On Special: Lasagne Vagabonde

The Emotive Response System has long acknowledged the inevitability of banal life scripts to dictate the foolsome footfalls of the feckless. (Whether this is a result of long-term sociological manipulation by the Powers That Be, or its opposite — their own Social Darwinist laissez-faire reticence — will be forever moot.)
  Folks who cannot ascend any further than Maslow’s Ground Floor are everywhere from Skid Row to Town Square. Indeed, it’s all a state of mind, though the topological space and dimension of origin may vary.
  Resource scarcity amplifies perceived urgencies and proper etiquette often takes a back seat to basic heterotrophic pursuits in an ironic form of Refined Gusto. Mirrored archetypes in alternate dementia illustrate sociological knot invariants (extended im-pasta-bilities, if you will) that appear to be complex algebraic tangles when viewed from home dimensions.
  In the end, tautological dicta win out the day: Help, or don’t help; the quantum endpoint is the same. A never-ending scroll actualising iterations of ambient-isotopic reruns (imagine Champagne Charley on a treadmill reliving his intestinal insurgencies), all washed down with surrogate libations like warm buttermilk or watery marinara.
  Not to be discouraged by Calvinist mellow-harshening, the Emotive Response System has introduced Lasagne Vagabonde to said feckless masses via the Coney Pungeonary to mitigate this dichotomous gestalt.
  Enjoy a delicious dish of Hand Pasta. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter.

Hello Planaria™ Digital Companion Guides You Through Social Discomforts

Hello Planaria™ is a digital psychological alert companion created by the Orville Corporation for their Emotive Response System’s public outreach services. Users can engage the app to recognise delicate social situations that many find triggering or overwhelming. The ability of Hello Planaria™ to detect Bad Vibes is paramount in a time when people’s common sense and social awareness are fettered by simultaneous connections to various digital realms.
  The Hello Planaria™ coding framework is based on simple bio-forms that are naturally attuned to the sensitivities of their sphere of vitality. We have the lowly planaria flatworm to thank for this. Take a bow, little worm!
  Programmers at ERS have fortified the worm’s extant nervous system and sensitivity genes and recoded its genome into a digital configuration to serve users on a human level.
  Custom algorithms are optimised to detect an array of specific discomforts and other intrusions of reality. A sonic alert works via speaker or earbuds. Hello Planaria™ can be set to sense Stranger Danger, questioning glances, disapproving eyerolls, potential frenemies, and more! Hello Planaria™ will also kindly offer banal affirmations whilst in stand-by mode.
  Rest assured that the technology inspired by a mere invertebrate is there to help you navigate reality.
  Hello Planaria™ also works well in conjunction with individuals who are on The Spectrum. Available for download at finer app stores.

ERS Updates ‘Toolz’ for Social Media Milksops

Crush it on social media! Cultivate your latent psychological pathologies with the Emotive Response System’s Digital Lifestyle Toolz™ for media exhibitionism.
  Today’s astute internet users are nigh hungry for your personal content, especially if it’s disgorged without the taint of thoughtful reflection.
  First person narratives are notably engaging as your Main Character Energy arouses the interest of complete strangers who apparently have unlimited time and attention to help fortify your depleted reserves of self-worth.
  The ERS Digital Lifestyle Toolz™ Combo-Pak includes mobile versions of:
  • The Spectrum 4.0 Lifestyle Product app
  • Culture Transition Services app
  • All current Punge Procedural apps
  • Hello Planaria Social Minefield Guide
  • Fragility Cultivation app
  • ‘Digital Despair’ forums, galleries and micro-blogs where the tech-savvy can bask and share in collective misery

As Johnny Gutts has declared, “In an Information Economy, there’s no such thing as Too Much Information!”
  The world is indeed the shoulder for you to cry on, so sign up today for the ERS Digital Lifestyle Toolz™ and let it all hang out!

BärteHansa — The Rising Menace

With the long decline of the BubbaCabal, “quality of life” issues indeed had improved in Classic City and nearby Heritageville. Their power and influence had ebbed to the point where in matters of business, media and daily life, the Cabal became all but impotent, much like Madron FC after last season.
  Unfortunately, in the resulting vacuum a loose, rag-tag assortment of former Easy Breathers, Nattering Nannies and Gray Ponytails coalesced into a formidable SWPL faction that, while perhaps ideologically opposite, rivals the former menace of BBACBL: BärteHansa. [BRTHNSA]
  Indeed, the BärteHansa threat may be greater than the BubbaCabal ever was — after all, BBACBL blatantly gave away their games of cupidity, unable to break free of the Pink Boy stereotypes in which they had cemented themselves. With BärteHansa on the other hand, the rot runs deep with Good Intentions paired with the taint of Kultural Kuru that they cast upon the community.
  The rise of BärteHansa has caused much chagrin for the Allied Pungeoning Front. Having their hands tied dealing with BBACBL mischief, they considered these upstarts benign before their ascendancy. (In hindsight, it is all too easy to point out that pungeoning requires eternal vigilance.)

What has BärteHansa been doing that could be so heinous?
  Well, BRTHNSA individuals’ activities have been noted over the years. While annoying, they were rarely toxic on a macro scale, so the APF’s Emotive Response System was infrequently utilised. Pungeoning was left up to individual citizens to deal with Ego Activists, Stupefacient Scenesters and other annoying anoetics.
  But Spent Histrionicians and Aging Fauxhemians often suffer from Role Strain, realising they’ve lost a mojo they never had. After achieving a black belt in Emo Tae-Bo, they tell themselves that it’s time to Do Something Important.
  And this is where things become alarming.
  The aforementioned Nannies and Ponytails, ever sycophantic to disaffected “youth,” jump at the opportunity. And our Tired Hipsters, ever enthralled with tales told of Radical Boomer Exploits, jump as well.

Ponytail, Meet Beard
  The result is like an open marriage made in Unitarian heaven: Do-gooder control freak fossiloids holding sway over a flock of failed artistes starving for purpose.
  BärteHansa elders hold rancid marxoid views that should trouble any free-thinker. But their skinny-jeans-clad foot soldiers, unable to form an original thought, use the stale tactics of the elders’ youth: street theater, occupation, and general attention-whoring — poor methods of persuasion, and ones very prone to backfire.
  It is this weakness the APF will seek to exploit. Stay tuned.

A Treatise on Fashion: Atrocities, Analyses, and Solutions

Fashion! Love it or hate it, everyone and their uncle has an opinion on the trending styles du jour. Of course, this is nothing new. But are today’s fashions as horrible as critics say? Yes, yes they are. But why is this so?
  Conspiracy theorists like to picture Hi-Couture diktats from the ritzy runways of Manhattan and Milan. But those are basically in-guild contests for effete fops to one-up each other whilst imagining that they’re Shocking the Squares. You’ll never see their “creations” out in public, let alone at the local clothes outlet. To many, fashion is just what happens to be hanging in the closet when they go to get dressed.
  So again, why is it so bad today? Do we blame capital-F “Fashion” as an abstract entity or blame individuals who should know better but don’t?

Failures of Fashion?

It is presumed that a concept so timeless as fashion must have a social function. So let us examine common explanations and see if they still hold water in this current day.
  A) “Self-Expression/Making a Statement” — Sounds great, but what “statement” were you thinking of making when you were half-asleep and just threw on the nearest garment? It couldn’t possibly be anything original, as your cultivated “look” took zero thought and subconsciously mimics the wardrobe of all your friends, therefore reinforcing stereotypes you claim to avoid.
  B) “Breaking Norms” — Walking stereotypes aren’t exactly breaking norms, and breaking any norms for the sake of itself is just a reactionary performance when you lack a cogent reason. Taking a dump in the middle of Town Square is also “breaking norms,” but that doesn’t make it a good thing.
  C) “Increases Self-Confidence” — If you say so. Psychologically speaking, Frame is an important mindset. That said, wilting under another’s voiced criticisms of your fashion choices is a sign of fragility, not confidence.
  The above points may sound passionate, and thus ostensibly substantive, but as a certain Mr Gutts has shown us, passion is amoral, bringing us to...
  D) “Accentuate Your Assets/Downplay Your Flaws” — This was the main undertone of fashion for the last century or so and served people well, notably as a self-marketing parlay for potential mate selection. But today the concept has been turned on its head: Yoga pants that draw attention to the cottage cheese buttock. Unrestrained gunt display that no amount of fabric can hide. Androgynous ambiguity meant to passive-aggressively bait the bemused. If intentional, again, these are shallow, reactionary performances; if not, unthoughtful slovenliness.
  In sum, these defences are found wanting in this modern age.

How Did We Get Here?

In recent years, armchair activists have called for fashion police disbandment as snowflakes reaching adulthood increasingly chafe at aesthetic criticisms leveled against them. Older citizens with a lifelong blind spot for good taste also have echoed this sentiment.
  “Defund the Fashion Police!” became a national rallying call to render any fashion judgement as null and void, whilst neutering any assessment as subjective, and therefore moot. Though the cry sounds defiant, claims of righteousness fall flat knowing that copium reserves have been declining for years, exacerbating extant neuroses in these social cohorts.
  However well-intentioned, the movement has left people disaffected amid surging fashion atrocities. Years of sustained incredulity and disgust over aesthetic neglect have reignited public debate for fashion police reform.

Solutions with Familiar Faces

We need solutions to remedy these everyday eyesores. And Orville Corporation CEO Johnny Gutts is the thought leader with those solutions.
  “Orville’s Community-Oriented Fashion Policing emphasises proactive problem solving, rather than responding to fashion iniquities after they occur.
  “Our non-profit arms [such as ERS and SARC] have been working in disadvantaged fashion communities with such resources as Punge Procedurals, Fashion Hygiene Outreach, Mobile Makeover Units, and neighbourhood watch groups to ‘get people’s minds right.’ Parent Shaming and public Scold Patrols will only be used as a last resort henceforth.
  “The bitter struggle between style and death is a real concern,” explains Gutts. “Not only for the fashion transgressor, but also for loved ones and strangers alike who must refrain from gouging out their own eyes when encountering these visual abominations.”
  Orville’s Emotive Response System is also spearheading a “National Conversation on Fashion” to be held in various locations across the country. These conversations will build on understandings gained, deal with societal determinants, and increase awareness of visual aesthetics.
  Jared Gutts, nephew of the Orville CEO, will host “rap sessions” on the importance of sustainable youth fashion. Amateur fashion shows with a “Good, Bad, and the Hideous” theme will also be held featuring commissioned apparel as well as volunteers off the street, applause meters, and crates of rotting vegetables for audience members to hurl at unacceptable attire. The traveling event debuts this summer in Heritageville where Johnny Gutts will give the keynote address.
  Whether you’re sporting a crisp tuxedo or a dusty burlap sack, all are invited, and remember...

“REFUND THE FASHION POLICE!”

“I desperately need people to see that I’m ignoring them...”

Join us for a unique event where select members of the community can congregate in a safe space for calm and idle indolence!
  The Orville Corporation presents the Emotive Response System’s Asocial Hour — an event for local asocial folx and allies!
  The ERS Asocial Hour is a regular group outing for asocial people to dissociate, ignore social etiquette, and be seen without reciprocal engagement. It’s a way to herd like-minded individuals together to vegetate in a judgemental, deprecatory way. This is a gathering not for introverts, but passive-aggressive extroverts!
  Whether you’re looking to impress people without having to meet them, give complete strangers the stink-eye, or just listlessly take up space and oxygen, we hope you’ll stop by...

Date: Wednesday, July 24, 5:00-7:00pm
Location: APF Car-Vue/Q-Mast, Mezzanine 9, 6700 Barney Scholls Rd., Heritageville
Refreshments provided by Tauntini’s. ERS Digital Lifestyle Toolz™ and Hello Planaria™ phone apps are available to help ward off uncomfortable social interactions. ConGaijin-20 protocols including safe shunning distances will be observed.

Cultivate the Fragility

Middle Kingdom familial professionals have liaised with Orville’s Emotive Response System to provide a support network for Western báizuǒ birthing persons. Experts exhort quasi-involved parental units to heed the sage teachings of Nánjué Monkhouse, Enlightened Polyhistor of Ōuzhōu.
  They will be guided to raise offspring to be dependent and sensitive caitiffs, thereby giving said parentals an indefinite sense of purpose. And thus overburdened parentals can depend on the judicious oversight of local Hukou Co-Prosperity Council agents.
  The circle will then be complete. In the wise words of Monkhouse, “The eternal teat will never go unsuckled.”

Cimex scientiam: U got me bugged

Assignment:

1) Obtain a small piece of rock from outside on the ground.

2) Glue some pipe cleaner feet on it.

3) Glue some googly eyes on it.

Behold: The Science Bug

Where does one begin to explain this mealy non-attempt at imparting scientific knowledge to the next generation?
[Shakes head.]
Was this an isolated incident? A rupestrian pipe dream hatched by some lone kooky teacher?

Johnny Gutts happens to remember the same project from an even earlier age... five, perhaps.
“Musta come from outta a book or something.”

He wasn’t taken in by it either: “By then I was already used to the overwhelming waterfall of sh*ttiness.”

Amen, Mister Gutts.

Apparently this assignment is a concerted effort by teachers to either foist bogus knowledge on the young or to shirk their day jobs, or both.
In the increasingly media-saturated environment of recent decades, perhaps kids are becoming more attuned to the questionable notions and claims put forth before them by those adults who should know better.

Good on ya, kids -- don’t swallow it. Speak up against this content-free pedagogical pussyfooting. Your parents can help, as Mrs. Gutts did when young Johnny came home from school and showed her the class ‘project’: she rolled her eyes and muttered, “How scientific.”

This simple yet pungent retort cemented the importance of the power of B.S. detection in the psyche of one Johnny Gutts.

Let this be a lesson to young and old alike: Don’t believe everything you are told.

This platitude is brought to you by the Emotive Response System.

Passport to Infinity: Self-Revoked?

Art is nice, y’all. It can celebrate the Viewed Aesthetic or goad the Unorthodox Beast. It can be a vehicle of the heart or the leid of despair. O the limitless potential we see when time-space works unrestrictedly. But what happens when leaps of imaginations fall short? To bridge the chasm of irrelevance we see Lenticulation of the Spectacle as automatistic face-saver [or a Band-Aid™ on Breton’s Boo-Boo, if you will]. Here is where we see the self-revocation of artistic opportunity from the 4th-dimensional realm. [Quantum Betrayal: “Shirking the Spore”] The Triumph of Gesture over actual meaning, like Saussure gone on a bender, reduces the spectacle to two dimensions [the ontic end-all Self, and the content-less dada Act]. The Heroics of Self are fêted as mere obnoxiousness is touted as a Courageous Act. Hollow pantomimes replicate like anti-spores drifting off a bandwagon driving in circles. In this, as is evident to even the layman, Art Cred is compromised. Actors may shrug shoulders in an emotivist defence, or reflexively shriek at the Critic, mistaking them as Censor 4 tha Man. But in the end, a lack of the Thumotic Assertive, coupled with an infinite allowance of empty signifiers (and a reliance on spongy affectations meant to soak up free-floating memes) results in mere pogo-ing atop an empty soapbox... a flushing of potential... and a shredding of the Infinite Passport itself.

This has been a test of the Emotive Response System. Defensive plaints about “artists’ rights” are expected but moot. The exercise was merely a placement test for identifying Gesturing Husks in reduced dimensional contexts. As for smarty-pants pointing out that this test is equally guilty, the authors must clarify that using postmodernism as a means to end postmodernism has always been an openly stated foundational tactic of the ERS.

got buttermilk?

This has been a test of the Emotive Response System. Skid Row types down on their luck may use dairy products reflexively as a surrogate libation that may have unintended results: The frantic attempt at quaffing available liquids may overwhelm the intake threshold and gullet capacity, resulting in a loss of face as fluid expulsion soils one’s countenance. At the opposite end of the social scale, this routine is equally common with collegiate alumnoids.

Hyenas vs. Children..?

Hyenas vs. Children? Move to Oconee County!

This has been a test of the Emotive Response System. Metaphor misinterpretation reactions of hoggish homeowners and helicopter parents to hyperbolic quippings regarding Parahyaena risum may result in Uptight Flight of so-called H. Sapiens to dubiously secure gated communities. Naturally, the irony is lost on those who cannot even grasp a literal account of “crying wolf.”

Please... Leave Room for Soy

Please consider the sensitivities of patrons and their needs to uphold delicate social façades by making the necessary allowances for potential beverage additives. Proactive deference towards these customer needs will help ‘save face’ as well as provide opportunities to ‘up-sell’ our product.

This has been a test of the Emotive Response System. Employee reactions may cater to self-absorbed clientele. Such is the toil of the minimum wage slave.