“Folk singers sing songs for the workin’ baby.
We’re just recreation for all those doctors and lawyers,
But there’s no relief for the bleeding heart
‘Cause they’ll be losing bodies tonight.”—The Absence of God, Rilo Kiley
Goddamn, we’ve been building these pyramids for freaking ever…
I’ve always found it odd that the thing that we spend the majority of our childhoods preparing for and most of the rest of our time left alive doing happens to be named after the biblical character with the most, um, curious occupation.
***
I’m currently 36 and have been in the US workforce since age 14. My back is starting to hurt. I thought about trying this then remembered where I currently reside. All I know is I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
Clockwatchers
“Does someone have a case of the Mundays?”
Monday: Denial – “I feel fine.”; “This can’t be happening, not to me.”
Tuesday: Anger – “Why me? It’s not fair!”; “How can this happen to me?”; “Who is to blame?”
Wednesday: Bargaining – “Just let me live to see my children graduate.”; “I’ll do anything for a few more years.”
Thursday: Depression – “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?” Time for Happy Hour gang!
Friday: Acceptance – “It’s going to be okay.”; “I can’t fight it” We’ve got it pretty good…
Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself…
Ya know, I heard somewhere that freedom isn’t free. I’ve also heard it said that work makes you free. Sounds like a continuity.
Injun sez: Yo. Back in the day everything was free. Now in the Land of the Free everything has a fee, sounds backwards to me.
***
In Brave New World the sub-theme is that all the while amidst this elaborate division of labor the technology already existed to make almost all labor unnecessary. If they took away all of the meaningless labor what would be reveled was an equally elaborate, somewhat arbitrary but well planned class structure. What would happen if it ever came into view? It wouldn’t come into view: Soma.
Some people argue the Grand Ole’ US of A is nothing but an elaborate Psyop. Maybe. I just know that for the last few thousand years we’ve all been born into a massive involuntary game, that isn’t that much fun, seems to be rigged and is never officially announced. And no matter what the game is called at whatever time…we always just seem to be building pyramids, but with increasingly bizarre rituals.
Are many of us just doing busy work?
“Career opportunities, the one that never knocks, every job they offer is just to keep you off the docks, career opportunities, the one that never knocks.”–TheClash
Uh, don’t hate the player, hate the game
***
At the restaurant I manage whenever you ask a worker about a really slow shift they say, “It was dead” and when asked about a really busy shift they say “we got killed.” I guess either way we know where this story is headed. Is it any wonder that the chorus to the feel good song of summer 2010 went, “We’ve got to live like we’re dying”? Yeash!
A moment of despair I have from time to time is when sitting in traffic and it hits me that this really is our real lives…
“Commute, work, commute, sleep . . .
Meanwhile everyone wants to breathe and nobody can and many say, “We will breathe later.”
And most of them don’t die because they are already dead.”—Paris, 1968
…and it might get worse real fast. What gets me is that most of us will never even retire at all. We’ll all just keep bumbling along, doing what we’re told, working five or six days a week, with ever diminishing expectations, an occasional little vacation, sometimes we read about The Wars, sometimes we’re mad, sometimes glad, usually just tired, its real hot in the summers, vacations are a little less pleasant, and all of the fucking immigrants trying to escape their deserts, trying to steal our jobs, we’re angry about something…
And then we’re dead. Where we can rest, (finally!) in Peace, (it was bound to happen sooner or later huh peace activists?!) and be in a better place (Hey, I thought Jesus was supposed to be here!) Maybe before we die we should take one of our little vacations to Easter Island and get a glimpse of how these pyramid building scheme cultures end…
“In a society that has abolished every kind of adventure
the only adventure that remains is to abolish the society.”—Paris, 1968
