Reflections on a Friday Afternoon

It is Friday and I am working today. (Well I am physically at my location of work anyway.) My boss, however, is out fishing in his boat, this being the first sunny day we have had here in the last year or so. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny too. While he had me in his office yesterday explaining what I needed to work on for him he got a call from his friend and I heard them discussing where they would fish and camp. It took them quite awhile. He then apologized for that phone call and outlined further what I needed to work on. Then he fired off a few more emails and exited stage right very quietly and quickly.

As I sit at my computer looking longingly out at the nice sunny day and imagining my boss on his boat and me sitting here working it occurs to me that this is the kind of situation which sums up why he is called boss and I am called, well, not-boss. It’s the sort of situation that gives rise to Communism.

The theory there is that no one is boss and they all share the boat. The reality, however, tends to be that the boat is too small and there is no bait and only the most-honorable chair-people ever get time enough away from the factory to use it anyway, so the rest of the common folk get depressed and drink too much Vodka.

So then they get disillusioned with the Great Revolution and begin imagining what it would be like to come to America and be a boss and have a boat all to yourself and tell someone else to do your work while you are on it. Then if they actually come to America they wind up becoming an overweight plumber in Milwaukee with degenerative back-disease and a corny accent. "Lonk lif zee Amereecan dreem!" they say sarcastically with a cigarette hanging on their lower lip while stuck in traffic. Meanwhile, I am still sitting here and my boss is out having the time of his life like in those ridiculous commercials for beer or amphibious trucks. You know the ones I'm talking about. Everyone is happy and beautiful and waterskiing and catching fish and throwing them to friendly bears while women in bikinis dance around the periphery. Those are the kind of commercials that tend to result in a Jihad somewhere. I can kind of understand this, because I tend to get a bitter feeling when I watch those commercials myself. Imagine what an overweight al-Qaeda member with a growing bald-spot thinks when he sees something like that. He looks at the commercial, looks down at himself, and the next thing you know he is fantasizing about blowing up buildings.

I read in the news today that a Muslim group had declared a Jihad on Israel. This struck me as strange. Not the Jihad, but the reporting of it as if it was news. Isn't there always a Jihad going on against Israel? And how does that work anyway? Do they have a certain length, and then have to be renewed in some way, possibly by filling out a form of some sort? What if someone forgot? Now that would be newsworthy - headlines like "Bin Laden lieutenant forgets to fill out Jihad renewal form, record numbers fill Israeli buses and restaurants while appearing relaxed."

I think we've all gotten a little calloused about the whole Jihad thing. So some Muslim's want to spread their religion by force and violence, what do we care? Meanwhile if someone puts up a Christmas tree on city property he makes national head-lines and gets sued for trying to use the property of the state to offend people, which promptly stirs some Southern governor to raise a confederate flag over a court-house and briefly makes allies of Zionists and those who feel that al-Qaeda terrorists are just misunderstood, child-like people that just need to be extended the hand of friendship rather than criticized for blowing things up.

The whole thing starts to get confusing at this point, which is why I don't like politics or non-sport-related internet forums. Well, my bell has rung (figuratively) and I am free to go home and watch The Simpson’s, so I will leave the field of satirical philosophy to others for now while I steep my mind in something more worthwhile.