By il conte della luna [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
‘Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy the cage.’
Hyde, Lewis. ‘Alcohol and Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking’, American Poetry Review, reprinted in the Pushcart Prize anthology for 1987; quoted in David Foster Wallace, ‘E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction’, Review of Contemporary Fiction, 13:2 (1993 Summer); dedicated to ‘M.M. Karr’; reprinted in David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Little, Brown and Co., 1997.
Today in Porn: E-Commerce Edition
'Moloch!'
‘At lunch, the most common question, aside from “Which offensive d-ck-shaped product did you handle the most of today?” is “Why are you here?” like in prison.’
That line (in its original, unredacted form) comes from Mac McClelland’s ‘I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave’, an undercover report on what it’s like to work at a hellish hinterland packing facility for a certain, but unnamed, e-commerce entity. There’s a bit to unpack here (as it were), what with the dehumanized workforce rushing at breakneck speed to fulfill orders for products that objectify the human body.
‘I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave’ appeared in — sorry, Mr Webb — Mother Jones, whose website seems to be down at the moment. But Google caches of the article’s four pages are available here:
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4
Also worth a look — or, if you’re pressed for time, even more worth a look — is Cory Doctorow’s featurette on ‘I Was a Warehoue Wage Slave’. Scroll down to find a comment thread that will be of interest to readers of Korrektiv. The first commenter, one Deidzoeb, begins the discussion:
More here.