Welcome to Baskin Robbins. How may I help you? Of course in a so-called “civilized” nation such as this, ice cream has some obvious manifest functions. We all like ice cream. It provides us with nourishment. It has a pleasant taste. It assures us that the world is safe and familiar. We forget about death.
At Baskin Robbins, we have over 30 flavors of ice cream. This wealth of options will make you feel as though you have control over your world. You will feel less helpless.
How will you decide which flavor to choose? Perhaps you will choose Butter Pecan: traditionalist, sophisticated, ascetic, Calvinist. Or maybe Strawberry Lemonade Punch better serves your ongoing self-construction; you see yourself as a free spirit that lives without boundaries, open to all that life has to offer.
Your choice of flavor will disguise your lack of a self.
Please, take your time. You are thoughtful, prudent. You do not rush into things.
While you think, enjoy our selection of 1970s R&B. The world will seem simpler and less hostile. Life will appear to have meaning.
A sample, perhaps? You entertain only the flavors, the essences. The sampler is a metaphysical being. You do not require physical sustenance of the ice cream. The sample spoon mocks the proletarian shovel.
I see you have spilled your ice cream. Your conduit of self-construction has been dismantled. You stand naked. The veneer has melted away, revealing the existential. You now must reconstruct your self.
Don’t worry, I’ll clean that up.