From Banana News www.bananaws.com

Self Esteem is all in the Head or the Right Cup of “Chico” Coffee

November 15, 2009

As unemployment in the United States reaches double digit levels for the first time in the stored memory of millions of computer disks and tapes, the French Minister of Labor, Leisure, and Life, Pascal Faizaire Lailare’, berated unemployed Americans for losing self esteem, for lacking a leisure-based identity, and for failing to translate their aggresive work resume’s, into the quietly structured form of a mist covered impressionist painting.  Government’s Ministers from countries across Europe and Latin America, where a full time job is often shared by four people and six farm animals, lingered to agree with the French minister who told a group of visiting U.S. wine and cheese importers:

“The employee American’ must jolt himself awake at 6 A.M., rush about searching for coffee and keys, curse through an hour of cursed traffic, to arrive at work just in time to start up a mundane, repetitious, finger numbing task, eight hours, every day, twenty two miles away from family, friends, and the carrot garden. Then, he, or she, must turn around, and sits-se-a-t-b-e-l-t-ed- among hundreds of jammed cars, while straining to find a short cut home to an oversized suburban house.  Why should such a person lose self esteem because he, or she, has ‘time unemployed’ to reflect on the meaning of a life and to weed the garden of its carrots. 

An idle American’ work season is the perfect time to search for missing family photo albums, discover what the children look like in daylight, and learn about the dog which the family had purchased two years earlier. Life, after all, is about living. Unfortunately, work, in America, is about sweat saving for the day when you can allow yourself to live a life and savor the flavor of a fresh rabbit nibbled carrot.”

Gilbert Hackerson John head of the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce, discovered the French Minister’s comment, in fine print, under a wine and cheese advertisement and quickly organized a petition to boycott French paintings of Indiana gardens and landscapes. Mr. Johns then placed a “rebuttal” beneath beer and burger ads in sixteen different business, sport, and car racing magazines:

“The French wine, cheese, and small print assault on American values is an insult to every unemployed American and their vegetables. Who are they; the small print people of the world, to tell any unemployed American, how to find his own self worth in the middle of the worst recession in computer disk memory? The French minister’s little print comment is why France, and all those other Argentina, cheese nibbling and fog painting countries, are where they are, and the United States of America is where it is.”

The French Minister of Labor, Leisure, and Life drew up an answer, over the course of a week, to what the European press called America’s “Hack Indiana John’s” assault on Europe’s right to life and living movement. He then raised a cheese and wine toast to “America’s addition of an exclamation point” to his original leisurely comment by telling reporters:

“The Indiana Johns’ remark shows why the United States is where it is and France is where it is and the other countries of Europe are where they are. And why Argentina is even somewhere else altogether.”

Reporters working for the international section of American newspapers quickly wrote columns asking readers if they knew where Argentina and France, actually were. They then hinted, that perhaps, Argentina had somehow moved to Europe, since most of the population of Argentina always acted as if their country was located between France and Italy Europe anyway.

A forty six year old man from Lansing Michigan claiming to be both an unemployed Whirlpool “suds mechanic” and an unemployed GM paint finishing specialist, wrote a letter to the Indianapolis Star newspaper saying that the French Minister’s statement, for the first time, had given him blurred and hazy feelings about being unemployed, and said that he was musing about coming to Indiana to look for a formless, misty, and neo-passive farm landscape, which he could paint, to express his newly acquired mixed feelings about having a surplus of free time and a shortage of expensive money .

Speaking to a dis-assembly of soccer fans, the Argentine Minister of Corn, Soybeans, and Arrogance blasted the Indiana John’s assault on Argentina’s values and economic performance, and challenged Indiana’s “best employed farmers” to try and match Argentine corn yields, without the aid of carbon fertilizers, USDA subsidies, and overly employed farm management. He then said that only a Norte’ Americano would fall into a barbecue pit of self pity, personal degradation, and humiliation if he found himself, out of work and living with free–“chico cafe”–time.  He also pointed that, unlike the United States, Argentina’s natural resources are so fertile that, “waiting” is viewed as a respectable and productive form of employment.

In a speech to Toledo’s Ohio’s “Retail Workers and Always Standing Association” Jeff Gorman, the Head of the Board of Ohio’s Chamber of Commerce said that he agreed with his Indiana counterpart. He then told a ”standing room only” crowd that the day that unemployed Americans did not fall into an “easy chair” of hopeless self pity, confidence loss, and empty identity, the country would be dooming itself to a lost and aimless future, similar to that of Europe and Argentina where:

“people spend a fifth of their waking life waiting for waiters at outdoor cafés and another fifth comparing sport scores so low that you’d think the players were afraid to touch a moving ball with a pair of working hands.”

The streets of Buenos Aires, Paris, Madrid, Athens, and Rome, exploded with anger over the “Gorman American Ohio “assault on soccer, life, and the world. Within an hour rioters, police, Government officials, and UN officials, were kicking soccer balls over the walls American embassy compounds worldwide, and through the glass storefronts of Macdonald and Starbucks outlets across the cities of Europe and Latin America. 

In Paris, thousands of protesters marched down the Champs de Elysee’s wearing soccer uniforms singing don’t cry for American workers, Argentina. In Buenos Aires thousands of unemployed Argentines, were, in fact, seen crying for their North American counterparts, to prove they had adopted enough North American values to qualify for Argentine Government subsidies to “wait”, in line, for travel and work visas to the United States.

Meanwhile a reader from Bellesville Indiana, who claimed he was an unemployed auto mechanic as well as being an unemployed “human search engine” from “the days before computers could find their own hard disk”, wrote to the Indianapolis Star editorial page and provided the longitude, latitude of six major cities in France, which had comparable unemployment rates to four Michigan and two Indiana cities. The reader then explained to “confused columnists” that France “is where it is”, due to the slow action of the North Atlantic tectonic plate.

He finished his letter telling readers that being unemployed from two jobs at once, had been so humiliating that, for the past six months, he had only posted blurred and smeared photo’s of himself on his face book page, so that no one would notice that he had been outside participating in un-employed activities during the average workday. He then noted, that not one French impressionistic painter had ever worked in a car factory or auto body shop and suggested that, perhaps, the impressionism movement was led by but a bunch of humiliated unemployed auto workers—who were afraid to let people know their identities or whereabouts when they were out enjoying and painting the landscape in the middle of a working day.

The next day the Indiana Star’s lead editorial said, that a reader’s “blurred self esteem” theory was plausible but doubted that the collapse of the auto industry in the Midwest would lead to an American Painting Renaissance in Indiana or Michigan. And the editorial warned that if there were a rapid increase in the production of impressionistic paintings in the United States it would blur the ability of economists to accurately measure U.S. output and GNP. However, the editorial page writers did acknowledge they would reconsider the matter, when and if, they lost their jobs or glasses.

Meanwhile the McDonald and Starbuck corporations jointly announced they would be sponsoring youth soccer leagues around the world and would sell French cheese and carrots at all franchise outlets. The two corporations also announced plans to create thousands of jobs across the Midwest by investing in factories that manufacture “kick and ball-proof” storefront glass.

The Indiana and Ohio Commerce Chambers announced a plan to build a Midwest Regional soccer league, whose growth would kick the region’s economy in the rear and get employment moving.  And the Ohio Governor, Ted Strickland invited Argentina’s soccer hero, Diego’s Maradona, to come to Toledo to give the Ohio Chamber Commerce Chief’s the season’s opening kick in the rear.

The Ohio Govenor also promised the Argentine soccer star an Ohio State “salary” if he would “stay in Ohio and kick up some corn yields until the league’s score total reached one hundred and one points.

–Employed or Unemployed, make a comment:

Tags: Economy

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 14th, 2009 at 8:43 am and is filed under Main Posts, Top Stories, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.