101318 they were going to have this whole thing ehere first the plate appears, wobble wobble wobble thdthdthdthd plump on the down-lit table. then the voiceover would say “Bacon!” and the bacon would fall artfully down from above, kind of bounce a little, land perfectly arranged on the plate while tst tst tsss tst tst tsss tst tst tsss a jazz hi-hat would start up. then “Eggs!” and two perfectly fried crispy edged sunny side uip eggs would land on the plate. the cool bass line would start. Then “Toast!” and two grilled to perfection slices of sourdough would carom onto the plate. a quirky saxophone would punctuate the groove. butter melts, and The next thing the voiceover says would be “You!” -- but that’s when the ad director got fired, and there were no more notes. So the new ad director wasn’t sure what to do--wanted to complete the project, wanted to outlive everybody’s baleful stares of “you’ll never be as good as ----“ and “we all enjoyed ---- so much because we had a special rapport” and “it was so unfair that ---- got fired” and “i miss having sex with ---- in the utility closet”-- and so what we ended up with was, when the voiceover says, “You!”, a full grown, rubinesque (ok, slightly fat) pale-white, lumpy-assed, utterly naked, disgruntled mom type woman comes crashing down from above, facing away from the camera. her great wide naked ass smashes down on the plate, shattering it to bits. bits of the breakfast foods go flying but most of it is just buried, crushed, compressed, under that all-encompassing twin mounds of sedentary woman flesh. the music stops. This is how we sold fourteen million replacement spark plug kits in the first half of the superbowl. i don’t know. so there’s no wind. becalmed. we’re sitting here on the widest river in the universe, barely even bobbing up and down. our east-west-norht-south motion is virtually nil. there may be a few micrometers of motion in any one direction, but they’re cancelled out by micrometers of motion in any other direction. someone said there is no up or down in space, so the crew doesn’t even think to try that. we die. zombies eat our skeletons. the end. I don’t know. I have a blender. I have three books of diaries by a guy who was beloved by one of my favorite writers; i will probably never read them because i started the first one and was largely uninterested. in fact, i was profoundly bored. the point of view seems self-serving, an intellectually violent mixture of tentative and arrogant. Basically cold. Oh well. I have never enough money. Never a big enough stack of doggie dollars to pay for everything my kids want or ostensibly need. Some of the things I think they need are really just things I think I need to make myself look good as a parent. I have Netflix, Apple Music, light bulbs in the basement that stay on all night sometimes, bad insulation, heat, a whole bunch of phones that aren’t new anymore but still work, I don’t always get the newest phone, one of the phones just beeped at me so I can’t possibly concentrate on this anymore. It’s no joke to say we are dependent on “technology”. Isn’t it weird how that word “technology” has become synonymous with phones? That’s basically what people mean when they talk about the effects of “technology” on our lives. Well, they mean phones but they also mean constant connection, text (a very specific type of connection that is often not really connection), surveillance, automation, conveniences that serve to further separate people into classes of labor vs. abstract intellectual privilege vs. none of the above (aka rich for the sake of rich),. Maybe they also mean “artificial intelligence” and “augmented reality” but I don’t think too many people who talk in terms of “technology” as if it were something we needed to be metacognitively aware of really have much of an idea of what those are. Artificial intelligence? You mean instead of going to the doctor, a robot is going to show up at my door without being invited, undo my “smart” lock, help itself to some motor oil from my “smart” garage, burst into the shower while I’m singing for the invisible cameras, and give me a prostate exam while jerking me off to some porn that plays on the lcd screens that are the shower walls? Yeah, that’s pretty much it. And then my self-driving house will drive me to work where I will sit around all day expending electricity by burning up the cells of my brain trying to think of ways to get people to send more money to the presidential palace. I don’t know. Go back to bed. Hit snooze. Have some coffee. Rub your eyes. Take your kid to a thing. Walk around. Self-medicate. Sit in a cafe. Be kind of cranky. Be kind of nostalgic. Watch people. Feel the gentle weight of gravity pushing down on your shoulders like a reassuring blanket. Watch people. Drink up. Write something down on a digital napkin. Pack up all your shit. Smile at the people. Push the knobby old oaken door open and walk down the three steep steps. Have concluded nothing. Have changed nothing. Still have to go back to work trying to communicate with the next generation of serv0-bots. You’re supposed to tell them how to go to college and make a bunch of money. You’re supposed to tell them a bunch of stuff that you don’t fully understand and aren’t an expert in and aren’t sure you believe anyway. You’re supposed to tell them to write their essays like a hamburger, even though no one really actually writes that way in the real world. You’re supposed to tell them about the real world--oh wait. No you’re not. I mean, yes you are, but not the REAL real world. Haha, who would be foolish enough to tell the little darlings about that!? They’d cry themselves to sleep. Or not. Maybe they wouldn’t believe you because they know you’re just some brainwashed half blind adult who doesn’t really know anything anyway. Or even more likely, they’re probably not even listening to you. They’re doing something more interesting and visceral and immediate and deadly and revolutionary and sexy while you’re over on the little screen using “technology” to tell them that they should be pecking away at a keyboard instead. Or they’re just playing video games, isn’t that right? Isn’t that what they’re all doing? Playing video games and not thinking about the future? Oh, I actually kind of doubt that. They’re probably playing video games because they’ve thought about the future TOO GODAMneD much, and they figured out a long time ago that there’s a discrepancy between the real world they’ve sensed and can actually start to see with their own eyes now that they’re old enough to not be automatically bought off by ice cream and stories of an augmented reality, and the “real” world that douchefarts like you have been trying to sell them for years now, have been trying to sell them by pretending to understand “technology,” and they can see that your intelligence is artificial, friend. They’ve actually been through to the other side of the hastily thrown-up curtains. What, did you think they were just sitting there being perfectly obedient and playing video games while you were at “work”? They’ve seen the real world outside the climate controlled dome. They’ve seen the poisoned orange air. The rust covered ground. The dead weeds. The mournful howl of endless dry winds. The crumbling towers. The angry, bitter faces of the leaders as they scrimmage and bicker over the last remaining scraps of anything green, anything wet, anything still alive out there. They’ve seen the dead eyes, the void, the cruel sun, the little piles of bones bleaching out under the infinite toxic sky. And they’ve come back in here, shut the door behind them, sat down in the climate controlled, fully lit, air conditioned, augmented, artificial, automated, self-service, next-day-delivered world, and listened for a while to you telling them how to be responsible, how to look good on a resume, how to write your essays like a five fingered hand. how to curl those five fingers into a fist and pound down anyone who gets in your way. how to make it in the “real” world. as if you had any idea. that’s why they’re playing video games. cuz that’s all you or anyone else ever taught them how to do. it’s OK. you meant well. #pdp #mrsquiggles