November 30, 2010

DRONE CONTROL

A CEMENT WORM ON A CONCRETE HOOK

Just before receiving a Bachelor’s degree in journalism I went to my career advisor to ask for some advice on the game of job hunting. “You should try Journalismjobs.com,” she said after her smile leaked down past her chin.
     In the silence that ensued following her response I thought of buildings falling down. I thought of dark city streets littered with glowing pairs of paranoid eyes and the future proclamation of an Internet hoax that said Americans would spend fifteen years fending for themselves in a chaotic and broken down environment. I thought of clutching a loaf of bread, crawling on hands and knees past groups of rioters as they threw bricks through front window shop displays. Then I thought how all the destruction of the coming years will need one thing and one thing only to rebuild: Cement.
     Not journalism, not creative writing, philosophy, music theory or history, but Cement and its final counterpart, concrete. My future proclamation to make on the Internet right now is that Cement is and will be everything in the decades smoldering before us. So much so that it must be capitalized from here on out.
      Soon children will come from the womb with a nostril structure that easily deals with floating dust particles of unmixed Cement. They will learn in school, not the difference between ‘there,’ ‘their,’ and ‘they’re,’ but the difference between gypsum, slag and fire. They won’t spend time molding oblong hunks of clay into crappy pottery, but will learn to lay and cut perfect gravestones. We’ll need a lot of those in the future. When an ancient disease swindles its way back into the Third World, we’ll need Cement to cover the casualties. When a natural disaster guts a whole city, we’ll need Cement, piles and piles of it, to drop right on top like whooped cream on a sundae. And if that’s a little insensitive to you then, guess what, you need some Cement poured over your emotions because we definitely don’t need those in the future.
     Our world is about to crumble (is crumbling!) like that Mississippi River Bridge and only those with the proper knowhow will have a stake in its reconstruction. Throw out your diplomas, GEDs, Associate's and Bachelor’s degrees and if you’re thinking of graduate school, you better prepare your concrete-and-brimstone thesis fast because Cement waits for no one.

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