The Black Sooty Bowels of Supply and Demand

23 minutes after midnight. Pink moon rises over purple sky. Rolling hills, a spread out rise and fall dotted with pale amber and flickering red – have now been reduced to one thick sooty matte. The faded stars overhead are the only reminder something else exists out there.

This is the bowels of Western consumption. And a steady stream of shit flows along the intestines, as the waste makes its way to the anus in one final “Hurrah!” There is a space age glow to the rest stop lighting – blacker than night, brighter than day. About 20 18-wheelers are lined up side by side – spewing diesel all night, nostrils right up to the starting line, awaiting orders to GO! They’re giant and clumsy, like gorillas or buffalo [sic] or genetically modified wildebeest. They’re run all up and down, every which way by America’s forgotten children – ex-military, immigrants, and fierce independents – doing the dirty work for society – running commodities from Point A to Point B. I saw at least five Wal-Mart trucks pull either in or out of this rest stop alone in less than two hours.

Just watch the thing moving from the little square they allot you. Can you hear the queasy grinding of the gears under such tight pressure? Can you feel the persistent twisting of levers somewhere far up above? The whole environment screams. The neat lawn looks second to none, right out to the edges, though no one’s really allowed to come here to appreciate it, no one will ever use it. At capacity the parking lot could pack a small stadium. The two businesses that run the place, a couple of the world’s largest multinationals, doing business with the best, doing business like the worst. But the current PR campaigns both firms are running are slowly working on the psyche of their customer base, and future customer base – one taking the “environmental innovator” line, the other brandishing the “healthy menu” shtick. But, just by definition alone, neither claim could even be feasible. Though the authority with which they have been allowed to speak, the reverence they’re shown by government boosters and happily clueless society members, strikes awe into anyone who gets a wiff of the used-up power they excrete.

It’s a sickening dance we’re doing. Myriad colours to dazzle the eye in plastic merchandise and carcinogenic snack foods. Myriad atrocities checked off the list to keep assembly line production at “just in time”. I mean, of course you’re supposed to fall in line. The hint-hint nudge nude is so thick it’s palpable. Even obese gas guzzling dealership employees rumbling along in yet-to-sell SUVs are ashamed of the scene. But a place like this, despite the current reality and the true facts of the past, still clings like hell to the party-line story. We hear about valiant God-fearing frontiersmen populating the countryside with bravery and honesty. We’re told to praise American leaders who helped inspire a nation. No one talks about Lincoln, our idol president Lincoln, ordering "the Largest Mass Execution" -- (Native Americans the victims of course) in US history (Brown, Dee. BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE. New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1970. pp. 59-61). That was only one of the steps taken to ease Caucasians onto the field of agricultural production. The corporate rest stop continues to inspire pride, carrying “Pioneer” in its name. And now I miss my old roommate Patrick. He’d know what to do.

So swerve into frenzy. Watching little colourful circles bounce this way and that, erratic, off of traffic flow signs. Whip what you can. Scream while you still can. Limbs are jerked this way and that by the only dance you can do that can save your ass from all this. The perfect counterpoint. Because if you’re not careful you’ll soon be intoxicated. Listen to the Locust design tableaus in a new folk tradition through music. Hardcore’s electronic now. And move with style in the perfect counterpoint to way we’re told is the best one. Let’s not forget that God wants us all to work in factories.

Listen to: -The Locust “God Wants Us All to Work In Factories”

“Getting born again can be somewhat hard/A snake eating its own tail,/Riding the new wave of new…Well in case you did miss the memo...Rest in peace neoclassical absurdity/Let's polish turds/Then eat them/Yum, yum”

-System of a Down “Toxicity”

-Genghis Tron “I Won’t Come Back Alive”

“Turn up the lights, sear it away /Now it's unending; fills the body wide/How long 'til this common life will fold/Turn up the lights, sear it away”

-Joy Electric “I Am a Pioneer”

-Circle Takes the Square "Patchwork Neurology"

-The Dillinger Escape Plan “When Acting as a Wave”