Tag: economy

Fiction: Angels We Have Heard While High

Posted on by bryon

Erik knocked lightly on Craig’s front door and walked in.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi. How was Christmas dinner with the family?”

“About like always. Lots of food. My sister’s kids running around like maniacs. Everyone asking me when I’m going to get married and have kids. When I’m going to get a better job, a better place to live, some get up and go.”

“Grim,” Craig said. “I just got off work. People sure can be bitchy on Christmas. Want a beer?”

“Sure.”

Craig provided each of them with a bottle of beer.

“And,” he said, “I’ve got something else that will put the mellow back into the holiday for both of us.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I got a nice little Christmas present in the mail yesterday from my brother.”

“Your brother the big-city cop? What is it?”

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OT: Labor Day

Posted on by bryon

The official unemployment number came out Friday: 9.1 percent. That’s 14 million Americans without work. Not counted are the underemployed who can’t make ends meet or the people labeled as discouraged workers, more than 200,000 unemployed people who have tried so hard and for so long to find a job that they’ve given up, at least for now. The Congressional Budget Office does not expect the unemployment rate to fall below 8 percent for two more years and says we won’t see 5 percent unemployment until 2017. Further, mass layoffs – when 50 or more workers lose their livelihoods at once – rose 3 percent in August.

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Fiction: Staff Lounge

Posted on by bryon

Owner and publisher Fred Koelpe didn’t see that he had a choice. One more issue of the Amidaville Banner before Christmas and then everyone got an unpaid two weeks off. There wasn’t enough money in the account to buy newsprint and keep the office open, so Koelpe did neither. He didn’t mind putting his small staff on the streets without a paycheck — never mind a Christmas bonus — but he did worry that all too few in the dying town would miss the weekly newspaper.

Koelpe was the first one out the door. He told his office and circulation manager, Sharon, to turn the thermostat down to 45 degrees before she left. Then he got away from the dirty looks and the general lack of understanding.

“Consider it a Christmas miracle I’m not just closing the place permanently,” he barked over his shoulder.

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Fiction: Presidential Vote

Posted on by bryon

“The question before the floor, during this special assembly, is whether to declare former President George W. Bush the worst president our great nation has ever suffered. Joe-Pete, you wanted to go first.”

Joe-Pete walked to the podium next to the leader’s throne.

“Thank you, Your Grand Imperial Exaltedness. As president, George W. Bush was fully complicit in these matters:

“1) lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq so as to start a war that has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis and the execution of Saddam Hussein;

“2) torturing Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq;

“3) holding suspected al-Qaida soldiers in Guantanamo Bay and torturing them and not permitting them access to legal representation and keeping them there for years without charging them with any crimes; and

“4) wrecking the national economy to the especial detriment of the Jewish money cabal and generally bringing the rest of the nation down to our level here in Scratchass County.

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Fiction: Closet Historian

Posted on by bryon

When a guy gets laid off, he gets to be pretty familiar with the bedroom ceiling. Anything you want to know about mine? Didn’t think so.

You also get to know all the sounds the house makes. Sounds you didn’t know about because you were at the job site all day. But three or four days into unemployment and I know every sound my house makes.

And just for the record, my bedroom closet doesn’t generally make a sound like a hundred AA batteries falling on the floor. But sometimes it does. Like when a time traveling historian uses it as a continuum portal. His words, not mine.

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