The Physics of Wage-Slavery

A couple of weeks ago I was talking about time. But you know what's really important? Timing, that's what. And I'm not just being paranoid when I say that! I have facts to prove it, too!

Timing is what "the check's in the mail" is all about. When you "take five," you take time, but timing is what makes taking it possible.

Ask most any evolutionist what his beef with creationism is and he'll tell you it has nothing to do with the theology of the matter. It's only about the timing involved.

Timing is what homo sapiens has more than the Wooly Mammoth, probably enough more to account for the recent shortage of the latter. Timing, suitable rocks, a good throwing arm. Likewise, a poorly timed precipitous climate change is poised to do homo sapiens in, with the rest of the planet probably feeling it's not one eon too soon.

Q. What's so hard about relativistic quantum physics? A. Taking into account the timing. The same thing can be said about tuning Lamborghinis or trying to tickle tigers.

Bad timing is almost synonymous with disorder. It's dis-order in the course of events. Mathematical chaos has gobs to do with timing and convolutions of timing, and the inevitable losing track of timing. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle can be laid to timing. "Hey Werner, what should we measure first? Are you sure? It seems to make a difference."

What's the real answer to the question about life, the universe, and everything? Timing: it's critical to life, while the rest of everything that isn't alive doesn't care.

In good timing, Science cures your terminal disease before you have debilitating symptoms. In bad timing, Science is not at all convinced that your disease is terminal until the day you die from it. Science is then so impressed by the sheer horror of your manner of death that she names the disease after you and proceeds to cure it, so that no one else will ever have to suffer so much again.

Good timing leads to Bliss; bad timing leads to Tragedy. When gene sequences fire in their correct order you get a gorgeous baby with ten little toes. Let the genes fire in the wrong order and your baby might still have ten toes, but they could be growing out of her eyebrows, causing a premature end to her modeling career, and forever dashing her dream of becoming the first non-Sherpa to break-dance atop K2 without an oxygen mask.

If you don't think good timing is important, try this experiment. Get a ride on a lunar landing module to the moon and beg your crewmates to be the one who decides when to fire reverse thrusters during the landing, but don't you or any of them look out the window or use the radar or anything that would tell you where the ground is in relation to the module. If you live maybe I'm wrong, maybe timing isn't important. If you die, my point.

Let's consider one specific variety of bad timing that concerns poor people. Let's talk about the sort of bad timing that can be summed up in the words: "You'll receive your first paycheck a week after your first fully completed pay cycle."

Since a typical pay cycle is two weeks that means the average would-be wage-slave can't get paid until after putting in three weeks of work. But doctors doubt someone in your condition could live two weeks without food of any kind, and think you'll last much less than that if you engage in major activity as required by a full time job. So if you're starting your job with no money in reserve, and if the job keeps you from taking advantage of meal programs, and if you're homeless with no place to cook food bank stuff -- well, screwed again.

But at least you know what did it. It was the timing!

Sticker Shock

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Are you feeling all paid out yet?

I am. First, we had the scare of being told that if George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld, say, decided to label us an enemy combatant, we could be imprisoned without trial indefinitely, even for life, just by shipping us to Guantanamo Bay. A lot of screaming and a Supreme Court ruling finally succeeded in regaining our right to be free from indefinite imprisonment without trial.

Why should we have to fight for such a basic freedom from our own government, a government whose duty is to protect our freedoms?

Then a couple weeks ago our precious Homeland Security, WHICH WAS ESTABLISHED TO DEFEND THIS COUNTRY, decided to see whether the 2004 presidential election could be postponed in the event of a terrorist attack.

Well let's see, the Constitution doesn't allow a delay, so we'd have to change that, and state constitutions don't allow delays, so we'd have to change about 50 state constitutions, and lets see, we would have 4 months to do that and get straight who does the delaying under what circumstances and so NO NO NO NO NO, IT'S NOT POSSIBLE, AND HOMELAND SECURITY IS RUN BY DUMBASSES!

So they said something like, well yes we know all that but we're just "looking into" the possibility.

To Homeland Security: Please "look into" the possibility of doing something legal for a change, like how are you going to do your duty and ensure that elections go on IN SPITE of any terrorist attacks.

Why should we have to yell and scream at Homeland Security to get them to defend our national elections? Who needs terrorists when we have defenders like these?

Then, periodically, we hear about some citizens being arrested or detained for "trespassing" at a Bush speech for either carrying anti-Bush signs, or as happened most recently, wearing anti-Bush T-shirts.

How long will it be, do you think, before our government, WHOSE JOB IS TO PROTECT OUR FREEDOM, will grant that freedom of speech is one of those freedoms they have to protect, not trample? How much yelling and screaming from the rest of us will it take? Will this require a Supreme Court ruling too?

The latest assault on freedom in this country comes from the President's own Orwellian-named New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. They are calling for mandatory mental health screening for "consumers of all ages" in this country, beginning with grade-school students who can be easily accessed through the public school system, then going on to include pre-school children and eventually adults.

Psychiatrists doing these mass screenings would use government-approved flow charts to decide who is mentally ill. The kids who test positive could then be required to take psychiatric meds, to control their illnesses and make them happy consumers.

I don't think the Constitution once refers to citizens as consumers, much less as "mental health consumers." The term is a favorite of pharmaceutical companies, which is a very big hint from me to you telling you who is behind this crap.

Just make sure that when your kids go in for compulsory psyche screening they haven't been "consumers" of any sugar-frosted cereal lately, as points will be deducted for fidgeting. Anti-authoritarian behavior will certainly be a decision point on the flow chart, so better tell them not to wear anti-Bush T-shirts.

Elder Bush motto: Don't worry, be happy. Junior Bush motto: Don't worry, take your happy pills. Or else.

To paraphrase Dick Cheney, I think Bush should go screen himself.

What Wes Won't Do by Anitra L. Freeman

I have once more volunteered to do Dr. Wes's column for him, because he's tired.

Wes wants to take this opportunity to have me write about all those things that people want him to write about that he doesn't want to write about, because he's tired.

For instance, a reader would like Wes to write about the permanent adolescence of George W. Bush. This makes Wes very tired indeed.

Now other than thinking that this sounds like a very poetic title, "The Permanent Adolescence of George W. Bush," I wasn't sure that I agreed with the premise. Even when I was an adolescent female, I never despised adolescent males that much.

Would an adolescent male deal with his unpopularity by picking a fight with the first person who gave him an excuse? Well... But would an adolescent male be so determined to have a fight that no matter what the other person did to keep the peace he'd make up a new reason why it wasn't good enough? Well...

Okay, but do you really think he's going to grow out of it in a few more years?

Michele "For God's sake, Anitra, you've known me long enough, you'd better be able to remember that it has only one L" Marchand would like me, or Wes, or me being Wes, or Wes being me, or somebody anyway, to write about Ruth Lilly leaving a hundred million dollars of her pharmaceutical daddy Eli Lilly's fortune to Poetry magazine.

There are several possible reactions here:

• "Why did she leave that much money to POETRY!?"
• "Why didn't she leave the money to Real Change? WE publish poetry."
• "Why is everyone so shocked at big money being given to poetry?"
• "So, is the magazine going to pass any of that on to the poets?"

Let us cut to the chase here. As the purported purpose of this column is advice to poets, I would like to advise that in my opinion the time for the unionization of poets has at last come. Somebody who publishes poetry finally has some money. Since, under the administration of a permanently adolescent male, people who read poetry are soon not going to have any money at all, selling self-published chapbooks is no longer the lucrative gig that it was supposed to be. Getting paid by a rich publisher is much more dependable.

Stan "A Published Author" Burriss would like Wes to write about the quotations etched in the stone of the triangle at the Second Avenue Extension. He believes that Wes could say something about these quotations that would touch you, the readers, warmly.

Wes is against touching people warmly without their prior permission. And he doesn't know where you've been.

My objection is that if writing can't speak for itself, it needs to be rewritten. So next time you are at the Second Avenue Extension, look. I didn't realize the writing was there myself until Wes told me.

Don't ask Stan about this. He won't remember. Ask him about Rumi.

Then there are the standard things that Wes is asked to write about regularly.

The inside scoop on everything wrong at "fill in the blank" shelter:

Folks, homeless people have been murdered on the streets of Seattle at the rate of one every three months this year. Nobody has been murdered in a homeless shelter. Like sex, as long as shelter is by consent, the worst there ever was wasn't really bad at all. Compared to the alternative.

Every rally in Seattle that ever was:

Like poems, these speak for themselves. Like poetry, they could always use more attention. But for us to tell you how great they were is preaching to the choir. I have another suggestion: how about for the next rally (you can find it in the calendar section) you take along one or two friends who aren't convinced of the cause yet?

I don't want to write about any of those things. What I want to write about is Congrescent Singulitarians. I have just discovered that there is a website for Congrescent Singulitarians. I would like to announce that, in retaliation, I am beginning a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Words.

Write On!
© Anitra Freeman 2002