callous philharmonics and the death of God

[© tweed]

the rise of condescension as an effective marketing tool illuminates a broader discussion of self-conception as relates to the being-as-lived, and the shell of man that participates in market transactions.

two instances.

1. Lewis Black does a pitch for New York Lottery.  radio pitches.  he is a massive misanthrope, with the focus on the urban fellow-traveller*.  the sexually unappealing, overly sweaty man on the Subway; the dude with an iPad and Bluetooth in Central Park.  is the lottery a market transaction?  an unnatural monopoly?  surely it resides in a camp contraposed to that of an electric grid, competing electric grids make no wind blow.  but competing lotteries would lead to an efficient outcome, but no wind-fall for the state.  

should the state, and the state only, stand to profit on sin?  today's market-as-God right, Sons of Hayek, are hardly a right at all, and they get tied positively in knots on lottery.  no state windfall on lottery, squeeze the poor on the service-side instead.  why has nobody gone further, allowing for competing private lotteries?  gambling, sex, drugs (incl. alcohol) -- once air and water get cordoned off, we will only have the deep pleasure behaviors left to colonize.  will it be the state or private property having sex drunk on PCP with a scratch off ticket?



*spell 'traveller' and 'travelling' with two l's please.

[© tweed]

Vince Offer is a Jew.  he was arrested for an offering with a prostitute, but was not charged.  this is old news.  what is older new news is the new field of criticism opening up that compares, contrasts, deifies and trammels likewise on Billy Mays and Offer.  we will concentrate on the latter.


a vast, vast literature.

Offer is condescending.  he knows something you do not.  may we divert to a parallel.  I have a born-again Christian friend.  let's call him DeMarcus*.  DeMarcus was born Italian Catholic non-practicing, militant right-wing hunter-gatherer atheist.  right wing has persisted while God has been born.  he knows what God has done for him.  he knows that Tweed can go search in this world, in every corner of Sabermetric websites, revisit every sexual episode with his ex-girlfriend, devour every bleak text written by the heathen brilliants -- but nothing, nothing will compare to the feeling DeMarcus has when he is in contact with God through Christ through the Holy Spirit.  I can't match it, try as I will, but I will die a codger, a mean old thing, only remaining value the monkeys-on-a-typewriter ability of all smart people to toss words together and on Blessed occasion make it sound right, plausible, witty, anywhere in between.

to universalize this as a goal, to make it a fundamentally important part of one's self-conception, to constantly reach this goal, in order to be simply passable, in order to simply qualify for interactions with the Holy Others... oh, it's a burden!  it's quite a yoke, too much for me to bear.

Vince Offer knows this, and he knows the Christ-sized hole in my heart can be filled with his mail-order slap-chop product.



*DeMarcus is a pseudonym.