n a t b s

Mark Gidwitz was planning to retire early, about 40 years early.  Now, because of the recent financial crisis he is running out of money and looking for work.  “I can’t afford the rent for my penthouse,” said Gidwitz, ” It’s terrible, I just graduated college after 6 years, and I was planning to retire, do some jet-setting, maybe buy some apartment buildings but now it’s looking like I might have to get a job or move into a more modest place.”

Trust fund babies around the country are finding themselves short on dividends and cash.  Buoyed by effortless income their entire lives, they have no marketable skills.  This unskilled labor is now flooding the job market for pie-in-the-sky positions.  Julie Andrews is another heiress who has been hit hard by the financial crisis.  Said Andrews, “I was out having some breakfast cocktails with my girlfriends, when my financial adviser called to tell me that my checking account had dropped below $50,000 and that my stock holdings were down 40% year to date and that I needed a new source of income.  I asked him if I could just buy another company to make more money and he said I was out of money.  It was appalling. I’ve never heard language like this.”  Julie is now looking for work, but very few places pay six figures to sit around getting drunk and watching TV all day.  “This financial crises has hurt everyone, ” Andrews said, “but especially the lower-upper class who have been painfully reduced to upper-middle class.”

The real question is, how can America absorb all this useless labor as well as the sharp reduction in extravagant purchases.  Expert Tom Hankey says times are tough for America’s upper-tier retailers, “Without spoiled rich young-adults, Tiffany’s is going to have a hard time moving those blood-diamond-encrusted toothbrushes and other exorbitantly priced virtually-useless items.”  One crap-peddler is already feeling the pinch, Hammacher-Schlemmer.  According to CEO John Jonhson, there’s been a sharp reduction in sales, “We have an absolute glut of $300,000 personal jetpacks, I mean, what are we supposed to do with these things?” 

The labor market is feeling some pain too.  Larry Williams, headhunter at the federal reserve has been dealing with a surge in inane phone calls.  “Rich people who know nothing about money look at a dollar bill and see the words ‘federal reserve note,’ so they call us up asking where they can get more money.  They think we just hand it out.  I tell them that we don’t, unless of course you’re a failing bank.  But these phone calls are incessant, they’re keeping me from doing my job.”

All-in-all it’s been a rough year for the mildly-rich and crap-peddlers, but the human spirit is resilient.  Between our interview and this printing Ms. Andrews found a job.  “I’m working as a medical test subject, ” she said, “I usually pop pills all day anyway, so I’m just getting paid to do what I love.”  When asked if she thinks the market will ever rebound she offered a bit of hope, “I think it has to, America wouldn’t be America without millions of useless rich people living a life of leisure and contributing absolutely nothing to society.  That’s the American dream.”

“Whoever can see through all fear
will always be safe.”

You know, religious folk like to talk about faith a lot.  They have faith in God, yadda yadda bs.  Here’s the thing; I don’t think these people have any faith at all.  I think that faith is a tool to use against fear.  So, when something scary is happening you can have faith that you’ll get through it.  But these same faithers also want to control everything.  They want to go to war because they have no faith in other forms of coercion.  They want to legislate morality because they have no faith in people to be good.  When faced with a fear, they always choose the most direct coercive action, they never let things play out.  Sometimes, if you overreact to something you make things worse.  Sometimes your overreaction blinds you to the fact that what you’re afraid of really isn’t as threatening as it first seemed.  So you start walking these paths of fear, and once you do that you have lost control of your own life because anyone can get you to do anything just by eliciting frightening consequences for not listening.  Eg. “We have to invade Iraq or we’re all gonna die”  or “We have to let the govt buy up shitloads of bad debt, or we’re all gonna die.”  And when they put it like that, we always listen. We need to stop being so easy to manipulate.  We need to have faith that we don’t always need to control everything.  Because we can’t control everything.  And taking the scarier rout is what we call a leap of faith.

On a day where we take one step closer to the world of 1984 with the re-branding of TSA headquarters as “the Freedom Center,” no, really, I feel the need to remind the world (or the 20 people who might read this) that the essential freedom America is about, the one we fought that big ‘ol war over, is freedom from tyranny.  I’m sure most of you know what that word means, but, just for the record, tyranny means “A government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power.”  Hmmmm, so it’s not freedom from being blown up by terrorists?  No, not really.  That’s pretty hard to guarantee.  But a government in which a single ruler has absolute power…sound like any government you know?  I mean, sure, George Bush can declare anyone a terrorist for no particular reason and lock them up indefinitely without due cause, but that’s not absolute power right?  Sure he ignores the laws he doesn’t like, and makes up new ones without consulting congress, but that’s not absolute power.  I mean, he still derives his “just powers from the consent of the governed” right?  It’s not like he stole the last two elections.  Nah, tyranny is not even close to being a problem in these United States.  I mean, how could it be with fine institutions like the Freedom Center and the department of Homeland Security guaranteeing our freedom?  Nope, no one in history has ever used the guise of national securty to unjustly seize power, so one must be crazy to think that’s happening now.  I say we all just sit back and relax, I mean, we have a really humble and qualified civil servant running the show.  George Bush loves us, just like God loves George Bush.  And I’m just loving these motherfuckin’ freedom fries!

Is it that crazy to not want to work?  At least, to not want to work in the corporate-America sense?  I have a job right now, and I hate it.  Those are strong words, and when I tell you what I’m about to tell you, you might question my reasonableness: by most standards by which people judge jobs, mine is actually pretty good.  The benefits are decent, the pay is decent, the company is financially stable, it’s not all-consuming of my life, it’s not that hard, and my boss is really cool.  Now you might be saying, “Andrew, you’ve got a good thing going, quit yer bitchin’” and you might have a point.  But let me tell you why I hate it.  It is utterly mind-numbingly uninteresting.  In addition to that, I don’t think I fit well into the 9-5, work-in-a-cubicle corporate lifestyle.

Let’s start with uninteresting.  I know people get jobs to earn money and stay alive.  I get it; interesting is a luxury.  Maybe it has something to do with my privileged upbringing, but I feel like interesting should not be a luxury.  I feel that I have a limited amount of time to be alive, and it pains me deeply to be spending so much of my time on things that I couldn’t care less about.  My time is precious and limited and it kills me to be selling it for a mere $25 an hour.  With an average American male lifespan of 75.2 years, that means my life is valued at approximately $16.5 million.  Sounds like a lot, but no, compared to the infinite value of a human life I find that to be a paltry number.  Money is a necessity in this society, and so I do it.  I work.  But I can’t help but feel on some fundamental level that I just can’t stand doing something that I don’t care about.  I feel that it’s almost a tragedy: all the millions and billions who toil away merely to survive, and on who’s backs others get rich.

On top of uninteresting, I have a real problem with taking orders…from anyone.  I mean, I can do it, but I absolutely hate it.  It fucks with my sense of freedom.  Every day I have to take whatever they give me, and take it with a smile.  It’s awful.  And I work in the drabbest, most un-beautiful place ever: a floor with minimal walls and rows and rows of gray cubicles, windows that don’t open, corporate propaganda on the walls.  I mean, would it kill these people to have some real art on the walls?  All we see is the soulless work of ad executives.  Why anyone thought this feng shui would be good for productivity, is beyond me.  I’m also coming to realize why fascism is so closely related to corporatism.  A corporation is a fascist enterprise in many ways. With the constant propaganda, the suppression of free will and free speech, taking orders, doing everything for the good of the company, taking queues on morals from up top (read: warrantless wiretapping), and living under fear (of getting fired).  Dissent is not readily tolerated.

The really scary idea is that the whole country could be run like this.  That’s why privatization is so fucking scary.  There’s a reason we have governments that are separate from these profit-seeking entities.  Life in a country is, or should be, about freedom and self-determination.  Those are not good things when profit is the only goal.  What I’m trying to say is that the government should stand up for what’s important but not profitable.  The influence of corporations on the government truly frightens me.  They are scary places that suppress humanity.  And the only people getting any significant benefit from the whole thing are the people at the top.

This has been a bit of a rant, but I hope it made sense to some people.  If anyone has any suggestions out there for making a living without giving over your life to one of these entities I’d love to hear it.  I’m young and still trying to figure out the course of my life, and I know that I want to steer clear of corporate life;  I’m just not sure what that will really mean for me.  I’m not sure I care.  I just want to get far away from this place and all places like it.

I can’t take this anymore.  Not that we didn’t see it coming, but today Karl Rove straight up ignored a congressional subpoena.  Fine, we were all expecting it.  The question is, what is congress going to do about it?  Because if Karl Rove isn’t in handcuffs real soon, I think I’m going to explode.  It’s just too much.  How long can we keep putting up with this bullshit?  A group of citizens should kidnap him and deliver him to congress if congress wont take take of this itself.  Or at least we should beat the shit out of him.  I mean, I don’t know why now but I’m really incensed over this.  That piece of shit ruins our country and breaks the law with impunity!  And what do we do, elect Obama?  That’s great but jesus christ if you break the law you need to be punished for it!  That’s the way it works.  Maybe I’ll just start robbing convenience stores right?  Because the rule of law clearly means nothing in this sad, hypocritical country.  Oh, unless you’re poor. Then the law applies with a vengeance.  Bush & co have been shitting on us for 8 years and we’ve just been eating it up.  Despicable.  We should all be ashamed.  I’m just, so angry right now.