I am advertised to for 14 hours every day. The ads cover every surface of every object and every virtual window. They permeate the air like an ideological carbon monoxide. Someone else might say that the ads aren't really there. But I know the ads are still there even if I'm not looking at them. That's the whole idea of ads.
I'm lying next to my girlfriend in bed. She's asleep. She is murmuring "Have a great rest of your evening, have a great rest of your evening, have a great rest of your evening". Of course I can't yell at her to shut up, because she's all I have. My girlfriend is a saleswoman, and a very good one. We have a nice arrangement going-- she acts sickly-sweet for the eight hours of her shift, so she can be wonderfully melancholic when we are together. Maybe those are just two sides of the same coin.
Have a great rest of your evening. Have-a-great-rest-of-your-evening. Coming from her it sounds almost like a lullaby. I'm trying to cry but I can't. I wish I were on anti-androgens because maybe I could cry then.
And then I turn to her, and I look, and I whisper softly and lovingly:
You hate the Twitter character limit but really you need it. You need to put yourself into that little kindergarten assignment box; you need to trim your garden to have nothing more than rows-and-rows of fucking 6-inch-tall flowers. You need to condition yourself so you post like that, so you think like that, even when there is no character limit. And you know why? It's because otherwise there'd be nothing stopping you. Your offhand posting about "mutuals" would scratch a little too close at the totality of what the Internet has done to the very idea of social interaction. Your jokes would go further and further, cutting deeper and deeper, and it might become too clear how fucking good it feels to just rip everything apart. Your frustration with your job and your politics and your environment might grow--with love--to entangle our income, entangle me, in some grand self-destructive scheme. Your flowers would fucking blossom. Your hydrangeas would become hydras. For a brief moment in time, you would become more beautiful than I had ever seen you.
She stops murmuring. It's seven hours and twenty-four minutes until the alarm goes off and I see her in the morning. Maybe the lullaby was better than this. I'm crying now. The alarm clock is telling me in the past to buy it. I think of her when I do.
I'm lying next to my girlfriend in bed. She's asleep. She is murmuring "Have a great rest of your evening, have a great rest of your evening, have a great rest of your evening". Of course I can't yell at her to shut up, because she's all I have. My girlfriend is a saleswoman, and a very good one. We have a nice arrangement going-- she acts sickly-sweet for the eight hours of her shift, so she can be wonderfully melancholic when we are together. Maybe those are just two sides of the same coin.
Have a great rest of your evening. Have-a-great-rest-of-your-evening. Coming from her it sounds almost like a lullaby. I'm trying to cry but I can't. I wish I were on anti-androgens because maybe I could cry then.
And then I turn to her, and I look, and I whisper softly and lovingly:
You hate the Twitter character limit but really you need it. You need to put yourself into that little kindergarten assignment box; you need to trim your garden to have nothing more than rows-and-rows of fucking 6-inch-tall flowers. You need to condition yourself so you post like that, so you think like that, even when there is no character limit. And you know why? It's because otherwise there'd be nothing stopping you. Your offhand posting about "mutuals" would scratch a little too close at the totality of what the Internet has done to the very idea of social interaction. Your jokes would go further and further, cutting deeper and deeper, and it might become too clear how fucking good it feels to just rip everything apart. Your frustration with your job and your politics and your environment might grow--with love--to entangle our income, entangle me, in some grand self-destructive scheme. Your flowers would fucking blossom. Your hydrangeas would become hydras. For a brief moment in time, you would become more beautiful than I had ever seen you.
She stops murmuring. It's seven hours and twenty-four minutes until the alarm goes off and I see her in the morning. Maybe the lullaby was better than this. I'm crying now. The alarm clock is telling me in the past to buy it. I think of her when I do.
