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Temporary Life 3: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You
Getting hired by a temp agency is relatively easy: make an appointment, appear in your second-hand monkey suit, fill out the application, take the software test, and discuss your resume with the “analyst.” Provided you type over forty words per minute, pass the software test and are functionally literate, they’ll hire you. As you leave,…
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I’m a Techy, You’re a Techy
About a year ago I bought a gadget that uses wireless technology to play electronic files and Internet radio through my stereo. Not a mind-bending idea. Receivers and transmitters have been around for over a century—telephones, radios, televisions, etc. And these earlier manifestations of our rut toward technological utopia, when finally mass marketed, were fully…
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Porn: It’s Never Been So Pornographic
Porn has quickly adapted to an explosively facilitated Internet market by not only fragmenting into numerous subgenres that cater to particular fetishes, but by purging itself of what its audience doesn’t want, which is whatever fails to get the chemistry pumping. This substantive evolution in porn product has rendered it less real and more fantastic…
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The Cell People
A woman reading a book raises a gaze of exasperated woe. Next to her is a dude whose one-sided babble runs something like this: “Nah, ain’ fuckin’ that bitch no mo’…Crazy-ass bitch be fuckin’ Shafon, now, man…Yeh…Yeh…Fuck that fuckin’ shit—I told the bitch I wanted her to have my baby…” With impregnation all the rage…
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Temporary Life 2: Revenge of the Human Resource
For three years I remained a temp or, should I say, impermanent. To those for whom I worked I was as insignificant as the tasks they assigned. And when those tasks were done, I was less than insignificant—I was gone. More than any other class of employee my presence was explained and defined by the…
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Liberty: Tied, Beaten and Blown
Awhile ago I was flipping through the New Yorker and saw an interesting cartoon: two men in uniform, guns trained on a pedestrian, behind them a van with “Fashion Security” on the side. The caption read, “Sir! Sir! Kindly remove the bolo tie and set it on the ground—nice and slow!” I find this significant…