quixoticWhat the fuck's with this weird depersonalization/reductionism going on in America (and elsewhere, I expect), whereby almost anything and everything is described as product (plural and singular). I see someone talking about making cookies on television, and they don't say, "We want to make the best cookie we can." No. They say, "We want to make the best product we can." And that product is not to be sold and eaten by people, or even customers, but by consumers. You see it online, with webzines talking about content, not articles, stories, photographs, etc. I see it in publishing, with everything coming down to a matter of how many units have been moved, rather than how many books have been bought. I'm not even sure precisely why this makes me so angry, except somehow it seems to work to devalue everything and everyone. It all becomes only interchangeable bits, with little or no intrinsic value.
And I do think words matter, and are not to be be swapped about willy-nilly. Sure, shorthand can be convenient, but when it stops being shorthand and becomes common speech, meaning is lost.
Yeah, whatever. I mean, nobody much seems to mind, right?
Meanwhile...
They illuminate the land,
and they make me think of you.
What sunk silently to the depths of a mystery?
A clue that only one scientist knew?
Who knew that the sky is now found to contain
Benzene and methane and chalk,
And bloody mud, muddy blood from the sky,
From the sickly sweet wings of Edith's Checker-Spot Butterfly?
They die in the ocean.
Their legs are broken.
The rain slows their flight as it soaks their wings.
In microphone, we'll listen for thunder.
The telephone will dial a number,
To deliver a, a clearer picture of weird wet weather.
This puts all previous discoveries in doubt.
These are the things we have theories about.
Overhead, two sky titans they collide in slow motion.
Then, over the Ice Tongue, fluid flows.
A one thousand foot thick chunk of sediment is exposed.
Your own special home.
A choking, vapor-laced haze obscured by acid rain,
Enveloping everything, on the edge of the Milky Way.
— Rasputina, "A Retinue of Moons"