It was yesterday, at Newport Beach (that's in Orange County). Near the jetty. I saw trash on a rock, which is not uncommon, even here in one of America's richest cities. There I stood - a poor man in his 20's- looking at the trash.
Trash.
It's all over. Up in Upper Newport Bay, trash from city streets empties into the Bay. Apparently a society smart enough to create toilets and sewage systems to get waste out of our bodies is not smart enough to put screens or catches onto storm drains to prevent a small landfill from washing into the Bay.
But I digress. Trash. There it was, on the jetty rock, as I walked past with my mag lens (if you know me, you know what I was using it for). I did not pick up the trash that I saw. Why?
It's not my job. But whose job is it? Newport Beach pays 30 year old guys to drive up and down the beach all day with trucks doing nothing, but who is paid to clean the beach? Nobody. Same goes for the Bay, where park rangers lazily empty the trash cans with no care for the debris washed up below.
Last night when I came home, fatigued from the bike ride, sun, and Chinese food/donuts on Newport Blvd, I saw an online headline informing me that John Boehner can't be bothered to admit that Obama is not a Kenyan Muslim.
Capitalism has invented a catch-phrase for describing inherent human laziness, and elevating it to a religious creed. That catch-phrase? "It's not my job". It can be used on so many different levels. When I used to work for a white-collar crime type of business in Orange County last year, I had little respect for either the office, type of work we were doing, or people that I worked with. Constantly, I looked to shrink my responsibilities. The main way of doing that? By reducing the amount of things considered to be "my job".
There are countless people in countless situations, many of them Americans, who employ the catch-phrase "it's not my job", on a daily basis. It's hilarious. It's like saying, "I am nothing more than what I am paid to be." Why ask me to fulfill my potential? That's not my job! Why ask me to care! Not my job! Everything about me is defined by my job, because I am a lazy slave who doesn't want to see the world outside of my hamster wheel. Because that would require me to think for myself. And thinking for myself....well, that's not my job!
I guess when you put it that way, everyone on earth has only one job to do: survive until you die. I used to tell my friends that "to survive is cockroach; to thrive is human." By that definition, thriving is YOUR JOB. In an existential way. Capitalism might disagree, but I'm a human, and not a cockroach. And the contrast between humans and cockroaches existed LONG before divisions of labor, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, supply/demand curves, industrialization, or the IRS. If you want to be a lazy fat f*k, as Suzy would say on "Curb Your Enthusiam", then be one. But don't tell us that you can't improve because it's not your 'job'. It IS your job to not be a lazy, fat f*ck if you can help it.
John boehner. you are nothing more than a virus. HPV. Human pompous-illa virus. A genital wart on the crotch of humanity. How fitting that your name would be John Boner. And since you won't do your job as a representative of your constituents, or as an educated human, or as a patriotic american, or as a 'christian" (a fake one, that is)......then what job is left for John Boehner to do? John Boner won't pick up the trash that his buddies in D.C. drop into their speeches, op-eds, campaigns, conversations, interviews, or legislation. Because it's not his job. Except that it is. If it wasn't his 'job' and he didn't do it, it'd be punk enough. The only thing worse than a little punk copping out by saying "it's not my job" is when a little orange punk says it about something that IS his job.
One day, when all those tanning salon sessions have caught up with John Bo(eh)ner, and skin cancer sets in, he will reach the end of his life. And he will die. And then his job will be over. The only job he ever had. The job of merely staying alive, accomplishing nothing at all, and sucking up resources. Like a virus.
But, hey, who am I to analyze all of these things? Nobody is paying me.
It's not my job.