This is probably the best straight out rant I've ever read.
read more to check it out.

for some reason, a long time ago, back when I imported this into WordPress, I lost the original text. I found it again. I long ago lost the slashdot URL, but it was by an AC anyway...

Re:That's nice. Hope you don't love slashdot...
by Anonymous Coward on Fri Mar 01, '02 10:14 AM (Score:5, Interesting)
(#3091399)

I've been targeted right out of the market.

I've had it. I can't take any more advertising. Television, radio,
magazines, billboards, even the Internet for Christ's sake. Everywhere. Why
do they keep targeting me? I never did anything to them. I don't even buy
anything! They're wasting their time! Fast food makes me feel like shit,
soft drinks make me dizzy, candy is disgusting, chips make my stomach hurt,
I don't smoke, and any band that has ever been advertised anywhere sucks
unequivocally. I eat tortillas and vegetables, I drink tap water. I ride my
$40 bike for entertainment. I buy a new pair of Dickies at the army navy
store every year and I get all my other clothes at Costco in 3-packs. My car
works fine, I use my Internet connection for long distance, I've had the
same boots for three years and re-sole them when they wear out. As far as
booze goes, well, as long as it's wetŠŠ.

So why do they keep attacking me? Why are they filling every square inch of
every available space in my life? Above urinals, on concert tickets,
underneath the ice at hockey games, on blimps, in video games, as props in
movies, plugs in rap songs, on shitty Web Sites (No, I will not visit your
motherfucking sponsor. If you're not in it for the love, and you can't
figure out any better way to pay for your site than by slapping some ugly,
corrupted banner across the top of your pathetic work, then fucking close up
shop, kill yourself, and leave the Web to non-polluters). They'd advertise
on the backs of my eyelids if they could get away with it, and I can't hack
it anymore. They win. I lose. They succeeded. I failed. Like Brian Wilson, I
just wasn't built for these times. I fold. Here are all my cards. Keep the
pot, keep my ante, keep the goddamn jacket on the back of my chair for all I
care, I can get another at Costco. I'll be out in the parking lot getting
drunk and yelling at cute girls because I can no longer stand the taste of
tentacles. Marketing has poisoned everything worthwhile under the sun, so
I'm giving it all up. Everything.

But the way I figure it, there's no real loss. I've seen all of the episodes
of the Simpsons 200 times each. Most of the good writing was done 100 years
ago. I haven't listened to FM radio in years. I could play all my records
beginning to end alphabetically and I'd be 76 years old when I got to the
Zeni Geva. Online culture is a fucking yawn, only good for buying stuffed
goats on Ebay and getting cracked copies of $1000 software. Movies always
end up at the 99 cent video store across the street eventually, and you can
fast forward through those commercials. My girlie's cute and the corner bar
has Pabst on tap. What else matters?

True, by shutting myself off to everything, I'm probably limiting my future
potential as a 'community building' or 'bleeding edge' cog in someone's
nightmarish vision of Internet profitability, but fuck, a simple read
through my writing should've cured that anyway (Note to potential employers:
The bidding starts at $120,000 a year with full dental).

So I'm out. No more.

I just feel bad for those of you I'm leaving behind. You'll be wearing your
Slave Labor Nikes, sweating under a Third World Vest, listening to Everqueer
or Fratboy Slim, your hair styled stupidly with gasoline and aborted pig
placentas, trying to choke down a Double Meat Fuck Splattered Cow Testicles
On The Slaughterhouse Floor Pus Coagulated Lactacious Secretion Yellow Dye
#2 Deluxe. Man, will you be looking dumb. It makes me want to cry. You poor,
oversugared demographic you. You're filling your apartments, your bodies,
and your minds with useless junk. You stagger under your own weight,
throwing money in random directions until you collapse and die, buried by a
bunch of people who you failed to create meaningful human bonds with, who
forget about you on the way home from the funeral.

Maybe I'm just oversensitive, but I actually feel those fingers reaching out
at me - cute little girl fingers, feeling at my face like a bind man,
pulling at the loose threads all over my brain, trying to find a sensitive
one, one that tweaks me. Desires to be successful, attractive to the
opposite sex, spiritually satiated, or conversely, the fears of disease,
dismemberment, of being outcast, of repressed homosexual desires. Herd
mentality as dictated by herd mentality. A gas mask of soiled wool, worn in
a steaming shower of chlorinated pond water. A lumbering culture created by
profit motive, existing as window dressing to disguise the brutal cynicism
of the architects, the brassy checks and balances of accountants bleating
commands to the flunky tastemakers on the production line. The subversion of
anything subverting. The conversion of something dangerous into something
profitable. The gutting of the lion and the championing of the taxidermist.
And the puffy vests, my god, the puffy vestsŠŠ..

I give it one more shot.

I hit that little "on" button, and immediately this little red dot appears
on my forehead. I feel the barrel rising on the other side of the glass as
some powersuited executive attempts to get me in his sights. His scope is
the best money can buy, but my nausea and skittishness mark me as difficult
prey. I make a sprawling leap over a pile of books, spilling a glass of wine
and sending my cats scattering. The TV takes a shot at me. It misses, but
after the smoke clears, there's a shimmering can of Pepsi on the coffee
table, seductively held by a well manicured (but severed) hand. Then the
Taco Bell dog is outside, scratching at my window, singing "That's Amore",
the secret code that alerts Col. Sanders and Ronald McDonald to get their
tumor inducing grease guns at the ready. "We have a resistor! Alert Cap'n
Crunch and Mrs. Butterworth. Tell Hogan to pull that Subaru around!" And
then, as the entire posse of 1-800-COLLECT goons attempt to joke their way
through the front door, a helmeted uberyouth does a backflip on rollerblades
against the window, almost crushing the Taco dog, thankfully getting tangled
in the iron jungle of security bars designed for such a moment. The severed
Pepsi hand launches itself across the room onto the stereo, turns it to
HOTROCK 99.5 FM and starts dancing suggestively on the turntable. Warm,
gooey songs ooze from the speakers, blurring the lines between commercial
and product, product and art. The walls are running with honey, blood, and
Gatorade. Limp Bizkit tries to sign me up for the Rap Metal MasterCard, but
is outvolumed by a chorus of creepy NY Gap models, dead eyed and Children of
the Damned style, singing nostalgic 80s songs with cool detachment, trying
to sell me vests. Close inspection reveals UPC codes on the backs of their
beautiful necks and a legion of bulimic girls behind them, mascara mixing
with puke on ten thousand toilet bowls. Budweiser frogs are crawling out of
the toilet bowls. A one-eyed, mutilated Asian girl holds a pair of new
Levi's against the window with a thin, purple arm and starts screeching
"It's a Small World After All" at the top of her lungs. Magic, The Old Navy
dog, is sniffing butts with the Taco Bell dog, who had since bit the Asian
girl on the leg and now yelling something about Gordidas. A waifish beauty
suddenly appears on my bed, vying for my attention, trying to talk me into a
new car, her hand slowly unbuttoning her blouse, batting her doe-ishly brown
eyes, "C'mon Mark. It's only a test drive. No one ever has to know."

Realizing my one escape, I yank my battered wallet out of my back pocket and
pull out a twenty dollar bill. The entire scene freezes. All eyes are
transfixed to the damp, smelly piece of paper. Andrew Jackson snickers and
you can almost smell the cannibalized Indian on his breath. A miraculous
cross breeze flows through my apartment, and I let the money go. It catches
an upward draft, a hot air thermal, and is gone out the window.

And then, something even stranger happens. The spokespeople, animals,
models, body parts, and corporate whores all disappear in a anti-climactic
'puff' of yellow smoke, leaving a slight smell of perfumed intestine
twisting through the air. My twenty freezes in mid flight about thirty feet
above the ground. A helicopter drops out of the sky, and lowers a rope down
to the cash. A man in a business suit slides down the rope, commando style,
and captures the money in his mouth, gives a contemptuous snort, mumbling
something like "sucker" under his breath. And then the helicopter is gone,
vanishing somewhere behind the radio towers spiking the top of Queen Anne
Hill. Everything is quiet again.

I didn't just turn that TV off. I unplugged the motherfucker.


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Published

03 March 2002