British journalist Larry Wilde gestured dramatically as he delivered an impassioned and obscure speech on the evils of corporations, in the process upsetting Joe Weaver's cream soda. Silence hung over the bar, complete except for the sound of dripping cream soda. I snatched up the bar rag and tossed out a new topic of conversation:
"Say, how about them Martians, huh?"
Joe, who writes for an airline magazine, reached across the bar to get another cream soda, Larry refilled his glass from the bottle of Chardonnay I had left unguarded, and the third journalist at Foo Bar that night, Maureen McBean, swivelled on her bar stool to glare at Larry.
"You're talking through the back of your head. You say, and I quote, "Corporate decisions are not made on the basis of technology, markets, or profits.' What's that supposed to mean?"
Larry sipped his Chardonnay and stared into space. "Think of it as a McLuhanesque epiphany..."
"I won't. I'd sooner die in a ditch."
"...by which I mean that every institution reaches a point in its life when it is no longer about what it was formed to be about. It is about itself and itself alone. The process becomes the purpose. Hence my allusion to..."
"McLuhan, right. The medium is the message, the process is the purpose, the limey is a loonie. Look, basically all you're saying is that every corporation eventually becomes about nothing but manipulating its stock price to make its stockholders rich, right?"
"It goes beyond that. It applies to any institution. Take charities. Every charitable organization becomes about nothing but raising money. Look at the people they hire. People with the will to give? No, people with the skill to get. Government, obviously. The most idealistic office-seeker, intending to use politics to get to a point where he can govern, finds that the far side of the election looks just like the near side."
"Nothing but more politics. Sure, I get that. But..."
"Or consider journalism."
We did. Another silence hung over the bar.
"So, did you hear about that rock from the Antarctic that shows evidence of life on
Mars?" I asked.
"You know what bugs me?" Joe muttered, brooding over his second cream soda. "Extra-large corporate logo t-shirts."
Larry rested his chin on both fists and asked sweetly, "And just what is it about extra-large corporate logo t-shirts that vexes you so, Joseph?"
"The size! I've seen who buys these things. Dweeby guys with pocket protectors and acne scars."
"And you wonder where they will put their pocket protectors?"
"No, but I can't shake the image of a pitiful dweeb loser fantasizing about waking up in his rats-nest Palo Alto apartment just as Sandra Bullock walks in carrying five bear claws and a couple of tall Starbuck's coffees, wearing nothing but his extra-large corporate logo t-shirt."
"God, that is a wretched image."
"I know. But I'm sure that's what they're thinking when they buy those shirts."
"I mean, to drink anything but Java Central coffee in Palo Alto is evidence of a moral
degradation that --"
"Well, but the point is --"
"I admit to a Starbuck's latte in a Dallas airport when laid over for four hours, but--"
"The point is, there are thousands of these poor souls, maybe millions."
"Good Lord. I feel your pain. Millions of Starbucks-drinking..."
"...lonely, obsessed geeks, hacking or fantasy role playing or Net surfing late into the night, with no social lives except for the inbred artificial society they find online..."
"...a stag nation..."
"Stagnation?"
"...with big shirts."
"Stagnation?"
"I hear the Martians are huge tentacled creatures with black eyes and V-shaped mouths dripping saliva," I said, but nobody was paying any attention.
Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
mswaine@cruzio.com