By "in this day and age" I am referring to the national, and perhaps quite international, zeitgeist that is raging as March roars in and winter clings nastily to our psyches, refusing, it seems, to yield to spring's inevitable thaw out (emotional/psychological in addition to literal)--let's not work. Yes, Let's Not Work (L'sNW) is the dominant mood of the country right now, and as usual, the world seems ready to follow America's lead. Most of the news, that I pay attention to anyway, is about people (who actually have jobs) either choosing not to work or being threatened with work stoppages (only in America, it seems, where 10% of the people can't find work, are many of the 90% employed being told that just because they have a job doesn't mean you get to actually do it, or are bluntly saying, we aren't going to work). Just look at arguably the two most influential entities in most Americans' lives: the government and the NFL. State legislators have left their states because they don't want to do their jobs and legislate, while thousands of people who have jobs that might be tweaked by legislation are obviously not doing their jobs so they can show up at the legislators' vacated places of work to protest either the pending legislation or the fact that the legislators aren't there to do their jobs (oh where have you gone Joseph Heller, Jonathan Swift, and Samuel Gompers when we need you most?). Not to be outdone, the federal legislators are playing footsie with one another over the budget, a game that might result in the federal government shutting down later this week. And not to be out-outdone, the NFL is quickly closing in on its March 3 deadline to reach a new collective bargaining agreement; if the owners and players don't reach an agreement by then, there will be a "lockout" and the NFL--aka pro football, aka America's raison d'etre--will cease to function. Across the world, people in various countries, obviously sniffing the winds coming from the good old USA as always, have seemingly stopped working altogether and are spending their time shouting in the streets for the removal of decades-long dictators.
Ergo, why the hell should I sweat out a few hundred insightful/inspiring/insipid words every other day when everyone else is breaking a sweat over not working? Well, I realize that if the U.S. government does cease to function (and with just about everybody in the world fed up with government is that such a bad thing?) and if the NFL does go on hiatus (correctly define and spell that word, Mr. Football Player) and people continue not working in protest over everything (and just look at the extent of that protest--Justin Bieber cuts his hair to avoid the 24/7 labor of keeping his helmet hair coif looking just so alluring and the poor lad loses 100,000 Twitter fans overnight) the world will have nothing better to do than to turn to my blog for sustenance and meaning. And so, in addition to getting all of you off my back and out of my e-mail in-box and the media hordes away from my doorstep, for the world's sake, I will steadfastly refuse the global tide of L'sNW and continue to scribble away here every other day after every other day. Not because in this L'sNW climate I like to, mind you, but because (owing to years of Catholic education instilling me with a strange martyr fetish) I feel an obligation to be a lone beacon of industriousness, which might be nothing more than serving as the world's scapegoat ("See, he's working, ain't that enough for the rest of us?"). So go ahead world, flee your state, your office, whatever; hang up your cleats; spend your time making pithy posters advertising your unwillingness to do your job--I've got your back. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go work my day job so that I can afford some football tickets and so that my taxes can support all those hard-working legislators and other government employees.
PS: Song I'd post if I weren't too lazy to do so--Superchunk's Slack M$#^&*$^&*$#^
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