Ben Paddon

Tag: america

  • Money Where My Mouth Is

    I’m experiencing something of a tight cash flow situation at the moment. Hopefully it’s only temporary and I’ll be back on my feet soon, but at the moment I’m decidedly short-wadded. I’m not sure if I’m going to make rent. I definitely won’t be going grocery shopping any time soon, a sad fact that led me to – I shit you not – eat a large chunk of cheddar cheese earlier today like t’were an apple. Money doesn’t live here anymore.

    It’s not the first time I’ve been in this situation and it likely won’t be the last. It’s easy to look at the comparative emptiness of one’s wallet and conclude that, yeah, money is bullshit, but the more I think about it the more I’m glad money exists, as a premise. If we had an old-fashioned bartering system, such as might have been employed in medieval England, I’d be fucked. I have no skills to offer, no trade to ply. I’d end up giving out blowjobs.

    You might imagine that, were we to return to a simpler means of keeping a roof over one’s head and food in one’s belly, I might actually do well. I’m a writer, after all. Well, guess again – in this day and age, everybody can write. It’s not like ancient Egypt where you had to walk to the local writing pyramid and ask a guy to write your shopping list for you. People can get that shit done themselves these days. What’s more, people are talented liars. They don’t need the likes of me to make shit up and write it down for them.

    So, regrettably, I’d have to make my way through life by sucking cock. I acknowledge this, and I’ve made peace with it. Fortunately we haven’t arrived at that point as a society, and we’re unlikely to reinstate such a barter system unless something catastrophic were to happen, such as a Fallout-style nuclear apocalypse. But I know my value as a person. I know how much I contribute to society.

    You always hear about people “failing upwards” – people who are woefully inept at their jobs, but who inexplicably get promoted into executive-level jobs. I always wanted to be one of those people. I worked tirelessly to become the sort of person who does just enough to keep him from getting fired, but not enough to actively contribute to a work environment. When I was made Project Coordinator at Disney I thought, “Yes, Ben. This is where the dream will come true.” It was fitting, in a way. Then the 2008 market crash happened, and suddenly I’m out on the street again. Back to square one, where I’ve been ever since.

    I still believe people can fail upwards. Mitt Romney is living proof of that – a man with the business sense of a meringue, who is now a Presidential nominee. If he can become a viable candidate for the most powerful position in the world, then surely I can become an ineffectual executive for a large multi-national corporation. Surely I can hold the sort of job with an important-sounding title, but in which nobody actually knows what, if anything, I actually do (which is nothing).

    That is the American dream. It’s what brought me to this country. It’s what’s kept me afloat during these rocky times. Some day, I will make my dream come true.

  • Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom

    America, yesterday. [Source: Wikipedia]
    Yesterday, the United States of America celebrated 236 years of independence. If you’re me, it’s a day marked by your friends cracking wise about how awkward it must be for me to be living in a country my people once ruled with an iron something-or-other. If you’re literally anybody else (except maybe a Native American) it’s celebrated with the mind-boggling combination of barbecue, alcohol, and explosives.

    The reasons this boggles one’s mind is obvious: I cannot imagine why anybody would want to set off fireworks in the height of summer when no bugger’ll see ’em.

    July 4th is seventeen days shy of July 21st, which, as any fule kno, is the longest day of the year. The days are longer, the nights are shorter, and even the night sky has a curious, ethereal glow to it. Not ideal conditions for fireworks.

    Fireworks, the way Guy Fawkes wanted them to be. Probably. [Source: Wikipedia]
    Back in Britain, we have the common sense to know when to put on a fireworks display: November 5th. It’s dark, it’s miserable, the days are short and the nights stretch out forever – the perfect setting for an explosives display. Even terrorist Guy Fawkes knew this as he prepared to destroy the Houses of Parliament in what could have been one of the most visually spellbinding terrorist displays in British history, had he succeeded. Of course, his failure is our win – we celebrate his inability to make a building explode by attempting to set the sky on fire, and every year it looks mesmerizing.

    If the Founding Fathers had any common sense, they’d have held off on finalizing the Declaration of Independence until October at the absolute earliest. Then, the following year, the night sky would have set the perfect scene for the fireworks displays that would ensue. But no – it was the summer, and they just wanted to get the damned thing wrapped up so they could go swimming and eat ice-cream sandwiches. Bastards.

    Did they not know they’d be depriving generations of spectacular visuals? Did they not consider for one minute that maybe the bright, orange summer sky would not make the best canvas? Or maybe they did know, but they didn’t care about their country enough to take action.

    One thing is for certain, though: Every Fourth of July America has ever celebrated has been sullied by their failure to take this one small detail into consideration, and this country is all the weaker because of it.

    Now obviously we can’t move Independence Day. If nothing else, it’s ruin the shorthand name for the movie of the same name. Instead, I propose a global calendar shift.

    By rolling the calendar back three or so months, we would shift July 4th to the a period in the year when the days are significantly shorter. Americans would still get to celebrate July 4th, but they’d be doing so with optimum lighting conditions. What’s more, this wouldn’t have too much of an impact on Guy Fawkes’ Night, which would still take place under fairly optimal lighting conditions in what used to be February.

    Everybody wins! Except for farmers, obviously, but they’d hardly complain. They wouldn’t want to look unpatriotic.