Soca, a gentle dog who can play with an autumnal leaf without breaking its brittle veins, has contempt for the 1% and capitalist materialism generally. This came as a mild surprise to me. I had always known that she had a dislike for technology. Should she be lying with you cozily on the couch and you take out your phone to mindlessly peruse email, play a game, or shop online, she will leave and let you be without so much as making eye contact. Disgusted she is. This is, of course, is not the case should you pick up a book and read for hours. Books, she knows, contain Adventures and in reading them People find inspiration for their own Adventures, of which Soca will surly take part. She will happily sleep beside you as you read. But her disdain for the 1% and, specifically, one of today’s tech corporations synonymous with the 1%, namely Apple, Inc., still came as a surprise. Why, I asked myself, is this so surprising. The answer, I think, lies in the fact that Soca is also not a working man’s dog. She has no admiration for labor. Soca sees no romance in work. Time is best spent not building or fixing, but simply wandering, tramping about, seeing and hearing what goes on in every corner of the woods, in the streams, between the rocks, among the rushes. This, Soca knows, is Life. And she can argue this point very persuasively. Watch her run, watch her jump, watch her swim, and you are convinced.

 

Still, reluctantly, grudgingly, you return to your so called life, to work. You pathetically assure Soca that an Adventure is forthcoming and open your MacBook and press a key that purportedly has some kind of meaningful function, a key that brings you closer to completing a meaningful Task. But it doesn’t. Sometimes when we click-clack on our computers, our keystrokes are actually, objectively meaningless and Apple is prepared for such situations. Invalid keystrokes, they call them. This key does nothing and so nothing is done. But to ensure you don’t think your fancy computer is defective, Apple emits a most uniquely infuriating beep. Really, it is more of a blop than a beep and I have come to internalize the meaning of this sound. I don’t even need my computer to make it for me. No, I hear it all the time, with or without my MacBook. I hear it when I strip the threads of a screw. I hear it when I eat at a bad restaurant. I hear it when I listen to a bad podcast. I hear it when I waste away the day for no good reason. So when I hear it because of an invalid keystroke I am unfazed.

 

Soca, however, had taken me at my word. Adventure, I said, so Adventure it will be. And so lying beside me as I task away on my computer, she dreams of our Adventure and of all the wonderful things she will see, hear, and do when—BLOP—she is rudely reminded of the delusions People place before themselves. Blop! Work is good. Blop! Ambition is noble. Blop! Wealth is desirable. Blop! Recognition is worthy. Blop! Adventure must wait! But Soca will have none of it. What heresy!—she thinks.  And so with the determination of Laelaps, she hunts for the author of that chime and in her desperation declares war on the 1%, on Apple Inc., on Work, and on Society. And I, for the first time in a long time, hear that blop in its horrific clarity, close the MacBook and get the leash.