Ironic Cuisine

fish-fingers

Why is there nothing on the internet about how to escape from attenuated realities? That’s what I want to know. There’s stuff there about everything else. Surely someone must see that this could be a pretty useful thing to know? I mean, it’s kind of a big deal really isn’t it? Wouldn’t you say? What’s the alternative – are we just supposed to put up with it, make do with it, accept it without a quibble? You go to an expensive restaurant, wait for an excessive amount of time; the meal finally arrives and its nothing but a few fish-fingers, some overcooked tasteless peas and a derisory portion of cold, lumpy mashed potato which looks like it’s been thrown in as an afterthought. Do you say, “This will do I guess”? Do you just knuckle down and make the best of it? Do you tell yourself that it’s not too bad, all things considered? Or do you kid yourself that its avant-garde, or maybe ‘ironic cuisine’?

 

Now come on. You’re not going to do that. There’s no way in hell you’re going to do that. You wouldn’t be that lame, you wouldn’t be that pathetic. Right? Of course you wouldn’t. We both know that. Yet this is my point. That we all do this all of the time – we lamely make do with attenuated realities. We accept them without a quibble. The waiter comes along, slaps the plate on the table – making some kind crassly offensive comment under his breath as he does so – and we mentally adjust to the insult. We shouldn’t complain, we tell ourselves. No sense in making a scene. Suck it up man, suck it up.

 

But the thing is that we don’t even do that. There would at least be some kind of dignity in that. At least we would be giving the thing some acknowledgment. At least we’d be seeing – in some kind of a dim way – that someone is taking the piss big time. Having a laugh at our expense. Having a bubbly bath. But we don’t. That’s the whole point. That’s what I’m trying to say here. That’s the amazing thing – we just adjust unquestioningly to whatever crappy attenuated reality it is that we’ve been saddled with. We adjust instantaneously, without realizing that we have adjusted to anything. “Oh sure, that’ll do…” we say. But we say it so quickly, so automatically, that we don’t even notice ourselves saying it. It’s totally unconscious, you see. A mechanism that accepts the attenuated reality on our behalf. A turncoat part of ourselves that we don’t know about…

 

So how fucked up is this? Can you even get your head around this? I can’t. I can’t get my head around it at all. There’s a whole big machine out there specifically set up for the purpose of bombarding us with attenuated realties, subjecting us to these degraded versions of reality. They’re being fired at us constantly. From all sides. From all angles. That’s what’s going on – they’re firing the attenuated realities at us and we’re sucking them up, we’re obediently buying into them just as fast as they arrive on the scene. “Yes sir I’ll buy into that.” I say. “I’ll buy into that attenuated reality…” Sure guys I’ll go along with that. That seems fine to me. Yeah cool, really neat – thanks for that. Thanks for subjecting me to your filthy dirty stinking attenuated realities…

 

We actually feel pleased with ourselves when we get conned. Like we’re smart players, like we’re staying ahead in the game. We feel that we’ve acquired some kudos. So I suppose I’ve answered my own question. About why there’s nothing on the internet about how to escape from an attenuated reality. We don’t want to know. We don’t give a shit. We’re into it. We’re into the attenuated realities. We think they’re the business. We think they’re the best thing since sliced bread…

 

 

 

 

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