We bought a wall clock for our new home, so I photo'd a section of its instruction manual for this entry's obligatory image. (I love images that are not images.)
Dear diary,
Plan your pregnancies: space them at least eighteen months apart.
Next subject: Voting. I don’t want to talk about voting. But immediately after writing my opening sentence, I saw a barrage of ad signs reminding me to “Register to vote so that you can botch the upcoming election!”
Why do I care so much about politics but then I drop the ball when it comes to voting? Is the truth that I don’t give a hoot?
I think it’s safe to say that, yes, I never really gave a hoot about nothin. The thing with politics is that it’s fun to discuss it: you can say things like “We should tax the rich more,” and “No war is just,” and whoever you’re talking to becomes shocked and aghast, because it’s currently unthinkable that the rich would contribute to society or that bloodshed could cease. So that’s fun: volleying points back and forth.
But voting is dull, unless someone’s counting the votes that’re cast. If you really are permitted to give your opinion, in the form of a vote on a ballot, then I’m all for voting. But who are we kidding?—votes are never really counted. So politicians remain unresponsive to all but two things: money and potential anti-stasis. The rich people don’t even know how to fill out a ballot: they’ve never voted a day in their life either; because it doesn’t matter to them – voting requires a majority to win, and the rich are always the tiniest minority – and they’re not stupid; they KNOW this – so they always vote with their money. This is smart. Throw tons of money at a given politician, let’s say five billion shells to the representative whose tag reads “9”, and thereafter 9 will do whatsoever you ask: 9 is not going to bring up the fact that you didn’t VOTE for him, Jesus.
On the other hand, if you’re part of a mass of people who DID vote for Politician #9, you remain voiceless and powerless. Because 9 doesn’t care a fig about the people, as long as the people are well behaved. As long as they’re all withindoors, slaving away at their bullshit jobs, or watching TV, or playing video games on their super-hot system, or thumbing their phone, the politician is content. Politicians are like parents, in this respect. Bad parents, I should specify. (Are there any other types of parents? I can only speak from my experience.) Politicians are SO happy when their children, their district’s voters, are occupied with some task. Some quiet task. But if the populace comes out of their houses and assembles brashly in the street, especially if it’s the street outside the politician’s HQ (HQ stands for corporate headquarters), and the people are well-dressed and absolutely silent, and the people just stand there, orderly and eerily, then the politician gets scared. “What’s going on?” Politician #9 inquires of his staff: “Why are the people just standing there like that?” And the senior staff member says, “I bet they’re protesting something. Check for signs. If they’re holding signs, the signs will tell you what they’re protesting: usually they’ll have some clever slogan written on them, like ‘We aim to please / You aim, too, please’ with a picture of a toilet, thus conveying their dissatisfaction with the state of cleanliness (or lack thereof) in the public restrooms.” But when 9 scans the crowd, he sees no signs: nothing. “I can’t see a single sign,” 9 says to his senior officer: “Do I not pay you to have all the answers? Yet you failed me just now. Therefore, you are fired.”
My point is that voting does wonders, but I myself am too dense to articulate what these wonders are; so I’m highlighting the only two ways I understand that one can get a politician’s attention: bribes and threats.
Lacking money, bribes are off the table for We the People; that’s why we all went out & occupied the street. The problem is that we forgot to bring our signs; so Mr. 9 didn’t know what we wanted him to do. He said “Your wish is my command; just get off my lawn.” And we said, “Sure thing,” and took our leave. We forgot to tell him that, by agreeing to mute the potential unrest that we threatened by standing there fashionably, we expect in return a share of humankind’s gains. We demand a dividend of the growth with which all the dead former humans have blessed us by inventing their inventions:
Our grandparents spent the entirety of each and every day on four menial tasks: (a) growing spuds, (b) washing clothes, (c) building huts, and (d) forgiving sins (in other words: administering cures for physical illness). That was life, for our grandparents: working all the livelong day. Then their children, our parents (note the lack of the prefix “grand”) molded robots out of the soil, and taught them to breathe. The Spud Bot rendered farming obsolete, thus freeing up one quarter of the day; the Sand-Blast Bot cleaned all the clothes of the entire family in ten seconds flat, you just press the silver button, thus eliminating the need to spend the second quarter of each day in front of the wash basin; the Hut Bot, as its name implies, built all the new huts, thus rendering the full third quarter of each day labor-free; and lastly the X Bot (pronounced “robo-christ”) abolished all the private insurance companies while nationalizing health care, which solved all our medical problems and eliminated the need for prayer and miracles; & it did this simply by shedding its blood, which had the effect of blinding the God Bot (pronounced “accusing faultfinder”) to our exuberance. It even destroyed death, so now Earth is overpopulated; but that’s OK because the Hell Bot made our sexy neighbor Venus habitable. All this lifted the last quarter of work from our daily lives and left us with 100% Leisure.
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At this point in the entry, I had to stop and take out the garbage (I swear on my life that this is true); which necessitated the chopping up of six mossy logs that the previous homeowner bequeathed us (I found a frozen frog hibernating under one of them); also I had to dismantle a broken rolling chair. So if the rest of the entry is not as clear, coherent, and laser-focused as the argument above, blame the caged orphan immigrants.
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