JOBLESS GIBBERISH AMONG THE DRUNK PEOPLE

I'll say one thing for being gainfully employed -- it largely spares you the burden of having to pay attention to just how stupid people are when they're drunk ... OK, yeah, so they're just as stupid when they're sober, so what the fuck am I talking about?

I apologize. I keep thinking that my personal melodrama would have some value to anybody besides myself. How ridiculous.

Maybe you all could give me the benefit of the doubt, since I'm trying to re-orient myself to being out of work for the first time in almost thirteen years. I'm a little rusty at the jobless slacker wastoid thing, you see. With about five weeks worth of severance pay, and a soon-to-be cashed out 401(k) to fall back on, apparently I'll have plenty of time to adjust to my new (old) status as unemployed bar souse; I can already feel the sloppy allure and magnetic attraction of lazy indolence, even as I pointlessly ogle the shapely collection of waitresses that seems to congregate around this midtown Sacramento brewpub, to no good purpose. The stationary panic that lies bubbling just below the surface is screaming, most incoherently, that I should be doing the responsible thing and get out there and find a job. Apparently, I'm not listening.

Honestly -- why should I listen to the more commonsensical centers of my battered psyche, when we're collectively teetering on the precipice of ... whatever it is we're teetering on. I seriously can't fathom why I should strive and struggle and hack and tear and toil myself into a triple-bypass frenzy, merely so's I can re-enter the insane economic struggle I was only losing anyway. Well, living in the street is a pretty good incentive, I guess; I don't really covet starving to death either. But it seems like a losing battle one way or another, employed or not. No crap job ever solved anything, much in the same way a Democratically-controlled Congress is no answer to the dire political/Constitutional crisis that is eviscerating this country: like handing the Republicans their scaly asses after the last midterm election, it just feels good to be offered a new gig. But then, the stark frigidity of reality makes its presence felt all too soon, and you understand that nothing has changed, not really. What does that remind you of?

Jesus, sounds like I'm plumbing ever new depths of negative snark, if that were possible. Actually, I'm surprisingly optimistic, under the circumstances. I'm not destitute -- yet -- and I'm fortunate to have a tightly-knit family that simply won't let anybody sink out of sight ... in the meantime, I have time to think, and to tickle the ass crack of whatever muse is fucking around with my karma, at least a little bit. Things could be much worse. Or better, but that's neither here nor there.

So then, take care my friends -- don't work too hard. I'm going to order another amber ale, and learn how to groove with all the drunks I secretly despise. It's the least I could do ...