walking in beverly hills i felt the need to visibly carry a brick. once i had passed the abandoned periodicals left on the driveways of empty houses, i was immediately disrespected by the unrealistic timing of a pedestrian crossing. it forced me to run, straight by a driver in her vehicle legally classified as a truck, already encroached on the zebra lines, set to run someone over. suddenly, the glimpse of her shitty 10 dollar matcha dazed me with an omen of what was to come right up ahead. the erewhon grocery store.

approaching from the sidewalk it's surprisingly under the radar, hidden by canopies of parasols from restaurant-style outdoor seating. but upon entering, total overstimulation. i must run to find sanctuary, in the health and supplements aisle,, aisles ? it came clear too quickly that actually. the place is empty. why the fuck am i here. ah yes of course. i need 30 dollar erewhon branded socks. the fact that i couldn't actually spot the shopping baskets was the first noticeable sign this wasn't actually a grocery store. it would be an experience.

it was clear to me that the fresh produce was not the star of the show. they were simultaneously both neglected and overly ministered to. ministered to as in totally stocked. neglected as in nobody was really buying them enough to require them to be stocked again. the real role of this area was to be a stage to perform the act of grocery shopping. an open area where you can 'bump' into locals. the final bastion of third spaces in the united states of america. each fruit and vegetable was playing their part to perfection, correctly positioned and neatly aligned in artificial grids and plastic containers.

if you're ready to move the spontaneous chat you're having with your neighbour down to somewhere more private, all u got to do is turn the corner into one of the conversation aisles, each stocked with a panoply of 7000 kinds of the same product. we've got one for bottled water, one for nuts, one for cookies, and so on. don't worry, all the actually useful stuff is either not here or stuffed into the 1 meter long shelf in the corner.

i really need to emphasize the bottled water situation. like i've never seen more brands of bottled water in my LIFE. there is an entire refrigerated wall of bottled water. and then that same wall is copy-pasted opposite, this time unrefrigerated. since it was clear it was not going to be possible to do actual shopping here, i realised i had to embody. i was to be a valley girl on her way to visit a friend's place for a lil get-together in the eve. of course, i needed to pick up a something. cheese and crackers.

i was in luck. they had probably around 50 varieties of vegan cheese. decided to pick up the toasted cashew and the cranberry and dill. now for crackers i enlisted the help of an employee. after navigation through the maze that was the awkwardly-laid-out private conversation aisles, i found myself at the cracker aisle (oop--). i was directed towards all the different types. plain crackers, seeded crackers, flavoured crackers, rice crackers, oat crackers, crackers, crackers, crackers. i didn't know there could be so many crackers. space is really quite limited in this store, and yet somebody decided they would need shelf space for every kind of cracker ever invented. oh well whatever. i'll just pick the seeded cracker. what's this? omfg it's literally stuck. it's locked in. the grocery store is refusing to allow me to grocery shop. it's not going to make it easy. with force, i wrench the plastic box of crackers out of the kicking and screaming shelf, narrowly avoiding making a scene of total cracker box collapse onto the floor of the aisle. victorious, i move on to restock on my essentials, peanut butter and alternative milk.

the peanut butter here is supposed to be pretty good. the actual erewhon brand makes an odd selection of in-house products. examples include: chicken stock, biscotti, toasted almond butter, ground cinnamon, raw honey, charcoal soap. they are all mostly packaged in reusable glass jars and bottles. but then basically everything that isn't in a jar or bottle is packaged in a non-reusable transparent plastic container. so what gives? once again it's literally just a performance. a performance of eco-friendliness. like how b-corps can allow subsidiaries of coca-cola to look better than they actully are (erewhon is, ironically, also a b-corp).

so i got my peanut butter and pistachio milk. all this tiring decision overwhelm is making me hungry ugh. in my rich person brat vibes i already quickly found myself becoming an asshole in the queue for the cafe deli take-away restaurant thing. nobody give a fuck about anybody other than themselves. i guess i would be a diva too if my life were a 25/8 bombardment of echoes of 'ya so i'm gonna book that' and 'i'm gonna invite...'. over the appropriated purple yam i relayed my choice of items for my bento. i later discovered the aubergine lasagna i got had kale in it. because of course it did.

i made my way through the pre-prepared food in more plastic boxes area, passing at least 3 more pallets of bottled water, and the same three kinds of hummus in two different container sizes, to the smoothie bar/checkout.

"hey, um,. are any of your smoothies vegan?"

"umm,,, no. but i can remove the collagen from the haylee bieber one if you like..?"

i ordered the veganized haighleigh bieber strawberry stalker smoothie. the cashier asked me if i wanted to get a text when it was ready. (not-so-)smooth way to get my number for marketing purposes. my bill for about 7 items ended up being over 100 dollars. and they asked for a 15% tip. at a grocery store.

having emerged back outside, i sat below the canopy within an american's idea of a european grocery store sipping my circa 25 dollar veganised strawberry smoothie, and watched the person opposite me who had opted for the secret water option, iced water in a plastic cup, use a knife to lay guacamole upon individual tortilla chips. the goji berries in my smoothie intentionally slowed down my consumption of the four digit caloric intake, by slightly clogging up my market-research-blue-coloured sugarcane straw. in my conceptual mood i pondered a hypothesis, that there could be a negative correlation between net worth and rate of finishing the smoothie. well, i finished it.

omg have you heard the new ariana grande album? it's so good. it's called sweetener. you have to listen to it.

— cel, probably like 2017 or something

so there's a new ariana grande single and it's her first in over 3 years i think? i've listened to it a couple times now and it just sounds like ariana grande which is like idk whatever. but girly pop when i went to check it out on my music player i saw THIS

i'm now thinking of all the permutations that must be capitalised upon to get all the revenue from the youtube edits. where is my yes, and? (a cappella sped up) and my yes, and? (slowed extended mix instrumental edit)? hello????

just reminded me of how sad the state of music culture (for most people) 'nowadays' is. i actually don't know if it was much better in the past since i was literally not alive and also engaging with that until the last decade or so i guess lol. it would be cool to hear if there's more to this idea of enshittification than rose tinted nostalgia. i'm pretty sure it's a thing but hey.

everything is driven by the recommendation algorithms people use on their cheap-ass streaming services, and as a result the kind of music that is being made is very much catered to survive in this scene. the fact that the main source of marketing for music is tiktok makes this issue even worse. probably the most exacerbated example of this would be kpop, in which songs can quite literally be released as little more than an undeveloped hook, and regular mini-albums at short lengths are all the rage. exhibit a: literally anything by NewJeans.

get up by NewJeans

there's also another thing i've been thinking on lately, which is i feel that recommendation algorithms inherently destroy culture due to lack of human decision or will. people used to go by culture journalism (F for pitchfork) or word of mouth, as well as literally sharing physical media or files. there would be more intention put into what we listen to. the fact that youtube-recommended-core exists is somewhat indicative of this, and shows the dangers of homogenisation that algorithms can bring. btw i don't want to say algorithms are wholly bad, mainly that they are horrible as a primary source.

where has the hunt for a good album gone? there is no risk/reward factor any more. it's too easy to never listen to a wide variety of music as you will perpetually be fed songs that are similar to that which you already like. without algorithms you have to sit aside and think about your music habits. you have no choice other than to manually look through new releases where u will inevitably be confronted with genres and artists u have never considered before. or you actually have a good reason to seriously think on that album your friend recommended or lent to you. if you can even get ahold of it anyway due to the differences in platform/drm.

which brings me to the next difference in consumption pattern, streaming versus owning. streaming from a seemingly unlimited library is a completely different dynamic to owning albums. when buying and/or downloading music we are forced to appreciate what we have rather than the unlimited depths of that streaming platform. we usually engage with full releases rather than just bits. it's easier to form connections even with garbage simply because we were stuck with it. it's what we had at the time. obtaining music in this way is slower and forces us to properly process that we once chose instead of immediately moving on to the next thing dropped in front of us.

this also doesn't even begin to cover the fact that the rise of streaming services has in fact been bad for artists (unless you are with a big label that has their own agreement with the service) and that it's all inevitably going to tumble since it's wholly unsustainable and unprofitable.

where do we go from here? honestly, the only solution i have felt contends is piracy. transfer files to your friends, get on soulseek, torrent, torrent, torrent. if u can afford it, buy albums you love direct from the artist. once album a month is already more money to artists than u give through paying for a streaming service and really only contributing to upholding this garbage system. of course there are also even more arguments for piracy, most notably the fact that it remains essentially the only reliable way to archive media and allow it all to stand the test of time, in addition, it's totally just a better user experience than dealing with whatever the fuck drm is. piracy democratises music listening too. people in places where an album isn't available or sold or too expensive can access it and enjoy it, which is the best tbh.

i guess i'm going to try writing about music i love (and hate) on this blog a bit when i feel like it now. i don't really know how to write about this stuff well but i'll never get good if i don't try. also this is now the second mention of ariana grande on this blog. on my second post. i guess this is an ariana grande hate blog now. i will make sure the next post is positive in some way before the vibes of this place get rancid.

p.s. (sadly) nobody will ever make an equivalent to the coolness that is taping a shitty quality cassette mixtape for your friend. i wonder if techbros would put playlists on the blockchain and make playlist nfts oh wait they wont because blockchains are total rot and would never have that kind of usability however dumb of an idea it is

i want to write something about rot. why not? i think it's become my favourite word over the last few months. it's so versatile.

what is rot? well i tried to look it up and i hit a paywall. this is a good representation of rot. it is pure decay. it is horrid yet undeniable. there is no way to tell at a glance at what point it became rot, and whatever it used to be, was surely destined for this end. perhaps it was always rotted to begin with. there is no way of knowing, only that now, at this time, it is surely rot.

rot in my opinion represents a state of post-cringe, a state of absurdism. how is rot post-cringe? it is something so bad that when you experience it it no longer triggers your cringe response, you simply accept it for what it is. this is most definitely absurd. there is no more meaning to it but rot. there is no interpretation, there is no saving it from this state, it is past the point of no return.

how can we solve rot? in my opinion there is only one solution: abandonment of that which is rotted. rot is not worth saving. however we can start anew, and from the rot allow that which is new to grow, even if it shall most likely reach the same end.

the worst kind of rot is that which pretends to not be completely rot, which is propped up by some as being salvageable, or in some cases, perfectly acceptable and maybe even a net positive. some examples of this include:

• beaurocracy
• power structures
• money
• ariana grande
• neoliberalism

it is undeniable these are rotted to the core.

i hope this aids in you understanding this term. maybe now you see rot in a different light, and that it could help you in making sense of the world.

— cel