It's been said i think too much... though i'd say in a current culture that has what's akin to sever allergic reaction to thinking i can't say that's such a bad thing but i do tend to try and look at things from all angles to understand what's happening in the world around me while simultaneously trying not to go fucking insane at all the bat shit crazy that swirls daily here in Dumbfuckistan... now of course the old adage of people voting and doing shit against their own self interest is basically a moot point, no use bleating on about it when it's painfully clear that people don't give a fuck about their own self interests (unless it pertains to their racism and bigotry) until it's too late while also clinging painfully to the narratives pushed by the corporate masters and their paid shills who occupy the halls of most government offices... (i'll show a bit of optimism by stating not all but let's be honest, most...) the manufacture of consent (to steal from Chomsky) has been going on a lot longer than we'd care to admit... in fact go back to the founding of this shit show sham of a "republic" and honestly one could go back further than that... it's always been by the rich for the rich and the rich learned early on that we must keep the rabble divided... by any means necessary... and so they have...
Having grown up on the West Side of Cleveland, a working class burb that ran right up against the city and featured the quasi red light district of the West Side, there is no way to escape the working class roots, yes Pops was an accountant, a guy who put himself through college while working full-time with a wife and two kids... for all but my first six months i lived in a house in the "nicer" section of my burb but the reality is it was far grittier than where the boyos are growing up and one could say the times were a bit different... i spent a good deal of my formative years trying hard not to get my ass kicked, three lads in particular had taken a distinct dislike to me for my apparent skill on the basketball court, funny thing is none of them played but they saw a tall, skinny kid and settled on a quest to beat his ass... luckily i was fast, both physically and mentally, so i avoided them until one could say they thought better of trying to kick my ass... meaning i got bigger and stronger than all of them...
Scholars of the lounge are well versed in the our hero's backstory... the dissolution of his nuclear family and the trials and travails that followed, the fact that he had to figure out a way to survive cuz there was really nowhere to go other than crashing on Pop's couch and the simple truth was that was an unacceptable outcome... in my head that was the ultimate failure at a time when my father needed a win, that his tall and wayward son would have to slink back to crash on a couch while trying to get his shit straight, not to knock my sister (or maybe i am knocking her magat self) but he already had a kid like that, one who was still living at home at 27 and only just starting to actually move out because she was getting married... i remember my last year of undergrad as we stood there talking and he told me he didn't have any money to help me through that last year and that hopefully i could find a part-time job or something... (and as we know i opted for "something") yes the rent was paid and i had one last student loan refund check to cover some bills but soon enough it would get lean... and it was here, also well documented, that the future Weed King was born... my first foray into the business world...
Not too long ago Disaster and i (along with a couple of his friends) were driving up to my old hometown to see the Banana Ball game, his mother had scored tickets through the lottery system but couldn't attend so it was the old man and some kids... on the way up as his friends put in their ear buds and stared at their phones Disaster and i were talking, he was asking about Cleveland and i explained that after i was 20 i never really went back for any extended period of time, maybe a week at most, how i had spent the summer i was 20 in Ocean City (though it was my shortest summer season there and came back with about four weeks before school started back up) and how that winter break my parents split up and after that i was pretty much on my own... he looked over at me and said, wait? so you've been on your own since you were 20? i said actually i had turned 21 two months before but yeah since then yes... he paused for a second, looked at me and said, damn... i could see on his face the recognition, the respect, knowing that his old man, at roughly the same age his brother is now, was doing this life shit on his own... yeah some kids are forced into it younger than i was but for the boyos growing up out here in the lily white it's not something they really get exposed to that often...
Which brings me now to the Bourgeois Lumpen Prole Blues... for a guy who has spent his life working shit warehouse jobs, i mean even the Big World Bank Machine gig, for all it's so-called respectability, was nothing more than still working the loading docks and unloading trucks, moving furniture, still the lowest rung on the ladder... and the only real job i ever had, at least in my warped worldview, was that of professional cannabis salesman, founder and CEO of Kono Inc... of course the boyos don't know that part of their old man's life though they have their ideas... either way my roots are working class... grandfathers who worked in factories and mills, uncles who were postmen or hustling in sales, a mother who was a beautician until i was born when she quit that job but started her own little side hustle in our basement cutting hair for her old clients and various friends... (side note: i understand now why my mom was always paranoid about workmen or city employees or too many cars in the driveway, she had a fear the guvment would find out about the tax free money she was making cutting hair, all cash and off the "books", little did she know how her young son was watching and how he'd take that situation to a whole new level when he grew up...)
My father was the first person in his family to get a college degree... i was the second... since then there's been many others, my sister and almost all my cousins but up until then it was just us two... granted by the time i skipped my commencement and headed off to the beach the events of the past couple years had drastically changed the way i viewed the world... of course one of the most important things was wandering into that bookstore on 2nd St. in Ocean City that summer of 1991 and discovering Bukowski, Burroughs, Keroauc, Hunter Thompson etc. but then that early evening of January 3rd rolled in and shit changed forever... i finished my degree and every now and then i stumble across it in a box in the garage... was it worth it? maybe... it did give me a few years to read as many books as possible, a habit that hasn't changed much in the last 30 some odd years...
In the current climate i'm painfully aware of the position i occupy and it could only be considered a position of privilege... the Breadwinner is a successful businesswoman, a story that could be a fucking Lifetime movie and though she constantly complains about the job it's almost laughable when she does... up until recently she worked far less than a 40 hour week, something that today is practically unheard of when most peoples workweek is a minimum of 40 and only increasing from there, with the recent loss of one of her stalwarts (see previous post) it has been a bit more hectic but that comes with the territory and though she's been tossed back into the line so to speak it's only temporary until the hiring gets sorted out... and while i have been quite cognizant of this situation (being the stay at home parent and gig economy serf) it seemed that it only just recently flickered through the BW's mind...
One of her other critical employees needed a car and in her conversations with him and another manager they were discussing money and savings and the like and one of them mentioned it was pretty clear she hasn't worried about money in a long time... and they were right... of course she worries about money but not in way a large section of the country is currently with every fucking thing under the sun increasing exponentially and how are they going to afford shit like rent, food, the dreaded medical visit or emergency... i try to impress upon the boyos that they have it pretty fucking good, even if the same shit happened to their parents as what happened to their father's, from a financial standpoint almost nothing would change... there are times when i wonder what the fucking cat food bill is around this place when i see the boxes of Chewy show up at the door... (of course if there is one thing i'm down with it's the spoiling of my cats but i realize again how in this fucking economy that's a privilege as well, between food costs and vet visits it ain't cheap but as we know i'm a sucker for my kitties...)
And maybe i'm one of those rare cases of white male suburban guilt who understands where i'm at and how the system was rigged for me to get there, i also realize had i not been a modern day Al Bundy sans shoe store job, that i'd most likely be single and living somewhere other that my current city and for the record i really love my current city, it's been home for so long now and i've taken a renewed appreciation of the neighborhoods and such and make and effort to get out and enjoy them more... not to mention the fact it is the setting of those Wilderness Years which i'm so fond of bleating on about... i get that i'm a gig economy serf who works maybe 8-10 hours a week for weed, shroom and vinyl money and in order to go see live music, fully aware of the benefits of health insurance and a place to live and a car to drive being "provided" by the BW, of course i do the bulk of the work around this place which i understand is part of my job and which i honestly enjoy, the body might not enjoy it as much but i don't mind the physical aspect of cleaning and yardwork and fixing shit (usually unsuccessfully), scheduling appointments, driving to get the I-mac or take him shit he forgot (a roughly 90 minute drive one way depending on traffic), and though i'd point out to the Breadwinner how good we actually have it while a large section of the population is living hand to mouth, just barely getting by or not getting by, where a unexpected $400 expense can completely fuck them, i don't bother... when i sit around the table with her siblings and such i sometimes want to scream, what fucking world do you live in!!!! it wasn't as if they were well off growing up, in fact when they were kids they weren't but the Shithead (aka their father) starting making more and ended up himself being a relatively successful business owner... but watching them together at times is tough as they either don't know or pretend and play the game of Look at Our Wonderful Life...
Yet the truth is i'm happy the boyos have it as good as they do but i also try like hell to make them understand how good they do have it, how they need to see things from multiple perspectives and grasp how fucked up the world is, how unfair it is, how racist and misogynist and homophobic and bigoted it is and that they need to understand where other people are coming from and what shaped their views... that how everyone has to take responsibility for their lives but that sometimes even when they do they get screwed, by a system both culturally and legally that seeks to destroy lives, that puts up multiple barriers preventing that old bullshit scam written by a bunch of slaveowners about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...
So i sit back and watch the shit show and try to figure out what i can do to help... really i do... be it donating to certain causes (see ACLU, Democracy Docket, St. Jude's, animal shelters and certain politicians who don't accept money from a certain group that fund a current genocide), i do my best to teach and educate the boyos and more importantly their friends, usually in a subtle way to get them to think, i do the same when i'm wandering the streets and talking to people, something i now realize is vitally important, i slyly recommend books by certain writers and thinkers while espousing the principles of certain philosophies or systems like democratic socialism (yes i no longer belong to the one party system) talking about how what we need is a new party, rooted in labor and for the worker instead of the capitalist nightmare and mythmaking machine that turns the utlra-wealthy into some kind of fucking hero to be admired when they are in reality the worst examples of humanity on the planet, i'm looking into certain groups to help my neighbors, specifically those who are being targeted by certain agencies and have explained to the boyos that it would not surprise their old man if he wound up getting arrested by the authoritarian shitbags... especially if he keeps writing and writing about things that oppose a repressive regime hellbent on remaking the world in their fucked up image...
And it's possible this is not all rooted in my current place in the social strata but more on a lifetime of reading and thinking and comprehending the bullshit, hell i guess i was writing about power structures and their evil ways way back in grad school and that really i'm the culmination of exactly why an oppressive regime wants to gut education... kill critical thinking and communication skills in order to keep the masses docile in order so they can't see how bad they're getting shafted... it's an old playbook but an effective one and it takes the rabblerousers spreading those dangerous "ideas" of freethinking and working for the collective good and not only the "self", the adman slogan of "we not me", but in a society inundated with social media seeking to glorify the individual and nothing more, the look at me culture that is nothing but a detrimental constant dopamine fix, the masters of the neoliberal economic welfare grift of let the market decide while the market somehow always decides that social programs and things that help the masses are bad but government welfare aka the people's tax dollars funneled upwards into their accounts are good because that's what the market wants... the masters understand they need to keep the unwashed masses distracted and divided in order to keep them from organizing, keep them working so much they're too exhausted to think, keep them chasing and drowning in a culture of consumerism, they understand they need to keep the game rigged... or else... the last thing they want are citizens out there actually working for each other, helping each other, those are the types that scare them because they understand those "ideas of we" can spread like a virus...
Sitting here i straddle a strange world, one in which i'm well aware of the privilege but yet still doing what now isn't even a blue collar work, maybe no collar? the gig world has now entrenched itself into the fabric of our society, it can be a side job for many or a full time gig for some, where those lovers of Milton Friedman's bullshit theory of neoliberal economics can rig the system once more, employing a workforce without ever really employing a workforce... we lumpen proles are responsible for the vehicle, the gas, with minimal or no benefits and with the coming of AI i can see this is the test for future business models... for collars of every color...
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Yeah so shit has been a bit of a mess around here, i won't go into it but i need to bang on the keys more, i got a lot to get down and one never knows how much time to do it... especially when i sit in what could only be called a precarious living situation which will have to get sorted out, one way or the other in the next year or so... so while i meant to end this post with that bit up there, not the way i wanted to end it but since it's been sitting here for weeks i figured i'd just toss it out into the ether, i mean who really reads this fucking shit anyway? that said there was another interesting conversation yesterday that took place while i stood in the kitchen... it was about investing and the question of ethics when it came to it... the BW has owned Tesla stock for a while, not a bunch but either way we all know how Elonia Hairplugz aka the world's biggest welfare queen, always has his hand out to his purchased puppets in order to prop up his stock prices... Disaster was there as well and talking about his little portfolio which also included Tesla bought way back when by his momma as a gift to be put in his kiddie account... (granted i like these kid accounts as it can be used as a tool in fiscal responsibility while teaching them how to invest and generate wealth, yeah i know fucking first world problems and something that directly correlates to the old man's Bourgeois Lumpen Prole Blues...) i stated i'd never own that fucking stock because i'm not about to prop up a fascist piece of shit... Disaster stated that the best way to make money in the market was to invest in "evil" companies, to which i replied he was both correct and very astute, the BW then chimed in with some dismissive remark about my viewpoint to which i replied, rather curtly, you either stand on your ethics and principles or you stand on your money and desire to accumulate wealth to the detriment of your fellow humans... i left it at that then turned to Disaster and more gently stated the same and pointed out there are also excellent companies out there to be invested in that do stand on principles and try to do the right thing by their employees, the planet, the community and while maybe one wouldn't do as well investing in them one would still do pretty damn good while also being able to live with a bit more of a clear conscience knowing one was trying to do right and not fuck over everyone else involved... he sat listened and i could tell he understood but i also realize he's 17 and still learning about how this fucking shit works while being exposed to both sides of the coin, an anti-capitalist, democratic socialist father who is trying to leave the world a little bit better against impossible odds while raising two sons to be empathic, compassionate, critical thinking human beings who respect everyone regardless of sex, race, sexual orientation etc while also being around someone who basically is concerned with how much money she has... and granted there are times when she will do some good with it but for not often... a person who stands more on convenience and saving a few nickels than on ethics and morals, hence her love of the Amazon and my loathing of it (the company not the rainforest)... it's amazing how far apart we've grown but then again i realize i'm a bit of an odd one, tearing through books on social issues, cultural and political theory, some fiction and philosophy and history written not by the hegemony but by the oppressed, while on the flip side someone watches shows on their phone, shows on the telly, reads some trashy romance novels sporadically and periodically turns on cable news (not Faux thankfully) but usually with sound down so they can fall asleep... i haven't hit the iceberg yet but i can definitely see it through this fog... c'est la vie (note of the song... almost none of the lyrics are correct in the fucking subtitles... enjoy)
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