American Fez

Working Stiff

Work is the only the thing in Jim's life. He has no significant other, no kids, no hobbies, no cultural interests. Nothing but the nine-to-five and whatever mental residue from the working day he takes home each evening.

That home, of course, is merely an ante-chamber of Jim's office, a place of suspended animation until he returns to his desk in the morning and can once again focus on paper pushing. And Jim still does push paper, despite the cloud-based conveniences of the digital age.

He spends hours at the photocopier making triplicate copies of documents nobody wants. Jim probably costs the company more in toner and ink than he does in wages and benefits. Staples, ring binders, sticky notes, notepads, highlighter pens, and a cobwebbed Rolodex, Jim's office could be an exhibit at the Museum of Work.

In fact, I often imagine him made of wax, standing perplexed beside a filing cabinet in a lost folder diorama with myself as docent: "This is how we used to do things in the twentieth-century." I tell a gang of incredulous young apprentices. "Notice the overflowing wastepaper basket and general lack of productivity."

"What are we going to do about Jim?" This question is always raised at staff meetings he's not invited to. The answer is obvious, but it's like deciding to put an old dog to sleep because its owners can no longer care for the wretched beast.

"You have to be cruel to be kind," some who is exclusively the former suggests. But we would not be ushering Jim into the Fields of the Lord, we'd be condemning him to the Hellhole of Social Security instead.

After all, an old has-been like Jim could never get another job. What would he do with himself then? Unemployment would be a kind of solitary confinement for Jim; a limbo of listless inactivity and mounting depression. Contract termination would not just take Jim's economic livelihood away, it would wipe out his only reason to actually live as well.

For not only is work the only thing in Jim's life, the people at work are his only family too, and I guess we have decided to become our brother's keeper, even if such blood-is-thicker-than-water loyalty puts the company out of business. How magnanimous of us.

But perhaps there's a selfish reason, too. Perhaps we're worried about our own positions as we anxiously watch the rise of the robots and the explosion of 3D printing. We are Jim's family, after all, and the apple does not fall far from the tree. 

Sick Note

Struck down by a stomach ache, I retire to bed and the milky embrace of Pepto Bismol, that pink elixir of all gastrically troubled souls. And once ensconced in my soon-to-be fart-filled bower, I groaningly enquire of my poor stomach what its problem is, and the much-abused organ answers with the face and voice of Walter Matthau: "Salad bar."

Of course, I should have known better than to eat from a salad bar in February, month of sneezes and yellow phlegminess. But I was weary and in a hurry. Who knows what vile bile had been expectorated into the vat of ranch dressing by some previous wielder of the ladle, unable or simply unwilling to control the symptoms of their digestive disease? God knows it's hard enough to know what's in ranch dressing to begin with, never mind guess what's been spat into its murky depths.

Suffice it to say, I shall not be dining at that establishment again, not unless whatever I buy is sold triple-wrapped in cellophane from Howard Hughes' kitchen.

Why I'm Not Enlightened

I was reminded of my spiritual failures while squirming in an airplane seat, the middle of three in a row, fighting for leg room between an unacceptably fat man on my left, and a restless student on my right who had constructed a sprawling combination of Starbucks cafe and Apple Store on her tray table.

My fat neighbor was squeezed into the aisle seat, apparently catatonic, so going to the bathroom would be a struggle of obsequious courtesy and grim determination. It seemed easier to climb over the back of my seat then wriggle across the laps of the passengers in the row behind than attempt to wake him. The student, meanwhile, had pulled the shade down over the window, the better to view her various laptop screens, so I couldn't even check for Gremlins grinning malevolently on the wing.

At times like these, I wish my brain could happily occupy itself with the melodrama of reality television shows, bestselling thrillers, and vacuous lifestyle magazines. But I had brought a biography of Cicero, providing a distraction from the disagreeable seating predicament for about two pages before my focus on shifted irrevocably back to muscle cramps and bladder issues. 

If only I could meditate like a luxuriously bearded holy man, I thought. If only I could transcend my current circumstances by departing the physical body existing in realms of pure thought for the duration of the flight. Alas, whenever I've taken the spiritual path I've soon found myself detoured back to the main road of materialism. Let's face it, sitting cross-legged while staring into nothingness is about as much fun as sitting in the middle seat.

Let's face it, sitting cross-legged while staring into nothingness is about as much fun as being stuck in the middle seat on an Airbus. I'd like to see the Dalai Lama maintain his serene composure in 35B when he's being repeatedly elbowed by a coughing child playing handheld video games in 35A and there's a farting behemoth in 35C.

The Unknown Tax Return Filer

My mind is preoccupied with taxes at the moment. I am surrounded by W2s, 1099 MISCs, crumpled receipts, dog-eared statements, and other inscrutable financial papers. It's an endless barrage of eye-strain inducing numbers and brain exhausting calculations, so I've coined the term "a Stalingrad of tax forms."

And on this battlefield of taxes, the best that can be hoped for are the most Pyrrhic of victories. Maybe I won't owe so much this year. I might even be able to claim a small refund. Perhaps my return won't be frog-marched off to the gulag to be mercilessly audited by an IRS inquisitor. Such is the grim accounting of tax time combat.

But God knows the little world of my personal economy is not so complex. A mediocre income, a few feeble investments, and a mortgage payment to deduct. It should not require the cloak-and-dagger strategy of a crack commando unit to write a few pennies off here and there. Yet my return generates so much paperwork it would overwhelm the Nazi war machine.

I suppose I could hire a tax professional to file my taxes for me. But that's a type of Stockholm Syndrome. Whatever. I won't be donating to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, that's for sure. Not unless Mr. Trump calls a truce. 

Cash On The Nail

Another day another dollar, as the saying goes.

Except for most of us, it's the same old dollar. Crumpled and dog-eared, torn in half and taped back together again, an indecipherable phrase scrawled across Washington's head in ballpoint pen, it's not an evergreen greenback.

Frankly, I'm not even sure the printed valuation "ONE" on its reverse still equals, you know, "one."

But for some people, of course, it's actually another day another million dollars. These people are new money, literally, since those million dollar bills simply did not exist the day before.

Crisp, crinkly, fresh from the presses with no Swastika or any other incendiary icon scribbled on George's forehead, theirs is the kind of cash that only comes in metal suitcases and is immediately deposited into private vaults before it can be manhandled. 

Not that I begrudge the rich their private bank vaults. After all, the accumulation of wealth is not a zero-sum game, although it does become unfairly lopsided when prices keep increasing and most people's income remains as stagnant as a greasy puddle at the bottom of a forgotten city drain.

Mind you, we are moving to a cashless society, or so I'm told, which the Bible-thick wad of credit card receipts in my wallet would certainly seem to confirm. Then we'll be saying "Another day another Bitcoin receipt recorded on the barcode implanted in the palm of my hand." 

Or, at least according to those miserable futurists predicting a barter economy of menial tasks, workers of the world will shuffle from gig to gig muttering "Another day another dog walk exchanged for a window washing."

I think the key is to ensure you will be saying "Another day another something," and not just "Buddy can you spare a dime." After all, it's going to be the cashless society, remember, and nobody will have a dime, never mind a dollar.

Tabula Rasa

Many people will not believe that I completed the pilgrimage, hobbling and foot sore, to the ancient Basilica of San Dalle, where, after washing my feet in the Holy Well of Saint Verruka, I did prostrate myself before the sacred relics of Igbert the Distracted, which comprise his miraculously preserved left big toe and a fragment of shine bone kept in an old medieval shoe box beneath the altar of the Basilica. 

Alas, apparently Igbert the Distracted does not believe it either since he still has not answered my prayer.

I asked Father Bunion about this rather unmistakable snub. I had, after all, traveled some considerable distance and ruined my favorite sweater whilst prostrate on the unswept floor. The priest told me that Igbert probably grew tired of my long-winded petitioning and, as his epithet implies, got distracted, then forgot all about poor me and my problem.

"And if the convoluted first sentence of this very blog post is anything to go by," Father Bunion continued, "I don't blame him at all. What, may I ask, was the nature of your petition? And try to keep it short." 

I'm very concerned that nobody reads my blog posts, I explained. 

Father Bunion nodded sadly. "Consider the parable of Prolix the Boring Scribe and his endless scroll of papyrus. Every time Prolix finished one discursive screed to his satisfaction he suddenly found himself faced with another blank page and felt the need to write yet another discursive screed. Eventually his collected screeds were published by Omnibus the Tome-Maker and became famous for being the least borrowed book in the Library of Alexandria. The moral of this story is: don't feel the need to fill a blank text window with words just because it's there."

And I suppose I should stop inventing preposterous and irrelevant characters like Igbert the Distracted and Father Bunion? But the fictitious priest did not reply because he was already gone.