All the best plots are stolen, and all the best snots are, too. I should know. I was the attendant of our town’s
stone nose. Night and day, I guarded the golden snot. It was honest work and lousy pay, easy work at a steady rate. I stood by the nose and protected the snot. From the left nostril, it hung, its golden green gleaming under warm sunny rays.

My job was simple. Only the lawful could essay a picking. The frauds were forbidden, you know, those without
papers—usurpers, outsiders, weaklings, and thieves. But the lawful had documents in order, and so by the thousands, they waited in line, and one by one, I allowed them a plucking. Easy, no? [Read more →]

Tags: all work, creative writing by Alex Kudera
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From Change we can believe in to It was like that when I got here. It’s not so great a leap, really. Who thought the ocean’s level was rising disastrously in June of 2008? Who believed that Obama’s seeing off the Hillary juggernaut would stop it? No one and no one. We have simply gone from optimistic nonsense to a fatalistic nonsense. Now, instead of a Bright New Tomorrow we are offered a Bleak Repetitive Today.

If you’re willing to put in the work, the idea is that you should be able to raise a family and own a home; not go bankrupt because you got sick, because you’ve got some health insurance that helps you deal with those difficult times; that you can send your kids to college; that you can put some money away for retirement.

Tags: all work, health & medical, money, politics & government by Ken Watson
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I’ve been away, dear reader, for quite some time. I’ve been busy driving a child to and from preschool, making Target runs, finding my spiritual center on Oprah’s Lifeclass (the first lesson taught us about the false power of ego), watching The Bachelor and Bachelor Pad (it takes three hours to watch that show every Monday night — that keeps a girl busy!), and wondering how I can avoid cooking the Thanksgiving Day turkey. [Read more →]

Tags: all work, family & parenting by Nancy DeGregorio
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There was a very sadly missed opportunity not long ago. It was a brief flash of insight from Administration PR man Jay Carney. Don’t worry, it didn’t last and has not been repeated but somewhere deep in the mind of this poor confused fellow he discovered a simple fact and, intentionally or not, exposed it to a gaping press. “Well, the White House doesn’t create jobs. The government together — White House, Congress — creates policies that allow for greater job creation.” What possessed Mr. Carney to publicly rubbish the fundamental Creation Myth on which sits the whole contraption of Obamaism? There must have been a demonic home-invasion in his little skull, invisible to video or audio but perhaps if we slow it way down and turn it way up we will see the ghost of Milton Friedman dashing in his one eye, speaking his piece and then fleeing through the other. Either that or Jay stumbled on a bit of good sense accidentally, which happens, but then quickly throttled it in its infancy, which also happens. [Read more →]

Tags: all work, politics & government by Ken Watson
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10. Anthony Weiner’s image consultant

9. Parka salesman

8. Suicide bomber

7. Amish air conditioner repairman

6. Lindsay Lohan’s bail bondsman

5. Apprentice crackwhore

4. Public pool pee monitor

3. Chris Christie’s lotion boy

2. Shark bait

1. What, people still have jobs?
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: all work, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything by Bob Sullivan
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10. Instead of giving you a chair, he makes you squat

9. He insists that you think of him as “Your boss…with benefits”

8. Your healthcare plan is a box of bandaids

7. “Casual Friday” means he comes to work in his pajamas

6. You wish he were only “all hands”

5. Your “probationary period” is now in its sixteenth year

4. You have to submit your request to use the bathroom two days in advance

3. The closest thing you’ve had to a promotion is when they doubled your lunch break to ten minutes

2. He greets you every morning with the phrase, “Do you still work here?!”

1. He insists on paying you in Cheetos
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: all work, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything by Bob Sullivan
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“Work,” Noël Coward once said, “is so much more fun than fun.”

Thomas Aquinas would have agreed. “Agere sequitur esse,” he declared. Action follows from being. You are as you do.

I also agree, especially now that I have returned to work (last week, I started a part-time, presumably temporary gig at the Philadelphia Inquirer). [Read more →]

Tags: all work, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson by Frank Wilson
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I just learned that my great Aunt Molly, one of my grandfather’s remaining siblings, passed away yesterday.

It took some time to process this information after I received the phone call from my cousin. I would be lying if I said we were particularly close –- it has easily been a year-and-a-half since the last time I saw her, since her health began to decline and she went into an assisted living center.

But Aunt Molly used to be one of the regulars at the Adult’s table growing up, and a sense of importance and regality surrounded her and the fact that she somehow out-adulted my own parents. I am 27 now, but Aunt Molly always seemed to be the same age: old –- old enough to seem delicate, but never in jeopardy of dying. This though, comes with almost 2 years of decline since the last time I saw her -– between reality and the memories I kept carefully preserved from it. [Read more →]

Tags: all work, getting older by Sara W. Moreno
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This week has been a walk down memory lane for two interesting milestones in my life. Twenty years ago this week I wore English Leather cologne to a high school party and a girl thought I peed myself. That’s a whole other story that I’ve told a million times, but I’d rather talk about the ten year anniversary of foolishly taking a job at an Iranian man’s lock and door hardware company. It was a nightmare from the get-go.     [Read more →]

Tags: all work, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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My day gig is teaching, so I am off this week. All I really had to do yesterday was shovel snow. That is it. This was done by about eleven o’clock in the morning. Did I come in and compose a sonata? Did I practice an extra hour on my guitar? Did I work on the final two mixes on my current musical project? Did I get around to writing this article before 8:55 PM last night? Nope. [Read more →]

Tags: all work, artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo by Chris Matarazzo
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