lobotomy performers wanted

Following a sharp rise in applications to drive for a certain ride-sharing app, the second-most popular industry platform in the U.S. is seeking doctors willing to perform up to a dozen lobotomies per day. The medical procedures are part of the pink-fonted company’s policy of ensuring their drivers make only the worst possible decisions when it comes to operating a motor vehicle - that they run stop signs, ignore pedestrian crosswalks, swerve, brake, and make u-turns unexpectedly, and in general drive in the manner of pissed-off teenagers sitting on bladders bursting with day-old energy drink.

“If the people who drive for us don’t do everything in their power - legal or otherwise - to reach someone needing a ride as soon as is humanly possible, we might lose market-share to a four-letter competitor,” said the company’s chief operating officer. “Therefore, removing the part of our drivers’ brains that is responsible for controlling higher level decision-making ensures a maximum profit-margin at relatively low long-term cost to the company.”

Expect to find lobotomized drivers menacing a neighborhood near you, sometime soon.

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

another union, gone

Forty-eight years after one of its members actually got paid to do the job, the American Domestic Rice Cooker’s Union (ADRCU) finally disbanded. Founded in 1895 by a group of house-maids from San Francisco, the Union had seen its number drop dramatically since the introduction of low-cost, automated devices. “We just can’t compete with computerized, electric rice cookers that do the job perfectly, every time,” said Yolanda T. Ching, a spokesperson for the ADRCU. “That, and a drastic reduction in the number of people wealthy enough to hire cooks and maids, sounded the death-knell for our lovely group.”

Former members are slated to receive training as taxi drivers, foundry workers, and call-center operators, jobs that the Union’s leadership thinks will soon return to the United States. Also at risk of extinction are labor organizations representing American retail workers, cotton pickers, and coal shovelers.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

on phaltweariness - the automobile

  Today's city streets are pitted and rough as if mauled by large and powerful beasts, and the souls of the people who drive upon are similarly abused. Aggression and impatience descend without fail upon the poor buggers who drive upon today's maligned avenues.

  We the Smog Riders of the America Phaltscape (the asphalt landscape) look often with pity upon our neighbors of the road, they who spend long hours strapped tightly to chairs which are in turn bolted to the floors of a tiny metal boxes. After spending years in such torturous environments, they will have forgotten the satisfaction of moving their own bodies through space/time using nothing other than living muscle and some metal tubes bolted to a pair of pneumatic tires. Rather than the good sweat that stands upon the skin of the bicyclist after a healthy cross-town slog, the sweat of the car driver will be distressed and foul, an oozing sheen that tends to creep through his furrowed brow as he worries about the skyrocketing price of petroleum.

  The smog riding street-art vagabond knows as well to avoid paying for petrol as she does to remain always vigilant of the withering and debilitating affects of phaltweariness – it is her duty to preserve the chaotic super-abundance of Street Art, and to record for Posterity as much of it as she can. To fulfill this task, and to keep her feet on the pedals, she has learned the limits of her body's tolerance for dehydration, pain, and exhaustion, and she knows how to make herself well again.

  Given the phaltweariness, the stressed out drivers, and the miles spend cycling through the phaltscape, how does the vagabond capture every unique work of street art that is at risk of being torn down as soon as it goes up? She does not. But she does what she can do, photographing what pictures might cross her path with the road grit fouling her mouth and a song filling her heart.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp