17 December 2007

in response to: another American psycho

Names changed to protect the innocent decent (because nobody's really innocent, if we're being honest, but I consider my readership to be a decent sort).

The last entry was cross-posted to Book of the Black Rabbit.

This comment from a reader followed:

If done at all it should be done well.
Get in; save lots; get out.
Write the book afterwards (unless you get published first).


To which I replied:

Which makes me think of a few choice lines of Metric's "Handshakes":

Buy this car to drive to work,
Drive to work to pay for this car ...
Say you wanna get in,
And you're gonna get out;
But you won't,
'Cause it's a trap.

I think I might fear all manner of [traditionally reasonable] commitment.

Turn the page ...

another American psycho

There are certain aspects of job hunting that make me [better] appreciate Bret Easton Ellis's vision of the American business world.

Let's take business cards for example, because I've been receiving a lot of them lately (and [VERY] briefly have considered investing in my own). If people allow themselves, they will go insane over the layout and presentation of business cards; but, when it comes down to it, most business cards are basically the same.

I think the best representation of this was seen the film version of American Psycho. You can't truly appreciate the insanity of the description of business cards in the novel (well, you can, if you're thinking the way Ellis is thinking), but when you hear the painstaking detail in the film, and then see the after-product--two or three business cards that basically look the same--and the overwhelming surge of furious envy that Bateman exudes upon being [somehow, and frankly, invisibly] outdone by one of his "friends," you begin to understand the unspoken and absurd competition.

Yes, nihilism is gripping me. And I begin to ask myself, Should I really be trying to enter this world, when I clearly hold it in so much disdain? Granted, I'm not trying to find work in Manhattan--but it's all so much the same, isn't it?

Turn the page ...