‘rip: 1991 – 2005’

q: do they have pretzels in phila?

a: they are more prominent than they are here; they are not handed out on every street corner, but they are placed around case registers/covered in choco, etc. there is a particular brand which i enjoy; they are called ‘uncle something’ and they are made by hand, locally. i find it queer that in this age of standardized global transportation, there are still items which are found ‘up there’ but not ‘down here’. for example, they have these things called ‘tastykakes’…

q: mmmm! i love tastykakes!!

a: …

since i dont post any interesting social phenomena on my site, and you are the
only person whose email address i have, here is my story:

last night at 20:30 a knock was heard on the door at quillian. upon looking through the front curtains it was ascertained that ‘crystalinia’, the neighbour kid, was indeed standing on the stoop. the door was opened a crack with only the occupants face, right shoulder, and right knee visible. ‘do you want to buy a ticket?’ ‘to what?’ ‘for a gift certificate to walmart.’ ‘how much?’ ‘$1.”stand by, the cats are trying to get out.’ the man stepped out the front door after fending off 2 to 4 eager kitties. ‘ok, all i have is a dollar.’ ‘ok, you need to write your name and address on this end and then rip it off and then you keep this end.’ ‘ok, let me get a pen.’ beginning to sense a dissatisfaction equal to more than being shook down for a dollar and feigning enthusiasm for free walmoney, the man decides to pose the query as to the charitable function of this transaction. he returns with his pen and banters with the lass. ‘what is this for anyway?’ ‘see on the ticket?’ (reads: mitchell family reunion)
‘this is for your family reunion?’ ‘yes, we are going to hawaii.’

moral: the sociological research aspect of this transaction was worth the $1 cash. but more valuable is the chuckle the man gets when he reads the rest of the ticket (reads: first prize: $100, second prize: $50) which shows that these people have to sell 150 tickets just to buy the prizes, not to mention the additional few thousand tickets to get their family’s ass to hawaii. ‘they are going to feel pretty foolish when they realize the futility of their plan. but then again, that girl did just stroll off carrying my dollar.’

prologue: when those kids on the offramp of glenwood from i20 have the audacity to tell you they are selling krispykremes so their basketball team can go to disneyworld, they arent fucking kidding!!! at least they didnt shill you out of some scratch at your own front door.

— john
iugis labor ad iugis opus
the workgroup:// www.sisyphean.com
ft ground publications:// www.insidethecastle.org

~ although it provides rich and ample fodder for musings on surface and artifacts, philadelphia has been a punishing drought when our literary motivation seeks to take root. not since the early days of the manhattan project [+] have we felt like such hacks, pirating lines from rabble in the street – this time splicing it w/ the work of other members of the work.group.

~ chain grocery store quote: ‘life is hard, you know. do you think you can work with those olives?’

~ this ‘quote’ was relayed to us by a third party, but as we were mere feet away from the exchange, peeping out pre-3ds brickwork, we feel as though we were there. basically, this is a fictionalized account: ‘order me a raspberry steamer. or strawberry.’

~ Investigators searching Moore’s cramped, two-room basement home about 60 miles norththeast of Glasgow found the typed lyrics of the Kraftwerk song ‘Hall of Mirrors’ next to his computer. The song is about being trapped and lost in life, and Moore’s note was on the same sheet of paper as the lyrics.

~ there are unexpected results with frank o gehry’s latest museum, in herford, germany. who would have thought one could say such a thing:

“With its wavy steel roof and curved walls of local brick, [Gehry’s] museum resembles Gehry’s Guggenheim temple of modern art in Bilbao…”

~ although jt [w] would be thrilled to see you cobble together your own damn presentation that tells them wtf you think the wrk.grp has cooked up, he has also prepared their version of the presentation in a feature article [w] format for you. you may find, consume, and copy the piece here. as noted in a sisyphean post [w], a certain silver tongue’d ease that accompanied the live freestyle of the presentation is lost in the text format. static though it is, it is certainly still on point.