EGGS: ‘MANUMISSION’
Dude just looked poor, not “cool-poor,” not “the virtuous ascetic aesthetic of poverty as novelty-poor,” or “alluding to my material transcendence-poor,” but that un-manicured, “maybe he’s homeless-poor,” without any abstract semiotics going on: the disruptive, inconvenient, buzz-kill kind of poor. On top of that, he was friendly; so he was obviously “scaring” people. Luckily, before approaching his mortified audience in the checkout line he whipped out a cell-phone, a smart one nonetheless, and his pileus was silently applauded by a collective internal sigh of relief, and of course, everything was “cool.”