Market Target

by Mark Driver

I've been targeted right out of the market.

I've had it. I can't take any more advertising. Television, radio, magazines, billboards,
even the Internet for Christ's sake. Everywhere. Why do they keep targeting me? I never
did anything to them. I don't even buy anything! They're wasting their time! Fast food
makes me feel like shit, soft drinks make me dizzy, candy is disgusting, chips make my
stomach hurt, I don't smoke, and any band that has ever been advertised anywhere sucks
unequivocally. I eat tortillas and vegetables, I drink tap water. I ride my $40 bike for
entertainment. I buy a new pair of Dickies at the army navy store every year and I get
all my other clothes at Costco in 3-packs. My car works fine, I use my Internet connection
for long distance, I've had the same boots for three years and re-sole them when they wear
out. As far as booze goes, well, as long as it's wet.

So why do they keep attacking me? Why are they filling every square inch of every available
space in my life? Above urinals, on concert tickets, underneath the ice at hockey games,
on blimps, in video games, as props in movies, plugs in rap songs, on shitty Web Sites (No,
I will not visit your motherfucking sponsor. If you're not in it for the love, and you can't
figure out any better way to pay for your site than by slapping some ugly, corrupted banner
across the top of your pathetic work, then fucking close up shop, kill yourself, and leave
the Web to non-polluters). They'd advertise on the backs of my eyelids if they could get away
with it, and I can't hack it anymore. They win. I lose. They succeeded. I failed. Like Brian
Wilson, I just wasn't built for these times. I fold. Here are all my cards. Keep the pot, keep
my ante, keep the goddamn jacket on the back of my chair for all I care, I can get another
at Costco. I'll be out in the parking lot getting drunk and yelling at cute girls because I
can no longer stand the taste of tentacles. Marketing has poisoned everything worthwhile under
the sun, so I'm giving it all up. Everything.

But the way I figure it, there's no real loss. I've seen all of the episodes of the Simpsons
200 times each. Most of the good writing was done 100 years ago. I haven't listened to FM
radio in years. I could play all my records beginning to end alphabetically and I'd be 76
years old when I got to the Zeni Geva. Online culture is a fucking yawn, only good for buying
stuffed goats on Ebay and getting cracked copies of $1000 software. Movies always end up
at the 99 cent video store across the street eventually, and you can fast forward through
those commercials. My girlie's cute and the corner bar has Pabst on tap. What else matters?

True, by shutting myself off to everything, I'm probably limiting my future potential as a
'community building' or 'bleeding edge' cog in someone's nightmarish vision of Internet
profitability, but fuck, a simple read through my writing should've cured that anyway (Note
to potential employers: The bidding starts at $120,000 a year with full dental).

So I'm out. No more.

I just feel bad for those of you I'm leaving behind. You'll be wearing your Slave Labor Nikes,
sweating under a Third World Vest, listening to Everqueer or Fratboy Slim, your hair styled
stupidly with gasoline and aborted pig placentas, trying to choke down a Double Meat Fuck
Splattered Cow Testicles On The Slaughterhouse Floor Pus Coagulated Lactacious Secretion
Yellow Dye #2 Deluxe. Man, will you be looking dumb. It makes me want to cry. You poor,
oversugared demographic you. You're filling your apartments, your bodies, and your minds with
useless junk. You stagger under your own weight, throwing money in random directions until
you collapse and die, buried by a bunch of people who you failed to create meaningful human
bonds with, who forget about you on the way home from the funeral.

Maybe I'm just oversensitive, but I actually feel those fingers reaching out at me - cute
little girl fingers, feeling at my face like a bind man, pulling at the loose threads all
over my brain, trying to find a sensitive one, one that tweaks me. Desires to be successful,
attractive to the opposite sex, spiritually satiated, or conversely, the fears of disease,
dismemberment, of being outcast, of repressed homosexual desires. Herd mentality as dictated
by herd mentality. A gas mask of soiled wool, worn in a steaming shower of chlorinated pond
water. A lumbering culture created by profit motive, existing as window dressing to disguise
the brutal cynicism of the architects, the brassy checks and balances of accountants bleating
commands to the flunky tastemakers on the production line. The subversion of anything subverting.
The conversion of something dangerous into something profitable. The gutting of the lion and
the championing of the taxidermist. And the puffy vests, my god, the puffy vests..

I give it one more shot.

I hit that little "on" button, and immediately this little red dot appears on my forehead. I
feel the barrel rising on the other side of the glass as some powersuited executive attempts
to get me in his sights. His scope is the best money can buy, but my nausea and skittishness
mark me as difficult prey. I make a sprawling leap over a pile of books, spilling a glass of
wine and sending my cats scattering. The TV takes a shot at me. It misses, but after the smoke
clears, there's a shimmering can of Pepsi on the coffee table, seductively held by a well
manicured (but severed) hand. Then the Taco Bell dog is outside, scratching at my window,
singing "That's Amore", the secret code that alerts Col. Sanders and Ronald McDonald to get
their tumor inducing grease guns at the ready. "We have a resistor! Alert Cap'n Crunch and Mrs.
Butterworth. Tell Hogan to pull that Subaru around!" And then, as the entire posse of 1-800-COLLECT
goons attempt to joke their way through the front door, a helmeted uberyouth does a backflip on
rollerblades against the window, almost crushing the Taco dog, thankfully getting tangled in the
iron jungle of security bars designed for such a moment. The severed Pepsi hand launches itself
across the room onto the stereo, turns it to HOTROCK 99.5 FM and starts dancing suggestively on
the turntable. Warm, gooey songs ooze from the speakers, blurring the lines between commercial
and product, product and art. The walls are running with honey, blood, and Gatorade. Limp Bizkit
tries to sign me up for the Rap Metal MasterCard, but is outvolumed by a chorus of creepy NY Gap
models, dead eyed and Children of the Damned style, singing nostalgic 80s songs with cool
detachment, trying to sell me vests. Close inspection reveals UPC codes on the backs of their
beautiful necks and a legion of bulimic girls behind them, mascara mixing with puke on ten
thousand toilet bowls. Budweiser frogs are crawling out of the toilet bowls. A one-eyed, mutilated
Asian girl holds a pair of new Levi's against the window with a thin, purple arm and starts
screeching "It's a Small World After All" at the top of her lungs. Magic, The Old Navy dog, is
sniffing butts with the Taco Bell dog, who had since bit the Asian girl on the leg and now yelling
something about Gordidas. A waifish beauty suddenly appears on my bed, vying for my attention,
trying to talk me into a new car, her hand slowly unbuttoning her blouse, batting her doe-ishly
brown eyes, "C'mon Mark. It's only a test drive. No one ever has to know."

Realizing my one escape, I yank my battered wallet out of my back pocket and pull out a twenty
dollar bill. The entire scene freezes. All eyes are transfixed to the damp, smelly piece of paper.
Andrew Jackson snickers and you can almost smell the cannibalized Indian on his breath. A miraculous
cross breeze flows through my apartment, and I let the money go. It catches an upward draft, a hot
air thermal, and is gone out the window.

And then, something even stranger happens. The spokespeople, animals, models, body parts, and
corporate whores all disappear in a anti-climactic 'puff' of yellow smoke, leaving a slight smell
of perfumed intestine twisting through the air. My twenty freezes in mid flight about thirty feet
above the ground. A helicopter drops out of the sky, and lowers a rope down to the cash. A man in
a business suit slides down the rope, commando style, and captures the money in his mouth, gives a
contemptuous snort, mumbling something like "sucker" under his breath. And then the helicopter is
gone, vanishing somewhere behind the radio towers spiking the top of Queen Anne Hill. Everything
is quiet again.

I didn't just turn that TV off. I unplugged the motherfucker.