Being an excerpt:
Seven months into his sixth year at Busy Bee Paints, Thomas Bandera knew suggestion boxes were for suckers, people who needed to feel they were part of something bigger than themselves, people who believed successful businesses were in large part successful because they respected their employees, considered them to be more than a collection of replaceable parts, and valued their opinions, grounded as they were in “common sense” and “street smarts.” The faceless, nameless bean counters and eggheads had a place in the grand scheme of things – somebody had to do the paperwork, after all – but in the Real World, it took Real People to get the job done, to keep the wheels of commerce and industry turning. So, what they thought about the day-to-day operation of any business counted for something, by God.
All of which was pure-D, chrome-plated balderdash.
Faceless, nameless bean counters and eggheads owned most of the world, and what they didn’t own, they held a controlling interest in. The Real World their employees believed in was no more real than the legendary Christian Kingdom of Prester John. It was, in the words of Busy Bee Paints owner and CEO Tunbridge R. Wells, “a pissant’s pipedream.”
Yes, cherished readers, after a lengthy sabbatical – were I a Catholic priest in an earlier age it would be said I was “on retreat” – I have returned to the blog/blagh/blah-o-sphere even less warm & fuzzy than I was, if I was, the first time around. I had been having second thoughts about firing up this platform again, as recent developments in both The Outside World and the billVerse had me wondering, as my paternal Grandfather Theophilus “Fay” Parker might have said, “What’s the bloody point?” It’s not like I’m possessed of Final Wisdom that’s being ignored by The Powers That Be. Afterall, I’m looking for answers of my own, and certainly don’t claim to have answers for anyone else. (I still hold to what the venerable S.J. Allen told me the day he hired me to be a telephone lineman way back in the way back when, if not quite the dim and misted: “If you’ve got personal problems, take ‘em to the chaplain.”)
But after an exchange of email with my pirate brother The Straightman (in Seattle) and Paul H. (an old pal from Calumet City days) I decided to get on the beam, straighten up and fly right, get back on that horse … and so on. But like I said, I didn’t ratchet up my WFQ – Warm and Fuzzy Quotient – during my time away. I read, walked, rode my bicycle, took care of some health concerns, and watched some old movies. Cleared my head out and, perhaps, wiped away some cobwebs that had attached themselves to my spirit. But I returned to find that outside of myself, nothing had changed for the better. Things had, in fact, got worse. So, here are a few observations from the bottom drawer of my desk here at Expatriate Games, all of which fit snuggly into the “Pissant Pipedreams” file:
No matter what some Icelandic waif may demand (no names, please), or what some government or corporate flack may say, no one with any clout gives a damn about climate change.
No one with any clout gives a damn about racial equality, economic equality, or any other equality outside the parameters of Orwell’s line that “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
It’s more apparent than ever that no amount of personal or organized protest will bring about any meaningful change.
No celebrity – to whom more and more people seem to turn to for their opinions and guidance – will do anything that will harm their image or career, but they will be quick to jump on any bandwagon that will appear to align them with “the little people who make it all possible” and vote for them in whatever award shows TV can devise.
The celebrities who vowed to leave the USA if Trump was elected in 2016 and 2020 are beating that drum again, apparently having missed their flights out of LAX prior to both of the earlier elections. I respectfully suggest some reverse psychology be tried: have Cher and (oops! Sorry! No names!) um, whomever, beat feet before next year’s election and maybe Trump won’t be elected again. Nah, we both know that won’t happen – the departures, not the re-election – but it needed to be said.
Finally, the government has co-opted the question of the existence of UFOs and rechristened them UAPs (what that stands for escapes me at the moment). For True Believers, the proverbial writing is on the wall: find another cause – Bigfoot, Atlantis, perhaps time travel – because it’s over. The warnings of The X-Files went unheeded, and more’s the pity. Regards to Mulder and Scully and to the Ghost of Max Fennig.
NEXT TIME: An update on the exploits of Death-Defying Harmonica Jack, Keeper of The Blues Flame.
(Get well soon, Lala!)
Nice, so glad you posted something fun! And I have another notice you have a new book. Prolific is you.
lala (who is feeling ok)