Free to do what exactly?

We talk a lot about freedom in this country. We continually brag about how free we are to rest of the world. We feel an urgent need to defend our freedom and finance billions of dollars worth of military to do just that. Thousands upon thousands have died thinking that it was for freedom, our freedom, not theirs, as dead is pretty much as not free as you can be.

So let’s take a look at the American version of freedom…

1.    WORK -- You are expected to work at least 40 hours a week, but to get anywhere in any career you need to put in at least 50 to 60 hours a week, if not more. Those hours will NOT being doing something you love. Sure, there are a lucky few who do love their jobs, but even people who claim to adore their work would quit in a second if they won the lottery. Most people, given a million dollars, will stay home, watch Oprah, eat ice cream and masturbate a lot. Or maybe that’s just me.

2.    WEEKENDS -- When you’re not working, you have your weekends and evenings free, right? Sure, after you take out all the time doing stuff you didn’t have time for during the week: grocery shopping, clothes shopping, cleaning, cooking, medical needs (including dentists, opticians, etc.), paying bills, balancing the checkbook and the gawdaweful DMV. And god help you if you have kids. You’ll be lucky to have time for a piss.

3.   OWN YOUR OWN HOME -- But all that work gets you something, right? You’ll get to buy a house, own a piece of property to call yours, a delicious slice of American Dream Pie. It will be just like your own little country that no one can take away from you. Paint the walls pink; put ceramic gnomes in the front yard; throw wild parties. Why not? It’s the Country of You. Think again. Home owners associations will tell you exactly what you can have in your front and back and side yards, and tell you how often you have to cut your lawn. Inside, it’s best not to get creative because one day you’re going to sell the place and homes with lime-green plaid walls don’t sell well. And besides, even if you do have wonderful taste, do you really have the time to do home improvement? Have you been in that mammoth hell-hole known a Home Depot? You need a goddamn sherpa and a team of bloodhounds to find your way out of there.

4.    FRIENDS AND FAMILY -- And by the way, who gives a shit about your house anyway? You don’t have real friends. You have co-workers you live with 40 to 60 hours a week, who you’re sick of and would pay money to not see on your time off. And your family? You couldn’t stand them while you were growing up. You really want to impress them with the fireplace you installed yourself?

5.    FREE TIME -- But you do have a few free moments, right? For some small guilty pleasures that make life worth living? Moments that belong to you and you alone? Let’s see…You can read a little on the toilet. (I eat more fiber just so I can have more time to read. I’ve almost finished David Sedaris’ new book, thanks to increasing my oatmeal intake.) You can watch an hour or two of TV every night, but if it’s not HBO Sunday night, what’s really worth watching? Back-stabbing jackasses on a desert island? Super models eating roly-polies?

6.    SEX -- You can make love with the person you’re dating, or you can masturbate to porno while your spouse catches up on what money-grubbing bimbo the handsome bachelor picked to marry. And maybe, if you’re a little early to work, you can stop at Starbuck’s, read the newspaper, and stare at the asses of the girls standing in line for their lattes. That’s about it. All of life’s pleasures in our modern world, this pinnacle of civilization, this product of best the human mind has to offer – Two or three orgasms a week and two caramel Frapaccinos, with the occasional episode of Sopranos to look forward to. (And the next episode isn’t until 2006, those fucking bastards.)

7.      RETIREMENT -- So you lead the painfully typical American life of quiet desperation with a home full of crap, a soul-strangling job, and an uncaring spouse busy with his or her own comfy hell to live through. You do eventually get to retire right? You’ll finally be able to read all those great novels, travel the country, travel the world and take that three month cruise to islands where the girls don’t wear tops. Right? Well, don’t count on Social Security (raided to pay the national debt), your 401K (decimated by stock losses and a floundering economy) or the equity in your home (you can sell it but then you’ll have to buy another one, and with no job, you will have no shot at getting a loan).

Here’s what you’re free to do: Live, scratch out moments of pleasure where you can, and then die. I wish there was more to it, but that’s it as far as I can see. Thoreau bitched a lot about the shitty way life works, but he offered few solutions. We all can’t go live next to a pond and collect royalty checks on our cute little philosophical musings. And that fucking cabin probably didn’t even have broadband. Speaking of which, I think it’s porno time and one of those small moments of pleasure…