Reposted by Request
On Our Noble Trade
20 Free Aphorisms
Provided as a Public Service
By Wealth Bondage
For a Panel on Genre, Blogging and Brands
Digital Genres Conference
University of Chicago
May, 2003
*****
Version 1.0 Unexpurgated Subect to Negotiation with the Sponsors
*****
1. Do Brands Exist?
I am the utterance of my name.
-"Thunder, Perfect Mind"
Quiz:
Which of the following exist?
On the Reality of Brands
Some Christians will not celebrate Halloween, recognizing in it a Pagan Festival. Yet on Christmas the child receives a baseball cap, shirt, shorts, under shorts, and athletic shoes, each emblazoned with a mystic symbol. Fearing demons, we sacrifice our children to brands.
Cassandra's Choice
Apollo gave Cassandra a choice: Either a dead language with tens of thousands of words, and a vast unread literature, or a living language with 300 words and television. She chose living language to make herself understood as she railed against the media.
Flesch Scores
Editors test copy against lists of words in common usage. Altogether there are 3,000 non-elitist words, but 2,000 are brand names and 700 are names of celebrities.
Being (capital B)
Methane from the dump, flickering flames, word magic. (Heidegger, et. al.)
Exorcism
The girl convulsed. From her throat leaped a rabbit, a mouse, a bear, a tuna, a starfish, a sheaf of wheat, a lightning bolt, a twisted cross, a spinning globe, a sailboat, and a thousand other signs and portents of the end. Without demons, she was without volition and wept ceaselessly for their return.
2. Imitatio Christi
Apparently, he hangs there to advertise his loin cloth.
3. Adam & Eve
Adam and Eve, wearing aprons and bow-ties, tend the garden section. Eve (her name is on her name tag) applies a little spritz to keep the cucumbers cool. Adam walks the aisles with a sticker gun, labeling every apple. What do the stickers say? Halcyon Farms Fresh? No, in tiny letters: Eat and be as gods!
4. On Pedophilia
The Last Philosopher has come and gone, taking bows long after the theater was empty. God has struck his tent, or so the posters say. What, then, is or was the last sin? Well, there is pedophilia. All else is a consumer preference: The stripper, the transsexual, addict, self-mutilator, fencer of stolen goods, all engage the empathy of the talk show host. Over time, guests and hosts change places. Between stints in politics, prison, or the pulpit, they take turns broadcasting from the madhouse, the bordello, from the hospital during the birth of their own child, or from the sewer in pursuit of lost treasure
"Right, but why this taboo, or alleged taboo, against sex with children?" "Hold the thought, Jeri, We'll be back after this."
You peep timidly from your window. A pedophile is loose in your neighborhood? Worse: He is loose in your home. The pedophile knows your children. They wear his logo on their shirts, their shoes, their caps. They plead for his name on their underwear. They fall asleep hugging his mascot. They croon his name in the shower. They dream his face in their sleep.
Solidarity, isn't that a brand name? Truth? A cigarette? Life, a breakfast cereal? Ecstasy, a drug. Dependable, an adult diaper.
American Heritage, a magazine or is it a think tank? Obsession, a perfume. Caress, a soap. Modesty, a tampon. Trustworthy, a line of lawn mowers. So why shouldn't Poetry be a lie against time that endures?
5. Public Goods
Air, water, also, language, honor, mutual understanding, literature, temperance, and trust. An ecosystem. "Still, no water is wholly pure," said s/he pissing in the well.
6. The Faces on TV
For those with eyes to see, the faces on television are daily more and more transparent. The speaker's face shows through, as if through a latex mask. The lies are ever more perfunctory. Newscasters pitch soap in their spare time. Spin doctors rate one another on technique. A Government spokesperson writes a book exposing his own duplicity, for which he is awarded an advance of $2.3 million and the anchor chair at a major network. His predecessor drags his lizard face before the cameras to endorse a corporation whose executives are in jail. An addict hosts a show on Business Ethics. Hungry men carry sacks of lies in wheelbarrows, hoping to trade them for a crust of bread.
7. The Daughters of Memory
Advertising, like poetry, is the daughter of memory. For every brand created an English word dies. The Eskimo is said to have 40 words for snow. We have 40 brands of coffee, automobiles, perfume; 40 ways to say: celebrity.
8. Jesus Watches TV with the Kids
Jesus said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me." Then and now, the children have always been his best audience. Before they can read and write, the Gospels and the Parables have entered their hearts for a lifetime, simply by hearing them spoken, like bedtime stories. The only modern equivalent would be the Disney Channel, though the business plan may be different.
9. Brand Builder’s Boast
Where God was, there Brands shall be!
10. Abraham & Isaac
He would slay his own son, but awaits the sign on the tele-prompter.
11. Bearing Witness
Truth is a word without a friend. To Pilate's question, "What is truth?" we make the gesture of the open palms. Truth could be coherence of an ideology - a lie in accordance with a fixed convention serving power (Nietzsche). Truth could be correspondence to fact - but what is a fact? asked Pilate, dipping his hands in the silver bowl. Truth can also be bearing witness.
12. Wheat and Tares
When weeds choke the wheat, and spread from field to field, the Brand Builder's work is complete.
13. Weapons of Mass Instruction
FOX, CNN, Time
14. Moment of Truth
The martyr bears witness in silence. Zeno recites paradoxes. Why seek truth when we cannot bear the little we have?
15. Career Limiting Move
The Romans had a slave stand behind the conquering general as he rode in his chariot through the streets in triumph. "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal." Today only an inmate from Death Row would take a comparable job with a CEO – or a President.
16. Hangman’s Dance
They hang one another upon command.
17. Civility
Outside the studio Quakers hold midnight vigils as the moderator is skinned alive.
18. Judas – Why?
Why, since the price had been paid, and the check had cleared, and someone else would have done it if he hadn't, and since it all would work out for the best in any case, and the victim was practically asking for it, why, I wonder, did Judas hang himself in a horse collar? (If this were a joke, the answer would be, "Because he couldn't find a rope.")
19. Spiritual Healing: Our Noble Trade
The Lesson
The world came home drunk last night. Tattooed on her posteriors were Self and Esteem. To these, as they clench and flinch, the Satirist applies the corrective lash.
The Healer's Tools
The knife, cauterizing iron, leeches, emetics, a sponge, and a wooden table. Why is the state of the art still so primitive? Because the infection is resistant to modern antibiotics. A poultice of maggots, the Roman remedy, is still the best.
The Great Festival
The wineskin holds wine at dawn, blood by nightfall.
The Laughing Animal
Darwin shows us pictures of the dog, smiling and snarling. The facial gesture is the same.
Alibis
To delight and instruct. To punish, to purge, to heal. So many evasions, for all of recorded history. Yet always the dance, the knife, and the goat.
20. Bringing Fiction to Justice
Some day The Happy Tutor will be brought to justice by those in business suits, clerical garb, academic regalia, black judicial robes, or the battle fatigues of Homeland Security. But they must catch him first.
To bring fiction to justice, you must first do justice to fiction.
*****
About the Author
The Happy Tutor
The Happy Tutor is founder of the Dallas-based Wealth Bondage, dedicated to delighting and instructing persons of wealth.
On Origins
Orphaned at an early age. The Happy Tutor was raised by Jesuits who taught him to achieve spiritual enlightenment through the mortification of the flesh. Running away at age 11, The Tutor is entirely self-educated, having mastered literature and philosophy by scavenging text books left in the dumpster behind the local High School.
Quotation
"When I was a kid roaming the streets, I didn't have any money to go to the movies like the rich kids. So I used to go down to the city dump on Saturday nights and shoot rats with a .22. That was the beginning of my interest in giving back to Society."
Recent Comments