We live in an age of miracles and wonder…if you have a certain income level.
A meandering journey into my evening, and my effort to come up with a name for the coming book.
A short story set in the new world, a prequal to the next book I shall finish.
I flew to Atlanta last week, job related, only tangentially related to this post. Taking the main tunnels underground I just thought of how excellent a space this would be for zombies.
I went to a job fair today, one in the city adjacent to the one I live in. My expectations were I would go in, wander around talk to a few people, drop off a resume or two. The reality was close to that.
I’m talking politics here. Are we to the point, in the United States of America, where we have crossed too many lines into a plutocracy? We have a president who is using his executive powers to persecute his opponents over false narratives and the other two branches of government are not checking his activities. I add the major upward siphoning of wealth to the top 1-2% of those who already have more than they can spend in a lifetime, and, hey, that money isn’t coming from just our current pockets; its in the form of ‘deficit’ spending, which just means borrowing from the future. So our kids are going to be saddled with it, all so the wealthy can…what? It doesn’t end well, does it? As I write the other countries are starting to not buy our country’s securities. There may well come a day very soon when there is no more money left to be lent. What happens then? I’m super curious to know what is ahead. Like does the country collapse? Does it split? Or do we go to war? Which, as we all know, is a great way to get rid of debt…if you win.
Have you tried getting a job lately? It’s a tough row to hoe, believe me. There is no interaction with a ‘real’ person anymore. You jump online, upload or, if you have oodles of time before you get your rejection letter, input all the data manually into a form for the job you want and the submit button. A day or two later you get the ‘we are going another direction’ email and move on. I’ve been getting calls by AI bots on my phone, vetting me with questions. I get it, times are hard, HR has no time to go through ten thousand applicants to find the best one. At best they use the bots to get that number down to the top three, at worst, they don’t utilize any filtering at all; zombie jobs are a thing. See? I can bring about any subject back to the undead…
Today was a difficult day. I was at the memorial for a young friend, by young I mean, not even out of high school, though close. He had everything seemingly, going for him; Accolades from various organizations, well respected by everyone who knew him, admissions to at least three colleges. Most importantly, and tellingly, more friends that anyone else I know. The church service was filled to overflowing, literally every seat taken and people standing all over the place. I arrived twenty minutes early and luckily secured a seat, I’m afraid after my ‘hiking exertion’ on Thursday last I would not have been able to make it by leaning against a wall while standing. Glad I went on the hike, not too happy I missed my ‘turn off’ and went for a far longer hike than planned.