Small business fell out of fancy. The little old woman selling flowers around the corner, the burly bumpkin running a diminutive shop selling basics, the older guy with a stache that lives in the block across who you could always go to get your tv fixed, that all stops working as concrete, ceramic and plastic behemoths plow and drag their way into every niche and crevace, nook and cranny they can fit, and sending meaty tendrils, disgusting slimy proxies of corporate minionship, feeling out the ground yet unclaimed, or so it would seem from that perspective. You go down the street and see some in ragged clothes playing his guitar, eyes closed, case opened. He might be even good, macking you tap your foot, nod your head, and feel just a bit guilty for thinking of him as a useless by-product of an otherwise functioning society, and you can't help feel the same about a guy peddling cabbage for a living. Driving in your fancy car, feeling like a boss. The guy reflecting in your polished shoe approves, fuck the lowest common denominator, you don't need them to feel comfortable in your cage. I read Cosmopolitan and know what razor brand Brad Pitt uses to trim his goatee, so take your broken nails and dirty clothes and broken dreams and go be a piece of shit somewhere far away and down-wind from me.

Have you ever looked at the faces of people in the subway? They're fucked up. You see them in every form of public transportation, but subway is special. It's special because there is nowhere to escape in a subway, and i don't mean literally, but with your eyes. There is nothing happening behind those small windows, sure there are posters and rules and a map and in most there are those small screens flashing some bullshit, but that lasts only for so long, before your eyes get drawn to the other passengers, idly glancing over their frames, not staring of course, it's important to keep up the illusion, the instinctive compulsion to pretend they don't exist or if they do you don't give a flying fuck. But you do coz they're just like those posters and screens, and so you go over the young guy reading some Clive Cussler novel, the ugly girl nervously moving her deformed lips and staring at her hands, neatly tucked on her knees, the well dressed middle aged dude, blankly drilling a hole in the floor with his eyes. It's funny when someone notices you took a snipe at them and they glance back, it's a bit like in Pokemon games when two trainers lock eyes with each other - the background goes black, and for a split second you engage in a silly game of wits, who's gonna be the fucking man (or woman), who's the chicken shit, weak willed sack of refuse and backs down first. On rare occassions it's a draw, it's like you telepathically shake hands and look elsewhere simultaneously. It's best to be in an alternative state of mind, you'll be most certain to win. Catching the sight of bloodshot, half-closed eyes on a twisted mug is sure to flatten all but the toughest competitors, of which most would be in a similarly deranged mental condition. That's when words are exchanged, knives are drawn, women scream, sub gets derailed, and Satan looms out from an abysmal fissure to slap you on the face with his burning dick.

Anyway, take a look at this:

I don't care if you're a De Beers, Rothschild or a Weishaupt, this is why self-employment is becoming a decreasingly less viable way to sustain yourself in this consumerist dystopia of beercan fortresses, the beehive doesn't function without the Queen, but it won't also function with all it's drones producing honey all for themselves, then they'd be just a bunch of hippies and who wants that garbage on the streets of our great cities, is what the Queen is thinking. The hivemand feeds the info through the tubes and the cables and the reels and the papers, and the only way to stay at least remotely oblivious is picking up on distractions, excuses, go ahead and label yourself as an outcast, see what the little man grabbing your collar from below will say about that. Branded livestock and slaves, they didn't have a choice, modern people, civilized people, wear their brands, embedded not only on their clothes and accessories but also in their hazy stares and shuffling walks, with pride and a feeling of great personal achievement. The need to belong suppressed the need to be, and all that's left is to make the effort to find a way out of the maze of vanity, but how can you if you don't see it's walls? Science tells us the laws of physics and dimensional perception are universal and the same for everyone, but how could it be for the brave young man plying his trade for a pittance on the street with his guitar, and for the guy who drives in a Lexus and holds an erroneous view of himself as being a big bad wolf swimming in a mass of green wool, as if that makes his decaying meat better than my decaying meat. Fuck his meat and fuck his Lexus, he doesn't have a chromatic Charizard.

The guy was pretty good by the way and i left him good money in a display of appreciation of the skill he had in his craft of choice. Maybe later i'll pick up my rake from the smithy, drop by the inn for a mug of ale, and openly stare at the faces of other patrons. It's ok to stare, because they know me and i know them. Good deal.