Work In Progress

I remember copying out the text below while I was in college. It is from an introductory essay in a large coffee table book on the artwork of Barbara Kruger. It is a shade hyperbolic, yet perhaps not. In either case it amuses me. And the holidays are upon us now for better or worse.

Mental notes in the houseware department of Wal-mart. Yes. Wal-Mart. You can get anything you want at Wal-Mart. The fact that you want it already means you are already dead. Last Christmas I had an epiphany at Wal-mart. No. That’s a little grand…It was two weeks before Christmas. Each department in Wal-Mart had its own Muzak system blaring Christmas carols, and each department manager apparently, had decided to program a different medley of carols. And as you walked through Wal-Mart, these competing festive audios melted together into a completely dissonant sour, even terrifying mélange, as if Stockhausen had decided to do a Christmas album, you know something, it was perfect, it was almost art, and no one in Wal-Mart seemed to notice they were being subtly encouraged to go home and commit suicide.