Market Target
by Mark Driver
I've been targeted right out of the market.
I've had it. I can't take any more advertising. Television, radio,
magazines, billboards, even the Internet for Christ's
sake. Everywhere. Why do they keep targeting me? I never did anything
to them. I don't even buy anything! They're wasting their time! Fast
food makes me feel like shit, soft drinks make me dizzy, candy is
disgusting, chips make my stomach hurt, I don't smoke, and any band
that has ever been advertised anywhere sucks unequivocally. I eat
tortillas and vegetables, I drink tap water. I ride my $40 bike for
entertainment. I buy a new pair of Dickies at the army navy store
every year and I get all my other clothes at Costco in 3-packs. My car
works fine, I use my Internet connection for long distance, I've had
the same boots for three years and re-sole them when they wear out. As
far as booze goes, well, as long as it's wet...
So why do they keep attacking me? Why are they filling every square
inch of every available space in my life? Above urinals, on concert
tickets, underneath the ice at hockey games, on blimps, in video
games, as props in movies, plugs in rap songs, on shitty Web Sites
(No, I will not visit your motherfucking sponsor. If you're not in it
for the love, and you can't figure out any better way to pay for your
site than by slapping some ugly, corrupted banner across the top of
your pathetic work, then fucking close up shop, kill yourself, and
leave the Web to non-polluters). They'd advertise on the backs of my
eyelids if they could get away with it, and I can't hack it
anymore. They win. I lose. They succeeded. I failed. Like Brian
Wilson, I just wasn't built for these times. I fold. Here are all my
cards. Keep the pot, keep my ante, keep the goddamn jacket on the back
of my chair for all I care, I can get another at Costco. I'll be out
in the parking lot getting drunk and yelling at cute girls because I
can no longer stand the taste of tentacles. Marketing has poisoned
everything worthwhile under the sun, so I'm giving it all
up. Everything.
But the way I figure it, there's no real loss. I've seen all of the
episodes of the Simpsons 200 times each. Most of the good writing was
done 100 years ago. I haven't listened to FM radio in years. I could
play all my records beginning to end alphabetically and I'd be 76
years old when I got to the Zeni Geva. Online culture is a fucking
yawn, only good for buying stuffed goats on Ebay and getting cracked
copies of $1000 software. Movies always end up at the 99 cent video
store across the street eventually, and you can fast forward through
those commercials. My girlie's cute and the corner bar has
Pabst on tap. What else matters?
True, by shutting myself off to everything, I'm probably limiting my
future potential as a 'community building' or 'bleeding edge' cog in
someone's nightmarish vision of Internet profitability, but fuck, a
simple read through my writing should've cured that anyway (Note to
potential employers: The bidding starts at $120,000 a year with full
dental).
So I'm out. No more.
I just feel bad for those of you I'm leaving behind. You'll be wearing
your Slave Labor Nikes, sweating under a Third World Vest, listening
to Everqueer or Fratboy Slim, your hair styled stupidly with gasoline
and aborted pig placentas, trying to choke down a Double Meat Fuck
Splattered Cow Testicles On The Slaughterhouse Floor Pus Coagulated
Lactacious Secretion Yellow Dye #2 Deluxe. Man, will you be looking
dumb. It makes me want to cry. You poor, oversugared demographic
you. You're filling your apartments, your bodies, and your minds with
useless junk. You stagger under your own weight, throwing money in
random directions until you collapse and die, buried by a bunch of
people who you failed to create meaningful human bonds with, who
forget about you on the way home from the funeral.
Maybe I'm just oversensitive, but I actually feel those fingers
reaching out at me - cute little girl fingers, feeling at my face
like a bind man, pulling at the loose threads all over my brain,
trying to find a sensitive one, one that tweaks me. Desires to be
successful, attractive to the opposite sex, spiritually satiated, or
conversely, the fears of disease, dismemberment, of being outcast, of
repressed homosexual desires. Herd mentality as dictated by herd
mentality. A gas mask of soiled wool, worn in a steaming shower of
chlorinated pond water. A lumbering culture created by profit motive,
existing as window dressing to disguise the brutal cynicism of the
architects, the brassy checks and balances of accountants bleating
commands to the flunky tastemakers on the production line. The
subversion of anything subverting. The conversion of something
dangerous into something profitable. The gutting of the lion and the
championing of the taxidermist. And the puffy vests, my god, the puffy
vests...
I give it one more shot.
I hit that little "on" button, and immediately this little red dot
appears on my forehead. I feel the barrel rising on the other side of
the glass as some powersuited executive attempts to get me in his
sights. His scope is the best money can buy, but my nausea and
skittishness mark me as difficult prey. I make a sprawling leap over a
pile of books, spilling a glass of wine and sending my cats
scattering. The TV takes a shot at me. It misses, but after the smoke
clears, there's a shimmering can of Pepsi on the coffee table,
seductively held by a well manicured (but severed) hand. Then the Taco
Bell dog is outside, scratching at my window, singing "That's Amore",
the secret code that alerts Col. Sanders and Ronald McDonald to get
their tumor inducing grease guns at the ready. "We have a resistor!
Alert Cap'n Crunch and Mrs. Butterworth. Tell Hogan to pull that
Subaru around!" And then, as the entire posse of 1-800-COLLECT goons
attempt to joke their way through the front door, a helmeted uberyouth
does a backflip on rollerblades against the window, almost crushing
the Taco dog, thankfully getting tangled in the iron jungle of
security bars designed for such a moment. The severed Pepsi hand
launches itself across the room onto the stereo, turns it to HOTROCK
99.5 FM and starts dancing suggestively on the turntable. Warm, gooey
songs ooze from the speakers, blurring the lines between commercial
and product, product and art. The walls are running with honey, blood,
and Gatorade. Limp Bizkit tries to sign me up for the Rap Metal
MasterCard, but is outvolumed by a chorus of creepy NY Gap models,
dead eyed and Children of the Damned style, singing nostalgic 80s
songs with cool detachment, trying to sell me vests. Close inspection
reveals UPC codes on the backs of their beautiful necks and a legion
of bulimic girls behind them, mascara mixing with puke on ten thousand
toilet bowls. Budweiser frogs are crawling out of the toilet bowls. A
one-eyed, mutilated Asian girl holds a pair of new Levi's against the
window with a thin, purple arm and starts screeching "It's a Small
World After All" at the top of her lungs. Magic, The Old Navy dog, is
sniffing butts with the Taco Bell dog, who had since bit the Asian
girl on the leg and now yelling something about Gordidas. A waifish
beauty suddenly appears on my bed, vying for my attention, trying to
talk me into a new car, her hand slowly unbuttoning her blouse,
batting her doe-ishly brown eyes, "C'mon Mark. It's only a test
drive. No one ever has to know."
Realizing my one escape, I yank my battered wallet out of my back
pocket and pull out a twenty dollar bill. The entire scene
freezes. All eyes are transfixed to the damp, smelly piece of
paper. Andrew Jackson snickers and you can almost smell the
cannibalized Indian on his breath. A miraculous cross breeze flows
through my apartment, and I let the money go. It catches an upward
draft, a hot air thermal, and is gone out the window.
And then, something even stranger happens. The spokespeople, animals,
models, body parts, and corporate whores all disappear in a
anti-climactic 'puff' of yellow smoke, leaving a slight smell of
perfumed intestine twisting through the air. My twenty freezes in mid
flight about thirty feet above the ground. A helicopter drops out of
the sky, and lowers a rope down to the cash. A man in a business suit
slides down the rope, commando style, and captures the money in his
mouth, gives a contemptuous snort, mumbling something like "sucker"
under his breath. And then the helicopter is gone, vanishing somewhere
behind the radio towers spiking the top of Queen Anne Hill. Everything
is quiet again.
I didn't just turn that TV off. I unplugged the motherfucker.