"You get your goddamned shitake mushrooms and get the hell out of my office!" Today was not the right day for trading merchandise with the Boss. "And take the fuckin' stairs. I don't want no fungus in the elevator."

The Boss delivered his crushing orders and had his client respectfully escorted down the almost 300 flights of stairs to a back alley, where amongst rats and garbage pails, his life would be taken.

Another day another failed attempt to reconstitute the broken fiber of business, which appears to be flaking off like emphysema. Covered in piles of shingles, the Boss makes his way toward his former secretary's office. He looks something like a reptile due to the overlapping of transparent scales that line his neck and under his chin. Almost a natural smile and rusted twinkle of the eye always accompany his outstretched hands as he reaches to embrace Mrs. Jones.

"Ah, Mrs. Jones, fine, fine Mrs. Jones."

"Ah, great Boss. Great and powerful Boss. There is trouble on the lower deck, Boss. We show extremely minimal growth in sales and services and almost no money for either. Your great empire is crumbling. At this rate we'll be finished within the next 20 years."

Now as the days roll on, Boss has hooked himself up to an opera generator where among thousands of employees he stands naked, his stomach hanging down and resting on a pinhead in the center of a floor like a great sack of potatoes suspended in mid-air. His arms raised like he was about to fly, wires connected to each hair on his head, sometimes so greasy that the electrical tape would just slide off, making the record skip in midstream. Finally, as in Aida where the Elephants come across the stage, Boss reveals he is wearing a cape of woven butterflies. The monarch's wing was his company's emblem.

The floors of the office shook as his feet pounded like oil rigs into the foundation of the building. Down in the basement was the Boss's dressing room, otherwise known as "the Kitchen," so called because in fact, that's what it was back in the old days‹1983-1990.

The Kitchen was seated down at the bottom of a dingy succession of steps darkly residing in the central septic areas. One man stirring a wooden spoon two feet long in a vat of puke. Steaming odors rising up through a heating system capable of reaching every cubicle twice a day, during lunch and afternoon break‹so as to deter the hunger of the employees and, of course, this man who from 3/4 profile appears at Saint Jerome, skeletal and ribbed like Ribera's holding the staff of the shepherd which he uses to stir the vomit, his face more like an ostrich's. Photographs of disease-stricken animals adorn the cracked roach-infested walls. Mice and ants crawling around his feet and up his legs. Fleas and ticks form a halo around his head. The refrigerator door is caked in shit. So there is no toilet paper allowed "comme Versailles," the employees would come straight out of the john and head for the fridge.

A sign on the door reads: "no pets." Let me say there are also Chefs of the highest order employed as well‹they are called "runners." The runners are in charge of bringing the constant platters of food up and down the stairs to the Boss and clients he might be entertaining, arriving with platters of petits fours via des provinces, some wonderful fois gras, and escargots de burguogne. The stench of snails always brings a smile to the ladies. The crusty mold resembles a Basilica (copper roof) (?) patina. Not to mention the soft mealy texture of the fois gras which has been repeatedly frozen and defrosted until ripe blue-green veins appear on its almost clam-like surface. Generosity was one of the Boss's greatest commodities. He sold more shares a minute in this product than any other.

The topic of the meeting: Holding down costs. No one is allowed to be excessive. Ever again.

... The secretary walks in, she's about our feet tall with a nut-cracking grin, green eyes and gray hair‹she measures 36 x 24 x 18 x 48 inches. She's wearing a set of plastic teeth from Woolworth's and carries a can of Raid for perfume.

Earlier that day the Boss had entered his office from the elevator, other days he was lowered in on a rope from a trap door located above his desk. It was said, "Familiarity breeds contempt." Churchill had once responded, "Let me remind you without familiarity we couldn't breed anything." From this point of view, the Boss began fucking everything in sight. He went after the Xerox machine, the coffee maker, the paper cups, the file cabinet, and, of course, Mrs. Jones. This was not considered hostile or aggressive, sexual harassment was one of the requirements, not a deviation, and Mrs. Jones was not shy. "Perpetually thinking of me, are ya?" she bashfully inquired. "Feel like you owe me somethin', do you?" At that moment, the Boss delivered a kick right into the side of her jaw. He went back to his seat with a bare foot sprouting false teeth. Her wig flew up and gathered around an exposed light bulb. The fumes rolled down and created smoke images of disappearing industries. Days of the old Grand Profiteers passively framed and hung gloriously. On the wall was an old gray and dusty blue photograph of the "First Staff." The original ancestors of Mrs. Jones, her husband, Mr. Brake, and their child. All the families were interbred in order to remain familiar and without contempt. Then sat upon his swivel chair and began his day.

Being that an object that was real is made artificial in order to bring it back to reality.

The plastic cup brings memories of the glass, it is equally real yet ibe us cinsidered by order of substances artificial.

(When a person is considered to be "artificial," this of course does not refer to his physical substance but to his behavior.) Yet an artificial object behaves like the real one (in function).

Therefore, it is the appearance of reality through the representation of the artificial that brings us to the point we're at‹even in terms of the artificial behavior of people, it becomes real.

In a painting the reality of the glass is self-plastic, or glass.

Because people are often creating artificial quotations of themselves as the sole representation.

We know that the truest abstraction of reality would be to transform all plastic, manmade, and "artificially natural" things into a painting that is fundamentally natural and has become the reality of itself.