Dig a Hole?

Value Judgments and Judgments of Value. . .

The Dead Labour Depot, in conjecture with...er, yes, actually, and... in conjunction with the Dead Letter Depot, would like to extend a welcome to the minions of Value, but only as a challenging welcome, an invitation to give-up on "value" and step-out of the marsh of stagnant waters.

"The symbolic order of culture is not value, value is an economic structure. With infiltration or contamination of signs by an aesthetic circulation, and the rise of cultural goods as aesthetic goods, that's the beginning of the end."

You want balanced books,
You want stale bread,
You want A=A out the ass.

You want text-book tranquility,
You want brooding heaps of trash...
You want to suck the barrel dry,
and then ask - politely - for seconds.

You want a canker sore to bitch about
You want slow decay to be your savior.
You want Value to bestow happiness upon your
aching bones.

Well, why stop there? Don't wake up,
as if from dreaming. Don't smash idols,
as if they were false Gods. Don't surrender
to Validity, that other pious creature.
Don't take the Notion of "for granted" for granted.

What you need is something more drastic than
these tiny, baby steps out of paradigmatic
hindrance. You need a
Royal Strabismus of the soul.

Yes. That's the key.
But the door is no easy walk-through, either.

You'll heave your guts before you'll take one step,
I know it.

You'll only see with clarity when all the fog of certainty
has collapsed. This is the issue at-hand: certitude is your
crutch and your dead-idol.

Dead Labour invites you for a round of drinks.
The Dead Letter Depot ships off a manuscript to your door.

Either you christen these gifts with smiles and whips,
Or you suffer like a Hog on Ice for eternity.

This is your plight, now deal with it.

1:03 AM / Chatham, NB / April 22/09