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STAY FREE, Winter 1998 In 1997, as a member of Negativland, I was invited to be part of the - Mark Hosler Leslie: I didn't spend too long thinking about whether I was going to do it, though. I just did it. Probably just because I'm starting at the bottom and wanted to promote the book and the ideas in it. You never know for sure but I think when you add up all the pros and cons, there are going to be some people you're going to reach who you wouldn't have reached otherwise. For many people, possibly the majority, you're right: the commercials and TV in general sucks the protest out of anything you're going to say. It negates it, it makes it part of the carnival of television. Television encompasses its own critique, its own protest, and all the anti-TV and anti-commercial messages that do seep in become part of the carnival. Mark: This experience made me think: television, which exists purely to deliver the audience to the advertisers, can just say "Sure, we'll take anything! We'll even have you talking against the ads on TV and then we'll run an ad and it's great if it gets those kinds of people to watch." Leslie: Some of them are savvy enough to know that the more they sponsor messages that attack them, the cooler they seem. They're amoebae; they can constantly take in anything and come off seeming hip. And kids-who don't really give a shit about a lot of this, most people don't-are going to have exactly that reaction: "hey cool, so what." Mark: When I first watched Beavis & Butt-head, I remember being very tickled that they were mocking all these videos and mocking MTV and the average moronic MTV viewer. But of course I'd been had; I was watching MTV just like they wanted me to! Leslie: Right, and that's what happens. The form itself-the videos, the built-in critique of the videos, and the way the audience perceives that critique-starts to evolve so that becomes the new standard. When you watch TV, you still have that critique of the videos, but you're nonetheless still watching TV, you're still buying the records. You're just doing it with a more jaundiced eye and that jaundice becomes part of the experience of being the postmodern/cool video watcher. The damage goes beyond the financial transactions that are maintained or enhanced by this critique. When we get so jaundiced about it, you almost can't criticize anything. No one really cares. It just becomes part of the miasma of pop culture. BUT beyond that, I think it's probably still worth being on TV to say this. Because you're still going to reach some people who by some quirk of evolution, are not going with the crowd. Mark: But I never want to ignore the fact that how what I make gets to you is connected to what I'm doing and saying. They are linked. I am really curious to see a copy of the show I was on with the commercials in it. I want to see the context. I mean I'm willing to be interviewed for Rolling Stone or Spin, I'm willing to be in there with those Absolut vodka ads, those Pioneer Stereo ads . . . Leslie: And those situations are as strong as television because they're more focused. They go right to the audience, more so than any spots on a TV show, which are usually for a more general audience. As for promoting my book, yes, it is paradoxical to promote a book that is at least in part about the evils of promotion. But we live in a very capitalist society. We're born into it; to some extent, we are corrupt to begin with. It's very hard to be pure, and I don't think it's even desirable to be totally pure. I mean, how much can you lock yourself off? Mark: The interviwer on the show today was characterizing me as an anarchist and I said "well, no, I certainly have some leanings that way, but you might say I'm a benevolent capitalist." I run my own business with my friends. Leslie: We're all a little corrupt. You know how we all have good bacteria and bad bacteria? If you bombard your body with antibiotics, that only creates stronger bad bacteria. They become immune to the antibiotics. You also destroy some of the good bacteria. In any case, we need bacteria as much as we don't need it. You have to live with some of that because it actually keeps you strong. You have to be able to live in a capitalist society. To survive and be heard, if you're an artist at all, you want an audience. That's sort of an age-old question of purity vs. corruption and we have to-I do-start from the point that we're already a little corrupt by nature of being in this. Mark: If someone just dropped into the middle of your book and read one article, they would get the impression that you hate all this shit. But as I read the whole book, it occurred to me that you must have to watch a lot of television to be able to write this column. In one article you mention that you called up and bought something from the Home Shopping Network! Leslie: Yeah (laughs) Mark: And I got the sense that it was more complex than my first impression, that you actually kinda like some of these shows. Leslie: Oh yeah, definitely. I'm not going to call it a love-hate relationship because I don't love commercialism. I do in many ways hate it, that's true, but it's more like . . . what's the right word . . . a hate-need relationship or a hate-addiction relationship. We grow up with TV, most of our leisure time is spent with it, so of course it becomes part of us, we become part of it, there's a symbiosis that goes on throughout our whole lives. Sometimes there will be something on I like, it could be some good quality TV- that does exist. I really like some of the Comedy Central shows (Dr. Katz, Larry Sanders on HBO). But I can also watch total trash, including infomercials. Yes, I hate them, they're ugly. They show the worst aspect of us and it's so incredibly sad that so many people will watch. But of course that's in me too, and that's what I mean about that corruption. I grew up shopping, I grew up at malls. And the shopping and the TV are just two sides of the same coin. The whole point is to go shopping so you can't exorcise that from yourself easily. Anyway, I think it's more interesting to explore that twisted, distorted, corrupt, sick relationship we have with television than to just condemn it. You can't really criticize something like commercialism-which is soooo vast-by just standing up on a pedestal and pointing a finger. You have to acknowledge its power. Otherwise you're not a worthy enemy. To know why it can have power over other people, you have to know its sway over you. Mark: The ads you write about in your book actually end up reflecting a sort of parallel universe version of our world. I hadn't thought of the degree to which so many historical events work their way into the advertising language, like stuff to do with the Berlin Wall coming down and the invasion of Iraq. If all you did is look at the ads throughout the '80s you could get a fairly interesting reflection of what was going on globally. Leslie: Commercials contain their own distorted history. And that, by the way, is the kind of ads that attract me the most, the ones that have their tentacles in social and political aspects of life. Sometimes it's really obvious, like the Pepsi ads with the fall of the Berlin Wall. But most of the time they're a lot more subtle and that's where it becomes interesting, to dig out the hidden politics behind a commercial. Mark: On the plane over here, they were showing a documentary about the making of a Puma commercial. It's all about how they're trying to come up with an all-new, in-your-face aggressive campaign to sell the product in England. The director -who's dressed all in black, with a shaved head, like some hip, downtown New York art guy-is spouting off, saying, "It's not what the commercial's about, we want to convey the attitude and the lifestyle 'cos these guys LIVE this life." And of course it's illustrated by constantly showing clips from the commercial. So, essentially, I was being show this elongated ad for Puma on the airplane-that's weird enough-and then I'm also thinking how amazing it is that this is news now. That this is something that is supposed to interest a person on a plane to Toronto. Leslie: That's not even new. It has been going on for 10 or 15 years. I'm sure the director guy thinks he's very creative and very hip, but everything he said sounds completely hackneyed. "Oh, it's about attitude, it's about the lifestyle." You know, what a clichˇ, first of all. No, this is not about the product, no, no, we're so much cooler than that. He's as programmed as the people he's trying to program. That just one part of why it's all so pathetic and sad-so much energy, time, money, and talent is used to program other people to, one, buy the product, but also to believe this kind of lie ("oh, it's the attitude and you can have this attitude too."). Then people only want that attitude. You know, there are so many things you don't get when you're just living by attitude and style. Mark: I talked to you about Wieden & Kennedy approaching us to do a commercial for Miller Genuine Draft . . . Leslie: That's a great example of all this. Mark: It was so amazing to talk to these guys. Because we all-you do, I do-we all rationalize how we live our lives in order to stay halfway sane and to be able to look ourselves in the mirror and feel good about our lives. And it was amazing to me to talk to these guys and hear how much they bought into the advertising executive lifestyle. They DO have to believe it. They may be cynical, but on another level, they are very infected and messed up inside their souls. Leslie: I think a lot of them have this battle going on with themselves where they feel guilty about it. They don't want to do what they do but the money's so good, they have to support a family, whatever the rationalization. Some of them hate themselves for it and then try and alleviate that by doing some pro bono work, something for a good cause. That's a really common pattern. Then there's others in advertising who just truly believe in it. They feel they're being creative; that's their word for themselves-"creatives." That makes them feel like they're good guys. A Creative. It sounds like being an artist or an angel. And then they do get a lot of feedback from people, not just from their friends, who say, "oh, ads are the best things on TV. They're so skilled." And yeah, it is a skill-not an art, though they'd like to believe that. So that's one way they protect themselves. At the same time a lot of them claim that they're not altering society, that they're just reflecting it. That's the other age-old argument. And, yes, advertising reflects who we are. There's no doubt about it. But it also shapes who we are. It's not simply either one or the other. That kind of either/or dichotomy is something that TV and a lot of media propagates. You're a villain or a victim, you're a winner or a loser. Mark: One of the main goals of advertising is simply to make people familiar with a brand name. So when you go into the store, you're more inclined to buy that name. It doesn't matter what light it was painted in. Leslie: That's absolutely true. Neither Pepsi or Coke or any of them have had anything new to say for years. There's a whole chunk of advertising that's just there to keep their name in the game. You may not remember what they said but you remember they're a player. Mark: Do you think that a big part of this approach is just playing on a normal, human quality? We like things that are familiar. It used to be that we lived in little villages and what was familiar was local. Now we live in a world where we're all getting the same information through the same box in our living room; it's the same human quality but it's being appealed to in a different way. Leslie: That's absolutely true. People seek out what's familiar. Starting from birth, you seek out your mother's voice over other voices. Mark: Give me that breast! Leslie: Right. And then you go from there to the village to the global society that's all drinking the same brand or two. Pepsi and the rest aren't necessarily evil for exploiting that tendency because we thrive as a human species doing that. What amazes me, though, is that there's some people who are sort of modern day tribesman who like to be in crowds, who like to look the same, drink the same, shop the same, yell for the same team. Then there's people who bristle at that. And I'm someone who bristles at that. Mark: You're a bristler! Leslie: In kindergarten, when they had us sing songs, I couldn't BEAR to sing with the group of kids. It made me feel like I was going to get lost in a mob or killed or something. Mark: I'm the same way. Even when I've been in protests, I'm so uncomfortable with joining in and shouting a slogan, even if I believe in the cause. If it's just part of human nature, then isn't part of the change you're arguing for contrary to human nature? Leslie: Yes, but I'm human. I have all sorts of proof! And you're human, too, as are other people who think they aren't part of the group. So it's also human nature to break away from the crowd and to hate and fear it. Mark: I think if you got them to be honest about how they feel, most of the people that look like they're having a great time at some danceclub out in New York would say they all feel like aliens; that they're not quite part of the human race. I think that is a pretty universal part of being human. Leslie: That's right. Something is driving them to get lost in the crowd. People don't use the word "conformity" anymore but that's what it's about. The thing that makes advertising's role in this more insidious than "oh, we're just reflecting human nature" is the incredible amount of power and money they have to exploit human nature. They also have the power of repetition, which is what commercials do. Some of them say no one commercial makes an impression. An impression is when a viewer has seen it at least six times. Repetition is also the key to all human learning. That's how kids learn human language and math. And what advertisers have that we don't have is the ability to repeat their message over and over again in different guises: Pepsi, Buy Pepsi, Here's Pepsi, We're Pepsi. We don't have that power, and by we I mean anybody who wants to criticize them. I have often had this feeling "Should I write about AT&T again? Didn't I say that before?" Or "How many times can I write a column about the evils of the free-market system?" Then I remind myself how often those ads have run, maybe 5,000 times. And another campaign is saying more or less the same thing for another product. You know, it's such an unequal playing field that I can justify saying it. I don't want to be too repetitive, of course, because it's hard on me and I suppose on the reader. But if the ideas bear repetition then I think those need to be repeated, because ideas at some point can become principals. Mark: People are always asking us, "Don't you think you're telling people things they already know?" And our response is "Well, intelligence is temporary." Leslie: That's a great insight. Sometimes it's just a flash and you forget it the next moment. You go on eating or sleeping or whatever. Intelligence can interfere with that, too. There's no evolutionary advantage for intelligence to survive in some cases. Mark: After DisPepsi, we're not planning to go on and do a DisNike or a DisMicrosoft. But this project worked out great in many ways. We correctly guessed that by focusing on one company it would make it more intriguing and interesting to writers and the public. Leslie: By the principle of familiarity. Mark: Oh yeah, but on the other hand I don't know how much I want to stay immersed in living this lifestyle where I have to keep sucking down all the media in order to be able to respond to it. There is a project we've been thinking of doing about the desert, because I love the deserts in the Southwest so much. Leslie: When you're so steeped in this junk culture, whether it be a love/hate/need/whatever relationship, you want the opposite, you want incredible simplicity and the possibility of something more spiritual, of something like the dessert. Mark: I'm the only person in Negativland for which this is true-about two years ago I just kinda stopped watching TV! In the last year and a half, I've literally watched about four hours of television. Even with my friends, who all like to tell me they don't watch TV, stuff comes up in conversation all the time where I don't know what they're talking about. On the one hand, I'm realizing I kinda like my life better, in terms of the way it feels inside my head and spirit, but I also know that the more years go by, the more I do become an alien, this freak where I can't relate to anybody because I don't know what was so funny on last night's Seinfeld. In fact, I've never even watched Seinfeld! Leslie: And Seinfeld, for many people, including myself, is a whole way of looking at the world. I did start watching more TV to write about it but it was just an excuse. I didn't have to watch so much. Now that I'm not writing about commercials as much, I still watch it. I think in many ways watching TV is the opposite of having a spiritual life. It's pretty hard to have a soul with depth and many nooks and crannies if you spend three, four hours a night watching TV. Or if you just have it on in the background. It's the opposite of silence. To be entertained all the time, to have your every whim responded to . . . Mark: If you have a constant external chatter going on it's very difficult to hear your own internal chatter. It's related to what I said before about worrying that my ideas will be flattened out on TV; conversely, you could say watching television flattens out the minds of the people watching it all the time. Leslie: Well, yeah. And this is sort of what I'm starting to write about, about language and how we talk. And how people are talking like the various media they watch or listen to. The media reflect a certain way of talking and it flattens it out. So we're all creating a new lingua franqua where we all know what we mean, it's very media savvy, it's very ironic and hip and all that. Mark: So if I'm out of the loop for too many years I'm not going to understand what people are referring to. Leslie: In terms of content, yes, you might not know about The Simpsons or Seinfeld. But I think everybody starts to pick up the media clichˇs of the day. Your friends use them, we all use them, whether it's "yada yada" or "I don't think so." Mark: Everyone I know used the Homer Simpson exclamation "duh!" That's the only show I miss. Leslie: Yeah, it's brilliant. When you say "duh," you're honoring Homer Simpson in a way and a whole way of looking at the world. But-and I don't want to put too strong a "but" on it-but . . . Mark: Put a weak and flabby "butt" on it! Leslie: But it is taking on the media way of being. In a way, The Simpsons is a bad example because it's not creepy enough. Anyway, back to what you were saying about the desert. There's a piece in the book that talks about how commercials are trying to be more spiritual, as if they can smell their lack of spirituality and how that's turning people off. And how people are sick of the lack of spirituality in themselves . . . Well, the commercials will give them that, too. They'll give them the fun, the excitement, the flash AND NOW they'll give them the spirituality. Mark: In car ads, you endlessly see the Southwest landscape. As if everyone buying these cars is going to be driving them around Monument Valley. Leslie: Right, the desert is god's prop. Around 1990, I wrote about some of the other props (the sky and clouds) because with the change of the decade-the decade before the millennium-there was a flurry of these sort of spiritual ads. They kinda died down but they're starting to come back now with a different tilt. There are so many ways for commercialism to get around the barriers that we put up against it. One way is that anti-ad ad (the ad that tells you you're a rebel), or Wieden & Kennedy wanting you to do an ad for Miller Beer. The built-in critique against the whole system is within the ad. The other way is to have the built-in antidote to commercialism and materialism-the spiritual life. There's probably a few other ways but those are the two main poles of built-in negation of advertising that advertising offers in order to get a deeper association with us. Mark: Earlier you brought up the point that anyone coming out saying something critical about all this will be absorbed. With the work that we've doing, part of me feels like "bzzzzzt! game over!" We're fucked because they've completely absorbed our language and our attitude and even our aesthetic. I certainly could imagine some of the stuff on DisPepsi being in a Pepsi ad in just a couple of years, if that. Leslie: No, now! Mark: Well, we were aware of that and we were playing with that in the work, but part of me felt very depressed when Wieden and Kennedy called us up. I just don't know where we can go with these ideas because they're just absorbing it. Leslie: Yeah, but there's nothing you can do about that. You can't not have a critique just because it's going to get absorbed. The world is just so complex. There's always going to be 10,000 millions things going on at once and they're not going to work out like any individual wants them to. Mark: I know. But it certainly gives me pause for thinking. Years ago just the act of appropriating anything, regardless of what we were trying to say with it, was exciting and new and transgressive. It felt like it meant something. It doesn't feel that way at all now, which is why we filled up a whole record with chunks of all these ads, something you never hear on records anymore. We were thinking, "what will that be like?" What will it do to the head of the listener when they keep hearing these wacky audio art pieces that keep mentioning one product over and over again? I actually hoped that two-thirds of the way through the record that people start to get sick of hearing about Pepsi! Leslie: Transgression always has to move forward because the last thing that was transgressed doesn't shock anymore. It's really, really hard but there are ways to not just react to the last thing and find something else. Mark: It's not that I sit around and try to come up with ways to be transgressive, it's not contrived like that. But I don't know where this can go. I'm also realizing that spending a lifetime just reacting in opposition to things gets to be sorta stifling to your own personal growth. I'd like to be FOR things rather than AGAINST things. Then again, with the anti-corporate corporate ads, in some ways you could look at it as a positive thing. These companies are now to the point where they're saying "you know, we just can't lie to these people anymore. We are going to admit that we are selling them something useless and trivial and even make an ad out of that." I mean, they may not literally be saying this but if you look at ads around the turn of the century, and the way they have evolved, they were always trying to keep one step ahead. And I see this trend as an interesting "one step ahead" for them because it seems to be indicating an acknowledgment. Maybe, in a way, that's positive. Leslie: I don't think it's positive for them to say "we know that you know" because the real point is in their action. They're still doing it, they're still putting the money behind saying "we know that you know." Mark: But I think that it indicates that the climate has changed a little bit. Their perception is that people are more savvy than they used to be. Leslie: Some people may say corporations are bad or whatever . . . but most people don't really think corporations are bad. They think corporations are their friends. The corporations are the entities responsible for giving them what they most want in the world, entertainment. Mark: A cheap VCR. Leslie: Yeah, it's the constant parade that you mentioned before. They want to get their baseball cap and wear it backwards and they want the familiar logo on it. They want fun and meaning in the right sneakers, and they want to watch their celebrities and to identify and care about them. The corporations are responsible for all that and I think when they say "we know that we know," that's just a way for them to buddy up and say we're an empathetic friend. Years ago I was in Portland and I went to lunch with people from Wieden & Kennedy and another local agency and we were talking about the same thing-how savvy ads are, how they're saying "we know that you know," and where do they go from there. And these ad guys said "we go to simplicity. Utter simplicity." Mark: (laughs) The new minimalism! Leslie: Yeah, there's always a new minimalism! It's a Ping-Pong thing, one trend triggers the opposite, but it also parallels that spiritual thing. Ad people are finding it in themselves, so they go through the simple trend for a while but then they go back to something else, and then they find a third way. Mark: I think you're right in a way but I do think this trend with anti-advertising has introduced an element into the mix that isn't going to go away. A friend of mine who's an organic farmer was telling me he thinks it's good because it means the lie that they all have to tell to all of us to keep us believing in this whole way of life is becoming bigger and bigger. And the bigger the lie gets, the more likely it is that some day people will question it. Leslie: I don't know about that. It sounds good but, again, it goes back to bacteria. We can throw the antibiotics at them or the anti-commercial messages at them and they incorporate it and become immune to it. They've surmounted it, they've incorporated the critique so they can go beyond that. The critique has to rise to another level and then they'll incorporate that. They just become bigger and bigger and more powerful. Mark: I guess I'm just realizing that I don't know what the next level of critique is at this point. I'm pretty confused because they're doing such a damn good job of absorbing it. I realize it's an inevitable process. You can look back to the '60s and the '70s. It always gets absorbed... Leslie: Yeah, Mercedes Benz is using Janis Joplin. Mark: One different aspect, though, is that instead of just absorbing different forms of fringey ideas and opposition, they're now absorbing the very idea of opposition period, no matter what form it takes. And I think that is a quantum leap. So whatever form it takes, no problem, "Oh whatever, we can absorb that." Leslie: Right. To them it's just another thing that can be part of the commercial. They really have no respect for the opposition in that sense. But they have the respect that one has toward an enemy. Like what I was saying about knowing TV if you're going to critique it; they have to know the enemy, the deep-seated distrust of corporate American. And they know that better than we know them. As far as going beyond the anti-ad, there are a lot of ads out there-there always have been but I seem to see more now-that are just so artful and well-produced and powerful that they just make all sorts of questioning irrelevant. You just sit back and say "Wow, what a good 30 seconds I just had!" "What a great ad!" And because they're not pushing their product hard (like Nike ads), there's no question to be had. You just have to say "Damn, I'm impressed." And that's one way of avoiding the whole question for them. And it works. Mark: So do you ever think about the folks who'll be reading your column and come away saying "She has a good point but this is so depressing. We can't stop it, so what's the point." Leslie: Yeah. I think that way myself sometimes! Mark: It's obviously not going to change. There are more ads every year. There are stickers on apples advertising the release of the Jim Carrey Liar, Liar video! It's like, oh my god, they thought of another way! Leslie: They always do. They've put ads in the tiles of supermarket floors. And three football-sized satellites will carry ads. That's been proposed but it hasn't happened yet. Everything from the tiny little space on apples to the moon can be turned into an ad. And yeah, that does increase. And that is depressing. Mark: The only thing I can realistically suggest to people is to be aware of it. Practice self defense. Leslie: Yeah, it's the same thing a shrink says about overcoming a neurosis: first you have to be aware of it and then its power over you starts to dissipate. I personally have two reactions. One, I can watch TV, especially ugly TV like Hardcopy, and just get this feeling of revulsion and anger. I want to turn it off and put up a wall between me and a lot of the media. And sometimes that's not a bad idea. The other thing that helps is to write or talk about it. That's part of that awareness thing. Anyway, what I'd like to see is people transform that anger or that depression into some political action, whatever "politics" means-some form of activism where you get into the real stuff that's going on. There was an interesting show on PBS the other day called Affluenza. The style wasn't hip or flashy and at first part of me wanted it to be in that trite, hip way. But I'm glad they didn't do that. What they did do instead was build up a good case for how much we waste resources, how much we shop. And then it showed one way of being an activist-voluntary simplicity is one way but also harvesting food from restaurants or being an environmentalist. The point is that you actually do something in the real world. It's not about the media, or style or image or attitude of being a snotty, ironic artiste, but actually doing something that has a political grounding in that widest sense of "politics." That's a way of exercising some of this crap. Mark: As far as self-defense goes, if Negativland has affected one person positively, it's me! I don't know how anything we do is going to turn out, but in the process of working on ideas and seeing them through to their conclusion, I learn so much. One unexpected thing that has happened with friends of mine who've been listening to Dispepsi; they tell me that because we've appropriated Pepsi's sounds, their jingles, their iconography, that every time they see a Pepsi ad, they now think about our record. It's like their global ad campaign is marketing our record! And that could be the single, coolest side effect of this project. Leslie: You've switched that balance of power. Mark: Yeah, and now it appears that Pepsi is not going to do anything about it. The news was in this week's Entertainment Weekly. Leslie: If they did anything, they'd look so square and evil. It's the old political gamble . If you have two candidates in a campaign, the more you publicize your opponent's criticism of you by saying it's not true, you give them more weight. That's politics 101. It sounds so trite but the other way of getting around this depression is to just have a sense of humor about it. I don't mean laugh with it or laugh it off but look at the crazy insanity of it and find it funny. Mark: I can, actually. If I have any sort of spirituality you could label, I'd say I'm a crappy Buddhist. I read Buddhist books all the time, occasionally meditate, and it always help me get a bigger perspective. There's one other thing I want to ask you. How does what you're writing about inform your choices on your own lifestyle, what you buy, where your money goes, what you eat? Do you invest? Leslie: I used to actually get a sick kick out of shopping. I don't anymore, I avoid shopping whenever I can. Mark: When I go into Home Base, which is this chain of unbelievably-huge, football field-sized hardware stores, there are so many things in there to choose from that I feel my brain is literally being crushed. I cower. And all I want is a roll of duct tape. Leslie: It's crazy. If I go into K-mart of something, I'll get dizzy, I have physical reactions. I tend to shop for food a lot, though I don't buy many brand things. It's not that I'm consciously trying not to buy them (although there are some companies I avoid); it's that I just don't want those products. They're too processed or fake. Clothing: I don't buy a lot, although I did buy some things somewhere lately . . . (laughs) oh, it was Ann Taylor! It's embarrassing to say that but I like some of their clothes, they're good, basic clothes, and there was a big sale. Also, since I was a teenager, I've liked thrift shops and second hand shops. In terms of investments, first of all, I don't have any money to invest so it hasn't been a question. At the Voice, they have a 401k plan and sometimes I think "Gee, if I invested, I would've had money by now." But then to invest in those companies is to be a part of this free-market system where you don't know about those companies, what shitheads they are, etc. It goes back to the symbiosis between commercial and us. We're feeding it from different ends. Back to PRESS US 
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