Oh man - I just had a postmodernist moment of recognition and self-inflicted irony.

I stopped reading Adorno and Horkheimer's "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" in order to watch American Idol.

The irony was just too delicious as I sipped a diet coke (now with lime flavor) and painted my toenails.

I came back to the Adorno, but it had just lost all of it's punch. Let me quote to you the last line "The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them."

I realized that at that moment I was the perfect Adornian consumer, totally immersed in the transparent irony and yet compelled (as if by some voice from the nether reaches of hell) to watch hopeful youngsters mold themselves into an unattainable pop-superstar ideal.

It makes me smile to know that my education has given me these moments of utter self-detabilization. I feel as though this should have opened up some black hole or time warp which will usher me unharmed into the white-hot glowing omnimedia future.