… although, I imagine that this would run longer than five minutes, and it’s not really comedy.
[These bits in brackets are the imagined bits, the parts imagined, for some reason. And so, a 164-centimeter tall, moderately-built Korean-type Asian walks onto an ill-lit, makeshift stage, and begins to talk into a corded microphone that makes her feel tethered to the stage like a helium balloon gaily bobbing up and down on textured ribbon …]
What’s up. As you can see at the top of this page, my name. If you’re an English speaker, it’s Sun Sailor (capitalized or lower-case or whatever), and if you read Hangul, it’s that bit in the middle. I’m told it’s Korean, but I don’t know how to read it. I go by this name on the internet because I like to pretend that my life is far more meaningful than the shitty hourly-wage job I must attend three days a week in order to survive this thing called life.
I don’t know how many of you are hourly wage-earners, but I’ve done a bit of hourly wage-earning myself, and at one of these lower points in my life, just kidding, that was mean. It’s mean to think of hourly labor as something lowly, especially when the majority, you heard me right, the majority of working people are hourly-wage earners. Remember this. Anyway, I’ve basically worked hourly my entire life because why would I subject myself to The 9-to-5 willingly? I wouldn’t. Yes, I have two four-year degrees. (This is absolutely true, from the best state school in my home state.) Leave me alone.
So one time, I was working overnight in one of the country’s largest grocery retailers when a conversation struck up between my fellow overnight stockers. I dunno about you, but I am not fond of coworkers, in general, hence my deep appreciation for the night shift. Anyway. One of these fools (a twenty-year-old white-ish [honestly not sure] male) starts talking about how the Apocalypse is coming, and two obviously, painfully, Conservative older (like over fifty) white males laughed out loud and said like, “It’s happening right now, kid.” And then they went on for a few minutes pretending to know things, especially about how much it’s going to suck, when I finally piped in and said my allotment of words for this particular shift, “It’s only going to suck if you’re poor.”
At this point, the more determined of the two older white males to prove that he’s “too smart for this job” responded by saying something to the effect of, “But that’s how you have a target on your back. They …” And then he suddenly stopped himself, and I chuckled to myself quietly under my mask.
I’ll admit it. I tried to entrap him, and he fell right into it by nearly admitting that the rich are “them/they,” that he is, indeed, a poor motherfucker, and I made him realize this, I hope.
But then I watched this video by Trevor Noah on his The Daily Show—a “Between The Scenes” as it were. And in this particular clip, Trevor begins the video by disclaiming that he doesn’t actually know anything about finance and finishes the video stating that capitalism—American-fucking Capitalism-As-Usual—is a scam. Trevor indulges us by bickering about how money works and doesn’t work and how the rich do and don’t pay taxes because they “tell the IRS” what they will and won’t do. Firstly, this is so irrevocably incorrect that I nearly hit “B” on my XBOX controller to stop this nonsense coming at me. But then, Trevor continues to divulge how “little” he knows about finance but explains Capitalism (especially American Capitalism-As-Usual) perfectly. But then, he calls it a scam because Trevor Noah Does Not UNDERSTAND Capitalism. It was a sad moment for me, to watch a quote-unquote “intelligent” comedian explain Capitalism-As-Usual so accurately and then completely whiff on what Capitalism actually does, is, means. Ugh. What a disappointment.
And then I was reminded of Donald Glover’s Atlanta wherein Season 2 (I think), one of the episodes reveals “Earn’s” return from “Darius’s” investment in some expensive dogs. “Earn” walks away with $4K and then loses $4K in a gift card scam. It’s unclear if he only doubled $2K of the $4K. I almost threw my XBOX controller at our TV.
And then that reminded me of some movie called The Florida Project?, that I watched a few years ago or something. It stars Willem Dafoe, which is the only reason why we were watching it, to be honest. Anyway, in one of the scenes of that movie, one of the main characters, I guess, I dunno, the female with the daughter who gets caught doing sex work in the presence of a child, etc. That character, that mom. So in one scene, the mom finally gets a little cash windfall, and what’s the first thing she does?, she spends it at some dollar-store-type store, and one of the items she buys is FAKE MONEY. This fucking lady finally gets some money when she’s at the end of her rope, and she fucking trades her REAL MONEY for FAKE MONEY. I couldn’t believe it. I sat there in total shock that that’s something that someone would do! Is this a real-life thing that could happen? I was beside myself, and I think of that scene every fucking time I feel even the smallest inclination to spend frivolously.
And then, I remembered a Ronny Chieng clip about how Chinese people love money so much that during the New Year they don’t say, “Happy New Year” or any translation like that, they say, “Hope you get rich.” I dunno how to say it in Chinese, or whatever, cause I’m Korean.
[The 164-centimeter tall, moderately-built Korean-type Asian suddenly looks confused. Looks around the stage, puts the mic on its stand, and exits stage left.]