A Note to Faithful Readership

This post was written by admin on January 16, 2009
Posted Under: Pathetic

No one has yet assessed what life would be without ye, consumers of the literati. After all I live every day for you, it’s true.
Two days ago I speed through the day trying to memorize as much of a short story as I could scribe on my lunch break at the grocery store. It’s about a boy who befriends bugs for lack of a supportive peer group, a la Kafka.
At work, I formed a band just for an outlet for lyrics. In my off time I write albums off the top of my head. All praises due to the night sky.
I don’t know why I do what I do. Making my life so difficult just for you, who I won’t ever meet. I guess it’s the allure of the feat: at least one original work each week of the year.
That’s means an unaccountable amount of cheap beer; many more moods that folks close to me cannot decipher; a pain in my back from hours in the writing chair and a wistful tinge to my wind-burnt leer.
It’s like juggling gasoline and fire. To tell you it’s easy would make me a pompous liar. It takes a toll like the billy goat troll, taxing peaceful good times with the need to write rhymes far away from your friends.
This game doesn’t make ends. My friends ask me my I suffer so stocking shelves in retail grocery. Is it because I feel fear of the success I could be, writing for one of the Big Five?
I say that as long as I’m alive I’ll strive to fight the tyranny of the Big Five, the source of latter day cultural, social retardation – enforcer of outmoded mores and alienation from our fellows.
Television is the fire, apathy the bellows. In the fire, our imagination burns technicolor flame until our generation learns:
The programing is designed to make us culturally sick.
A dose of the cure is on PatheticRhetoric.

Hey, for those of you that read through my attempt at prose poetry, I thank you. I mean what I say. Our culture is sick.
I am part of the last United States generation that remembers a time before cellular phones, the internet and video games. Sadly, we have bought into this lifestyle as much as any other demographic designation. Some call us Generation Y on account that we come after Generation X. Maybe it’s appropriate. 25-year-olds: ask a peer to really give a shit about something, and chance are they will ask “Why?” Or ask them to read a book or this blog. Why?
Because your imagination is under attack. If you submit to the daily barrage of pleas to give a shit about the petty details of unattainable celebrities; compare yourself to people who have more wealth than you could ever imagine; shape your standards of beauty and decency by the images you see on the TV that are owned by about five companies, you’ve succumbed to slavery. That’s what pop-culture means to me. It’s mind control. Investigate it, think about it long enough and you will realize the truth in my words. I have nothing to gain but the liberation of the human imagination.
Snippets of a show here and there are good for a laugh or two, but if you stop criticizing the entertainment and information you consume, you become an empty vessel. Multiply yourselves by all the people you know at work who talk about the same shit, who see the world through the same keyhole of headlinenews coverage. That’s hundreds of millions of people not imaging a better world, art of a finer quality or a national character based on treated people decently. Think about all the jobs an ape could do. The bosses would have to feed and house the animals. Covert operations perpetrated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency have killed at least 6 million people, many of them women, children, old folks and innocent men. If you didn’t know that, you’ve been living in La La Land, humming the theme song of Friends while the leaders of the world prepare for endgame.
It all begins with your mind. If you say, “What do I know about art? I ain’t no smart-ass critic with a valid opinion,” then you are just another body in line waiting for a lobotomy.
For the sake of your invaluable imagination and the future of humanity, reject cheap, brainless entertainment! Shut off your television! Read the classics! Be militant about educating yourself for long as you live! Check the internet for sources of new, independent, original literature like patheticrhetoric.com.
I hate on the television without shame or remorse. If someone were murdering your family and siblings with poison tea would you complement the assailant on the fine almond notes of the brew or defend what you love the most.
Well, I love art as much as anything else. Yes, my life is art, which means my marriage, my relationships with friends, family members, all the beautiful and ugly shit involved are all part of the same story, the same work of art.
Whether you realize it or not, your life is art as well, the memory of which will have more meaning than which spoiled asshole won the latest challenge on the reality TV show or whose fucking fake blond hair looked the best in the new product that destroys the ozone layer in the new commercial between segments of the home decorating show you just have to watch. That’s not life, it’s Grade F entertainment; F for fucking bullshit. You are real, not the glowing tri-color pixels and they tell you what to think? Don’t you respect yourself?
Of course you do, and I respect you too for sticking with me instead of the “real” phony programming you could be watching. This week was difficult for me, technically and personally speaking. Two concepts crashed on my head, along with an ethical concern, of sorts. Often, art mirrors life and vice-versa. This week, I started a story that mirrored life a little too closely. Out of respect to my friend, his health and the story, I need to let time provide me with more information. The other story I had planned, well, I just ran out of time.
That only means I double-down my efforts for you, my readership, for next week’s installment. Art is what it’s all about at Pthetic Rhetoric! It is for you I live, readers.

Much Love,
D. Senter

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