Thus Spake the Prophet Mitchell to the inhabitants of Allston/Brighton
As Overheard by Kerry Joyce
illustration by Jef Taylor
Truly we are living in the end times. See you not that the ozone layer waxes holier, heating the earth, yet snow drifts pile higher with each passing winter? Is it not an allegory of the confusion you feel within? Or are you blind, deaf, and hopelessly dumb?
Your science is in shambles, your metaphors are stripped bare, your algorhythms are infested with lice. You have replaced truth with a smorgasbord of gleeful propaganda, from which you choose first one, then another, as if your philosophy was no more important to you than a visit to a Red Lobster restaurant. Your nipple rings grow rusty, your tats grow paler by the minute. Your Pit Report is now an Endangered Species and your once free Lollipop costs two bucks.
While you slept, the world was transformed into an elaborate computer game. Yet off to sleep you go again. If you wake, you will realize that all who deny they are players on the electronic board are merely programmable little pawns. Living organ donors parting easily with whatever they have that someone more powerful wants. The combination of your heart, etched on your transparent skull. Your eyes and ears, your nose and groin, the easily cracked tumblers of your petty desires for which you part with all for the mere promise of their fulfillment. You think you are surfing the Internet, when in fact, the Internet is surfing you.
You, who have a hundred rock bands living in your midst, cannot even support one club. You, who must now schlep down to Kenmore Square to hear a live show or make do with a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover band at Harper’s Ferry, do not see the signs of your ruin, though they burn into your skull at every street corner. That which was formerly Bunratty’s is now the Wonder Bar. Your electric guitars have been replaced by black turtle-necked jazz trios. You look but you see not, you doltish post- Gen-X hapless hipsters.
A foolish and corrupt generation looked on with pride as The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine ran an article about All-terna-ston. Know ye not that the editors there cannot smell a trend until after it has become a putrid corpse?
A foolish and corrupt generation indentures itself to the Lansdowne Street consumer-plex just to buy a little time between gigs, drawings, poems, whatever. There you will serve. So serve ye then another round to the Euro-Trash within. Hear the pulsing rhythms of ambient music. Soon you will mistake that rhythm for the beating of your own heart. Apes like you will imitate the nationless, corrupt fools and max out your Visa Cards on bottles of Dom Perignon.
Ah, but the gold-digging blondes will plunge the depths of your shallow financial resources. They will note the anxious knitting of your brows as your credit cards are taken over to the bar, and will ditch you for the first Venezuelan with a Rolex who passes by. But only after they’ve had their fill of your borrowed champagne while your credit cards lie prostate, tapped to the limit, on a soggy napkin. Only too late you will realize your siren song is a groan, your poetry is a drink menu, and your drawing is a half-hearted wipe of your sorry ass.
You think you can get by with the spineless rebelliousness of your smug house-bound parents? Fools. In the world economy there are no hipsters, only masters, slaves, and criminals. Hip has been crushed on the heel of the New World Order. You are either in the system or you’re out of it. You think you can live on the edge? The edge has been erased by the delete button from an IBM clone hotwired to Bill Gates’ asshole. You are enmeshed in a subtly- shifting electronic grid, controlling every move you make, worth controlling. Rebel, Serve, Or Die. NOW!
I’ll bet you’ve chose rebel. Well, when you can last 90 days on nothing but bread, water, the instruments of your chosen craft, a drug or two, and a cum towel, then talk to me of your rebellion. Until then: Papa Gino’s is hiring assistant managers.
