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29 March 2005

Questions Concerning CubeLife

There remains a fine line between dashing rule-breaker and downright asshole. who can tell the difference? On the one hand, so many texts encourage reckless, boisterous behaviour on the part of entrepreneurs and the living person in general. Should you not just go out and do what you feel, saying fuck it to accepted practices and try it out on your own? Why do so many people take things for what they are, take them for granted, take them home with them and hide them deep down in the dark parts of the soul? Sure it's easier to fail to react when you see something happening with which you do not fully agree. Is there a line that needs to be crossed before anything is done? Let us look at some examples:
The Garrulous Manager. For the past half an hour AT LEAST the man has been walking around from cube to cube, office to office, with a painted rubber snake wrapped around his neck, the mouth clenched firmly and unfailingly to his pulsating juggular. During this time, he has been repeating the same phrase in reference to the snake, or SERPENT, as he so jokingly refers to it, but not until some weeks have gone by and the joke has been thoroughly spent, finding itself into the corner of the sandpile in our minds where some kid took a smelly shit last week. The Garrulous Manager has been informing everyone that said "snake" has gained purchase, or BITTEN, his taint. So he flails about, gesticulating to the plastic toy, and repeating his beloved phrase, when the next person reluctantly looks up from their work, to hear the phrase they have heard a dozen times over in the past half hour: THIS SNAKE SEEMS TO HAVE BITTEN MY TAINT. Listening to this dribble from my cube in the corner, my blood boils on a low flame. I have run a register in front of an obnoxious two story robot-elevator for six hours straigt, not even with a piss break, and took it as part of the deal, eventually tuning it out. At least the ginormous robot didn't take itself seriously and beg from door to door for attention. Finally I find myself approached by the Serpent-stricken man, and preempt him by stating blandly YES I KNOW THAT YOU HAVE BEEN BITTEN IN THE TAINT. THE JOKE IS DONE. IT'S NOT FUNNY. NO ONE IS LAUGHING ANYMORE. PLEASE COULD YOU FIND ANOTHER JOKE AND MAYBE RUN IT BY ME?
I am informed later that this offended to a small degree the Garrulous Manager, and that subsequent, further offenses, as well as my inability to install a filter into my prefrontal node, mind-mouth interphase or whatever governs my speech, have found me in a pickle of sorts! Jokes repeated are not funny. If i am trying to do work and someone is being annoying or telling the same joke over again for an hour or their cellphone is ringing loudly in the maze of cubes, I will say something about it. But OH NO that's not what you are allowed to do in Corporate America. NO NO NO, even when the same Manager is trying to tell jokes and failing, and other people are failing just a miserably, and you have neither the patience to pretend to laugh nor the courtesy to just shut the fuck up, so you systematically shut them down or counter their pitiful display of humor right to their faces, right in front of the other people at the table, sitting in the airconditioned comfort of a foodcourt in Southern California.
You do it because your fucking patience is at an end, because your own manager has been promising since it was due in December an update on the fundage situation, and i'm talking about three or four percent of your current income, which works out to about sixty cents an hour or so more, which in the long run you piss or fuck out so fast anyway it's almost like it didn't even happen. What's that? YOu dropped over a hundred Gs on schooling so you could circlejerk in cubeland with highschoolers and turncoats, hireons and gamernerds? Shut the fuck up it's not that bad. WHo the fuck are you to judge these people? why the fuck don't you make a move then? Scared, you say? of failure or success? both? is that why you're going a bit nutty at present? why you can't seem to just act nice and amiable for one day or week for that matter. But why should I act nice? You can't know what nice is unless you're a little mean sometimes. But can I then truly know life without first knowing death? must that step be taken before a true understanding of the current existence be reached? Take this example.
Olde Bouyah. i love olde bouyah. fuck i should patent it and make up some cool designs and sell that shit. maybe i should just precum all over it and wait for some old lady to mistake it for a happy thought and take it from me. Olde Bouyah is a mindless display of minimal creative ability, a feeble attempt like trying to make FEtch work, like trying to get a group of punkers to get fuckning facials. It's nothing at all and just a little bit of something, something hiding in the folds of the brain, lurking in the shadows of insanity, awaiting a spark so it may lick the bark and sear the flesh of the world. My world. ON the edge. Not sure if ANYTHING can be believed. ANYTHING taken for granted. so i saw a bug-covered windshield on my way back from getting some combo cause the shitty mutant-run J in the B didn't have any fucking salads, and all i wanted was some leafy fucking greens to boost my magnesium rates. what a bitch. But the edge remains elusive!!!! how do you define something that can only be seen when one is directly inside, like sticking your head inside the guts of a soda dispenser and realizing there really isn't that much there. only some lonely tubes and warm stuffiness.
Goddanm it people want answers, they want to hear that this is the way it is for this reason and that is it, no questions or doubts about it. But take that fucking soda machine. from the outside it looks full and teeming with activity. you imagine wheels turning and water carbonating and the differnet softdrinks just waiting to leap out into your cup just the way you like them, crisp and fresh adn without too much water, or too little syrup. but of course you don't know that because the machine dispenses and you enjoy. but if you need to service them or look inside for a leak, then the myriad quantum states collapse and you are left with warm stuffiness. and every time you look at a dispenser you see the pretty facade but you also see and feel the insides, you see the lie exposed, the false promise of massive innerworkings laid bare to the discerning eye.
but the jackfuck standing next to you just waiting to get that medium sourdough combo meal, he glances at the machine and sees a box with levers sitting there and spitting shit into his cup, fuck whatever is inside. But his life is no more or less fulfilling because he doesn't know, doesn't even care to know. he may have a loving wife at home, he may hate his mistress, he may not have a mistress, or a wife. he may still live with his father, who lost his eye a few years back in a whaling accident. but his life is no more or less fulfuckinfilled because of the breadbox sodajerk. so why is yours? why are you stressing about it? can I not just live with it, letting it out without fear of the sidelong glances to check for drool? can i let it out without striking fear and revulsion in those around me? should i let it out if it does not? fucked if i know. maintain the central divider. X