september 19, 2021
it's my staunch belief the final end-stage perversion of capital isn't to force resources into producing things that exist solely to speculate on - loot crates, ape jpegs, collateralized debt packages consisting of subprime loans - it is to make useful objects assets, and therefore destroy their utility.
that is what appears to be a 1990-ish Mercedes Benz 190E 2.3-16, a sports variant of the company's W201 small-sedan platform outfitted with slight aero upgrades and a 2.3-liter inline-four Cosworth powerplant. It is not rare, with around 20,000 produced; it is valuable, because the market said so.
It is valuable because we have a glut of men who have more money to spend than they have time left to live, once all the workweeks they still have left are accounted for. Those men collectively decided that in an absence of time, the next best thing to usage is ownership, and they will collect every childhood dream like they are funko pops, complete uselessness and all.
As a car, this Mercedes is stirring, I'm told. Handles excellently, revs to the moon, incredibly well-balanced torque curve. These characteristics are likely why it was purchased and sought-after by wealthy men.
Unfortunately, an asset cannot be used for its purpose, if it originally had one, and so those attributes might as well be video-game statistics now. A broken Hasselblad, a worn-out record, a blown-up Cosworth - those cannot be valuable anymore, so they must not be used, and they sit on a shelf to safely collect monetary value, and they collect dust as they do it, and they lose all their utility, and the entire world is a shittier fucking place for it.
It's shit. I got a couple of classic cameras when they were still somewhat affordable, but now they are worth more than a new digital one. And a little voice in my head has cropped up saying; If you break it you can't really justify getting a new one.
Somewhere last year I cracked and decided to just shoot the snot out of these cameras. They are meant to be used, and I want to be the one getting the most out of them. Fuck them being an asset, I want to use them as the high quality tools that they are and try to make some art.
Something I used to be into was Field Notes. They're small, pocket notebooks meant for general note taking. But they suffered so much for this. Early, rare editions could go for North of $100. Same for limited editions, like the "Dead Prints", with covers made of chopped up misprint and prototype posters. I had one of those- I bought two packs. One was a space shuttle design, that I was offered $50 for twice after I posted it. A randomized pack of 3 cost less than half that. And you know what I did? I filled it up with notes, and the cover, living in a sweaty jeans pocket, was destroyed in a way that made some other people cry out in anguish. There was an expression among some there, to "use the fine china", as it was. But still more would spend hundreds piecing back together the posters that got chopped up to make the books. I don't want to be negative about it, that community was nothing but welcoming and the anguish mostly in jest. But it still feels relevant here.
