Sunday, August 15, 2010

Paying Your Industrial Dues

This last week we've all been working together -- feverishly, in the case of those who really went all out -- to help people with the extreme heat, then the high flood waters.

We've got the means of production now, thanks to the Residential Industrial Movement (RIM), so there's no excuse not to do our best. Before, we could always wait on the kindness of strangers -- nameless, faceless corporate fat cats hiding behind a smokestack somewhere, doing their best to avoid the riffraff. I don't know about you, but I never liked that system, especially if you knew they'd just as soon kick you when you're down as look at you.

But now, how great it is! When the word goes out that people are dropping like flies from the extreme high heat, someone can do something about it. Air conditioners, fans, and sprinkler hoses. Or when we hear that the rising flood waters are scouting the area and are about to make an assault -- including many boldfaced incursions in broad daylight -- we can fight back. You can't spray it, swat it, or kill it. But you can fight against it if you have something to work with. Hip waders, boats, mold repellent, sump pumps, and scuba gear.

I don't mind saying, we're gettin' it done! We're beatin' back the heat! We're evaporatin' the flood waters, or channelin' it away, settin' it on a downstream trajectory to somewhere else. We're kickin' some hot booty, we're kickin' some liquid booty.

And it wasn't the feckless "major" industrial powers who did it. They're still hiding behind whatever smokestacks they've got left. I've personally heard of several air conditioner companies, the old majors, who've had to shutter their factories. And they're saying it's the same glad story for the fan companies, the sprinkler hose people, the sump pump companies, the ones who make hip waders, mold repellent, and scuba gear. Except, depending on where you live, like if it's near an ocean, the scuba people are still able to find a few customers for their shoddy wares.

Where's this leave them? Their employees are starting up their own residential factories, of course. But many of the company officials, who've spent most of their lives in the executive break room and couldn't actually manufacture their way out of a paper bag, have been seen applying for the easier jobs at our factories, reportedly preferring any work in pencil pushing we might have available.

So I'm proud of you all. It's becoming one big RIM world out there! We're able to get things done. Like with the air conditioners, we've got so many factories making so many things, it's great. We're able to keep the supply side so high there's a permanent glut of goods, thus keeping the price dirt cheap. And that means there's very little out of pocket expense on the part of the consumer, so, really, anything's possible!

We've been paying our dues, and now we see the fruits of it, a happy nation, a happy world, many happy people. For those who aren't paying your dues, don't blame us, if, say, you suddenly find yourself hiding behind a smokestack, then when you're finally smoked out, we just don't happen to have any pencil pushing jobs available and you're forced to fend for yourself, alone or perhaps on the run, isolated somewhere, maybe wearing a very cheap straitjacket on a desert island.

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