Kosta Karageorge's suicide made me think about this: how fungible we are; replaceable, discardable. Like every athlete we're reduced to a number; he was number 84 or whatever, you're number 12, I'm 32. We're numbers. Ohio State will just give his number to someone else.

So I was thinking stuff like that when I thought about this: Chances are, wherever you work, there is a human resources department that you go to to get your paycheck or if you have questions about financial matters or benefits. Have you ever thought about that name, "human resources?" Human resources. We're "human resources," I'm a "human resource," you're a "human resource." We're not Ben or Betty, we're not even "personnel," that's what those departments used to be called, the "Personnel" department, "Go see Personnel." Maybe personnel was too close to "person," too warm and fuzzy, to empathetic? We're not even "employees." Both "personnel" and "employee" are sufficiently cold for me! But we're not even that, we're "human resources."

Who the fuck came up with "human resources," Mengele? Eichmann? That name wasn't computer-generated, somebody at some company, maybe they learned it in a business school, but some living, breathing man or woman with a mom and dad and a son or daughter, and maybe a pet dog, somebody who had all the appearances of being a normal, empathetic human being, with a name, like Josef Mengele or Adolf Eichmann, some Ben or Betty, came up with "human resources." And it spread.

I think "human resources" is the end-of-history for department names. I think that is de individualization perfection. We've reached Absolute Zero in the temperature of personal relations in the workplace. There is a lack of empathy in modern life. It's creepy.

I'm not a fucking human resource, punk.