W.T. Fallon's Blog

January 24, 2019, Australia—Entitled general managers no longer willing to work for free, say frustrated interns at Muffin Crack, an Australian company that relies on volunteer work from its CEO and management executives.

“It’s just so frustrating,” says Blueberry Skohn, an intern at Muffin Crack who supervises hiring the C-suite executives. “Every time the company doesn’t go bankrupt, they expect a bonus! Sometimes even when the company loses money or files for bankruptcy, they still expect to get bonuses. Just because they heard on social media that Sears did it, now they want to get $25 million in bonuses for flushing their company down the toilet too.”

Fortunately, putting unpaid interns in charge of real-world problems like hiring and firing top executives has helped Muffin Crack avoid these types of PR disasters.

“When CEOs or general managers or top executives come to an interview and demand to know how much they’ll be paid, I just laugh,” says Skohn. “Like, they’re gaining valuable experience running a company. I don’t understand why people who sit behind a desk and embezzle from the company all day think they should be paid too, when those of us who actually serve customers and bake and sell the muffins are working for free experience. Like, social media has taught executives to have this inflated sense of self-importance.”

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Self-Important Millennials Expect to be Paid for Work?

The above was a piece of satire. But the reality is that general managers of businesses like the currently controversial Muffin Break do, in fact, feel that today’s generation of workers has an inflated sense of self-importance because they—gasp!—expect to be paid for their work. Yes, some executives seriously believe Millennials have an “inflated sense of self-importance,” just because they don’t want to work forty hours a week for free.

Yes, some people do seek out unpaid internships. Usually these people have rich parents who can support them while they work for free. I remember interviewing for an internship when I was in college. It was at a company I would have loved to work for. They were located in another city far from where I lived with my parents while working two jobs to pay my way through school. The internship was forty hours a week, just like a real job, and lasted for three months in the summer. I hated having to ask at the end of the interview, because I know you’re not supposed to bring up pay, but I really did need to know if it paid. I truly couldn’t afford to quit both my jobs, move to another city, pay rent on an apartment, put gas in my car and drive to work, and eat, all while working forty hours a week for free. No, the internship was not paid and the company did not provide room and board. I was relieved when they sent me a rejection letter, because there was no way I could have afforded to take that three-month internship anyway.

I was reminded of that experience this weekend when reading about the #MuffinBreak mishap. In a much-discussed interview, Australian company Muffin Break’s general manager Natalie Brennan said it’s unfortunate Millennials are no longer willing to do unpaid work for experience. She also bemoans that those she deigns to pay for their hours of effort sometimes ask how soon they’ll get a raise.

Apparently, Brennan was never a recent graduate with student loans to pay back on top of necessities like food, gas, and rent. Not to mention luxuries like health insurance! A friend of mine recently told me about her younger relative, who recently started work in a competitive field after graduating with student loans. We’ll call this person Claire (not her real name). Claire went to a relatively inexpensive school, but even with federal loans and a job, she couldn’t pay for her tuition, forcing her to add loans from Sallie Mae. Now that she’s graduated and is struggling to build a client list, Sallie Mae wants a thousand dollars a month in loan repayments. When business is slow, Claire does odd jobs and sells on Etsy, but all her sources of income only add up to a little more than $22,000 a year. Rent, food, gas, insurance, and other expenses eat up most of that in a hurry, yet Sallie Mae still wants their money. Keep in mind, Claire is the rule, not the exception—about seventy percent of students graduate in debt. The average student borrower finishes school owing more than $37,000.

So no, #Millennials don’t expect to make a huge salary the second they start work, and they don’t have an “inflated sense of self-importance because social media.” They have massive bills to pay and we all know minimum wage (in the US, at least) doesn’t begin to cover even the most basic necessities. (An Australian friend tells me college and living expenses aren’t cheap there either.) Do we want to work hard and learn on the job? Of course, we went to college and seventy percent of us got in debt so we could learn. We always planned to work hard. And while it’s great to love your job more than you love money, it is sometimes necessary to ask about the damn money because we fucking need it to pay our bills. You don’t want us asking for free stuff, do you? There’s another complaint I hear about Millennials all the time, that we “want everything free.” Whoops, that’s actually the older generation demanding free labor in its retail stores—sorry, I got confused about who wants free stuff!

Brennan herself certainly worries about money, despite whatever salary she makes as general manager and all that unpaid labor her company has benefited from. One Muffin Break franchisee claims he was
told “to consider underpaying staff that I can trust”. The franchisee went on to say, “The key message was that as migrants, I must be aware of other migrants or students who would gladly accept underpayments in lure of their first job and hence not report or complain.”(Muffin Break denies the allegation but is still under investigation by a parliamentary inquiry.)

But hey, why should franchisees worry about saving money when they should just be glad they’re getting experience running a business? They don’t expect to be paid, right? If their employees aren’t being paid fairly, why should they be? Why should the Muffin Break executives?

What are your thoughts?

V. R. Craft is the author of Stupid Humans, a science fiction book series that asks the question, “What if all the intelligent humans abandoned Earth—and we’re what’s left? She is also the author of the political satire, Fail to the Chief, in which she envisioned the presidential election as a reality show… more of a reality show?

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Obviously, this is satire. I am not using the White House microwave to eavesdrop on the president scrawling his speech in crayon.

Congratulations to all of you who get to hear the best State of the Union address ever…since last year. I know those of you at home are enjoying it too, because your TV is spying on you. And if not your TV, then your microwave.

First, I want to tell you the state of the Union is great, because I am making America great again! BUT, we still have much to fear, because there are caravans of people from all over the world and maybe even Mars… and a couple parallel universes, see why we need Space Force…  everywhere coming to take what’s ours!

There are so many people to fear, I don’t know where to start—oh wait, yes, I do, yes I do. The gravest threat facing our country today is poor people! You know they’re all out to take your hard-earned money. Not mine, because I store mine offshore, but definitely all of yours. Do you know most poor people work multiple jobs? Where do you think those jobs come from? They come from you, and then you don’t have any money!

[image error]State of the Union Leaked Draft

And then those nasty poor people want welfare, folks, they want welfare, even though they’ve taken jobs from the good, hardworking people like you, they still want welfare. Can you believe that? They want free healthcare, free college, a free place to live—who do they think they are, my family?

Then, once they’ve taken all your money, they want to raise the minimum wage. Don’t they know how hard life is for CEOs and shareholders these days? Don’t they know raising the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour will force big companies to blame their regular price increases on a higher minimum wage? Don’t they know the damage to our economy when a CEO is forced to limit himself to only five summer homes in the Hamptons? It’s an absolute disaster!

And you know what’s an even bigger disaster than our own citizens robbing the rich? Foreigners. Foreigners who are out to take those high-paying jobs available to everyone with a first grade education in this great country! Foreigners who want to take welfare from the poor mooches who were lucky enough to be born in this great country. Let me tell you, those illegals will rob our poor of every dime they just fleeced from the rich, before they can even spend it on beer and cigarettes. Then they’ll start committing serious crimes—coming after the rich!

There’s another big threat facing this country too: Women. It’s a scary time to be a man, guys, because these days you can’t harass women anymore without them getting all sensitive and snowflakey about it. Can you believe it, now women you don’t even know want you to ask permission before you grab ’em by the pussy? Why do they hate men?

Getting back to pussies, have I mentioned I’m taller than Obama? And I had a bigger crowd at my inauguration? You wouldn’t believe the crowd size! Everyone wanted to see me make America great again.

And I have, but we can’t forget all the threats facing us. We can’t forget the threat of the well-educated. The well-educated are scary because they’re always trying to confuse good, honest, Americans with annoying things like “facts”‘, and I don’t mean the good, safe, alternative kind. The scientists are especially dangerous. Do you know they’ve formed a cabal and created the hoax of global warming? Well, the Chinese helped, but mostly, it was the scientists, folks. It was the scientists. If those people have their way, they’re going to put solar panels on everything, and then how will I get a tan after we use up all the sun running our electricity? Fortunately, my Secretary of Donation Education, Betsy DeVos, is working tirelessly to ensure American students are educated properly on the scourge of environmental hoaxes like climate change. She’s asked me to remind our young viewers to think logically: How can the globe be warming up when the Earth is flat?

As if the scientists aren’t bad enough, then we have LGBT people. Make no mistake, they have an agenda to convert everyone to their sexual preferences. Remember back when America was great, you could turn on the TV and see only straight people kissing each other. Back then, we didn’t have gay people or transgender people or arguments about who used what bathroom. There were no gay people until the gays invaded the media!

It gets worse, it gets worse. Then there are the foreign threats. Mexico is sending rapists and murderers, and Canada is trying to steal our citizens by dangling the carrot of free healthcare. And Norway refuses to send us any more limmigrants because they claim most of their citizens don’t want to move here—even though I’m making America great again! And don’t even get me started on all the people from shithole countries who want to come here and get on welfare, shaking our poor billionaires down worse than our own poor, lazy citizens already have. It’s a disgrace, an absolute disgrace.

And don’t forget, there are the young liberals, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who want to turn America into a shithole country like Venezuela. First of all, our oil reserve is bigger than Venezuela’s, much bigger. Second…has anybody seen her birth certificate? Where was she born? How about that Robert Mueller guy, anyone seen his birth certificate? Just curious…and fourth, liberals are all communists, and they want us all standing in line for toilet paper and vodka, and don’t you forget it!

You know why the liberals are doing this? Because they want to give everyone free stuff. It’s like on Oprah. You know I have better ratings than Oprah? I have better ratings. And I never gave away free stuff on my TV show. Better ratings than Swarzennager too. Anyway, free stuff. You get a car, and you get healthcare, and what do the rich get? They get all their tax breaks mercilessly ripped away, and that’s just not right. It’s not right, folks, it’s not right. Billionaires should not have to pay taxes, because they earned their money. Me, for example. I earned my money the day I was born into it, and I’ve been earning it ever since. And I’ve never stopped working for other billionaires like myself, good, hardworking people who only want to preserve the fortunes they earned by being born into the right family, growing up, going bankrupt going to bed with hot supermodels to Wharton, and hosting the most popular TV show that even got better ratings than Oprah, Swarzennager, and Hillary Clinton!

But don’t worry folks, there is a solution here. There’s a way I can protect you from all this pain and misery. Simply donate to my reelection campaign! You can pay online by credit card, or mail a check directly to the Kremlin. Thank you for hearing the greatest speech in history, until next year.

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V. R. Craft is the author of Stupid Humans, a science fiction book series that asks the question, “What if all the intelligent humans abandoned Earth—and we’re what’s left? She is also the author of the political satire, Fail to the Chief, in which she envisioned the presidential election as a reality show. More of a reality show….

 

I recently watched season one of Amazon Prime series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which I found hilarious and thoroughly entertaining. I don’t watch a lot of comedies—I find the writing is better on serious shows that also happen to be funny. However, I found The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel to be the perfect blend of plot and humor. SPOILER WARNING: This review contains spoilers for season one.

As a creative person, I noticed the show, while entertaining, also offered many truths to be learned about pursuing a career in the arts. Now, the show is set in 1958, and there are obviously hundreds of things that are different about pursuing a career in show business, or other creative pursuits, today. Social media. The internet. Society. Stupid people going viral and stealing my spotlight. And not just people. I mean, a rat dragging a piece of pizza down the street can go viral but I can’t get 100 claps on Medium? Anyway….

This show revealed so many epiphanies about pursuing a creative career that are still true today. Here are 4 funny (okay, some are not so funny) epiphanies I learned about the creative life from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: 

Lesson 1: If at first you succeed, fail, fail again.
The main character, Midge, embarks on a career in comedy after her husband, a would-be comedian himself, leaves her for his secretary. She—Midge, not the secretary—gets drunk and goesto the  humble nightclub where he performed earlier to collect a pyrex dish she used to bribe the club’s manager for a good time slot. While there, she wanders up on stage and drunkenly explains her very bad evening to the audience, who finds her hilarious. Later, the nightclub’s scheduler, Suzie—one of my favorite supporting characters ever—offers to manage Midge’s comedy career. Midge has a few more good shows, then some not-so-good shows, after which she decides to quit. She later realizes she wants to keep performing.

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As a writer, I want to quit pretty much all the time. I’d probably be a lot happier if I did. It occurred to me a few months ago that if I’d known just how much work there is in writing—not just the writing, but the editing, the rewriting—I probably would not have started. I’d have a lot less stress and a lot more time to sit on my ass and watch Amazon Prime, that’s for sure. Hell, I might even have time to vacuum my room twice a year instead of once. But I probably wouldn’t, because I don’t care. Anyway….

But I don’t quit. I keep failing. I try to learn something from my failures. On the show, Midge goes to comedy clubs, watches the most successful comedians, takes diligent notes. Then she tries to apply what she learns to her own writing. She figures out what works for her, what doesn’t, how long to ride the laughs, how to plan her show instead of just rambling and hoping something funny comes out.

This can be applied to other creative pursuits. I read a lot, and have always read a lot, but now I really try to notice how my favorite authors do things. How do they explain back story so seamlessly you don’t even notice, instead of just making a big infodump on page one? How do they explain a fictional world without spending three pages on the scenery? How do they disseminate a large amount of info in snappy dialogue?

When I think I figure it out, I try to do these things myself. It doesn’t always work. I’m still learning, and more importantly, still failing.

Lesson 2: The more privilege you have, the better.

This one sucks, because privilege isn’t usually something you can gain through hard work, and you can’t buy it on Amazon, either. It would be nice if pursuing a creative career was equally easy—or hard—for everyone. But that’s not how the world works. It wasn’t in 1958, and it isn’t today.

In trying to improve her act, Midge finds an ad in an entertainment magazine and hires a guy to help her. She tells him a few things about her act, and he tells her he can write five minutes of material for $15. Now, that’s a pretty cheap rate today, but back in 1958 it would have been pretty expensive.

Can everyone afford to hire a script writer, or an editor, or a cover designer, or whoever they need to help hone their craft? Can we all afford to take acting classes or singing lessons or improv classes? No. Midge lives with her decently well-off parents after her husband leaves and her father-in-law kicks her out. She seems to have some cash left over from the marriage as well, and could probably sell some of their nicer items if need be. She gets a job at the department store so she can buy a television for her room. If she wants to spend fifteen dollars on a script writer (who turns out to be a scammer), she can do so without thinking too hard about it. She can also call her husband and get $200 for bail after being arrested for swearing and flashing her boobs during a show. That shows a tremendous amount of privilege not everyone has. (Money, of course, is only one of many kinds of privilege.)

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I found this meme on Writers Write’s Facebook page the other day, and it really summed up my writing process:

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Me, right now.

Technically, right now I have an idea for a new short story (that will also be part of the trilogy I want to write some day). But I’m trying to edit my stupid fucking book, and I don’t wanna.

Me, trying to have an idea while writing: Idea?

Brain: Crickets.

Me, trying to edit book: Idea?

Brain: Ooh look at all the shiny new ideas….

Me: But I still need to finish fixing this fucking book, then I have to finish fixing the other fucking book, then I have to finish WRITING the OTHER fucking book….

Brain: Here is another idea that has nothing to do with any of that.

Me: Brain, you’re fired.

Brain: You can’t fire me, neener-neener-neener.

Me: Please can I have something to help me with the task at hand?

Brain: No, but here is another unrelated idea.

Me: NO. FOCUS ON TASK AT HAND.

Brain: It has dystopian sprinkles.

Me: NO.

Brain: But there’s a plague and a nuclear holocaust and an insane president and—

Me: NO.

Brain: But it has that new story smell!

Me: Idea. Make current book better.

Brain: ——-

Me: Fuck you, brain.

V. R. Craft is the author of Stupid Humans, a thought-provoking science fiction book series that asks the question, “What if all the intelligent humans abandoned Earth—and we’re what’s left?” 

 

Lately I’ve been thinking about cliched plots and bad tropes in books, and this got me thinking about the plot/story ideas I don’t ever see, or don’t see nearly enough of. So I thought I’d compile a list of books I wish someone would write. Please note, if you don’t like cynicism, this is probably not the listsicle for you.

[image error]Books I wish someone would write.

#BrutallyHonestBooks I wish someone would write:

My family is crazy and no, I don’t love them anyway, and I won’t apologize for that. My mental health and well-being are more important than unconditional love for people who cause me nothing but stress and unhappiness.
At first I didn’t succeed, so I tried, tried again, and fifty years later, I died, still an epic failure. I am the 99 percent.
Under “Books I wish I had read when I was younger”: A kids’ book where the rich kid has a happy family and the poor kid an unhappy one, because LIFE IS NOT A FUCKING FAIRY TALE, and this configuration is more likely according to science. PLEASE don’t be the author who repeats this false dichotomy about poor people having “something better than money” designed to discourage the poor from stealing from the rich. Instead, write the kids’ book that tells the poor kid with the unhappy family that she’s not alone.
Two people meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after. For five minutes. Then they start fighting and make each other miserable. Then they have a kid and make a third person miserable. Then they either have the sense to get divorced, or they stay miserable until one of them has the sense to die. (Can you tell I don’t write romance novels?)

What #BrutallyHonestBooks would you like to read?

So Thursday the widget guy wanted me to write an article about a movie, which his SEO stats say a lot of people search for. Target market for the movie probably can’t afford the pricey, high-end widgets the client’s company sells. But the movie’s title contains the name of the widgets they sell. I ask him if he thinks people searching that movie want to buy the movie or a widget. He says the movie but if we could just get them to the site, that’s what he wants. Okie dokey. He pays by the hour.

[image error]20 Things I Already Know About You When You Say, “I Don’t Care About Money”

So I go read about the movie. Plot: Basically kid has a widget for a heart, there are rules, one of them is don’t fall in love, he falls in love, terrible things happen, he dies at the end.

Yeah, that puts people in the mood to buy a widget, right? Most depressing fucking story ever.

I shamelessly explain that our widgets are not as fragile as this kid’s heart-widget, and if you take care of them well they should last for years.

So then I go to write about other widget related movies. Maybe I can find something a little happier? Something where people could get excited about buying something distantly related?

The Widget, 1950. Plot: Cat hates widget. Cat tries to blow up widget. Cat succeeds in blowing up self. Cat dies.

I shamelessly consider following this description with a line like, “Check out our explosively great deals on WIDGETS!” I refrain.

The Two Widgets of Hell, 2011: Dystopian story where most of humanity has succumbed to a non-specified plague (HURRAY!). A few thousand people are left. Two decide the best use of their time is to fight each other to the death. Okay, looking around me at the current state of humanity, I do totally buy that happening. “Widgets” appear to be metaphorical.

I seriously considered following this section with the line, “Don’t worry, our widgets are nothing like hell!”

Moral of the story: Buy a widget and die!

Second moral of the story: Listen to your marketing consultant.

V. R. Craft is the author of Stupid Humans, a thought-provoking science fiction book series that asks the question, “What if all the intelligent humans abandoned Earth—and we’re what’s left?” 

 

This weekend I had the displeasure of reading a Forbes op-ed piece suggesting that Amazon should “replace local libraries to save taxpayers money.” I was hoping it was satire, but as I read through it, I realized the author, a Forbes contributor named Panos Mourdoukoutas, was actually serious. (Or else he’s the world’s most un-funny satirist.)

[image error]#Libraries will never be replaced by Amazon.

For now I’ll assume he’s serious. In the article, he explains that libraries are no longer necessary since Amazon has its own online library, plus retail stores where people can buy books. He also says that people don’t need libraries for a place to hang out, because we have Starbuck’s for that now.

After I finished reading this steaming pile of shit, er, opinion piece, I had some suggestions of my own:

Forbes should replace paid contributors like Mourdoukatas with unpaid interns to save money. After all, a college student is more likely to know how to do research before writing an opinion piece. And someone who did research would know that the closest thing Amazon has to its “own online library that has made it easy for the masses to access both physical and digital copies of books” is an offering of 800,000 titles people can check out on Kindle only. And that’s only for Amazon Prime members, so people who can’t afford to pay the ninety bucks a year will be SOL. Hey, too bad they can no longer turn to a library for assistance.
Now that we’ve saved Forbes a bundle paying for uninformed, unsupported opinions on important public resources like #libraries, let’s get back to the taxpayers. I think we can save a bundle by getting rid of our police departments. If someone is the victim of or witnesses a crime, instead of calling 911, they should just go on Amazon and buy a copy of Soldier of Fortune magazine. Then they find an ad for a hitperson and hire them to handle the problem. Taxpayers will save a bundle, and the economy will be booming with new jobs in the “private security” business.
While we’re at it, let’s get rid of our military. If another country attacks us, our defense secretary can buy a few hardback copies of War and Peace and throw them at the intruders. Hey, that’s a long fucking book, the hardbacks are heavy.
We can get rid of the fire department, too. If your house catches on fire, just go to Walmart and buy a sprinkler for your lawn, that’ll put it out. Meanwhile, you can take comfort in knowing the store’s stock is going up!

Those last three were #sarcasm, a language I speak fluently. The first suggestion, though, is serious. Mourdoukatas, like everyone else, is entitled to his opinion. However, as anyone who’s ever visited a library knows, it’s always best to do a little research to support your opinions, instead of just talking directly out of your ass. Should Amazon replace libraries? Of course not, #LibrariesSave people from publishing uninformed op-ed pieces on the internet by helping with research. They also provide books and internet service for people who can’t afford to buy those things, community spaces for classes and group meetings, and forums for local authors to meet with readers. #AskALibrarian if  you need to find reliable source material on topics like economics or “services actually offered by Amazon.”

Just don’t ask a librarian for a copy of Mourdoukatas’ book on the golden principles of leadership. I’m guessing they won’t be buying a copy. If you want to read that, you’ll just have to get it on Amazon where, by the way, you can find many helpful reviews of said book.

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V. R. Craft is the author of Stupid Humans, a thought-provoking science fiction novel that asks the question, “What if all the intelligent people abandoned Earth—and we’re what’s left? 

 

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I buy crap and resell it. I used to have a niche, but I can no longer make money in that niche, so now I buy and sell whatever I think I can resell. (Hint: It’s getting harder and harder to make money selling ANYTHING on eBay.)

How to Make Money on eBay

Making money online is not as easy as you may have heard. I go to Goodwill a lot. Occasionally I find something I can flip, but often I don’t.  I’ve seen videos of people getting huge hauls from their local Goodwill, and all I can say is they must be in some swanky neighborhood where there are tons of rich people donating designers duds they’ve worn once.

My Goodwill is full of mart brands of clothes people wore one million times then donated. The clothes are completely worthless. Mostly I browse the electronics section. Sometimes I find something there I can flip. Mostly I don’t. If you think making money on eBay is easy, think again.

[image error]Making money on eBay: Not as simple as it looks on YouTube.

Today I went to a local discount store that does sort of what I do—resells rejects from other stores. I recognize clearance labels from many local stores. (Also, they still have about a hundred boxes of crayons from the store I used to work at, which closed its doors in 2014. Guess they couldn’t unload them any better than we could.)

1. Look for Stuff That Isn’t Made Anymore

Saturday is bin day, and I usually spend a couple hours foraging through the bins. A few weeks ago I found a remote control for $5. I took it home, listed it, and in less than an hour it had sold for $30. Even after eBay’s insane fees and four dollars for shipping, I still made a very nice profit.

I also went on dollar day (Wednesday) and got a bunch of AC adapters for various laptops/devices. Someone, somewhere needs a new one of that damn thing, right?

Today I was lucky enough to be there when they brought out a couple new bins.

2. You Have to Be Fast

When they pull the cover off the bin, grab the first big thing you see. Don’t waste two seconds looking at it to see what the hell it is. Just start grabbing. You can always put back what you don’t want. You can’t grab something someone else already grabbed. Well, you can, but I don’t recommend it. You try snatching something out of my hands, I will see your crazy and raise you to batshit in a heartbeat.

3. When You Get a Chance, Look Your Items Up On Ebay

Before buying, look up every item on eBay. Go to Filter>Completed Listings so you can see what they actually sold for. The fact that someone has one listed for $500 means nothing. I can list a wad of my belly button lint for $500, doesn’t mean anyone is going to pay $500 for it. Completed listings will show you exactly what the market will bear for that item. It also shows the number of unsold listings (noted in red). If you see ten red and one green, hit the back button, even if the one green one was a profitable price. The item obviously isn’t that popular and it’s probably a fluke.

The same should be done when buying at yard sales. If you see the yard/estate sale is being managed by an auction company, I suggest bailing right then. Auction companies tend to price things at what you’d get for them on eBay—before the fees and free shipping. There’s no way to turn a profit on that stuff. You want to buy from people who have no idea what stuff is worth and don’t feel like looking online to find out.

[image error]Tips for Internet Resellers
4. Be Very Careful About Telling Store Employees You Are Buying to Resell

Although I have had a few managers who would call me about deals and helped me out, I don’t recommend broadcasting what you’re doing. Some stores seem to think they have the right to tell you what you can do with your items after you have purchased them and they are legally yours. Dillard’s is especially bad about this. I once got into it with a store employee who stormed up to me at a clearance sale and demanded to know why I was buying so many items. I told her it was none of her business. I was literally standing in the middle of bins and bins of this type of widget, and only buying specific ones, and there was no crowd of other people grabbing for stuff. The store had been open for business since eight or nine in the morning, and I had gotten there about five in the evening. Other people had had the entire day to shop the sale. This idiot clerk proceeded to read me the riot act about how resellers were taking items away from other customers who couldn’t buy them. (Again, empty fucking store, everyone else had their chance.) She wanted to limit me to six items.

I told the Retail Gestapo that if she didn’t like it, I’d be happy to take my money and leave. And I did.  I don’t make empty threats. I left all that merchandise behind. And you know what? I swung by a month later, not to buy anything but to look and see if it was all still there. And it was. No other customers came along and bought it.

Meanwhile, I went to the same store in the next city where they encouraged me to take as much of that crap off their hands as possible. They even carried it out to my car for me. That two grand in inventory I was going to spend at the first stores? Went to the second one. I did not shop at that store again for almost a year. I sincerely hope I contributed to that store not making its bottom line each quarter. It’s unfair to have a sale then tell people they can’t buy a lot of stuff. Do you want to unload your merchandise or not?

However, stores will let you buy all the items you want if you say you’re buying gifts for family and friends. Even if you’re buying two hundred gifts. So when store employees ask why I’m buying stuff, I always say it’s a gift. Always.

That being said, it does not hurt to get friendly with management and let them know what kind of stuff you’re looking to buy more of…for your friends and family. Because you’re such a generous person. Sometimes they will call and tell you when they see something you’d like to buy as a gift.

 

So a few weeks ago I had lunch with my Trump-loving parents who, naturally, decided to blather on about how the Chump is “making America great again.”

The conversation started with mom trying to tell me I needed a 401K. She and my dad had this brilliant idea to start me one for my birthday instead of giving me money I can use now, not when my life is over and I’m almost dead. Great idea. It’s not like I need money today or anything.

I can’t get excited over money I can’t have for at least three decades (realistically, more like thirteen at the rate I’m going and social security is being depleted). Anyway, Mom was going on about what stocks to invest in and said something about a company circling the drain. I told her I knew that, if you look at the past few years’ tax filings, you can see the company is losing money and only staying afloat because of the rather large tax break they get from the government. She asked how I knew that, and I told her publicly traded companies are required to make their tax filings public….unlike the POTUS.

“You just thank Donald Trump for saving you money on your taxes.”

Say what? The taxes I just wrote a check for $661 for, even though I only made less than $15,000 last year? Like how does that even make sense?

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“If I pay less in taxes this year, it’s because I made even less money in 2017 than 2016.” I sell shit on the internet. It doesn’t pay well. And I did make markedly less in 2017 than 2016.

“Well, you just won’t give him credit for anything.”

“Should I give him credit, or our real president, Putin?”

“He had nothing to do with the Russians,” my dad jumped in.

“Great. Then he should have no problem carrying out the sanctions Congress voted to enact on Russia.”

“The democrats and Russia made that story up to make Trump look bad.”

“Uh, okay, so to let everyone know he’s innocent, why doesn’t he, I don’t know, uphold the sanctions that Congress voted on?”

“Because he had nothing to do with it.”

“Uh, that makes no sense. If the Russians were out to get him, wouldn’t he want to punish them for that?”

“No, because we have deals and stuff with Russia,” Mom said. “He gets along with other countries so much better than that Obama did. Other countries like us now.”

“Except the ones he called shitholes?”

“Well, that was to get jobs like yours back from China.”

“Mother, I lost the only decent job I ever had because the company replaced me with a couple ten-dollar-an-hour interns. Here, not in China.”

“Well, factories can’t build here,” my dad said. “But Donald’s going to fix that.”

He calls him Donald like they’re personal friends or something, like he and Donald play golf together or some shit like that.

“It’s cheaper to build factories in China because they don’t have fair labor laws,” I told him. “You want your neighbors working 80 hours a week with no overtime in a sweatshop down the road?”

“That’s not true, it’s because of our high corporate tax rates,” Dad said.

“Anyway, Trump didn’t do anything wrong,” my mom added. “The FBI is out to get him. They’re in a secret society with Hillary and Obama, James Comey, and that other guy who just got fired.”

“Okay, half those people are republicans. So this is a bipartisan conspiracy to ruin Donald Trump?”

“Yes, it is.”

And that is some keen insight into the mind of a Chump supporter.

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It gets worse. Last weekend I came home and found them watching some speech of his on Faux News. They were both drooling over how fantastic everything he said was.

Mom: “He really does deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Me: We can’t be related. Are you SURE you didn’t find me in a basket on your doorstep?

Mom: I know you voted for Crooked Hillary, but he’s really fixed things with North Korea. Hey, I thought his eyes were blue, why do they look brown?

Me: Because he’s full of shit, Mom.

Dad: It’s okay, we forgive you for voting for Crooked Hillary. 

And then, as the TV droned on, I realized why Chump’s supporters are so immune to logic. They have cognitive dissonance, which is where you really like or want to like something even though there are good reasons you shouldn’t, so you try to rationalize it to make yourself feel better. Like when your car is a piece of crap, so you say things like, “At least the radio works.”

Well, Chump’s supporters don’t even have to make the effort to do that, because Faux News does it for them. They don’t just deliver the news, they tell their viewers what opinions they should have about it. I hear a lot of people complain about the “liberal media.” Are there biases in terms of what gets coverage and how much coverage and how it’s slanted? Sure, everyone has biases and journalists are not immune. Nor are gatekeepers, the people who decide what makes it on the news.

But I can’t think of any news organization that makes more of an effort to tell people what to think about the news than Faux News. If Chump says or does something stupid—my bad, I meant when, not if, it’s definitely a when—they either don’t cover it, or they explain why it wasn’t his fault. Sometimes this takes some serious mental gymnastics, like, “The FBI is out to get him. They’re in a secret society with Hillary and Obama, James Comey, and that other guy who just got fired.” Yeah, like that.

There’s truly nothing you can say or do to get through to them. The more logical you are, the more they just change the subject or insist that everything is a lie, except whatever they want to believe. What can you do? Keep pointing it out to them anyway. Don’t make it any easier for them to deny reality. And don’t forget to vote in November!

W. T. Fallon is the author of Fail to the Chief, a political satire in which the presidential election is carried out via reality show, which is much less bizarre and far-fetched as our current reality. 

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Things I’ve learned from watching Criminal Minds on Netflix:



If you’re a serial killer, there’s about a 99.99999% chance it’s all your parents’ fault.


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When an FBI agent leaves the job for any reason, they’re usually replaced with someone similar looking of the same gender and hair color. Replacing a brunette with a blonde would make the world stop turning or something.



If you’re a serial killer, at some point you’ll probably be interrupted by a ringing cell phone right before you off someone. So annoying.



[image error]Things I’ve Learned from Binge-Watching Criminal Minds

All geniuses are experts in every single subject in the history of the world. Nothing gets by them. Whatever knowledge would be helpful in a particular situation, they just happen to have it. Forget superheroes, you need a genius following you around at all times.

Don’t talk to strangers in parking lots. Or anywhere. Ever. Just don’t.

Especially don’t help strange people put stuff in vans with sliding doors. Those are kidnappermobiles.

W. T. Fallon is the author of Fail to the Chief, a political satire in which the presidential election is carried out via reality show, which is much less bizarre and far-fetched as our current reality. 

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