Yet more words writ just to fill the time

Dear diary,

I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up the
     time while I wait for a boat...

[—from “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman]

Let’s create a person and a job. I live in the USA, where politicians grow wild, so I’m accustomed to hearing sermons about job creation and the virtues of employment. And I write this during the primary and caucus season, which precedes the presidential elections, so there are sermons all around me. We rode our bikes to a park called “Fake Venice Park” yesterday evening: it was a place where glass skyscrapers were planted in a vast semi-circle like a postmodern Stonehenge, and the pathways between these buildings were paved with gray and reddish stones in zigzag patterns; and there were man-made lakes throughout, filled with lavender-scented water. My point is that we couldn’t walk more than five meters without encountering a politician giving a stump speech about how the transnational corporations that inhabit these glass towers are a blessing from God because they generate employment for the human race, therefore it is immoral to refuse to lower their taxes. This is why I begin this entry on this note.

So let’s create a man and a job. I wish that we could jump right into the act of job-making, and skip the man, but the truth is that jobs are nothing without men to perform them. Even robots are men. So first we need to fashion a living being to employ.

I happen to know that if you pay your brother and his wife to produce a child, they’ll come back in eight months with a nephew named Frank Booth Ray. So there’s our man. Now let’s give him a place to exist within, so that he can have a job.

First we drive out to Hopkins, via Westbrook road, and make some condos for Frank Booth Ray to live amongst; then create a business park like the Fake Venice mentioned above, except much less flashy and minus the scented lakes and skyscrapers — basically just a parking lot surrounded by grass, and a horseshoe-shaped stripmall with garage doors at the back. This place must be easily accessible by anyone who sets out from the Westbrook Condo Complex driving a coupe on the superhighway. (We’ll christen this highway “94 East”.)

And the employer (the one who furnishes our man with his job) shall be an eyeglass manufacturer. The small factory, housed in the strip­mall at the business park, will contain a pair of grinding machines in the rear storage room, near the garage door. Our man, the employee Frank Booth Ray, can take plastic lenses out of cardboard boxes and insert them into the grinders, which are technically known as “edgers” because they have a rough, stony, cylindrical spinner at their center which removes excess material from the edge of each lens, thus augmenting its contour. And our man will wear earplugs while he does this. Also give him a lab coat. And his other duties will be burnishing the lenses atop a padded, rotating capstan at a trough; inspecting the lenses for any scratches, film, or specks; loading the lenses into metal trays, and inserting these trays into the vacuum chambers, to give them an anti-reflective coating. Additionally let us charge our nephew Frank Booth Ray with the task of discarding and replenishing the chemical elements of these vacuum coaters, and programming their computers.

OK, so we created a man and gave him a job. Now let’s run some stats.

It turns out that Frank’s car costs 100 shells per month (this covers fuel and maintenance); rent for his condo is 100 shells per month; food is yet another 100 shells monthly (covering a diet of peanut butter sandwiches; cereal made from oats that are fit for a horse; and soup which comes dehydrated in a styrofoam cup, to which you add water); lastly, clothing averages a cost of 100 shells monthly as well, because Frank’s shoes wear out from pacing the floor of the factory, and his trousers and collared blouses become threadbare from the constant motion of all the hard work. So 100 shells multiplied by four equals 400 shells. The way I’m arriving at that number is I’m taking the basic needs — food, shelter, clothing — at 100 shells each, which is 300, and I’m adding transportation, which is another 100, to get a monthly living expense of 400 shells.

Now here’s the deal. The contract that we drew up for Frank Booth Ray states that we, the transnational job-creators (incidentally our parent company is based in Japan), that is, we the employer will pay our employee, hapless Frank, a flat rate of 400 shells per month to perform all the duties described above. That is why we created the job in the first place: to make this exchange. We dreamt up a bunch of tasks that could be performed, and then we ordered a person to be gestated; and we named this man and placed him into a factory of the Hopkins Business Park, to dress it and to keep it. And we said:

“Cursed is the economy for thy sake, Frank Booth Ray. In sorrow shalt thou labor, all the days of thy life. Edging grinders of eyeglasses, and vacuum coating machines shall be stationed before thee, in thy place of employment; and thou shalt sip dried soup from styro-cups, with a broth of hot water which thou shalt receive from the manual spigot on the side of the coffee maker in the break room; also cold cereal, and peanut butter sandwiches; for there will be no time to prepare high cuisine like the French are rumored to do. That’s why we HATE the French. Their tax rates are too steep, and they once decapitated their Ruling Class. That’s why I propose that we change the name of French Fries to Freedom Fries; for we are FREE here in the States to create both people and jobs. So, in the sweat of thy face shalt thou work to meet thy basic needs, O Frank, till thou return unto the ground.”

At this point in our story, we the authors could choose to make our character Frank either stupid or smart. Let us ponder each option:

If we make Frank smart, he’ll reply to our speech above by saying simply “Thanks, boss!” and then go purchase a house in the suburbs, produce a child of his own with his wife (I’m calling his wife’s name “Nancy Reagan” — I don’t care if that name’s already taken), and someday retire, take up a hobby, and complain incessantly about the upcoming generation.

But if we make Frank stupid, then he’ll think to himself “Wait a minute; here I am working hard to make 400 shells in a month, and yet my monthly expenses amount to the same 400 shells; thus I’m continually breaking even and being left with zero shells to spare for emergencies. And that’s if luck allows me to remain healthy enough to continue to do this job! Tho it is true that I can count on my health continuing perfectly forever, because I don’t smoke or drink or do anything fun; and diseases only attack evil people, which is why little infants die from diseases all the time: they choose pleasure over work, and just suck at the breast all day like lazy milk-addicts, instead of earning their keep; may God punish them in hell and never give ear to their prayers. — So, in essence, I’m laboring at my job solely to make enough money to continue laboring at my job.”

And if we make Frank extremely stupid, he’ll say, “Forget this: I’m quitting this racket. I’d rather generate zero shells and do nothing, since doing nothing costs zero shells.”

Now the reason that our man would be extremely stupid to make this last remark is that the price of doing nothing is NOT zero shells. It costs 200 shells to do nothing. That’s 100 for food plus 100 for rent. (Clothing is free: you can always just steal someone else’s clothing.) That is, unless you live in a place where it’s nice all year round: in that case, you can get away with living outside, and thus slash 100 shells from the cost of doing nothing; for then you’ll only need food. But our man Frank lives in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, where three quarters of each year is life-threatening, climate-wise, to humans. So our stupid version of Frank will be in for a rude awakening if he tries to live his life outdoors just like a squirrel or a duck or a frog. Wild creatures have feathers or fur, or a slick slimy aqua-suit, to protect them from the terrors of Mother Nature. Man, on the other hand, has nothing to protect him from the elements.

And human food must be purchased from industrial agriculture corporations; unlike squirrel food, which, like squirrel money, grows on trees. Also rabbits survive on weeds, which are relatively inexpensive (one shell per acre, which feeds a family of fifty for about three days) — I see rabbits out in our yard all the time eating the weeds, and I open the window and yell “Thanks; now I don’t have to mow the lawn today!” And frogs eat flies.

Plus animals generally stroll about in public unclad; so they don’t even need to sneak up behind someone in a department store and steal her overcoat (made with real fur) and then realize that this person isn’t a person but only a mannequin — the lack of a head was the giveaway... unless it’s a French aristocrat.