WEBVTT

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This text constitutes
something of a manifesto.

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It's entitled
"Virtually Nontoxic."

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It's pretentious enough to
have an epigraph by the poet

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Christopher Dewdney.

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"'Vinyl is as
natural as lichen.'

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Plastic is the Silly Putty
with which we simulate,

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then supplant, every
facet of reality,

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converting all the varied
elements of the planet

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into one common emulsion.

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While we sleep, our automatons
toiled throughout the night,

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transmuting everything into
a petroleum byproduct that

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resists bacterial predation.

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Our species might openly mourn
this phase of our demise,

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but in secret, we really
exalt the power of its genius,

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marveling to think that in some
landfill of the future, long

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after our own extinction, a
single crash helmet might still

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endure, sloughed off like the
carapace of some alien crab.

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Our gewgaws some epoxy
resin and nylon fiber

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do not attest, however, to any
advance in our rational prowess

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so much as they
allude to the breadth

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of our cultural tyranny.

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The invention of
plastic has given birth

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to a celluloid spectacle
whose reveries displace

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the esemplastic imagination
of the romantics,

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filling our hollow skulls with
an injection-molded mentality

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as pliable and as durable as
any blob of polypropylene.

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Has the language itself begun to
absorb the synthetic qualities

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of such a modern
milieu, becoming

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a fabricated but disposable
convenience no less pollutant

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than a Styrofoam container?

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Has not the act of
writing simply become

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another chemically
engineered experience

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in which we manufacture
a complex polymer

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by stringing together
syllables instead of molecules?

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The words of our lexicon
have become so standardized

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that they now resemble a limited
array of connectable parts,

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and the rules of our grammar
have become so rationalized

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that they now resemble a bounded
range of recombinant modes.

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The protean quality
of our discourse

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finds itself vulcanized
in our playthings.

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We see language marketed as
an infantile commodity, a toy

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suitable for kids of all ages,
because its plastic coating

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makes it safe to
own and easy to use.

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Nevertheless, we must imagine
a more corrosive poetics,

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something vitriolic enough
to dissolve such an acrylic

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veneer, and if we cannot
distill this kind of acid,

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then let us concoct a
more explosive poetics,

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something catalytic enough
to detonate such an acetate

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finish.

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We need a lingual variety
of gelignite or plastique,

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the kind of incendiary
literature written only

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by misfits who have grown up
still dizzy from the fumes

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after having melted a platoon of
plastic army men with a match."

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[APPLAUSE]

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