In your face

my mailbox this afternoon was stuffed to the gills with mostly catalogues of things no one can use and no one, that i know of, wants. mom jeans that the retailer had the gumption to trumpet as “stylish”—“so comfortable you’ll want to wear them all week.” a strappy contraption that you insert your fingers into “to exercise the tendons used in opening the hand.” who punked me by enrolling my name into an inexpungible dada mailing list? these are the perfect reading materials for future installation artists, no draftsmanship skills required, thank you very much. “whatever is funny is subversive,” so said orwell, most dour of writers. but these are even more ultraistic. they are bad puns, jokes that no one get, custard pies that believed they’re really meant to be eaten.