Pink Dubloon

Here's why it sucks when I hear a song I like in a commercial: because the car/drug/tampon company, in trying to sell you their shit, is trying even harder to create a feeling in you, to hijack a few of your genuine synaptic responses and harness them to their goddamn product. It's not benign, it's not an even exchange (money for cred, is it ever?) it's not even selling anymore, it's fucking "branding" i.e. the attempt to create falsely transcendent associations in your mind with a corporate "identity": women in billowy dresses twirling in slow motion on a sea-cliff sunset or scruffy philosopher/mechanic-looking kids piling into that Cabrio and saying 'fuck you' to the jocks. So when I hear that Nick Drake song now, I have an interruption in the circuit in my brain that recalls the smell of apple blossoms at 3am on State St. in Ann Arbor or the play of the curtains in the bedroom of the then soon-to-be-Mrs. JoDI, and I also now involuntarily think of those punk kids who are being paid to act like they're not the type to care whether their car is cool but that's why it--and they, and you if you choose to buy--is so cool isn't it goddammit?

Etymology of Fear

When did break-ins become "home invasions"?