the great invention

january one. aaah, doesn't that just sound groovy baby?

ok ok. my audience of three neeeeeds to know. about the ass. ahem. last night my ass was soooooooooo tight...
; j

more on that later.

i'm a little bit freaked out about this subculture called "cutters." i have heard of it, i have friends whose kids know kids who do it, i have friends whose kids do it, i have a lot of fear for those kids and those parents, but especially especially i have fear for those of us who walk around saying things are worse now than they ever were.

i ask you: in what way?

maybe i'm a pessimist. maybe i'm a dreamer. maybe i think that things are always worse now than before because we ourselves--the big I--are in the middle of it now, and the "t-h-I-n-g-s" seem so much more real b/c "I" am in the middle of them.

i used to say that the u.s. was founded by a bunch of businessmen. i have in the last week decided that the u.s. was founded by a bunch of marketers. the land of the pioneer marketers. we were born to sell. stuff. dreams. ideas. willy lowman is a microcosm of the whole shibang. bear with me here:

1492: well, looky looky... how do we get our hands on this dope prop-er-tee? the grandfather of spin
1776: bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses... breaking the muthafuckin mold, feggettaboutit it's so good spin
1865: 40 acres and a mule! heavy-handed spin
1866: land granted through 40 acres and a mule rule rescinded! double wheeling-triple dealing sinister spin

and on it goes. aaaaaaaaall marketing. we market the world. wizard of oz: america. author: american. frank baum. born in...where else...new york. actual first name: lyman. but who the hell'd read anything about anything (except chemistry or physics) authored by someone named lyman. oh no. he marketed himself with his middle name: frank. much cooler frank. frank baum. dropped lyman like it never existed. and really, here we are, 2005. there's no such person as lyman baum s far as the public is concerned, uh-uh. nossirree.

need i say more?

1952: the first tv dinner

according to researchers who care about such things,
"
The TV dinner got its start because of a product surplus. C.A. Swanson & Sons of Omaha, Neb., had too many turkeys and leased 10 refrigerated boxcars to hold all the meat. The refrigeration units only worked when the cars were in motion so trains had to keep hauling them between Omaha and the East. Determined to put an end to the problem, the Swanson brothers told their sales staff to find a new market for turkey. Up until that time, most turkey meat was sold around Thanksgiving.
"

don't even get me started on the assembly line and mass production, fruit-flavored vodka and in-car television sets.

we, my friends, are the progeny and the begetters of the greatest marketers on the planet. step right up and see what it'll getcha...

cutters, writers, automatic garbage disposals. the next big thing. oh, maybe even people who can communicate these ideas to each other. maybe even people who can say to their kids: "baby, this funnylookin walking corpse of a man mick jagger once sang beautifully, 'you can't always get whatchoo want but choomightfind you get whatchoo need.'"

aaaaaaaaaaw yeaaaaaah. now that. that's an invention worth marketing.