99 Capitalist things I did tonite
Attn Huffy Crew-
I haven't seen a new post in days, so I'm just gonna spout some truth, gettin it how I live you know I'm sayin? Tonight's activities were a perfect example of capitalism in action- just look hya: Tonight was my boy Selden's 22nd birthday, so we gotsta celebrate, kna mean, so we head down to the local watering hole in my 1995 Toyota Camry, capitalist possibility #1, available only through the neoliberal international trade agreements between the U.S. of Goddamn A. and the ol' Japanesa man, gettin a drink at the bar, capitalist possibility #'s 1-35, the different beer combinations available to me via my pay from capitalist institution #345677, Vintage Vinyl records St. Louis, plus some cake from some capitalist venture or another, plus headin' downtown but decline capitalist rational interest choice #454652384923, whether or not to pay $10 to attend crappy dance club, then off to establishment 9584358a midtown bar where we partook in a $5 beer bust and drank more beers than each according to his need, kna 'm sayin, then I went home to use the non-state-sponsored interweb to let all y'all know and all I gotsta say is DAMN~! do I love the joys of not driving my shitty workers' made car to the local Communist civic center for propaganda hour and rationed portion of allotted spirits available to a good Party member, so FUCK COMMUNISM and long live big business and local business, BOO YAH. Peaz.
I haven't seen a new post in days, so I'm just gonna spout some truth, gettin it how I live you know I'm sayin? Tonight's activities were a perfect example of capitalism in action- just look hya: Tonight was my boy Selden's 22nd birthday, so we gotsta celebrate, kna mean, so we head down to the local watering hole in my 1995 Toyota Camry, capitalist possibility #1, available only through the neoliberal international trade agreements between the U.S. of Goddamn A. and the ol' Japanesa man, gettin a drink at the bar, capitalist possibility #'s 1-35, the different beer combinations available to me via my pay from capitalist institution #345677, Vintage Vinyl records St. Louis, plus some cake from some capitalist venture or another, plus headin' downtown but decline capitalist rational interest choice #454652384923, whether or not to pay $10 to attend crappy dance club, then off to establishment 9584358a midtown bar where we partook in a $5 beer bust and drank more beers than each according to his need, kna 'm sayin, then I went home to use the non-state-sponsored interweb to let all y'all know and all I gotsta say is DAMN~! do I love the joys of not driving my shitty workers' made car to the local Communist civic center for propaganda hour and rationed portion of allotted spirits available to a good Party member, so FUCK COMMUNISM and long live big business and local business, BOO YAH. Peaz.
posted by to scranton at 2:15 AM
7 Comments:
Yo dog, I gossa give mad props to a brotha who knows how to pimp it when he goss it, but you knows I'm sayin it aint all straight ballin wit' capitalism, yo. Some people be mad opressed yo- we gotta at tha very least recanize that emiseration shit dog, it cold sucks! Havin the fly rides and dope threads is all cool homez, but is ignant to think that we gotta have that capitalism extractin a brother's surplus labor for him to have them sweet kicks. All I'm sayin is check it before you try and wreck it, them Stalinist fools was trippin from day one, but that ain't mean that theys' all bad, we just gossa take matters out of the hands of the bureaucrats in any system, and that's the strait troof!
Speaking of capitalism, I just saw a rather entrepeneurial commercial for a spray known as "Urine Gone" which comes with a blacklight for finding hidden filth. roooiiiight.
Urine Gone (pronounced Uri-Nay Goh-Nay) is actually a traditional Japanese house spirit that cleans up after the pets of devout Shintoists.
Doesn't bottling it anger disrespect the ancient majicks it relies on?
(I'd make a real post but either I'm too dumb to figure it out or my non-huffy-crew-contributor status relegates me to this here comment box.)
365 ways the Culture Industry has owned me and people in my vicinity this week: a Horkheimer&Adorno style reply to Santron.
The reduction of marvelous sweater (prodcut #53216579) from an entirely reasonable price of $52 to a mind-blowingly-low post-anniversaryofoursavior'sbirth price of $16 necessitated immediate purchase in Milwaukee. The victim, codenamed "mother," Consumer #2472, swears that she has too much shite ('tis true) and will therefore give to charity/throw out one old sweater for each new sweater purchased. The purchase of these sweaters somehow provided consumer #2472 with some small amount of happiness. Lest this be taken as simply a pathological issue pertaining to a single individual, it should be stated that Consumer #2473, whom I shall call "aunt" for stylistic purposes, partook in a similar holiday glee. Also purchased were some pants, though "mother" and "aunt" were at the time already wearing some.
In fact, bo (phew, close call, 2472 just peeked over my shoulder) both Consumers seem to be of the opinion that there is a link between these purchases and happiness, and feel obliged to bombard me with items like socks (#5546, size 12) and cutesy cards with penguins in hats throwing snowballs at each other (prodcut #s 994324-994368). yes, there 44 different varieties. probably more. the holiday season has created not only a desire to receive loads of loot, but even a need to distribute said loot to others as a means of expressing affection. I'm fen to vomit.
Of course, I played my part in the scenario as well. I consented to be dragged to the bookstore and I half-grudgingly allowed the parents to purchase a book for me (Fernando Pessoa - The Book of Disquiet), knowing that I could have found a used copy for half the price on ebay. Scarily, that's just how the Culture Industry essay ends: its ultimate victory lies in the fact that even those who see through it play along.
I mean, I hope y'all get what I be try'na say: the exuberance of Scantron may be moderately unwarranted.
Welcome, Mike! I'm diggin the "Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones circa 1966" look you're sporting in your picture. Of course my exuberance is unwarranted; I need only purchase a capitalista beer for $4 to feel utter disgust with myself.
I'm not sure how I feel about "Culture Industry." It's definitely bigger and more encompassing now more than ever, but is it so new or different? People in every culture are told how to talk, dress, express themselves, and convey emotions. For the Greeks, the models offered by Homeric heroes and Pindarian odes were the ideal. For them, even more than ourselves, I think, the elite were expected to perform in very specific ways; there were rituals for talking to equals and lessers, sacrificing, dressing, exercising, etc. Nowadays we stress "diversity," which admittedly usually means the diversity to drink organic Asian tea in your Benetton sweater while driving a foreign made car listening to Bulgarian folk music. But there's an emphasis, however suppressed or bound up in the wheels of the system itself, to be "different," even if that difference is always a reflection of an available paradigm anyway and true originality is impossible. It's a tricky question, obviously, but again, is the situation so *new*? And do you think we're more or less equipped to deal with the culture industry, thanks to philosophy, compared to its previous "suckers"? One would hope. Now excuse me, I've got to go make a note on my Blackberry to make an appointment with my dentist for a whitening procedure!
Yup, I largely agree with your doubts about the Culture Industry - I have a very tough time thinking of an era when such a system wasn't present. Horkheimer and Adorno, though, would agree with this. There is another essay (I'm pretty sure I haven't read it) in Dialectic of Enlightenment that asserts that domination has been around since Homeric times and even somehow implicates Odysseus. I don't know much else about it, except that H&A, a bit like Foucault, don't think nostalgia can provide much of an answer. For them, every "enlightened" attempt to understand and manipulate our surroundings, even early animism, risks domination and some sort of dehumanization.
I think an even harder question is whether it's possible to imagine a future society without a Culture Industry. This ties into your last point about whether or not we philosophers are more conscious and hence better prepared than our predecessors - can we find a solution? What would a "better" economy? It seems like we need a hulk of an economic system to keep driving material prosperity, and any system like that will largely ignore or even control certain aspects of an individual's life.
(I wasn't done, but I've got to go partake in some festivities)
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