| ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE.COM |
| ***BIO*** Bradley Mason Hamlin is a writer and publisher, born in Los Angeles and currently living in "Capitol City" Sacramento, California with his beautiful wife Nicky and their many amazing children. His poetry and short stories have appeared in several small press magazines in print and on line and he is the creator of the metaphysical crime series: Monster Zipper, featuring the Intoxicated Detective, available at: www.mysteryisland.net |
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| © 2005 zygoteinmycoffee Ink. |
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| WORKING STIFF
(a working class death novel in progress) |
| by Bradley Mason Hamlin |
| Never could understand or relate to these mainstream men and women running businesses big, small, or medium, mostly white but doesn’t matter. All managers (that don’t think outside the square) are trained for alien asshole invasion, abusive to employees just for the hell of it—as the good old and new corporate America kills radio, television, and theater—all casualties of the new slavery.
Never could relate to the way society is set up, that ambiguous concept forcing us along, the way we have to work the jobs we hate for an unlivable wage or more money for more abuse and training to become abusive yourself as you morph into them, but look at the way the blank faces hate you. You have to squeeze the intelligence outside your brain. You’ve got to be a soldier dumb for the bullet to survive inside the cubicle, talk their talk, or join their thin line of linear thinking; football gambling pools, Tupperware parties, the normalcy of infidelity, complaining about the boss behind his or her back but kiss ass when authority walks on by. At the job it’s always some black guy or girl I end up befriending if I make a friend at all, not purposefully, but the displaced Africans understand this is not their land anymore than it is mine, even if they’ve never seen a rhino in the wild. An office ain’t Africa nor is a salesman, by any color, an artist. But we sell, babies, don’t we? Sure, some sell creatively, and not all dark-skinned relatives of the old land want to identify with the jungle, but we’re all in it anyway, the cement forest of concrete faces working and selling, working and selling nothing worth buying, screaming without spears, cringing without shields … Where is my lion roaring on the veldt? Where is my sacred wooden art? Where is my time undone watching the Watusi? Who will lead me to the elephant graveyard when I die of boredom? I steal time from the controllers whenever I can, typing things I am not supposed to: This document is illegal contraband in a foreign world. Sneaking hot shots of whiskey from flask, listening to Tony Bennett sing “Stranger In Paradise” during lunch break, and drinking pots of coffee to stay awake, drinking bottles of booze before bed to knock myself out. Shoot, baby, it ain’t so bad. Even if I am just a matchstick of the damned. I am still alive, but why then do I feel like a block of wood waiting for the furnace? “Sing you sinners …” Whatever you say, Tony … There is no time to be who you are if you work for the wrong man, woman, or monster. There is no time to return the product and start over if the brainwashing becomes complete: All sales are final. Working Stiff part 1: Dumb For The Bullet. Novel in progress. Bradley Mason Hamlin. 08.12.05. |
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| 49 |
| Oct 2005 |