I am a Shutdown Victim. I’m not a government worker, but I am a Shutdown Victim, and I’ll be only too happy to explain to you in detail how come I’m in this condition:
The First Vibration of the Ripple Effect came from the furloughed government workers, into the marketplace in a variety of ways, some directly — as in they didn’t buy goods this month because they don’t have the ready cash — and some indirectly, as in screwing up the market and buying sentiment of the consumer class, which is us.
Then we got the Second Vibration — the non-furloughed workers started freaking out because they were “Risking their lives and not getting paid for it”.
Hell, that describes my job in a nutshell. I never get paid for my work, but I don’t really have to get paid — I have an endless supply of Shakti-Pat, and that translates into money, in my world.
Of course, if you’re not living in the Western Realm, and you find yourself in a government job, which means these days, “working and not getting paid for it”, you still have to come up with money for food, gas, parking, migraine headache remedy, tips, spare change and more, not to mention the tons of alcoholic drinks you’ll need to toss down while at work, in order to be able to take the crap without actually snapping the boss’s head right off.
If you’re drunk, you’ll be all right.
Of course, you’ll at some point sober up, and you’ll need to find some free food and drink, so you can put some food on the table for your family.
But … but … here you are at work, at your daily job, but how do you get the time to stand on a breadline for three or four hours, waiting for food — and how do you get them to give you more than one single portion, so you can bring the food back home, and feed your whole family?
You can’t. You won’t. They’ll have to also stand on line — the whole family has to stand on line. This means that you can’t work for a living, which makes you a candidate for the Labor Camps and the Road Gangs.
Well, SOMEONE has to rebuild the infrastructure, and why shouldn’t it be the poor?
The short fact is, you will SOON need to find some way to get some nourishing non-government cheese type actual food.
If you don’t mind the plastic cheddar cheese and the spoiled pasteurized milk, there are always the soup kitchens and breadlines waiting for you — filled with WORKING WORKERS on the job — workers who are actually FORCED to report to work, but they’re not getting paid ANYTHING for a fair day’s work, with all the expenses and misery that this incurs, including carfare and bagged lunches, or no lunch at all, if it’s a choice between food and mortgage payments.
Sure, it violates the “fair pay for fair labor” rules in the Constitution, but you surely don’t think that the Constitution is still in play, do you???
Listen, the Middle Class of the 80s and 90s is today wiped out, stone cold dead — which is the very heart of the PLAN of the Trump Administration, and it’s working. Soon there will only be the Very Rich and the Very Poor, and nothing in-between.
The whole idea of eliminating the Middle Class is to avoid being replaced by upcoming upstarts and savages. Old Money Rules Forever, and the Very Rich give no quarter, they fight dirty and they always win.
They don’t want people coming up the ranks, and can you blame them? They’re weak, scared little children, and they wet their pants at the slightest whisper of wind, but they DO always win, because they have the money to fight you and grind you down into the dirt.
Get used to disappointment, or just don’t get disappointed when what always happens happens to happen, if you get my meaning.
You will lose. Your family will starve if you do nothing.
I can tell you the result on me and in my work-life:
As a result of the illegal government shutdown, which is holding millions of Americans economic hostage — which is technically and actually a form of terrorism that has its equal only in Al-Queda and Nazism, my income is currently down to Absolute Zero, and I will have to take some action or face eviction.
I go right from Middle Class to Homeless in 5.6 seconds.
So I take to the streets, and sell shit, but what can I sell??? I have no money, only a few pennies in my pocket, and a couple of pairs of ear-wires, some hot glue and a glue gun.
Okay, I can still make it, still do something, even if it’s only a few pennies in my pocket. I’m resourceful, far more so than a man who has never had less than $2 in his piggy bank, which is so aptly named in the case of Donald J. Trump, Asshole-in-Chief, no respect intended.
I might get in trouble for that, so if you take offense to my outrage, then fuck you in advance.
I’ve spent the past two years trying to reach the bottom of TrumpWorld, but there just isn’t any bottom, but I keep looking for the mud below.
As far down as I’ve managed to get, there’s always been a factor of at least $3 raw cost in any product I’ve designed for the street marketplace, but that’s all changed now, with the advent of the “Cheapo Raw Coin Birthday Earrings” and “Cheapo Raw Coin Birthday Pendant”, both of which involve the direct gluing of the earring mounts right onto the raw unprotected coin.
This means certain destruction for the coin, but nobody will care. It’s a temporary and fun fashion solution, and it can be sold for as little as $3.99 a pair for earrings, and $1.99 for the pendant — what do you say to that???
It’ll never get any cheaper.
Of course you can sell a pair of these earrings for $5 or even $10, but why hassle it? If you sell a million of these a day, your takeaway should be a little less than $4 million dollars, going forward at the end of the day.
You know, right?
Okay, so what’s the exact gig, meaning what’s the street pitch?
It’s very simple. Wear the T-Shirt with the “Shutdown Victim” message, and sell the hell out of penny earrings and pendants, and if anybody bothers you, tell ’em to fuck off, you’re broke and hungry and mad as hell and you aren’t going to take it anymore.
The coins can come off the loopy-doodles, but so fucking what???
I assure you, Giuliani would have no ethical issues selling jewelry that’s almost BOUND to come apart unexpectedly, and these days, his ethics are the most popular ethics, which means “none at all”, and that’s what’s expected these days, so get with the program.
The RAW COIN products are made with hot glue, so the penny might just plain come off without warning.
Big deal, give the customer another one.
They’re guaranteed for life, which means that if someone lives long enough, they can wipe you out for about $4 bucks total, if you replace them once a week for the next year or two.
Listen, screwed-up merchandise is good, and in Trump World faulty merchandise is The Industry Standard.
Problems and confusions and disappointments bring the customer back again and again, and each return is another opportunity to sell them more shit, so the more likely the chance of the coin slipping off the ear wire, the better.
That’s a semi-joke. The fact is, you want to guarantee everything, and you DO want the customer to come back again, even if it’s for a problem or a complaint.
Whatever it is, make it right, and your customers will give you respect and trade.
But why are you out there selling this shit, anyway, when you could be at work???
” I WAS at work. I’m an electrical engineer, and I have a government job, but I need to put food on the table, and I can’t stand on a breadline and work both at the same time.”
That’s what you say if you are actually a government worker. If you’re not, but you’re getting hit by the shutdown, explain that you are a SHUTDOWN VICTIM, and go for the throat, meaning sell stuff based on suffering and pain.
In short, run an emotional binge on them. Show them how much pain it is. Give out with the agony and misery, and tell the story, get them to feel the pain, to suffer with you, then to give you money to assuage their guilt, because they’re not yet feeling the pinch, but soon they will, and you’ll have to find another gig, like selling apples.
Just make sure to get a good corner.
Selling is like begging — the same rules apply and the same relationship between beggar and patron is in place, after all these millennia, and you can’t expect better, not ever.
The government is NOT playing fair.
This gives you the license to do whatever you have to do to make a living, as long as it’s LEGAL, but in Trump World, it needn’t be ethical, moral or safe, as witness the dismantling of the EPA and other consumer protections.
It’s all fair game, and you are the target.
It’s your challenge to get enough money together to avoid the Great Roundup when it happens “for your own safety and benefit”, but that train ride is the same as the one that ended up in Bergen-Belzen and Auschwitz.
If you’re a minority, your life is in danger from this administration, please believe me — they intend for all minorities to be dead within the next two years.
Trump is trying to beat the deadline to personal prosecution, and he’ll do anything and everything to avoid being locked up his own self, and that includes nuclear options.
If he can get re-elected, he calculates that by the time he’s out of office, he’ll be beyond prosecution for one reason or another, and he’d be right, if other things didn’t happen, but they will, according to my 37th century “Ancient Earth History” textbook, which I still haven’t yet read entirely.
I forget names, dates and places, but otherwise my sense of history is pretty precise.
So I have a PEGBOARD that can be used to sell the hell out of Raw Penny Birthday Coin Earrings and Pendants at $3.99 and $1.99 apiece, and you can send for it anytime.
Cost?
The Pegboard with frame and pegs costs $50, but you only have to buy it once, or you can cut the board and buy a frame and get the pegs from a retail display supply shop, and do it yourself for about $48.57, thus saving yourself close to a couple of bucks, wow.
The setup has 20 pegs, on which you place a bunch of RAW COIN jewelry, and let ‘er rip.
You can make the jewelry yourself and take the whole rap for it yourself, or get it from me at a WHOLESALE price of $1 apiece for the pendants, $2 for the earrings, which is half the retail, see?
Can these earrings fall apart?
Yes, they can.
Will they?
Yes, they will.
Do I give the customer a new pair?
Yep.
Again and again?
Yep.
Will I ever see a profit?
Only if it’s the Old Testament.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby