I Don't Get These Rich People

 Do you? Like, how can they be so rich that they couldn't spend their money in 1000 lifetimes, and yet begrudge their workers a decent living and seek in every way to replace them with machines?

I'm thinking today of the Bezos wedding that closed the whole city of Venice down for a long weekend and lured the most vapid and wasteful wealthy people to a private celebration mired in excess. This is the same Jeff Bezos who moves heaven and earth to keep his employees from organizing. The same Jeff Bezos who wouldn't let the newspaper he owns endorse Kamala Harris for president.

The same Jeff Bezos who joined Joe Biden for state dinners at the White House. Because, you see, it doesn't matter who is in power, they can all be bought.

My confusion is how their minds work, the rich. Why do they never have enough? Why does it bother them, if some unfortunate Americans get health care? Why don't they want to pay taxes? They wouldn't miss it!

I suppose from our earliest eras as humans on the savannah, we have had self-preservation at the forefront of our minds. This self-preservation instinct evolved into cooperation, which is a benefit to humankind. It also evolved into competition, into taking the other group's harvest when your own failed.

Is that what lurks in the minds of the Bezos and Thiel and Murdoch and Musk scions? Some vague anxiety about an invading horde carting off all their stuff? Because, ha ha! If the Apocalypse comes, their own security details will turn on them.

They are all subsidizing research into longevity too. Heck, if they are going to enjoy the fruits of their exploitation to the max they will have to live thousands and thousands of years. And good luck with that, fly boys! Inevitably your submarines will implode.

I'm not the most charitable person on the planet, by any means. But I pay my taxes, no matter how high they are. I hate the president, but I'm paying the Secret Service to protect him. I'm also paying for the health care of some 29-year-old, able-bodied man who is sitting in his parents' basement. Somehow that bothers me a hell of a lot less than it seems to bother Jeff Bezos.

Fewer and fewer people are standing up to defend the super-rich. I think it's finally dawning on average Americans that they aren't the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" that John Steinbeck described. Events like this vacuous wedding, set against a backdrop of unrelenting toil at Amazon, will hopefully move the needle another inch or two.

I don't get these rich people, but one thing I know. I would not trade places with them. Not for all the tea in China.

Pandemic Teaching Nightmares

 Today I took a half sick day. I went out to lunch and then to the swimming pool. I also called my doctor and got an appointment.

I left early because I was having a panic attack.

Since school began on September 7, five of my students have gone out on quarantine (after one tested positive for COVID). I can't get these teenagers to wear their masks properly unless I am looking straight at them.

School started on September 7, and on September 13 we started district-wide standardized testing. This is done through an expensive online platform that the district purchased a subscription to. The test took 3 full days and part of a fourth. I looked at the junior-level test. It was excruciatingly hard.

Today, September 21 (full moon), we had a practice for another standardized test, this one run by the state of New Jersey. Can you believe we spent 75 minutes practicing how to take a standardized test?

The real standardized test is scheduled for three days next week.

I had a panic attack because I always do when I have to administer a state standardized test. I'm so afraid I'm going to do something that ruins the students' scores that I'm much more likely to actually do it. The expensive testing platform programs are confusing to use.

So I asked my administration not to assign me the job of running the practice test, and they went ahead and assigned me anyway. There is literally no one in the school administration who worked on the last state test in the spring of 2019. Not one administrator who remembered that I have difficulties doing this.

Well, y'all will be proud of me, because I schooled the entire administration today. I melted down and was openly flustered and upset. When an administrator came in to help me create a new password (I just made a new one two days ago), I made the password HellonEarth1! and made sure the admin saw it.

The irony is that the whole practice was a fiasco school-wide, and my class got going first by some strange mystery.

When the practice test was winding to a close, one of the administrators came to apologize to me. But she wasn't among the ones I asked to assign me a benign testing duty. My guess is that she drew the short straw. But it only made me feel worse when someone apologized to me for something she didn't know about.

If I could comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, I would shut down all the Big School corporations that create and administer standardized tests. You can't believe how many there are. And how much money they make. And how bad they make kids feel about themselves. And how stressed they make the teachers who have to run the testing.

Pearson, Linkit, Kaplan, and all companies that "gather data": go suck a cactus. I'll bet your CEOs go hob-nobbing at Davos every year. I'll bet they would taste good if slow-cooked with some root vegetables.

Hardest school year since my second, so far. So glad I didn't spend my life in this profession.

A New "Gods Are Bored" Series: Anywhere But Amazon

 Did you see this?

"I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this," Bezos said during a post-flight press conference. "Seriously, for every Amazon customer out there and every Amazon employee, thank you from the bottom of my heart very much. It's very appreciated."

Yeah, Jeff. Fuck you, and your dick spaceship! "I just want to thank all the little people who got me on this nice trip to outer space. Everyone who works long hours, breaking their backs in my warehouses (and pissing in bottles), and all of you customers who get your socket wrenches and yoga pants from me, rather than shopping locally or even searching a little bit online."

For the love of red-eyed fruit flies! Is this demon spawn for real?

Got to assume so, I guess. So, what can I, Anne Johnson, do to thwart this King Louis XVI wannabe (short, of course, of following the same fate that met ol' Louie)?

Announcing a new "Gods Are Bored" series, ANYWHERE BUT AMAZON!

In this occasional series, I will choose a random item that could easily be purchased on Amazon, and I will direct you to another outlet. And please, I would like some reader participation here! If you are thinking of buying something on Amazon, let me help you find an alternate vendor!

Today's item to not buy on Amazon: a shower curtain.

Simplest thing in the world, right? I mean, you can pick up a vinyl shower curtain in a lot of supermarkets. But suppose you can't? And suppose you want a stylish one?

Annie's advice? Target.com

Target ships as fast as Amazon, costs the same, and sometimes they give you a deal for free shipping if you spend a certain amount. The last time I ordered an item from Target.com, I obtained six pairs of cotton cuff socks for the same price I would have paid to ship the item I originally bought. I needed socks and basically got them for free.

Now, if you really want to go the ANYWHERE BUT AMAZON route, you could search up a shower curtain on Etsy. I just looked, out of curiosity, and there are 55,470 shower curtains on Etsy! If you can't find one from a small vendor on there, you are the most discriminating shopper of all time -- and in that case you sure aren't using Amazon.

Readers, I am at the point where I wouldn't buy from Amazon if it was the only place selling air. Bezos is not only a spoiled-ass billionaire, he is clearly so tone deaf he couldn't carry a tune across the room.

What are you tempted to buy on Amazon? Ask Annie ... she'll help you find it somewhere else!

Links are directly to shower curtains.

Mackenzie Scott Should Read the Bible, or Be Eaten. I Don't Care Which.

 Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we don't comfort the afflicted ... we afflict the comfortable. Today's comfortable person is Mackenzie Scott, formerly Mrs. Jeff Bezos.

In case you haven't heard, this chewy and nutritious plutocrat has been giving billions of dollars to the charities of her choice.

I found out about this by seeing a Facebook page called "YOU Are Now RBG." This article was posted, followed by dozens of ordinary women, applauding dear Mackenzie's generosity.

When I dared to suggest that someone who has $60 billion giving away $4 billion is laughable, insulting, and grounds to be chopped up for soup, I got scolded. I was (in no specific order):

*anti-feminist

*hard-hearted

* cynical

* a danger to woke society

Several clearly intelligent women seemed to have a complete inability to grasp the fact that giving four dollars away when you have 60 dollars is nice, but giving $4 billion away when you have $60 billion is LAUGHABLE.

"But she has plans to give away half her fortune!" one Karen exclaimed.

Half of 60 dollars is a lot. Half of $60 billion is NOTHING.

This person could give away 99.9 percent of her wealth and still live large. She would still have millions!

Next question: How much did she pay last year in taxes to the government of her native land? The answer is not available, but my guess is, not much. Certainly nowhere near the percentage we common middle class scum pay. And why give money to the U.S. government when you can fund theater projects and colleges? Well, let's start with public fucking schools. And go from there. Did you know that America's senior citizens have to pay the entire cost of hearing aids? And there sits Mackenzie, on a fortune that would buy hearing aids for every damn senior citizen in America.

Final question: How did Mackenzie Scott acquire $60 billion (with a b) dollars? Well, for those of you who do your shopping in stores, there's a company called Amazon that has practically monopolized the purchase and delivery of every item you could ever want. Amazon has done that by creating inhumane conditions for their workforce and by strenuously blocking efforts at unionization of said workforce. It's basically the 21st century's answer to coal mines and shirtwaist factories.

So, to the dear feminists at "YOU are now RBG," I've got to say: This is not about a woman. It's about an owner who exploits workers. Who does Mackenzie Scott think she is? To me she seems like some emperor of old, flinging ducats into the crowds of starving subjects on Festival Day.

EXHIBIT A: FEED HER TO GRITTY

Speaking of Festival Day, this is Juneteenth! Now a federal holiday! I had 12 years of public schooling, then four years of college, then a lifetime of reading and watching the news, and I never heard of Juneteenth until last year. So please allow me to catch up and learn how to celebrate this holiday before I begin to comment on it.

This sermon will end with that rarest of recommendations from "The Gods Are Bored." Mackenzie Scott should read Jesus Christ's advice to the rich man, and then follow it. Same goes for anyone who has more money than they could spend in 100 lifetimes.