Today’s soundtrack:
can't find food fi eat,
earth a run red
Today at 9:02pm: tuning my pathetic rabbit-ear antennas to catch Lost


Because I do a good job of keeping my head down, it only occurs to me that I’m living in a society when I go to the grocery and buy the last of something. You know what I mean? Like today I bought the last half-gallon of Lactaid and thought “Man, the next person looking for this will be screwed.”

On the way to the grocery I must’ve passed two dozen people on the streets of Manhattan, and there was a half-dozen more in the actual store at 12:30am, but none of them are real to me. They’re like woman-and-child decoy targets popping up at a police shooting range: of no real relevance and only there to mount false attempts on securing your attention. I have no cause to think about these people, in fact I actively avoid interacting with them because it’s usually so disheartening; but the faint twinge of guilt that comes with consuming the last of something in a consumer society reminds me there are others with refrigerators lacking this very product.

Another ailment of the consumer society is not keeping up with subscriptions. Tony had described “Economist guilt” to me, referring to a stack of unread magazines making a glum and unfulfilled journey from his mailbox to an ever-growing pile on his kitchen table. Thus far I haven’t developed this disease, in fact I usually get antsy when I’ve gone through an issue and the next has yet to arrive, but I think that is because I am obsessed with The Economist. Which is because I was raised on trashy Newsweek. When you grow up driving a Plymouth and later wind up in possession of an Audi, your brand loyalty is cemented.

I guess it doesn’t make sense that I live in a dense metropolis and spend much of my time avoiding crowds, but I’m not here for the people. Well, not most of them, anyway. For instance if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s hipsters. I want to open a nightclub called Sartre, and when hipsters try to get in I’ll tell them they can’t because “Hell is other people.”

How do you choose your friends? Yes, you.

I’m pretty selective, as I imagine you are. I’ve got several different levels including Immediate Family, Buddies & Pals, Associates, Acquaintances and Midnight Friends. Then you’ve got your Fair-Weather Friends, Potential Security Breach Friends, Black Hole of Despair Friends and Why Is This Person Still In My Speed-Dial Friends. I’ve become pretty good about detecting and not hanging out with the latter categories. And if my categories sound sick to you, I would posit that you might actually have the same delineations but perhaps haven’t gotten around to slapping the post-its on their foreheads yet.

Anyways the worst thing that could happen to me on the way to the grocery is that I’d be caught in a sudden earthquake, swallowed up by the buckling pavement and subsequently trapped in an airspace for hours with two hipsters and a woman for whom Sex-and-the-City occupies a role similar to the role church plays in other people’s lives. I’d ask them not to talk, stressing the limited oxygen supply.

“But we have an unlimited supply of oxygen,” one of them might say, pointing out a thin airshaft leading to the world above. And then I’d have to seal it with something.