11.14.2025 - Weekly Digest
11.10.2025
The word for fear of work is 'ergophobia', apparently.
I'd've gone with being called a laborophobe but then again I like to make things up to amuse myself. Is there a job in that?
'We'll pay you $50 an hour to fold your legs under your knees and giggle in a rolly chair. This device will track your eye movements.'
I mean I'd consider it. I can't afford not to. It might be the one thing I'm good at and my Midwestern genes tell me I'm better off finding a trade than doing all the things I'm not doing these days.
If you need an editor I'm great at criticizing other peoples' work. I can be passive aggressive about it or whatever you need.
'Interesting choice to not go anywhere with your idea. Very avant-garde. Tres Moderniste.'
Or the other kind of aggressive if that's what you're into.
'My professional opinion is that you should select all, delete, and throw your laptop out the window. For liability's sake this is only a hypothetical and I certainly don't encourage you to engage in any activity that could result in injury or property damage and so forth.'
11.11.2025
I used to write legal documents for money.
'It is clear from the evidence that your entire operation is a fraud and our client looks forward to displaying your gonads in a jar.'
We sued debt collectors. Which ones? Only the ones who broke the law. That was the joke. That's all of them.
These were the kinds of people who send anonymous notes with the addresses of your kids' schools on them. We had a colleague in Idaho who had to go into hiding. Savages. The kinds of bastards who lawyer up for domestic terrorists when they get caught up in the law they pretend to enforce. The guys who blew up Michael Clayton's car. Who look at a corporation that makes its money collecting on expired debts and go, yeah, I'd like to be a part of that.
No shortage of earthly rewards for sociopaths. Makes me wish I was one. If I've been faking my feelings I should get a trophy for method acting. The Daniel Day Fucking Lewis Award.
If you don't know this I am not a fan. My disdain is a matter of record and I'm repeating it here. If this changes your opinion of me, then we can agree to disagree. If you think I'm wrong, then we can agree that I think you have been tricked. I am a terrible actor and I recognize my kind. Pretending to be someone else and being all loud about it isn't really a skill.
11.12.2025
I was a teacher too. Taught unnative Englishers how to be more good.
To think to have to get up every morning. To have to be hygienic about things. To put on sometimes a tie even. To wait for the el for as long as the el takes and then to squeeze into a stranger's armpit and inhale humanity's fumes.
To ride in that unholy configuration exactly the number of stops it takes and with unseen delays between each one. To emerge from those tunnels like a miner. Covered in coal dust packing black lung.
To go willing into the pale glare of tube lights. Ancient fluorescence. To speak to no one because you have no community among adjuncts.
The classroom though I liked. The students were bright and even focused sometimes. Many of them were artists. We told stories about our own cultures and when we got to comparing idioms the room dissolved in laughter.
11.13.2025
I will do anything to avoid having to go to a physical workplace again.
I will splatter the internet with my resume in faith that something somewhere has to stick.
I will steal your most personal information. I will descend with it to the bottom of the internet and sell it to the lowliest lowlifes I can find. Lowlives, even.
I will narc on your neighbors so I can kidnap their dogs. Don't worry about the dogs; I will be kind.
I will go door to door and campaign for causes and candidates I find loathsome in my bones.
I will put my nightmares online. When I run out I will borrow your dreams and pass them off as my own.
I will pretend to have Severe Associate Disorder and beg for funding to cover my bills.
I will make lists and pass them off as literature and ask you to pay for them.