I had expectations which I have failed to meet with this project so far. That is perfectly on course and to be expected. I shan’t let some run of the mill failure send me to the self-flagellating crypts where I would otherwise sit still and wait to die. Time to go set myself up for another cycle of missing the mark.

I would have liked to see myself cutting out blocks of time to write in excruciating detail about what the research feels like for this project, however I’m only doing a cheap drag rendition of a researcher-- so instead I was working at a cafe and dropping 1.89 L of pickles on the tile floor and looking deeply into the eyes of Young Up and Coming Laptop Toting Professionals to ask if it’s okay that their grilled cheese will not come with the usual pickle. Instead I am writing about my glitching Service avatar, my sweet little performance of trotting through a caffeine spitoon. Oat milk, my liege? Some stevia, good lady? It’s all in a day’s work.

The owners of the cafe I work at are members of the Vancouver Art and Design Elite, and receive the data transfers of “currency” from the Y.U.C.L.T.P ( Young Up and Coming Laptop Toting Professionals).on which I dote. Then that currency is, to some degree, funnelled back to me in the form of data so that I can do my silly little tasks like build a computer.

What I am drawing for you here, is a picture of how this project is just an abstract digital simulacra of the force energy released when I shattered 1.89 L of Bick’s gherkins. These little service masquerades, unconscious assumptions of a role, are every little bit relevant to the constant dematerialization of my body into a string of information reducible to 0’s and 1’s. The one thing that has not been embedded in data yet is the humiliation of kneeling in a puddle of green brine on checkered linoleum and picking glass out of a pile of pickles.

Arguably.