Natural Selection
Author - Chris Weagel
Chris Weagel writes about the intersection of technology and parenting for Wired Magazine. No he doesn't. He can't stand that shit.
Sacrifices never apply to the powerful. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder will still be comfortable after reducing his salary to one dollar/year. Retired workers paying higher taxes on their pensions, as Snyder has proposed, won’t be so comfortable.
Snyder didn’t offer to pay more taxes because his caste never sacrifices anything.
Rich bankers got bailed out, gave themselves bonuses and now everyone who was already struggling has to suffer and sacrifice. Never forget that.
This system is stupid and pointless. Time for a national strike. The previous generation has blown it completely. I will not follow them to hell.
Finally got me a wooden leg. Made of Real Pine. Varnished and polished and smooth. Solid brass knee joint, bends in three directions and fits, extended, inside a velvet custom case (with handle). I keep the leg on a shelf in full view of the road. School children see it. So does the mail man. When I drive Father MacAbbe home each Sunday, I swing past my house – entirely out of the way- and drive real slow past the picture window. “What leg? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Father. All I see is a very happy, well-run home. No I don’t have any family to speak of but I hardly think that should stop you from supporting my bid to become Alderman.” Then I’ll stop the car and if the humidity is just right, I’ll lean over and whisper:...
“Get your house in order!” they scream. And they throw garbage at me and my pets.
Still I persist. Still I go forward. Still I carve away, slowly, with the bent knife and the little jeweler’s glass. Lot of people wondered why anyone would spend so much time painting huge pictures of empty fields and sacks of sand.
Once completed, I will let the paint dry then, beginning in the upper righthand corner, eat the entire accursed artwork. I will refuse naps and any offers of water. Snap your photos and scribble curse words if you must.
I will not stop.
EARLY LUNCH CONVERSATION STARTER What is it about Marine Life that enchants us so? The Whales and Shrimp and Penguins and Porpoises and Seals and Walruses and Star Fish and so on and so forth. What is it about them that makes men spends endless hours whittling away in their workshops on full life-size mechanical recreations – the kind that you have to wind up or get a neighbor to wind while you’re away – of these creatures so that we might be nearer to them without threat of losing an arm? Is it the cold, sure certainty of their starless-night dark eyes? The way they’re slippery without being slimy (unlike those horrible cave-dwelling albino rats)? Is it their mastery of latin dance? Whatever it is about these doleful, simple animals that keeps us returning to the...
Wayne State University's Labor Library.