I live in constant fear that someday I will lose my
pit crew. Those are the people I hire to drag my ass out of bed every day, make my
meals, do my laundry, scrub my toilet, wipe my butt, etc. The state pays their
wages. And we all know what the legislature giveth the legislature can just as
easily taketh away, especially these days when they’re privatizing the everlovin' hell out
of everything.
If that ever happens, in order to meet payroll by
my own devices, I will probably have no choice but to do something that is
against all my moral and political principles. I’ll have to either 1) turn
tricks or 2) wear a t-shirt with a corporate product brand on the front.
To me, wearing a Budweiser shirt or McDonald’s boxer
shorts makes the following fashion statement: “I’m a chump.” I’m paying a humongous
corporation to advertise their product. Pretty good scam they’ve got going on
there. If I was the Super Bowl, I could charge them 1.5 skillion bucks to flash
their silly little brand for 30 seconds.
But if cripples are left to
throw ourselves at the mercy of the Fortune 500 to fund our butt wiping
escapades, these shrewd capitalists will seize the opportunity to traffic in the seedy business of human billboards. Cripples like me will be
assigned a corporate sugar daddy to pay for our pit crew and in exchange we
will have to wear a shirt emblazoned with one of their brands everywhere we go.
And we’ll have to hang around whatever strategic locations the corporations
send us to reach the target demographic. Like for instance, if you’re wearing a
Viagra shirt, you’ll have to hang around golf tournaments.
It might not
be so bad, especially if I end up with a brand that makes me look cool, like
Jack Daniels or Harley Davidson. It might even turn out to be my dream job. My
dream job has always been whatever the easiest job in the world is at the time. Right
now it seems like the easiest job in the world is sign holder. But human
billboard would surpass that as the easiest job in the world. You don’t even have to
exert the effort it takes to hold a sign. You are the sign. It’s the perfect
job for cripples. Even the comatose can do
it.
But it could also be a nightmare. I don’ think
cripples will have any say over which corporation adopts and brands us. So it
will be a real crap shoot and I could be sentenced to a life of wearing
an embarrassing brand that turns me into a laughingstock, like American Girl or
the New York Mets. And there’s no possibility of parole. Branded cripples will
be like branded cattle. There’s no turning back.
So maybe I should be proactive and issue what the
bureaucrats call an RFP (request for proposal). I’ll auction off the advertising
expanse of my chest and see if I can get a corporate bidding war going.
I shouldn’t allow myself to take part in such a
degrading practice as becoming a human billboard. I have to salvage at least
some of my pride. So I think I’ll just turn tricks.
