26 notes left for customer service from a necessary product reflecting on its experience of the future
1. Is my life worth trading in this game for coins, or cosmetic upgrades? A series of confusing questions might obtain, such as: how much time do I have left? how many coins? What colour of cape?
2. To whom do I pledge fealty: to the hardware designers and bank on short term gains for my lineage?
3. Should I spend my money on software and buy whatever I can get cheaply on the auction house in order to hedge against the time when the hardware finally catches up?
4. Can I expect to be able to use all of the devices in my body with the latest operating system patch?
5. The sound of two long blasts on the horn signals the loss of identity mixed with an unhealthy desire for more identity on Twitter.
6. What gift would you offer to salvage something when the war for our data finally stops and we can look up from the trenches without fear of losing more of our privacy, I asked the archivists in attendance.
7. We fear our governments and yet give everything to companies who owe us nothing and are predatory as part of their business model.
8. Line à into slot b then reverse.
9. I like the blue deodorant because the green deodorant smells too antiseptic or something, too piney. it makes me yearn for the fjords and I hate yearning. Yearning is weak.
10. Notes from stress test: plastic wheels and blue plastic body rolls until the wheels crack or dent, connotes user should have been less rough, blame the children, make 10% less durable.
11. What should I be able to do with myself in the 21st Century?
12. The playground looks vaguely like a ship, make sure some metal exposed to elements, cold temps and rain for optimal rust, target for replacement 5 years, acceptable limit for loss of children needs analysis.
13. X marks the spot where treasure is buried, but in this case the x abrades the surface enough that eventually fine cracks appear in the substructure that will lead a user to replace the unit at considerable cost / profit!
14. A yarn company except with wool from only one sheep that accepts money for spots on the waiting list. The sheep has a phenomenal pedigree and good manners, local, slow, organic, etc.
15. When we design a product we must always be conscious of reducing the cost of the material and assembly, decreasing the actual amount of product contained vs the size of container, increasing the chance of accidental breakage esp. Of key components like pumps, handles, vacuum seals, spouts, lids, hinges, etc., we must increase the desirability of the product to the point a user feels lucky to own and use it, and experiences significant FOMO if unable to attain it, thusly when the product breaks the user will feel shame, sadness, guilt, and frustration not with the product or producer but with herself.
16. What happens when we are deep into a time when we can't repair the basic elements of our lives ourselves?
17. Glass jars must clink well, plastic bottles must have good hand feel, ergonomics is a selling feature. hands should feel good when accidentally breaking products.
18. Imagine a future. That's it really. That's the poem. Just imagine a future.
19. Nice ride on the horizon, faded frontiers full of empty signs await us in Valhalla or whatever shitty strip mall we call the afterlife.
20. Here's something I've always wondered: is part of the reason we like chocolate that it looks like shit but we can eat it and enjoy it.
21. I don't know. Maybe I'm over thinking our relationship to the things in our lives, especially chocolate.
22. A flickering spate of stars splashed across my high def VR field of vision suggests I've landed myself in the middle of something I can never hope to control. I was playing a game and then an ad started for some treatment cream and now I don't know where I am or how to exit the ad.
23. A choir of voices risen as we shop online, subscribe and save, as we lift our baskets to the sky and beg for a few pennies off the dollar, a scrimp to salvage whatever humanity we traded on the open market for access to free shipping especially if we inveigle a friend.
24. I don't know how I feel about using a deodorant called vengeance thirst or freedom thrust.
25. Scavengers at the fount describe a desire for recommendations, a closing of the gap in the protective screen lining the sphere in which we bathe.
26. Adrift, maybe. At a loss, certainly!
The Party
Welcome to the party.
I hope someone took your jackets for you. If not, then we can work together to change that.
Please have a seat if you have not already taken one, if you have not already claimed your space, or if it has been taken for you, on your behalf. If someone else is in your seat, then we can ask them to move, together, or you can have them removed for a small fee. Just ask because it is your party.
Welcome to the party.
I know you don't think the party is for you, but I assure you it is in your honour, it is, in that sense, for all of us, we the honourable people, we the people at your party have the honour of being at your party which is also for us.
Welcome to the party, sincerely.
I hope you have had the refreshments that your membership dues have paid for and maybe some fancy cheese too. The crackers were expensive, but we need to spend our budget. If not, and if there are no more refreshments, then be sure to remember that when we ask for an increase in your membership dues for the coming year.
Please fill out the survey attached to your menu. Please click like and subscribe. Please RSVP for next year's party.
Again, welcome to the party.
The party would like to acknowledge that we are only renting this venue, that we do not hold any political affiliations with this venue, nor do we endorse its business practices, although we might if the people who own this venue are also part of the party in good standing with paid up membership dues. In that case, we would also extend an option for them to procure some of our lucrative paid advertisements that we make available as part of our extensive marketing offering. And we'd like to thank you for your contributions that make it possible for us to raise awareness of ourselves, and thereby of you.
Welcome, welcome to the party.
Together we can work toward changing the party, if we see fit, and if enough of us see to it, or if enough of us can directly benefit from the increase in attention or prestige that accompanies any act of change. We can do anything if we have quorum, and make sure we have the votes ahead of time. Because, of course, if I've said it once, then I've said it a million times, it is your party.
Tone cluster for one
"I just simply drew back and said, 'beyond that lies complete chaos."
-- Leo Ornstein
said the angle to the square
or some kind of particle to
the dust it laid bare, said
the voice to the vocabulary
or to put it another way
the day opens into night
and the night opens as well,
a circle looking inward spirals.
a launch into the next wall, I
stumble and sit, careen
what we mean when we
put two notes side by side:
a music falling apart, even
gratefully dissembling, art...
an unfinished thought
never seeking itself or
to be a self at all, art
only so far as others
fade into the background.
that's two in and a stanza
begins to form around
the idea of not forming
and in forming becomes
a note ringing into silence:
"i don't pretend to know
whatever it is you think
i should know by now."
Jason Christie is the author of Canada Post, i-ROBOT, Unknown Actor. His most recent book is Cursed Objects published by Coach House Books. He has numerous chapbooks from above/ground press, the most recent being: glass language (an excerpt).