the box

 Stuck in Aiken, SC, of all places, just me, my Bodhisattva and a liter of Jim Beam.

If you're in your 20's and you look around and feel a little cynical, or think that all politics and institutions are corrupted, or that an excessive wealth gap is taking away your opportunities, or that college is out of reach for most that aren't affluent, or that the generations before you (including mine) messed shit up real bad and left it to you to fix - YOU ARE NOT WRONG.  AND... VOTE ANYWAY! BE SOCIALLY ACTIVE ANYWAY. PAY ATTENTION ANYWAY. FIGHT BACK ANYWAY. VOTE BECAUSE YOU DO KNOW IT'S ALL MESSED UP! BECAUSE, THIS TIME AROUND, YOU'RE VOTING AND FIGHTING FOR DEMOCRACY THAT ALLOWS YOU TO CONTINUE TO FIGHT FOR A BETTER AMERICA, OR YOU'RE INVOLUNTARILY SUPPORTING FASCISM THAT WILL NEVER ALLOW US THE RIGHT TO SPEAK OUT AGAIN. I know it's not fair, but your generation is important and sees the world with an enlightenment that the rest of us do not. Please use that insight and strength and anger to be active, and know that change is slow, but it ...

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Only two right answers: 1. I don't care. 2. It doesn't f'n matter. A common pop culture, societal playful riddle.  Really, a cyclical paradox of epic pointlessness.  First off, in all of my infinite scientific naivety, I'm certain someone much smarter than me could offer up a valid answer involving some sort of evolutionary lineage back to the dinosaurs, and likely some human meddling down the line.  But, that's not the point.  Conceptually, I think we all know what it's getting at, and that is the part that is utterly, ridiculously of no purpose.   The same answer as the body/mind duality debate, the final emblem of Descartes masterful logistical equation, the same general response as to is there a god.  It's all basically the same question, and they all have the same appropriate responses, stated clearly above.  

Stories from the depths of the high end service industry, from the perspective of a fly on the wall.  They forget we're there, because they see us as Servants rather than Servers. Story of Senator Mark Warner and wife in intimate conversation with A Family (the Murrays).  Mark's wife's comment being the final punchline.  Story from days catering as captain at V House and beyond.

An essay on the current labor movement resurgence in a post-covid world, as a response to the greatest wealth gap in modern times.  The elimination of the middle class, or more accurately, the middle of the middle class.  The reality is that the middle has been gutted, which is the rung from lower middle to upper middle, so lower can no longer leap to upper with any regularity, and upper is accessible only to those born into upper.  Multifaceted issue as the spotlight was shined on many forgotten corners of civility, which can be discussed in support of premise, but keep focus on labor movements and the energy brewing in that direction.

Old white privileged baby-boomer syndrome of empowering themselves over others by asking/demanding their name. They pass it off as being personal, but it's only for their benefit, to empower themselves over you, in their "rightful" place, in their thinking.  What they are actually saying is, "What's your name, son?"  They are giving you no option, as if they are entitled to my name, and no other demographic does this. The stories of the old factory owners that knew every workers name but never once gave a raise, thinking that was some gift.  Nope.