semiotic paradoxes

the human mind is foolish. it can be tricked, duped, deceived, manipulated, and bent against its will. really if humans weren't such dumb fucks we wouldn't be constantly plagued by such problems as wars, oil spills, and shitty music wow that would be so nice

the element that is primarily responsible for the inadequacy of the mind is a sense of intuition that is hard to override. back when we were hunter gatherers we didn't need to think much really. just get yr fruit and kill yr boars and find a nice cave to sleep in and fuck a cave chick once in a while to make kids. no need to check yr hair in the morning or pay taxes or study for that exam or finish that project yr boss assigned months ago. no need to think, in fact the more you relied on your intuition, your 'autopilot' the better off you would probably be, if you see a berry that you think is like poisonous you just walk away from that shit. no need to set up control groups and longitudinal analyses to conclusively determine the effect of the active chemical in the berries on the human endocrine system. as soon as you let your curiosity get ahead of you your ass is in danger. so naturally 'evolution' rewarded the peeps who just acted on instinct and didn't think things entirely thru

the end result is that we are very easy to fool, and there are thousands of paradoxes existing everywhere around us.

for instance a few weeks ago i was riding in my friend sidi's car and i saw a cluck u chicken menu chillin on the ground (cluck u is a chicken joint,) i have never eaten there but i guess he has. anyway the 'mascot' of cluck u is a chicken bro with one of those athletic shirts (are they called jerseys i have no idea) i think the point is that he goes to 'cluck university' here is a picture



initially you think, oh there is nothing semiotically dissonant about this arrangement of symbols. since this place serves fried chicken it makes sense that their mascot should be an anthropomorphic chicken (note the human-like eyes and eyebrows as well as the fingers on the ends of the wings) but upon closer examination that makes no sense why would a chicken bro want to represent an establishment that kills hella amounts of chickens and treats them brutally and awfully so a bunch of self-serving pieces of shit that epitomize exhaustively the set of negative american characteristics can satiate their primitive desires for incredibly unhealthy food. they are furnaces that must be fed. fat fucking furnaces at that

poor chicken mascot bro. imagine a day in this dude's life. he pretends to chill around cluck university to attract potential students/victims. he's also probably a professor there teaching classes to the chicken student bros about how to become fattened up (so they will unbeknownst to them be better candidates for slaughter) and then every once in a while has to pose for a camera with a smile for promotional material

he may be smiling in all the photos you see of him but inside he is harboring anguish, how do you think this guy sleeps at night, if he sleeps at all then he wakes up every morning with dried tears on his pillow

also czech this shit out



that's the ben & jerry's cow in case you didn't recognize it

do you really think that cow is thanking you? do you really think it's fucking glad that you are buying ice cream from ben & jerry's?

you know how it takes like an entire fucking forest to make 1 piece of paper? it's the same with milk and ice cream. hella liters of milk go into each 'lovingly' crafted cone of ice cream. well you know what? what if that cow wanted to start a family. imagine this fucking cow. going to the store to get a crib and a little mobile to hang over it and some cute as fuck stuffed animals. we're not done yet, this cow is going fucking all-out. she's buying that goddamned baby einstein shit. and thousands of boxes of diapers, made of organic cloth and tenderness. so this cow is all ready to have its kid and be the best mother ever right? and all of a sudden a ben & jerry's agent goes up to her and is like "yo what do you think you're doing storing up all that milk for your kid. we need that to make ice creams. do you even know how much milk you need to make an ice cream? hella milk so we need all the milk we can get. hand over the goods fatty."

no other cow on the farm can sleep that night as wails of sadness pierce the dark sky

and the next morning it has to thank people buying b&j's ice cream

and

at first glance it seemed perfectly normal and ok

for the cow to be thanking you

and for the chicken to be smiling

good books you should read but probably haven't

popular culture would have you believe that in order to be 'cool' you have to listen to obscure music, be in a band, wear stylish clothing, be very good at a sport or game or have some other talent or ability, know hella languages, have hella cash, etc etc. but it's wrong all you need to do to be cool is to read all the time

srsly nothing is so sophisticated as reading, it's so much more of an intellectual commitment than listening to an album or watching a movie because it's impossible to progress unless you're paying attention. whether you're actually listening to the music or not the record will keep on spinning but pages don't just turn themselves bro. also since literature is (almost) always conveyed on analog media (fuck you nook kindle etc) it gives you a badass kickin-it-old-school aesthetic which is awesome for the same reason that listening to music on vinyl is cooler than having cheap piece of shit apple headphones ostentatiously & uncomfortably stuck in yr ears all the time

you probably are thinking oh that is all well and good but how am i supposed to know what new stuff to read, i've read a lot of good famous stuff but idk where to go from here. because the 'content' of the media that i consume actually matters. and it's a sad and unfortunate truth that 'popcorn lit' is proliferating (popcorn lit is the type of shit you can buy @ little giftshops or bookstores at airports, you know what i'm talking about, the big thick books with showy covers by no-name authors, they're literature's analog of like miley cyrus (also shit like twilite)) and there isn't a source like rottentomatoes or pitchfork that covers books as in-depth or as broadly as music or movie review sites. well i have got some good news for you bro! i have here some great lit for you to read that you probably have not read before

(note. you don't actually need to read these to be cool. you theoretically could just walk around pretending to read and making sure that the cover is visible to everyone you're trying to impress. but unless you aren't as shallow as a bowl of soup, you should actually read them to expand yr mind etc)

1. heart of darkness



"but i already read this in my high school english class!" no you fucking didn't you scrubby piece of shit, you looked up chapter summaries online. this is easily one of the best books ever written and as a bonus it's universally recognizable. most people think it's about how terrible imperialism is etc but i think it goes deeper than that, imo heart of darkness is a book about literature. but i always look into things too much. reading this book does require a bit of stamina however, despite the fact that it's p. short it's hella dense. shit's denser than tokyo (not as dense as a black hole tho)

2. a man without a country



everyone's heard of kurt vonnegut and his most famous books like cat's cradle and slaughterhouse five. this is most likely a shitty analogy but i guess maybe that kv is the pink floyd of modern literature because he was able to achieve mainstream success with a new unique alternative style. and then you could say that cat's cradle and slotty five are like the wall and dark side of the moon. but just like pink floyd, kv has a lot of little-known underrated material that is just as good or even better than the better-known stuff. amwoc is the last thing he published when he was alive, it's a semi-autobiographical collection of essays about his life as well his opinions about culture politics america the world etc. and instead of hinting at his message behind a façade of 'symbolism' and 'characters' like he does in his novels, kv tells it straight in amwoc. reading this book is like being face to face with him and listening to him speak it's awesome

3. the stranger



similar to heart of darkness above, you've almost certainly heard of the stranger but almost certainly not read it. the stranger is about a chill bro who doesn't give a shit about anything except eating, sleeping, and fucking, he is a true 'nihilist.' small warning, just make sure that you don't start randomly killing ppl after reading this, it's going to be v. tempting

4. too loud a solitude



i read this very recently and i loved it, it's really short and beautiful. it's about this poor guy who trash-compacts wastepaper and books. it's pretty 'meta' in this sense bc it's a book about books. also it's translated from czech so you can be all like "yeah i read foreign language lit, english is so passé" and then watch as everyone around you is blown away by yr impressive alternative-ness

5. house of leaves



k so to be honest i haven't read this yet (i've been meaning to) but apparently it's a total mindfuck where the very presentation of the work itself is part of the story. it has like 500 footnotes and hidden codes and backwards pages and colored text and a goddamned appendix. very 'edgy,' i'll start reading tomorrow hopefully

aight now get off the internet and start reading. although i apologize in advance if these books don't measure up to expectation, if you're used to reading springwells then this stuff might seem a bit weak in comparison

biographers are dumb

in this world which is becoming progressively urbanized as people get less and less sleep so they can study longer in an increasingly competitive academic environment so they can get better paying jobs and work more hours all to better fit the global model of "successful rich person" people are becoming mechanized, they're becoming expendable statistics. bob the builder is not a human being with a family to robertson construction inc, he's a cell on a spreadsheet that tells the company how much of an economic asset he is and if he is no longer profitable he is laid off

as a response to this we see a newfound appreciation for things such as existentialism and eastern philosophy developing. you are the center of the universe you are so important stop reading this and go seize the fucking day. quit yr 9-to-5 and become a firebreathing circus performer or a photojournalist or a "poet" or something equivalently bohemian. but although this mindset is fairly goddamned moronic (because the last thing we need is more talentless hacks who think that they're perfect unique snowflakes and entitled to respect from society at large when all they really do is drain tax money and suck up oxygen that could be put to better use) i'll admit that it is meritorious to some extent. if everyone were a lawyer or paper pusher or exec we'd get bored p. fast, we need people to take control of their own lives in ways that are inspiring, breathtaking, tearjerking, etc.

so. given this. can someone explain to me why biographers exist

biographers are people who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of studying and documenting the lives of cooler, smarter, more successful, more interesting people in meticulous detail and then getting that account published. they're not seizing their days they're telling you about how other people have seized theirs. imagine for a second that you're the most successful and renowned biographer to have ever lived. guess what buster. you're still not half the person that you wrote that bestselling biography about

future biographer probably

dear biographers of the world: stop living vicariously through people who are better than you and make yr own story

just remember to thank me when you've realized yr full potential

and write yr next biography about me if it's not too much trouble