By: Pete Johnson
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| Not Pete Johnson. |
This
economy is crazy, amirite? One day you are a busy and involved member of
society, commuting and being outside and talking to other human beings and
such, next thing you know you are growing whiskers, napping, and licking your
own butt all day every day. I know I am.
The
first thing I felt when I was laid off and subsequently realized I was eligible
for unemployment benefits was an immediate and immense sense of accomplishment.
There was no sadness, because I hated my job with a capital “Is today the day I
light someone on fire?” There was no shock, because I had moved past working
just hard enough not to get fired and moved on to being such a shitty worker
that I was effectively daring them to fire me, oh dear god just fire me.
Instead
of firing me, they laid me off. I don’t know the actual definition of getting
laid off, but for me getting laid off is getting fired only they give you a
good reference and then you are still eligible for unemployment. Technically I
was being a worthless piece of shit because they could never pay me enough to
like my job enough to not be a worthless piece of shit. Thankfully, “couldn’t
afford to pay him enough not to be a worthless piece of shit” is, I guess,
technically a government approved reason to lose your job and still get
unemployment. I could not believe I had somehow managed to pull this off.
There
was also no panic. I suppose that’s what unemployment was invented for. It
exists so when real working people lose their real jobs that they real care
about and really real depend on, they don’t die of what-the-fuck-
am-I-going-to-do-now-except-starve-to-death panic. This was a good move,
inventing this thing that helps people avoid this panic. It is really nice to
be able to go to a job interview for a job I actually want and not just the
first thing. It is even nicer to be at that interview and not be desperate with
every inch of my body that they will hire me, or at least give me some kind of
free snack before they reject me in order to justify the bus fare
expenditure.
So
yeah, good move unemployment inventor guy. You did me a real solid there.
Except now I am a cat.
I
stay at home all day. I have to stay indoors, because I don’t have my shots
(money) or the wherewithal (money) to be trusted to go out there. I walk around
like I own the place, with an odd sense of accomplishment that could not have
come from anywhere besides something I made up in my small mammal brain. When
my roommates come home I welcome them warmly until they stop paying attention
to me and I wander into another room to lick my own butt. Unless I am napping.
Those fuckers straight do not exist if I am napping.
Did
you ever look at a cat napping peacefully in a sunbeam and think “oh man, that
looks nice, I wish I was a cat?” Well guess what, it IS nice. Any employed
person will tell you “naps are the fucking best, good god do I miss naps.” Any
newly unemployed person will tell you “naps ARE the fucking best, good sweet
holy Moses did I miss my naps before I was laid off from that hellish nap-free
hell.”
So
it is really not that bad, being an unemployed indoor catman. There is a roof
over your head and food in your bowl. There are plenty of ways to keep yourself
occupied for free, such as reading books, or licking your own butt. Any
solitary activity done for free and with the sole purpose of entertaining
yourself to ward off cabin fever is essentially the same thing as licking your
own butt, especially looking at the internet.
The
only problem with being a cat is that every once in a while you will catch a
glimpse of yourself in a mirror and freak the fuck out. Like, full on,
“AAAAHHHHH SHIT I’M A CAAAT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT WHAT IS THAT FUCKING THING” cat
in a mirror type freak out. But really those aren’t so bad because everyone has
cat in a mirror, what-am-I-doing-with-my-life freak outs sometimes. Even employed people, maybe especially
employed people, have these freak outs. I know because I had them way more
often before I was a cat. Now when I have these freak outs I can just get
distracted by a piece of string or something until it is time to take another
nap.
Still,
I have to get out of here before I start actually shoving my asshole in my
human roommate’s faces and pooping on the floor. Like any indoor cat, I badly
want to escape from this house so that I might have the opportunity to fuck
something. Might even one day be grown enough to start a family, who knows? It
is a wide world of possibilities out there, and my mouth is starting to taste a
lot like my own butt.
Pete Johnson is the brother of Ben Johnson. His twitter consists of retweeting something Ben wrote about once a month.
