Derp Face

Typically, life events and news-of-the-week are the most obvious jumping off points for anything I post here. There's nothing special about me as a blogger in that regard. I'm out here ginning up content just like any other social medial schnook, willing to call any blip trend-line of routine inspiration, in ways that I know border on almost indecent levels of depreciation of "inspiration" as a concept when I know things like the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel exist or whatever. But if you think about it, look, the execution is awe inspiring, sure, but that was just the result of Michelangelo taking a contract job from some rich asshole. So really, yeah, his work gets slightly more hype, but he knows he's a corporate sellout while I'm out here keeping it real, doing this at the minimum integrity-buy-in level of NO DOLLARS,* so those factors kind of balance each other out. We're functionally the same, Michelangelo and me, people are always saying. But he's got his fancy religious pictures and I've got my sanctimony, so I feel like I'm ahead a little.

Right now, though, looking at the news, I almost wanted to write about how things are better than they have been, or at least have a positive spin, but most of the things affecting me or at least dominating my vision are all government related, so I'm not sure "positive" really exists as an option. It's like getting hit in the head with a bat over and over again, but putting the emotional contortionist's work in to get to "well, at least the bat didn't have any nails driven into it."

Like is it great news that the fascist secret police show of force occupying a major American city is purportedly finally ending? I mean, of course it is. And the way the government is doing it, slinking away after the relentless, heroic pressure put on by ordinary citizens in an exercise of advocacy and sustained public action we haven't seen activated in this country since the Vietnam War ended, or maybe the Civil Rights Movement before that, is a clear win for the things we are supposed to root for in the United States. But it's hard to be too elated when the conditions for which the collaborative public activist effort was required existed in the first place, including but not limited to kidnapping, brutalization and murder by agents armed, sent and justified by the federal government. These are what my therapist would call "mixed feelings," which I could probably leverage into so pretty good meds if I pushed.

But if I'm going to push for good meds, I should do it soon as I've also just quit my job. This isn't great news, but (and this is complicated) the last job I quit to take this "upgrade" occupies the same space I work out of, so all my friends and former co-workers I see every day. The people in that job, they're also all about to lose their jobs too, with no parachute or backup plan. But me, because of my status? I have the opportunity to quit my job, but still get paid and keep my benefits in place for six months without having to come into the office.

Six months off? When was the last time you had six months off? When you were four, before you started kindergarten maybe? What a boon! What a wonder! What a luxury unworthy of denigration or complaint!

Well, OK, until you consider:

1) This program was invented by that pedo guy who broke twitter

2) It's a way to circumvent federal law regarding layoffs

3) It's after a campaign of psychological bullying of government workers en masse as an anti-labor action (and in my case, an ultimatum to move my whole life across the country or else get fired anyway)

So yeah, I've got a nice glide-path into unemployment ahead of me, far more than most people could expect, but I recognize it's not offered in any kind of spirit of generosity or good financial sense. If they hire someone in my position while I'm still in my six month window, that's the government paying twice for the same job. But you know, these DOGE people who started all this, they're all about eliminating waste, fraud and abuse...

I can have a sense of general gratitude in place while still maintaining the morally objectively correct level of contempt for the people involved in offering me the deal I've taken. I guess that means, yeah, at the end of the day, I'm not really any better than Michelangelo. Or at least not by the margins I typically assume.

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*Well, almost no dollars. Infinite love and gratitude to my patron(s?)!