Don't Buy Starbucks! At any location, today and beyond, while workers are on ULP strike!
As of this morning, Starbucks workers across the country are officially ON STRIKE. And we're prepared for this to become the biggest and longest ULP strike in Starbucks history.
Say #NoContractNoCoffee with us: DON'T BUY STARBUCKS for the duration of our open-ended ULP strike! $SBUX
Don’t ever let the Trump Administration tell you they support the First Amendment. This is a shocking violation. The United States Government has no authority to tell people in this country what to say or not say.
It's 3 AM, finally finished my readings on ancient Macedonian naval devices. Couldn't tell you anything about them, though, so don't ask. The class whose essay I was writing doesn't start until 12. Pretty sure I can finish this if I wake up at 10. I just want to sleep.
This leg won't stop fucking bouncing. I've written 4 poems and half an essay. I've written 4 poems and half an essay in this sitting, Coltrane's quartet playing soft from my CD player a room over. I set it to loop so I've one less decision to make on this mad dash tonight.
I reply "Really?"
"No," she giggles, You've got to put up your posters. I can even donate some. If you want, I mean."
"I'd like that, if you really want."
-~- APRIL 2020 -~-
The house sets forever. Maybe I will, too. Be in the place I'm supposed to be and have an eternal ache to move.
Time to put off my assignments and have a gut dread for the ages. I head outside, wading through tall wild grass toward the winding creek. I need the sound of water slowly, violently eroding rock.
Domestic silence drives me crazy.
-~-
"I like how, um... minimal you've made your room," Charli says.
There is a 1.2 million-person armed militia with active ties to white supremacist groups, no legal obligation to protect people + a frequent blank check to brutalize, intimidate, and even kill ordinary members of the public and saying this shouldn't exist is considered insanely fringe and radical
Nothing like whistling on the job
All I've been focusing on is survival. Surely a prolonged period of this won't rewire my nervous system that I've worked on for years.
It's worrying how many people loudly claim to understand depression as some kind of champions of the downtrodden, just to label a person experiencing depression as "lazy"
"waves". "Last wave's got maybe three people left," he'd say. I ask how many's in the next. "I've heard maybe 15 at most. People understandably get paid for the 3-day training and dip."
jab. The nature of the calls changes as needed, meaning most new employees are like reaper messengers. Letting strangers know by phone their test results for the virus. Chris explained the turnover exploded over the past two weeks, with each cohort of new hires being referred to more as movements -
to even turn my computer on.
Chris leaves for work as he's on-call 24/7. Said he'll be by later, just has to install Windows on 230-odd devices. His call center is two towns over, in a similar scant sprawl down the highway. Weird, weird place. Type where a manager might fake you out with a feigned
student orientation two years ago, and I access every possible material digitally now. Sure as hell not paying for any of them. Piracy's grown in popularity, anyways.
I chose these classes because they piqued my interest, and now I can barely sit through a page. Per usual, I'm going to wait all day
Neil Diamond's "Cracklin' Rosie" enters my ears' periphery. TV was on all night.
First thing's on my mind's the readings I've put off all week. School's gone remote, reduced to simulation screens of an institution all the students are still paying full-price for. A grant gave me a laptop during
Birds tweet out of my phone's stock alarm with hard sun ascending through the square living room window. A stern buzz fills morning's void of sound. Summer's insects are here early. I wake up fast, Chris a bit slow. We ended up sleeping on opposite ends of a faux leather wraparound brown couch.
from our rural home, all the way to California. With clarity, I see myself from above. A scared child sobbing into his pillow. His mom trying to comfort with words I can hardly make out. A stellar report card lays bedside. I feel it, too - dad's been on the road, and will be for a while.
So here we are in my father's house, out in the sticks of the sticks. Dad's 60, trucking from the Carolinas up to our homestate Michigan. I don't know if he'll be home this month.
-~-
I dream of the time before. Often. Tonight's sleepfocus is the period of my childhood where dad's route took him
Even then, Chris and I have locked in our pandemic social circle. We weren't chancing a horrific illness. I'm a full-time student at a once-prestigious university and he's a system admin for a call center. Catching the virus would halt our lives more than this half lockdown already has.
could anticipate any form of a tomorrow. I might as well unpack my Playstation so we have something to do on this clear sky Saturday night. Should we make the hour-drive to Charlotte, there wouldn't be any nightlife to enjoy. All the clubs are on some precarious operating hiatus.
A couple misfires from his lighter and I offer mine, no doubt almost empty, also.
All my belongings are still boxed up from when the university told everyone to evacuate dorms two weeks ago. Made the 6-hour roundtrip to pack up, knowing intimately with each fresh minute nobody, not even the college,
I'm a deeply flawed individual, but I bring joy to the world.
-~-
"How much longer do you think we'll be in this shit," Chris asks half-heartedly for the third time this week. We're a month into the U.S. declaring a state of emergency over a viral outbreak. "I still dunno. We said a month, tops, and here we are." I pass him a loosie from my L&D menthol pack.
Not like knowing would've mattered, would've helped them prepare. Chris was 20, and I 21. A fledgling coder and a professor-to-be.
My backpocket buzzed with an email sent to my student account. The spring break I was enjoying became extended. Indefinitely.
Here's my semiautobiographical #fiction #shortstory about two friends during, after, and sometimes before a global #pandemic shapes their young adulthood:
Cool March air blows through Chris's unbound brown hair. I notice a broke branch blocking up the creekstream. The world ends today.
prime minister gf, lizard wizard associate
Here's my guy, Joaquin. I can't see him as much anymore, but I'm grateful for the pics I have 💛
I miss my #cat, and I'd really like to see yours, so please share down below or in DMs. Not trying to engagement farm. I sincerely wanna see #cats.
king gizzard and the lizard wizard 20