#2 🍔 flame-broiled and that's good as hell

for nearly fifteen years, I’ve been transfixed by this very short deleted scene from AMERICAN MOVIE (1999) in which the protagonist/doc subject Mark Borchardt details Burger King’s seemingly arbitrary decision to switch from Pepsi to Coke with a level of deep and genuine gratitude that’s honestly hard to quantify. just watch. i’ll wait…

…so what is it? what am I identifying with so deeply here outside of the basic philosophical nature of the thing?

maybe it's the feeling of knowing that Mark’s preferred combo of sizzling brown discs and fizzy brown water is killing him, probably, but in a way that definitely feels worth it, and regardless of all that represents moments of deep-if-fleeting satisfaction in his life. that in some nameless office tower in South Florida, someone in a suit and fedora sat in a conference room with someone else in a suit and fedora and convinced them that their burger joint needed to urgently pivot to Mark’s preferred water preferred fizzy brown water OR ELSE, and now, that one particular spot on his commute isn't going to piss him off anymore, and in fact, he’ll light up every time he drives by it in a moment of mundane but powerful capitalistic gratitude.

oh that's cool / thank you sir.

maybe it’s how the universe sensed it was time for me to wrap up my fruitless search for the miracle cure for my itchy skin and release me from my tailspin down expensive Instagram snake oil rabbit holes, steering me toward Reddit of all godforsaken places, where I’d almost immediately find out that some time ago, someone ambled into Trader Joe’s corporate headquarters hungover in their Sunday best Hawaiian shirt and decided they were going to commit to putting the upstart hippie soap company with the cult manifesto labels out of business by releasing their own generic alternatives for half the price, and that somewhere in North Florida, I might appreciate the prospect of being able to add my body wash and shampoo to my normal grocery list, but that I might feel guilty enough about eschewing the “little guy” that I engage ChatGPT with the input “how might you reconcile the way Trader Joe’s treats their employees considerably better on average than most U.S. companies but still shows signs of union busting” just to close the guilt loop. then though, for less than the cost of the monthly ChatGPT subscription, I’ll give it a shot, and the first time I feel those tingly tea-tree bubbles washing some measure of the bother away, I’m set. all due apologies to Dr Bronner, that feels good as hell.

it's the thing that my particular wiring makes everything a thing, and there are just way too many things now, and that every discrete thing wrapped up is a thing that's no longer a thing for a minute, and thank f***ing god for that.

so I mean, it’s great that sometimes things work out like that.

for my doomscrollers

gearing up for what already is and will continue to be a hellish several months/years/lifetimes to be an American on social media (slash IRL obv), what better way to disassociate than to take a mental sojourn to Japan to vibe to a massive 90’s jazz fusion concert or simply stare out of an implied ethereal window and let the real-life-noise-machine-of-it-all soothe your screen-rotted soul. does it work? you won’t know until you try.

take it easy out there, pals. we need you 🤍