Coffee Up and Smell the Wake: It's Fucking Over!

Ben Lomond, CA - ( Jan 6) - According to sources close to the cognition industry, things are pretty much over. "Yep, things are pretty much over, alright" said Joey Ramote, President and Founder of Ramote Informatics and Telemation, during an off-the-cuff Q&A session following a speech either he or his brother Phil had just delivered at Sly and the Family Stone Institute of Technology in Cupertino California, 08608.

"Yep, the ever-tightening grip of vapid reality has really shut down just about everyone's ability to even consider [trying to toss] a sweet Hail Mary [Play] into, you know, the far off serotonin sunset," added Phil Ramote, Joey's identical half-brother, "So don't expect anything new, ever again, in any medium other than, say, bathroom fixture design or managed mental health brothels or maybe in the field of sinecures for sycophants or pyrocures for pornofants, or whatever."

According to other sources, unrelated to the Ramote family circus, "Part of the decline in culture is really only the perception of decline. It's related more to the on-going strike by under-paid culture shills -- you know, the people who've been quietly hired to circulate amongst the unwashed masses, loudly proclaiming how, for example, websites like Salmon1999.com and Slave.Com are not really as trivial and shitty as they seem, and how, 'artists' like Laurie Anderson, Jim Jarmusch and Mark Leyner, might really be something more than just the tepid, marginally updated Andy Rooney clones they appear to be -- If you'd only spend enough time and money on them and give them half a chance..."

"Temp shills are attempting to fill in," noted Chaka Cohn, a Temp Personnel industry insider, "But without rich experience and deep incentives, they can only fake it for so long -- and eventually they crack -- usually in ugly ways that totally discredit the sweet little culture brandname they've ever so delicately been ramming up and down even your tiniest and most unexpected, uh, orifice."

"Without shills, those steaming little pieces of culture just sit there and rot like a corporate website, or like the corpse of some over-ambitious raccoon, fallen off your roof during the night, greeting you on your doorstep in the morning, ebullient with the gift of fresh, hyper-active maggots," said Rebecca Kramer, film and child custody critic for the smarmy Fox News syndicate.

"And, meanwhile, on the creative side, like nobody's even fucking trying. The top film is named something like, 'Joe' or something, and the number 2 film is named, like, 'Bob Smith', or something.

"The number 1 book is called 'A' and the number 2 book is called, like, 'B' or 'More B Again' or something. I mean, if people don't have the fucking imagination to come up with half a fucking title, imagine what the actual work is gonna' be like. Uhh, if you still can imagine, that is."

Yet, according to at least one unnameable cultural commentator, "One last white hope still remains perched on the horizon of dreams, poised to leap into the abyss of possibility. The upstart daily, Schmuck.com, in a daring masterstroke has boldly gone forward and throwing all fucking caution to the wind, boldly redesigned its site to reflect the bold and rapidly changing sensibilities of a bold new era."

"Well, we thought that by moving the ad frame from the side to the bottom, we'd be capturing the new Weltanschaung of the new Zeitgeist, which only kicked in maybe 2 days ago," said an, uh, undisclosed Schmuck senior editor. "I mean, it's not like we couldn't do interesting shit if we wanted to, but it's like, you know, our market research indicates that readers like it when we're bland and pedestrian.

"And besides -- somebody's gotta take on the straw men, or, you know, we might all wind up in a mattress someday. Or, at least, in a mattress factory, or in an ad for mattresses. -- And so what if the bold new design looks exactly like the Hotwired Obituary Page, which, in turn, looks just like circa 1993 Prodigy. -- And so fucking what if...."

In a related news story, House Speaker, Newt Gingrich delivered a devastating intellectual analysis demonstrating conclusively why, once and for all, "Rape is Bad." And then went on to propose that it's time for hypocritical, disingenuous, money-grubbing, power and ego-driven, in the box, narrow-minded, DC politicians to start helping the pathetic masses rediscover the spiritual side of life in our great nation.

Political junkies and junk collectors, much like Schmuck readers, could only sit there with their jaws dropped open wide, muttering, "Wow," while, outside, the Budget Pest Buddies, carted off another raccoon crystal-meth OD.