Some thots are resistant to polishing

Dear diary,

If you’re a handyman or any type of contractor who repairs houses for a living, then ripping carpet out of a room maybe feels humdrum to you because it’s routine work; but imagine you’re just a regular stupid person like myself, & you rip up your carpet & tear it off the floor: you grab it by the corner & pull upwards, it releases its grip from the ground & exposes the scary subfloor beneath:

Don’t you wish you could see the world thru my eyes? The smallest task feels like an adventure.

If you were me, you’d never leave your home. For, what’s the use of going out into the street and joining the multitudes, getting hit with rubber bullets and sprayed with pepper spray and injured from tear gas canisters, when you could just stick to performing regular carpentry and yet feel like you’re experiencing the end of the world?

What are all these corporations that everyone’s protesting, by the way? Didn’t people formerly protest their government? (I mean to contrast the fact that aforetime it was the government that received backlash from the population whereas now it is the private corporations.) Back in the good old days, a mob would gather in front of the king’s residence and threaten to burn the place down. Then, after kings went extinct, representative aristocracies came into fashion, and they did a swell job of treating the people badly, so the people would rise up and gather outside the Parthenon contraption, which, according to the encyclopedia, is “the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally considered the zenith of the Doric order”. Yeah, so the masses of voters would gather outside of the Parthenon, and each individual would be holding a knife, and this mob would collectively thrust their blades into Caesar’s back. That’s how votes were cast, back in the day. And that title “Greco-Roman Caesar”, in case you’ve never heard of it, means the same thing that “hockey coach” means to a hockey team, or “dance instructor” means to a gang of ballerinas. It’s basically the person who gets murdered when the team is upset. Alternately, a mob might gather in front of a big hut with an onion dome, like they did in the days of the Russian Serviette — I’m talking about the Russia in my dreams now, not the real one: for I know practically nothing about the real Russia; that’s why I’m making stuff up about it for this paper here — and this mob would shout “Down with the Russian Serviette! We’re sick of choosing representatives to serve us; instead, we want businessmen to be appointed to govern us!” And the bureaucrats in the onion hut would peek out of its windows at the raging crowd and remark one to another, “Well it looks like our days are numbered. We can’t get any paperwork done with that angry mob chanting catchy slogans from nine to five daily. For those hours overlap our work shift. Therefore let us stand up and exit this building, all together, holding our hands high, to show the people that we’re unarmed: let us simply surrender. Or, if you would rather not greet them empty-handed, let us all wave little white flags. The idea is to convey the message nonverbally that the populace has nothing to fear from us, its bureaucrats, with regard to retaliation: on the contrary, we’re willing to roll over and play dead; so long as the revolution can transpire nonviolently.” (For the Russia of my dreams really knows how to get things done.)

I’m being too long-winded: I only intended to say something like: After the days of kings, when people revolted thus and so, during the days of kingless governments, people revolted otherwise, and here are a few examples of such revolts: the Parthenon, the Russian Onion Pub, and the U.S. White House. But I didn’t get to the White House because I ran out of fuel. So let me establish the last of these three illustrations, before moving on to the main subject of this entry: modern civil unrest.

The way that the citizens of the United States achieved their goals, when their appointed leadership left them dissatisfied, was similar to the case of the Russian bureaucrats: A vast multitude of people would gather together and march in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln, which is parked at the end of a spire on top of the White House. And the reason it’s called the White House (instead of, say, the Executive Mansion, or the King’s Quarters, or the Royal Harem, or Heaven’s Nucleus, or the Imperial Fortress, or the Place Where the Interns Offer Their Praise and Worship) is because power-mongers are partial to unprepossessing titles. Like when someone compliments your Robe of Many Colors, and you answer “Oh, this old thing?” as if it’s nothing special, when you can clearly see that your admirer is mad with jealousy. Sort of how “Department of Defense” sounds better than “Department of Offense” because the latter name, tho more accurate, would cause the populace to think twice before bombing innocents; whereas, when the bombs are perceived to be defending the homeland, the populace can assume that those innocents were probably extremely dangerous and most likely just about ready to attack. So we had to bomb them before they could make their move, cuz we’re smart. So it’s not even a lie, because we ARE defending our nation, albeit preemptively. It’s the same reason that Jesus killed so many passersby: he could tell that, if he did not strike first and wring their neck, they would maybe have lunged at him and tried to wrestle him to the ground. Lo, if Christ wouldn’t have been on his guard against the evil government of his day, he would’ve risked getting arrested on some trumped up charge. They might even have crucified him.

But back to the Second Coming, or rather the days just before Christ returned. Like I was saying, the king of the U.S. lives in the White House, and when the citizens are fed up with his style of governance, they put on gray flannel suits and silently march. They hold signs that declare their reason for marching, hence the silence. It is eerily effective, for it reminds one of the calm before the storm. All you can hear, from sea to sea, is the click and whirr of the television cameras, which are recording the event. (Audiovisual media are sacred to U.S. politics.)

But all these forms of protest are a whim of the past now. They’re like a daydream that, moments after waking, one begins to doubt even occurred. For our memory of history fades fast; that’s why I’m recording this info for the future. Yes, the times have now changed: Just as kings gave way to misrepresentative plutocracies, so this privileged class gave way to corporate personhood. Allow me to elaborate:

Consider how one single skin cell acts on its own: it just sits there obediently upon the slide of your microscope while you ogle its cytoplasm. Thus one cell alone is helpless; but if you fasten together a whole slew of such skin cells, you create a living organ: the epidermis, which is arguably the most important aspect of a human, as beauty is exclusively skin-deep. Now the same phenomenon governs the concept of personhood: One soul is nothing on its own; it’s basically just a worker bee, sitting at a computer inside a cubicle, like a hive-less honeycomb. Yet combine this single soul with a board of directors, and behold: a corporation comes to life. (He is risen indeed!) The advantage that a corporation has over a country or homeland is that it is not bound by borders. Corporations are multinational. If you’re a nation, you have to build a big beautiful wall to keep out dangers from the surrounding environment: this type of border wall is the first line of defense from external factors, such as the migrants from nearby nations, especially places that you’ve preemptively attacked. Much like skin, the border wall plays a key role in protecting one’s country against pathogens and loss of blood-money; it can also serve as a secondary sexual characteristic or camouflage. Take, for instance, that cartoon where the coyote repeatedly chases the roadrunner: in one iteration, the former paints upon a wall the image of a road extending beyond the horizon, employing techniques from perspective drawing such as the concept of the vanishing point, in an attempt to trick the latter into speeding straight at the bricks of the wall and dying from the impact. One presumes the coyote’s plan was to dine on the roadrunner, if he ever managed to trick him in this fashion, but only the beast itself knows what it is thinking. (And even this is debatable.) The roadrunner, however, instead of colliding with its physical surface, simply avoids the wall by dashing into the distance of its picture — seriously, I saw this with my own eyes. So a corporation is more like the roadrunner than the coyote, because the normal rules of reality don’t apply to it. If you legislate a trap with the intention of hindering a corporation, the corporation will just eat the bait from the trap and the trap will not spring: so you watch the corporation go meeping off into the future, care-free and well-fed. This is due to the fact that they have better lawyers.

Now we’ve reached the modern moment. Poor single individual souls are bound by spacetime and nations, and they’re forced to work every day for their basic necessities; whereas corporations, as just explained, are wholly transnational (that is: unhindered by love of country or any patriotic impulse or morality) plus super-real (that is: above the laws of reality; the opposite of sur-real, for corporations lack both creativity and imagination). Now recall that when the people hated their king, they engaged in civil disobedience, and the king resigned from leadership voluntarily. Then when the people wanted to overthrow their Aristocratic Taskmasters, they either chanted outside their offices, or stabbed the Executive Officer, or loitered in silence. But the modern multinational corporation remains impervious to these techniques. They’re more like a legion than a king, so there’s no single entity to depose; and their CEO and the board members are replaceable, so, even if you cut them off, the lizard just grows a brand new tail. But there’s still hope:

Despite the fact that corporations are devoid of an Achilles’ heel (thus no one can harm them or abolish them or even lessen the rate at which they spread evil), there is one course of action that an irate population can employ which offers at least a degree of satisfaction: that is, one can bug them. The problem is that they will kill any soul who bugs them; but if the citizenry can learn to accept this price, then fun might be had.

A deacon at the Baptist church once told me: Tho salvation is eternal, it nevertheless takes place in space and time: so there’s a point, a measurable moment, an actual date that can be circled on the calendar, during which the Lord Christ saved your individual soul: this is your spiritual birthday, the day that Jesus’ blood cleansed all your sins: so, happily ever after, you are saved from damnation. And he added: Now do not forget, tho your reception of this divine gift occurred during an instant that was temporal, the change itself is permanent; for you can never lose your salvation. Then this deacon wrote with his pen on a page in my Bible the date “Dec. 3, 2004”, since that was the moment I accepted Christ into my heart. Or maybe it was “Dec. 5, 2004” or a little later — I forget; for I don’t believe in Jesus anymore. (I sold my salvation for a shot of red pottage.) But I mention this concept because corporations are kinda the same. Corporations are also eternal. But, as William Blake always sez, in his Proverbs of Hell:

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

So here is what we can learn from my deacon’s wise words: Although transnational corporations are too big to be contained by time and space, they nonetheless must build their physical headquarters here on Earth, just like us lowly humans. So, vast sinister private banks and firms will own glass skyscrapers filled with gold furniture. And people can gather outside their metal doors, just like they used to gather before old Abe’s effigy on the White House’s bell tower. Look at him, perched there like a solitary gull atop a church steeple! No doubt he’ll repose like so for eons and eons. Perhaps he will stand as our culture’s sole testimonial, once the broad-browed son of Kronos has gathered his clouds and overthrown Christ the Second.

Anyway—back to the subject—so the people peaceably assemble outside corporate headquarters. And heavily armed police stand menacingly blocking the entryway. (This is the point I was trying to get to, all along: the stage of modern civil unrest.) But the people step forward, friendly and peaceful, toward the metal doors, which look like the vault of a bank, they’re so enormous and strong, and the armed guards aim at the people and shoot the people; they maim the people and kill the people; meanwhile waves and waves of polite multitudes remain approaching the headquarters, and, as each wave reaches the entrance, the guards mow them down.

My question is this: If the entire populace were to get so annoyed with a given corporation that they (the populace) actually did gather thusly and march at the corporation’s business address in waves, and allow themselves to get mowed down without retaliating, like a billion fallen christs, then who’s gonna clean up all these cadavers? Does the corporation make the armed police do THAT too? Are the armed guards gonna have to grab mops and mop up all that blood? There’s a lake of gore outside the corporate headquarters, after this slaughter. What if the police find this cleanup work degrading? Are they going to follow the order from the corporation’s board members, even tho the job sucks to do? Cuz shooting all the protesters was a thrill, but cleaning up this mess is tedious. As it is written: It is easier to rip up a carpet than to install new wooden plank flooring. You can’t tell me those cops are gonna mow down all those waves of people who dared to exercise their right to protest, and then just put down their weapons and become the janitorial staff, once the board members command them. Or do police officers really hold the orders from their uppers as respectable? Maybe they really would become the new working class, once the old working class was done away with.

But another outcome, instead of the one just imagined where all the protesters are plain whacked, is that one or two of the protesters successfully make it into the building. Now, if three protestors get their foot in the door—the big metal door flanked by guards—then maybe at least one wave of regular people would follow them into the skyscraper. The first thing they see is all the gilded furniture. Maybe they waste a few moments sitting on the golden settee, and touching the keyboards of the golden computers at the golden desks. And rubbing their bare feet on the bearskin rugs. Cuz each office has a different type of rug, and they’re all made from the pelts of exotic beings. It’s understandable that the protesters are a little awestruck at first; but after a spell, they’ll start to slack and goof off, which will surely bug the corporation. So they find important papers and fold them into the shape of airplanes and toss them around. And they pick up the telephones that are ringing, and they answer them, but they give nonsensical replies to the voice on the other end of the line; so the conversation, if lightly edited for comedic effect, would make decent filler-material for a variety show. And a lot of the protesters would begin waltzing, right there in the office. I mean literally performing that well-known dance in triple time (for once, I’m not using the term “waltz” as a euphemism for copulation).

But, sooner or later, even the wildest office parties grow boring. So what I suspect is that, after the armed guards have backed away in compassion, finding that they don’t have it in their hearts to shoot all their peaceful fellow citizens at point-blank range, and the golden offices of corporate headquarters have been ravished by the curious infiltrators, our protesting populace will address itself, like a giant contemplative party-animal, and say “Dear me, what have I done? I’ve trashed this office: it’s a mess now: there’s paper everywhere, and all the furniture needs straightening. I should tidy up a bit. And hey, now that I understand what the reins of power feel like, why should I not help my oppressor with his work, instead of making all these production graphs into Pop Art? I think that, after a couple hours of well-deserved merrymaking, we protesters should re-stack all the papers and place them in their appropriate baskets (ingoing memos; outgoing receipts), and man the workstations, and answer the telephones properly: no more crank calls, but actually listen to the mogul on the other end of the line. Get the place back running efficiently; make sure everything’s shipshape.” You (the populace) find that these corporations that you presumed were your enemy are actually just like you: a humble poet trying to make ends meet. And they have landlords of their own, who hound them for rent. There’s no difference at all between A and B, if A stands for suffering a paycheck-to-paycheck existence as a retail clerk who makes less than a living wage, and B stands for facing the world as the head of a monopoly who must decide how to invest the billions of profits that keep piling up. For, in either case, you have to worry about how to survive; only you’re mingling with different company: In the first case, you’re swimming among small fish, away from a big fish; and in the second case, you’re chasing after the small fish. “With great power comes great responsibility” says the Comic Book Narration.

We penniless multitudes should be thankful that we were born without the burden of wealth weighing us down. We should also be nicer to our congresspersons and senators — those people have a tough job to do.

In closing, imagine a pair of children: they are the only two children in existence. One is in poverty, and the other is rich enough to sustain whole nations of people. Thus saith the LORD: The first child should learn to accept with patience the suffering that she was born into, and she should never talk; whereas the child born wealthy should be able to enjoy his riches: he should not have to learn how to share. Sharing is tantamount to stealing.