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Our
Mission, Should You Choose to Accept Us
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"I
saw the BEST minds of my generation
destroyed by MADNESS . . . " —Allen Ginsberg
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Without
thinking, we do what is expected of us. We get up in the morning. We put
on the radio and listen to the music the record companies think we should
listen to. We get in our cars or on a train and go to our jobs, silently
cursing the swarming, slow-moving mass of humanity that stands between us
and our daily prisons. We toil mindlessly for the benefit of the CEO's kid's
trust fund, dazed by deadlines and the blue glow of the computer screen
in our beige-and-gray cubicles, or smiling politely at the customers we
serve like automatons. We wear the clothes the fashion magazines tell us
to wear, because they will make us young and hip and sexy and happy. We
drink the beer the commercials on the sit-coms tell us to drink, because
it will make us young and hip and sexy and happy. We gladly pay ten dollars
to watch the young, hip, sexy, happy-appearing people on the movie screen
and wish we were more like them. Before long, we are thinking and feeling
and working and buying exactly how other people expect us to.
As I sat in the chain bookstore, reading Ginsberg's "Howl" and drinking my pretentiously named, yet oddly flavorless, corporate coffee, I realized that matters have only gotten worse in the past fifty years. There is a madness consuming our generation: The madness of the modern. The madness of the banal. The everyday madness of a world that sees people only as factors in a profit/loss equation. Five or ten or twenty years ago, we, the thinkers and feelers, still deluded ourselves that we wouldn't live our lives in the narrow little boxes drawn for us by our schools, our churches, our parents, and our society. We would be rock stars. We would be professional athletes. We would be writers and artists and millionaires and actors and a million other things, all of them great. I put "Howl" back on the shelf, threw out the rest of my coffee, and began plotting revolution for the hell of it. This e-zine is our own "Howl." We hope that it will encourage you in your own subtle daily rebellions. Think for yourself. Learn to play the drums and start a punk band of thirty-something accountants. Take painting classes and start your own salon d'refuses. Study kung fu or fencing or Swedish massage. Learn Spanish and move to Guatemala. Write a novel. Better yet, write us an article. Most of all, don't give in to the everyday, mundane, corporate world. Be yourself. Be a CORPORATE MOTHERFUCKER. Yours, Ken Mondschein
The
Corporate Mofo Theme Song
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