the inmate's journal : preamble

common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist

only a little and that true reality is only in dreams

a miscreant

 

preamble

 

the only thing that makes me believe in the devil is that i've spent my life in institutions.  the only thing that makes me believe in god is that i've survived.  the only thing that makes me believe they're the same is that there's no escape:  society, love, art, parenthood - even alcohol, adultery, fetishism, philanthropy - are institutions.  we're all locked up.

 

when we're born, we emerge from the only nature we'll ever know - that horrible gushy mushiness commonly called the womb - and are immediately plunked into another; but this other womb is vast and metallic ... and mommy's pablum has been replaced with stock prices, hollywood breasts, and iraqi bombings.  the womb we all came from was diffused, dark, and silent; the one we’re born into and spend our lives in is intense, perpetually light, and eternally noisy.

 

now i'm no moralist.  the prophets, preachers, and professors can tell you one womb's better than the other.  the sales clerks and ipods can help you forget the darkness, silence, and diffusion.  the greenpeacers and neoneohippies can show you mpegs to help you remember what nature looked like before we stuffed it in the internet.  let them.  i'm a journalist.  i just describe.  i can't help you with anything.  i can't even help myself.

 

i taught in a university for seven years.  i don't trust the academics.  i don't trust them because i worked in a university.  once you've seen inside anything, you can't trust it.  the academics would like us to think we understand institutions by analyzing them - so a million scholars produce a million reports informing us that 96.31% of 27-year-old portuguese virgins have never worked for a registered charity, and that this correlates with dr. stu q. birdie’s recent seminal research on condom reengineering that revolutionized disability studies.

 

such insights are true for a disturbingly large majority of people the media calls educated.  why in elon musk’s name would you trust the media though?  trust me.

 

these numbers and surveys and educated babbles are great - they keep the west employed manufacturing ideologies and the east employed manufacturing the technological rewards for the west’s burden of truth production.

 

in this journal, i'm going to tell you my truth about institutions.  and i’m going to tell it my way.  no stats.  no pie charts.  no feasibility studies.  only mad faces, compassionate crocodiles, malefic christians, psychotic psychologists, and schizoid executives ... in short, the people you work with everyday.

 

i'm going to tell you stories.  from the depths and heights of power, from church to bank to the sacred halls of learning.  stories so true they're more shocking than fiction.  people so real they can't be believed.  you’re probably one of them.

 

what are my credentials, you ask.  you want degrees?  i’ve got them.  you want titles?  i’ve had them.  you want names?  i’ve stepped on them.  you want praise?

 

ambiguity is at the heart of the inmate’s journal and sometimes makes it complicated to explain because it's really two things that it’s saying. i'm not meaning either to condemn or celebrate it but rather to show the difficult circumstances of its origins and how the kinds of expectations we have been led to have of ourselves make this book difficult. the limited nature of the parameters of the possibilities of the thesis of this book is a product of those very forceful realities.

am gilpin gerber faust

president, harvard university

 

the inmate’s journal is riddled with schadenfreude, which we germans know is the most superb kind of joy since it comes directly from the heart.  i highly recommend it to spirited people everywhere.

angina moodle

chancellor, das internet ist für uns alle neuland

 

i have purchased 300,000 copies of this book and personally distributed them to each and every one of my employees.  essential reading for the modern manager.  i keep five copies in my manhattan condominium:  one by my bed, one under my pillow, one by the toilet, one in my mistress’s brassiere wardrobe, and one in my wife.

charles cunning dugan prince

ceo, citigroup

 

index librorum prohibitorum.  donec corrigatur.  index librorum prohibitorum.  donec expurgetur.  index librorum prohibitorum.  donec corrigatur.  index librorum prohibitorum.  donec expurgetur.

ratzinger prevert 

popo dictaleo xxx

 

enough.

 

i was born in religion, toilet trained in business, and prostituted in the academy.  i've kissed the rings of ceos, charged vintage napa wines to my corporate expense account, watched priests make love to everything but god, and listened to deans and provosts blab incomprehensibly about eloquence and knowledge.  yeah.  i’ve lived there.  in that strangest of traveling circuses - the institution.

 

so come with me … into the hard halls of organized life.  into the stories that you live but cannot tell.  into the dark locked stairwells below the festival of light and cash.

 

inmates one, inmates all, we march from cell to cell in glorious remuneration.