The Menu Was Never a Menu

* Who actually takes the loss when a boycott works: workers first, shareholders never. A SodaStream, a recycling bin, a Chick-fil-A sandwich, Audre Lorde, and the only fight that reaches a company funding harm: organizing the people who work there. Discusses Israel–Palestine (the SodaStream boycott) and labour law in Canada. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit parkbenchontology.substack.com

* AI-generated racist accounts are an industry, and the episode treats the industry as a symptom of its customers. Malcolm X, Aimé Césaire, outsourced labour, a lunch that turned into an argument about colonialism, and a protest cross with a wheel on it. Discusses racism, colonialism and the Israel–Palestine conflict. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit parkbenchontology.substack.com

Daniel Grant of Spoiled Rotten returns for a conversation about HBO’s Lanterns: fear passed from parent to child, the cop show underneath the superhero show, Brooke Obie’s anti-Black propaganda reading, and why Disney cancelled the Black stuff first. Covers the whole season (spoilers). Audio recorded without video.Guest: Daniel Grant, Spoiled Rotten: https://tdfeverything.com/spoiledrotten This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit parkbenchontology.substack.com

Doug Ford has survived scandal after scandal and will probably win again. I planned to look inside tiny libraries in neighbourhoods that vote differently to understand why. Then a woman put her feet up across an entire couch at a Gaza fundraiser.This episode is about Ford’s immunity, and what that image shows: people are not tricked into reproducing the systems that harm them. They reproduce them at the scale available to them, fully aware, inside what Mark Fisher called capitalist realism. Ford’s cottage, “elbows up,” who absorbs the tariffs, algorithmic pricing, and the Etsy shop for your political complaint are all the same loop at different sizes.The episode closes on a reading from Fisher’s Capitalist Realism over outtakes from the library shoot.Park Bench Ontology is lo-fi ontological satire. Written and hosted by Gavin Stephens (JUNO-nominated, Canadian Screen Award winner).Audio version: parkbenchontology.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit parkbenchontology.substack.com

The opening leads with an object (Dukes of Hazzard, the toys), which is the accessible entry. But the gag is visual: “I had this one. I sure as hell had this one. Oh, and you know I had these.” On Substack there is no “this one.” In text, the preview reader gets no flag, no car, no punchline. The toys have to be named in the written version (or the video embed has to sit above the first line) for the preview to carry the joke.“Politically free adolescent” is the line doing the work in that paragraph; it currently sits mid-sentence and gets buried.The definitions of “detective work” and “case” are the signal to theory readers that this is worth their time. They arrive in paragraph two, which is fine for the essay but falls outside the email preview. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit parkbenchontology.substack.com

An influencer died from a penis-enlargement injection and was buried in a gold coffin reportedly worth three-quarters of a million dollars. My first reaction was a joke about it. That reaction is what this video is about.What’s in here:* Why “man dies for vanity” works as a causal amputation, cutting the death off from every cause except the man* The hamburger math: why your employer maintains the fryer on the company’s dime and you maintain yourself on your own* How the gig economy replaces the wage with engagement without getting rid of the boss* A fight with my mother about whether work is coercive, and why I’m not smarter than her, just a beat later* Why the gold coffin reads as vanity but is actually labour, and why his death fed the cycle instead of interrupting itAbout Park Bench OntologyPark Bench Ontology is a comedy and ideas show hosted by Juno-nominated comedian and Canadian Screen Award-winning writer Gavin Stephens. It takes the feeling that the world is getting weirder and tries to name it without bullshitting you. Equal parts philosophy, stand-up, and cultural diagnosis, delivered from a park bench with nowhere to be.Referenced📎 Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (sign value)📎 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (labour power, surplus value)📎 Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (the culture industry)📎 Wayne Brekhus, “A Sociology of the Unmarked” (the unmarked position)Welcome to the Collapse. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit parkbenchontology.substack.com

Gavin used to think he was an angry person. Turns out anger's just the mask anxiety wears when it doesn't want to be looked at directly — and his family's particular strain of it goes back further than therapy alone can explain. A story about a menu left face-down on a restaurant table becomes a way into Fanon, colonized minds, and the year Britain decided Guyana's independence didn't count if the wrong party won it. Also: a very reactive dog, and a pharmaceutical apology to every stranger on the sidewalk. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit parkbenchontology.substack.com

This is the new home for Park Bench Ontology. If you followed the show over from the old feed — welcome back. Anything before this episode is the archive; everything from here is new. Season 4 lands September 14. Subscribe at parkbenchontology.substack.com for the show and for the essays in between — same lens, just sometimes written down instead of said out loud.https://parkbenchontology.substack.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit parkbenchontology.substack.com