that's precisely what's lacking. And that's lacking because I don't half-think-through my conversations, I think again. So I can't be considered honest. I'm too naturally averse to these nuances. I refuse to play the game; something inside of me is laughing when it shouldn't be, I think as Vangelis ends. I've been thinking at this shit-hole bar about this, talking about this, and nobody understands what I'm saying and I'm not even drunk. Everybody understood everything until the switch from me being honest to being dishonest. I'm too honest and therefore I'm completely dishonest, I say as I pound my beer. To be honest at work involves at least an awareness of the ballet dance between coworkers—even a minimal, half-thinking awareness. In fact such a half-thinking might be preferable to a full-thinking, I think, because a full-thinking would be a pure awkwardness and a losing of all honesty (because a full-thinking would make us lose the ability to be honest or dishonest by making us question what our real intentions and acts actually are, therefore making them questionable and no longer justifiable). A full-thinking is like quitting the game when we need to keep playing—and then I think that I'm giving this whole line of thought quite the full-thinking it shouldn't be getting. But non-thinking, which is what I do by nature or through choice in these specific work situations, is likewise just as bad as full-thinking, because I might as well be an automaton who can't play the game. And that's my problem. The dance is important, I tell myself, sipping my beer.  I almost convince myself I need to change. The dance is real and makes both ourselves and the other real, I think, within the given situation. But somehow I don't want to dance. I'd rather play the wallflower. I think I'd rather sit this one out. I think this is a problem.

Crohn's Log 6 - Remicade

and by my goals (at the end), I mean,

1. stop drinking because it is bad for Remicade treatment (somewhat).
2. look for a part time job to save money (I didn't mean quit my job now - need full time job for benefits.  I like my job.)
3. keep making small good choices, like food-wise and such, that will benefit my recovery.

Also: Steve Zissou lookalike?

INSECURITY

Every loss of confidence is ultimately a step towards death. A step towards indecision. A step towards incapacitating, bedridden reflection. I think this as I stare at my newest painting, The Dot, which is a painting of a small black dot in the center of a rectangular piece of blue paper. I framed it and hung it on my wall and now I'm standing in front of it, staring at it, trying desperately to remember the instructions that go with the painting. There are instructions for looking at this painting but they are only written somewhere else, somewhere I can't find right now, so I'm half-making them up even though they were very specific, specifically designed to bring to light something cold and dark, something that we never think about. Something that is deep within us. A secret. It actually works. (I think.) But I can't find the damn instructions so I'm just staring at this damn dot. I've lost all confidence in this work and all my work as I stare at this dot, I think, I have no confidence in anything anymore. Not only have I lost all confidence but now I'm even telling myself that I've lost all confidence, and this can't be a good sign. It's one thing to just lose all your confidence; it's another to tell yourself that you're nothing, that you're finished, done, dead. In the first case at least you still have your pathetic self; in the second case you've lost even your pathetic self and created this commentator second-self, and this second self is standing there behind your first self laughing at the first's own inability and insecurity. But really you're performing both parts like a bad stage play. I think this while staring at the dot. I start to wonder what people think about while looking at paintings. Do they interpret them? Where are my instructions for this damn dot, I think to myself, these damn instructions need to be posted with the painting—I really don't understand why I didn't post them right up here next to the painting. I've lost my confidence, and while I was going to try to get some work done today now I realize that it's impossible, that I've lost all my confidence and that I'm slipping towards death, towards total incapacitation, which is really the same thing as death. The Dot, in fact, is precisely about this, I think, clicking my tongue and letting my eyes wander from the dot (but then quickly forcing them back to the dot in the center of the blue rectangle). The Dot was supposed to be about deciding to stare at the dot, telling yourself to stare at the dot, and thereby becoming aware that you are telling yourself to stare at the dot. I believe that this was what it was about. I've decided to stare at the dot. Now, who is staring at the dot? I am. There's the blue rectangle and there's the black dot in the middle. I'm staring at the dot. But now that I'm staring at the dot and now that I'm aware that I'm staring at the dot, who is giving the command to stare at the dot? I'm staring at the dot but somehow this second-self still seems to be there, commanding me to stare at the dot, but really I'm this second-self too, commanding myself to stare at the dot. The second self isn't laughing anymore. My eyes are darting and I'm being distracted but something is being dredged up from inside me. The dot is misshapen, I think, I didn't draw it very well with my sharpie, I think—but instantly I stop this line of thinking as I can't let myself be distracted by the aesthetic aspects of the work. The work is more important for it's phenomenological import. So I'm staring at this dot, and I've split myself into at least two people: he who commands and he who obeys. Yes! This is The Dot, I think. This is what I was supposed to realize, I think. My second-self is really myself, as is my first self, but this duality is deeply rooted and my two selves are inseparable. Any loss of confidence, I now think, would have to take into account this indivisible duality. Or at least think it through, and I will think it through, right now. Insecurity, indecision, and even bedridden reflection need to be reminded of my ability to act through my meditation on The Dot. Even if The Dot is not a major action (it is in fact a simple action), and even if it's an arbitrary action, we can see that The Dot can remind us of our ability to do in the face of insecurity, incapacitation, and bedridden reflection. I stare because I believe in my ability to do at all (because of my indivisible duality, which commands and obeys—but this command/obey relationship is really only metaphoric, we have to remind ourselves), I think, and my act proves my ability. The Dot is a savior. I must remind my loss of confidence that I can still act, that even though I feel my loss of confidence deeply, that I can still act, that even though I've basically become metaphorically bedridden (temporarily) due to my inflamed bowel, that I can still act. I think all this while staring at The Dot. I wonder where those instructions went. They must be somewhere. But then I wonder if I need them at all, or if I just needed to be reminded to listen to The Dot. What do people think when they look at paintings, I think again. Would anyone else have acted upon this painting in this way without a signpost pointing him or her in the right direction? Those instructions must be somewhere. I'll have to find them. I need to find them because I need to be reminded to actually listen, to be receptive. And I will find them. And I'll share them without anyone who needs to be reminded.

SEEKING

Seeking is harder than finding. I tell myself everyday that I need to clean parts of my apartment. Parts of my apartment are really quite clean all the time, but other parts are dirty and maybe even necessarily dirty. My bathroom is dirty but I always avoid cleaning it. My closet is full of stuff, “stuff” being the apt description of what's in my closet, really the only word that describes what's actually in there. A lot of clothes, games, sheets, books, Christmas lights, boxes of Christmas lights everywhere, Jesus Christ Christmas lights everywhere, practically filling up the place, if only I plugged in an outlet and turned them on they would glow brightly and burn through their boxes, I'm sure. And of course then start a blaze that would hollow out not only my apartment but the whole building, leaving nothing but scar tissue—really just a burned-out brick foundation in which people used to live, love, crafty, die, probably not give birth but maybe get pregnant. This scar tissue would remain for a winter or a year or however long it takes demolition crews to demolish a burned out brick building, possibly forever, but actually not long, as the land is worth quite a bit of money and I'm sure there are developers who would love to buy the property and put it back together. A profit motive. I imagine it would succeed, I think to myself as I search for my glasses, being completely unsuccessful in finding them. The capability is there: there's plenty of machinery and tools and manpower and money; like ants on an anthill they would swarm through the burned out building and, using shovels or perhaps diesel powered machines, plow away everything burned down by my mistake of turning on my Christmas lights in their boxes, I think, even as I look everywhere for my glasses. Where are they? My glasses not not anywhere on the floor, I think, I've looked everywhere, even under the bed. The proper method is to start from the ground up and then look everywhere, knowing that at some physical level one will always find one's desired object. So I've started at the ground and completed that portion of my search to no success, and then without even moving on to the second level, which is just above ground level—somewhere around a foot up, but possibly somewhat lower or higher (this method allows for deviance)--I've given up and now I just think about burned out scar tissue. Thankfully the blind don't need eyesight to think, I think as I sit down in my chair, half-tired and half-mad, impatient and inept in my search. I'm not blind but I can't see right, something's wrong: I'm either nearsighted or farsighted, I believe near-sighted, though at the moment in my impatience I'm only half-thinking this thought, so I can't really be sure whether I'm really nearsighted or farsighted because I can't form the thought, really I'm only thinking about the scar tissue that would result if I turned on my Christmas lights. Thinking about it so much, in fact, that I actually get up and stand in front of the boxes and pretend to turn the lights on, snapping my fingers and pretending to start the fire. I imagine leaving the building. I have no desire to burn my building down but I imagine the possibility of it happening. Fires are terrifying , or at least I imagine they are terrifying. I imagine this as I sit in my large red chair, one leg resting on an arm rest and both my arms grabbing this leg together, and then in one motion I actually pull myself up and over so that I am actually standing in front of the chair looking at it. And then I sit back down again, only this time in a normal position. Scar tissue amazes me for a second, and instantly I start to think again about the burned-out building—but these thoughts quickly turn to the scar tissue in my gut due to my inflamed bowel. Basically somebody turned the Christmas lights on inside me, I think, as if my colon were an apartment in a multi-apartment complex in which someone like myself lived and had no motivation to clean his little corner of the building. Or even to clean a little corner of a corner. So one day he turned on his Christmas lights and cooked the whole place, only this time there was no developer and no profit motive for rebuilding the property, even the healthcare system gave up rather quickly as he couldn't afford to pay and in fact even refused to pay. And so the scar tissue stood longer than expected, a year, a lifetime. A lifetime of scar tissue, I think, due to someone inside my gut turning on his Christmas lights hidden away within a cardboard box. But would this even start a fire, I question, and I'm tempted to turn everything on, light everything up, illuminate the darkness of these boxes and see if I even notice anything, let alone a fire that rips through the entirety of the building. But rather than do this I simply sit and think about various methods for finding my glasses, which are still missing. I simply sit. And think. And I don't know where they could be. I've gone over every inch of the floor, I think, and of course I've gone over every other obvious place. Seeking is harder than finding, I think. And not only for the pleasure of the find, because everyone loves to find something. Seeking is harder for more insidious reasons even if I can't explain it. Seeking is a crossing, but also a separation. Separation is hard if we have a desired object and we are separated from it, but seeking is a crossing towards this object, always hard in itself but harder still if this object is impossible to find and no method of search completes our crossing. In fact, because of the nature of my own search (I can't see without my glasses—quite the cliché), I can't even begin a cursory search of my apartment, even the clean parts. For all I know my glasses are lost in one of the parts of the apartment in which I cannot clean, cannot even imagine myself going into and cleaning. My god the thought is loathsome. And so again I sit in the red chair and think, arms grasping at my leg. And so method comes in here: we seek a method by which to understand how to even begin seeking, and my method is as good as any other method for seeking, I should think. Seeking is a trembling before the infinite, I think, but then I wonder what I mean by that and of course I'm overstepping my thoughts, so I get up from the red chair and go looking for my glasses. The scar tissue inside my body due to my inflamed bowel doesn't hurt, but it can hurt. Somebody turned the Christmas lights on and burnt the place down, I think, and now I have a dilapidated piece of real estate inside my bowel. One wonders about the future; one always anticipates the future. The possibility of developing this piece of land is grim. I think acceptance comes into play here but again, acceptance is impossible, it's infinite due to something more insidious than we've previously suspected. Seeking is harder than finding. Seeking is a trembling before the infinite and now I think I've made some sense of this senseless thought—I really quite like that red chair, I think. Everything is encrypted in images and metaphors and deciphering is only a waste of time. Encryption can protect us from people by helping us remain undecipherable. But really we're an open book (really we're documenting everything, it's plain to see). Really everything's there in front of us, presented to us, but most of the time we're too lazy to connect the pieces and really read what's written. Everyone who writes makes monstrous errors—and we must always remember when reading that, of course, and obviously, seeking is harder than finding.

How to Decorate an Apartment

You see, the point is to stare at the frame on the wall and wonder about what goes in it.  (Or why we frame pictures and things and put them on our walls to begin with.)  If you'd like, you can imagine something for my apartment, or what you'd like in your own apartment.  Sit and stare and imagine for a while and I promise this will do you well.

SICKNESS

A certain terror exists alongside sickness. I have never believed in the age of invincibility, the so-called “teenage years” when half-grown adults thought they could do anything. Dangerous or otherwise. And really, goals never existed either, or at least my goals were always vague, half developed hopes (really the word “desperations” would make more sense here). But regardless, always in the future: in fact we always live in the future, always to-do, never just doing, even as we are calmest we are really always anticipating everything, even sitting down staring at a tree is really already anticipating future glances at the very same tree. The very conditions of being calm, of absolute oblivion, are always anticipatory. Our life is conditioned purely on anticipation, on the very condition of having a future, all our acts precede from an anticipatory gesture, I think while my cat pisses on my furniture. I am currently taking thirty milligrams of steroids a day to help with my inflammatory bowel. And I am raging. Even being in my apartment destroys me. Knowing what time it is destroys me. I push my cat over with my index finger and he falls to his side but he's still pissing, just up in the air. He can't stop. I don't blame him but instantly my mood sours and I take a anti-anxiety pill. This won't help, I think as I wander around my apartment gathering things because I have to leave. At a certain point you have to leave where you are. This is not wisdom, just natural. I gather my laptop, various things: a pen, in case I feel like writing; more anxiety pills, because I know this night is shot, really, and shouldn't be excused, can't be excused, by anything. They're injecting me with experimental drugs, I think, and I know that it's possible I might get lymphoma and die, and yet a certain levity exists alongside sickness, as well as terror. That there is a future that I anticipate at all times really clinches this deal, really opens up the world for me (shake hands with the world—you're always meeting it for the first time). Anticipation allows the possibility of possibility, if that makes sense, I think while my cat has finally stopped pissing and my anti-anxiety drugs take effect. Anticipation allows terror to strike at the heart of the future, a real grim reaper; or it allows levity, a rather weak handshake, I think, a real wimper, a weak smile. What we need to focus on is that anticipation precedes along, reaching out a hand, and this hand must grasp hold of the other hand. A phenomenology of handshaking, really, is what we're after. We anticipate the gesture and grasp the hand, and through this grasping I make possible my relationship to the other. In business terms I close the deal or open the deal, whichever you prefer. But the very specific handshake that I come to experience is only possible because I am reaching out, which requires that I anticipate in advance the handshake itself as a possible handshake. And here we need to grasp a final point—that though we anticipate and use a handshake as a projected, possible gesture, we must always remember that the hand coming towards us is completely other. We must harmonize in some way with this other hand coming at us in front of a gray suit. Whether the handshake is a wimper or a winner, we don't have total control. Our gesture must always meet the world and so while anticipation can give us this gesture, and while in fact anticipation is required first and foremost, at some point we're left holding the hand of a pisser who just spent thirty minutes pretending to speak to us about credit history checks and the NHL Hockey League.

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, # 67

The satisfaction that no longer comes from using the commodities produced in abundance is now sought through recognition of their value as commodities. Consumers are filled with religious fervor for the sovereign freedom of commodities whose use has become an end in itself. Waves of enthusiasm for particular products are propagated by all the communications media. A film sparks a fashion craze; a magazine publicizes night spots which in turn spin off different lines of products. The proliferation of faddish gadgets reflects the fact that as the mass of commodities becomes increasingly absurd, absurdity itself becomes a commodity. Reified people proudly display the proofs of their intimacy with the commodity. Like the old religious fetishism, with its convulsionary raptures and miraculous cures, the fetishism of commodities generates its own moments of fervent exaltation. All this is useful for only one purpose: producing habitual submission.