In addition to apocalyptic scenarios, I also enjoy teasing out the possibilities of action/reaction in society’s macro behaviors. Like Freakonomics taught us, what are the implications to what we’re experiencing and how we’re reacting? Here are a few I’ve heard of and some I’ve dreamed up myself. My favorite is Goldie’s “there’s gonna be a rash of December babies born this year due to the work-from-home mandate.”
Close the borders and…
- Migrant workers cannot come in to perform the agricultural work needed by 1/3 of the industry.
- They won’t be there to pick, pack, and purvey the produce we need directly, and the food industry needs to create our canned, bottled and frozen foods.
- Those same workers won’t be there to perform the planting that will result in crops in four to six months.
- Close the borders and we eventually starve.
Close the schools and after school programs the daycare facilities and…
- All the kids now need parents to stay home.
- Many of those parents are critical service workers: police, healthcare, emergency responders, infrastructure repair.
- And the kids won’t be staying home, or alone, or away from the elders who live with them. They’ll be out mixing it up with other neighborhood kids, perhaps more so that had they just stayed in school.
Shut down the hospitality industry and…
- Fifteen million low to medium wage people lose work if not their jobs.
- Another eight million in the airline industry lose work if not their jobs.
* Suppress spending across the entertainment, sports and restaurant industries and the velocity of money drops through the floor — ending up in a massive recession — one we’ve been expecting for three years.
* Drive the price of oil down below $30/barrel and the booming U.S. shale oil and fracking industry collapses throwing another million workers into the pit.
@ On the bright side, fewer cars on the road means fewer traffic accidents; less air pollution; quicker response to emergency calls (to save an elderly person with COVID symptoms).
* Force everyone to work from home and the homeless go WTF?
@ Fortunately, it’s already second nature to remain socially distant from the homeless.
@ Is there going to be a resurgence of home cooking where millennials learn to make more than Mac-a-cheese and Ramen?
* Too bad Grandma won’t be allowed in the kitchen with those asymptomatic carriers.
* Millions were forced from their homes to live at the whims of the rentier society during the last Great Recession.
@ Although thousands more will end up being force to foreclose during this calamity, at least we know that the rich are just as susceptible to this scourge — so there’s hope a proportionate number will die along with the rest of us.
* Is this the end of the Farmer’s market? Craft fairs? Concerts in the park?
No doubt the unintended and unexpected consequences from this pandemic will continue to play out. How many more can we come up with? I’m sure there are dozens just waiting to be exposed.
- More marijuana smoking/eating?
- More alcohol binging?
- More reviews on movie venues, book venues, products?
- More online psychologist sessions?
- More facetime calls with estranged family?
- More Amazon Prime memberships?
- More neighbor altercations?
- More house cleaning?
- More nookie?
- More?
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
The issue comes when you get all narrative an shit, Jim Bob and Shirley an ’em all thinkin’, processin’ gets all kindsa fucked up an shit. Not to be confused with floating POV.
Lately I’ve been reading things with overblown narrative and descriptive and locale research bullshit and I’m about to puke. Like all you can eat for $1.99 and a buck’s worth is all you can stand. And one, from Lawrence Block who should know better, fuck me. Moby Dick, substitute stamp collecting for whaling instruction and call and response dialogue makes me look positively mute.
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I pushed my simplistic entry-novels onto smashwords, just to get them into the $1.99 crowd (but only charging $0.00). You know they suck, you helped hone the first 1000 words for the one, but who knows. They might make good movies.
The reason I mention this is that, Smashwords is drop-dead simple to publish through. Way easier than Draft2Digital. And if all you care about is getting readers, then it looks like a potential venue.
So, sew up Paro and get your serial story out into the public.
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Good idea. The “professional” epub upload is something that Scrivener does for free. I’ve seen some real junk pushed through Smash with hard page numbers, etc but that is all down to GIGO. I assume if you properly format a Word file you’re good to go, but how effing cumbersome. But their distro rocks. Sit back, wait for the mailbox money. He said, dryly. I have all kinds of novel length crap in the can that my “people” don’t want, so I’ll wrap Paro and 2 Bobby B and see.
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Head hopping is not illegal, Elmore Leonard made a living with it. It’s in how you do it.
“You dumb bitch,” Randy thinking it, saying now, “Are your sure? I saw his car –”
The good looking black girl coming back “Um ummm. Don’t care what you saw, he’s not here.”
“But –”
“You can’t stand here all day, Mister whoever,” she popped her gum. “He’s gone, didn’t say when he’d be back. Time you hit it, I got work.”
Randy hit the door, “Dumb Bitch” ringing in his head like church bells, the good looking black girl shaking her head, sitting on “‘Bout time you beat it, asshole,” saying to the priest behind her “It’s handled, Father. You go on to lunch.”
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Don’t confuse us. We be tryin’ to get shit right, and now you toss back in a spare wrench? Grind ‘dem gears all up and shit.
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Just went through Gdocs, great edits and comments, thank you very much. Yeah, some passive voice and head hopping…working on that. Appreciate your input!!
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Another whip smart posting. Your writing is beyond topnotch. I hope your writings grow to reach an every expanding audience. This is truly your path.
Mike
On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 5:15 PM Anonymole – apocryphal agitators wrote:
> Anonymole posted: “In addition to apocalyptic scenarios, I also enjoy > teasing out the possibilities of action/reaction in society’s macro > behaviors. Like Freakonomics taught us, what are the implications to what > we’re experiencing and how we’re reacting? Here are a few I’ve” >
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More hope, or is it less? The recession is lurking.
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The fact that humanity will pull through this, with positive change throughout means… More?
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I like your optimism.
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Not more babies bro…more divorces and spouses taking out the other spouse…equally distributed between men and women being “the other spouse.” Many men stuck at home already wondering…”So…remind me again why I got married to begin in?” Ever been in jail or spoke to anyone who has been in Jail? Insanity: the unexpected and unintended consequences of being locked down. But thanks for thinking this through…as always, I’m taking notes.
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