archive | the baffler周常综述(2021.02.26)

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Fresh Hell

Bound, Gagged, Evicted

捆缚，堵嘴，驱逐

Early Sunday morning, while the tenants of Albany, New York’s Grandview Terrace tossed and turned, dreaming of unpaid bills and usurious interest rates, three armed men broke into one of the apartments, bound its two occupants with zip ties, placed pillowcases over their heads, and loaded them at gunpoint into a Dodge Durango. The victims were then driven thirty-five miles outside the city and abandoned in an isolated, snow-swept cemetery just before dawn. Was this a workaday kidnapping, the likes of which populate every blandly violent police procedural polluting the televisual landscape? Or was it an innovative eviction undertaken by a landlord frustrated by draconian restrictions on unhousing tenants for nonpayment during a mass death event? Reader, in this squalid nation numb to violence, driven by avarice and indifference, its collective spirit corroded by the mighty enchantments of individualism, the answer comes as no surprise. As of Tuesday afternoon, the landlord-cum-kidnapper in question, a Mr. Shawn Douglas, was being held in Albany County jail on $50,000 bond.

周日清晨（美国时间），当纽约奥尔巴尼Grandview Terrace的租客辗转反侧，在睡梦中被欠租和高利贷搅扰时，三名武装者突入其中一所公寓，用扎带捆住两名住户，用枕套将他们蒙住，用枪将他们逼进一辆dodge durango内。在日暮前他们被载至离城35英里处，丢在杳无人烟，白雪皑皑的墓地。这是例行公事，那种滋生于每个染污适宜上镜的风景的温和暴力的程序性出警的绑架？还是一个革命性创新，由被大病亡时期对欠租住户的解约的残酷限制所烦扰不堪的房东所行使的驱逐？读者们，在这个对暴力无感的腐朽国度，被个人主义的强大魅力所腐蚀的群体精神被贪婪与默然所驱使，答案毫无意外地呼之欲出。在周二下午，一个Shawn Douglas先生，这名受疑问的房东兼绑架者，被投入奥尔巴尼县监狱，保释金50,000美元。

It’s a Death Wish!

致命祝福

Elsewhere in the Empire State and only a few hours after the aforementioned kidnapping victims stumbled from Ghent Union Cemetery to find help, yet another human life was taken by the gender reveal. Just before noon in Liberty, New York, two “mechanically inclined” brothers were preparing an explosive device to announce the gender of the elder brother’s forthcoming child when the jerry-built device detonated, killing the father-to-be and injuring his younger brother. The gender reveal is now responsible for at least two other deaths since 2019, two major wildfires, and inestimable severed limbs, shrapnel wounds, and other mutilations that, in a different time, did not come to mind when one considered parties where adults gathered to eat cake and Name That Poo! Once isolated incidents, depraved curiosities worthy of a disparaging chuckle, the gender reveal can now only be seen as a bleak manifestation of our collective death drive. No longer “funny,” they affirm that something is very deeply wrong with us.

帝国州的另一处，仅在上述的被绑架者从Ghent Union墓地跌跌撞撞地逃出寻求援助之后数小时，另一个人类的生命被性别揭晓(gender reveal)夺去了。就在纽约自由镇的近午，一对“娴熟于机械”的兄弟正在准备一台爆炸性设备来宣布兄长即将诞生的孩子的性别时，这个粗制滥造的机器爆炸了，使得准父亲死亡而弟弟受伤。其它时间的其它伤残，在当事者考虑成人聚在一起吃蛋糕、做name that poo游戏的派对时并没有被放在心上。抛开对事故与只值一笑的堕落好奇心的考虑，性别揭晓只能被视为我们追求死亡的不幸征兆。不再“有趣”的它们证实了我们在某些方面深深地出了毛病。

FREE with Purchase

有买有送

To sunny Arizona now, where two parents who managed to bring a new life into this world without burning down an ancient forest and/or maiming a relative received an unexpected gift with purchase when they bought a Glo Worm toy for their child at a thrift store: over five thousand fentanyl pills.

在艳阳高照的亚利桑那州，有一对成功地在没有烧光一片森林且/或将亲戚搞成重伤的情况下为世界带来新生命的父母在为孩子在节俭商店(thrift store)买下一个glo worm玩具时收到了一份意外的礼物：超过5,000片止痛药。

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Totally Not Real

惨绝人寰，在逗你玩

Mr. Douglas of Albany wasn’t the only American who reimagined the tired trope of “kidnapping” to serve their own ends this month. In northern Arizona, one young man decided to kidnap himself. Though he claimed to police that two masked men attacked, gagged, and abducted him only to inexplicably leaving him in the middle of nowhere because his father had allegedly hidden a large sum of money throughout the desert—which strains credulity—it turns out he staged it all so as to be excused from the tire store where he worked.

奥尔巴尼的Douglas先生并不是当月唯一通过解构老一套的“绑架”比喻来赢得自己的下场的美国人。在北亚利桑那，一名年轻人决定绑架他自己。尽管他对警察声称两名蒙面男令人费解地袭击、封口、劫持了他仅仅为了将他丢到旷野里，因为据说他父亲在整个沙漠中藏了一大笔钱——这十分要求轻信的能力——最终发现是他编出了整个剧本来为他在轮胎厂的旷工找理由。

Wild, Yet Tasteful

鉴赏力的疯狂

Keeping on that beat, Lady Gaga’s longtime dog walker was out with three of the singer’s prized French bulldogs earlier this week when a gunman approached, shot the dog walker, and stole two of the dogs, Koji and Gustav. As TMZ breathlessly reports, the condition of the dog walker—who, we should note, was shot with a gun—is of so little importance that it is not until the ninth sentence of their article, and only after informing the reader that Gaga is “extremely upset” about her missing pups and is offering a $500,000 reward for their safe return, that the reporter deems it important to note that the dog walker is “expected to recover.” The New York Post, which took the shooting as a chance to offer readers a tour of Gaga’s $28 million real estate portfolio, does not even mention the fate of the dog walker but gushes over the “eclectic, wild, yet tasteful” Tudor estate you’d expect from “a celebrity who is known for meat dresses.”

保持着这个节奏，在一名持枪男子接近Lady Gaga的长期遛狗员时他正与这位歌手珍爱的三头法国斗牛犬一同在户外，持枪者枪击了他，偷走了两条狗，Koji与Gustav。TMZ焦急地报导，这名遛狗员的情况——注意，他是被枪击的——一点也不重要以至于在他们第9次出稿，并在告知读者们Gaga对于丢掉的狗儿们“极度难过”并对它们的安全回归悬赏500,000美元前，记者都没有将提及遛狗员“预计康复”视为重要事项。将这次枪击视为一次向读者提供Gaga价值28,000,000美元的庄园集合的观光的机会的纽约邮报，甚至没有提及这名遛狗员的命运却对那座你能从“以牛肉裙闻名的明星”想象出的“不拘一格、奔放而有品味”的都铎式庄园满溢赞美之词。

All the Money in the World

朱门酒肉

Lest we give you the impression the United States is an utterly lawless place overrun by kidnappers and thieves with nary a thought for the sanctity of human life, allow us to direct your attention to Pfizer’s earnings call earlier this month. During said call, the pharmaceutical giant’s CFO Frank D’Amelio gushed that, while “pandemic pricing” for the Covid-19 vaccine is only $19.50 per dose, “a normal price that we typically get for a vaccine” would be closer to $175 per dose. That “pandemic price” already gives Pfizer a comfortable 20 percent profit margin on a vaccine largely developed at the public’s expense, but D’Amelio assured investors that “there’s a significant opportunity for those margins to improve once we get beyond the pandemic environment.” And, look, the untold millions of Americans who are un- or underemployed, starving, and in debt—to say nothing of the seven hundred thousand who are homeless—are, frankly, fucking stoked to “get beyond the pandemic environment” . . . because they’re sitting on a sweet-ass pile of cash they’re itching to spend? Senate Minority Leader McConnell certainly thinks so: “Nobody thinks our health or economic fight is finished yet. But on a broad national scale, households are sitting on a historic pile of pent-up cash waiting for the economy to reopen.”

以免我们给你一种“美利坚是绑匪与窃贼齐飞、罔顾生命之神圣的法外之地”的印象，请允许我们将您的注意引至当月更早时辉瑞的财报会议(earnings call)。在该会议中，这个制药巨头的CFO，Frank D'Amelio对投资者们鼓吹道，尽管2019冠状病毒疫苗的“大疫情特价”仅仅为19.50美元每剂，“我们通常能为一般疫苗设下的价格”可高达175美元每剂。所谓的“大疫情特价”，已经给辉瑞一个20%的舒适利润差额，用一种很大程度上由公众开支研发的疫苗。而Frank D'Amelio却向投资者担保：“只要渡过疫情，我们将有显著的机遇将这个差额扩大。”看吧，无数未充分就业的、忍饥挨饿的、负债累累的——更不用说700,000名无家可归的——被这“渡过疫情”狠狠击中，只因为他们坐在一摞巴不得快点花掉的、柔软甜蜜的钞票上？参议院少数党领袖McConnell无疑这么想：“没有人会认为我们的健康、经济斗争已经结束。但在全国的宏观角度，居民们正坐在历史性的一摞挤压钞票上，等待着经济大门重新开放。”