The Crime of Being Unemployed

Before I get into another unpleasant issue, I should say that I saw the most charming thing the other day, the girls at the school were out playing their xylophones as I walked by. I enjoyed their concert and I think their teacher is pretty cool. Is crime control an election issue? I think crime is a severe problem in Vancouver. People must wonder how I get ripped off and slandered so much. If they came to see the concentrated criminality of my area with their own eyes, they'd quickly know why. I don't want to pass judgement on it too much because I'm not sure what else can be done about the crime here, except perhaps to invest more money in jails, but I think the way to deal with an offender is to lock him up so he can cause no more trouble and the local media disagrees with me: they think offenders should be turned into superstars on the TV and radio with material stolen out of my online accounts. Am I an offender? What's my offense? Smoking ghangi? No, that's practically legalized now. What about being unemployed? Yes, that must be my offense. And what is the punishment for being unemployed when you write hit songs and popular punchlines and share them on the web? It must be to have all of your work stolen away from you and put into the hands of vicious frauds who use it to destroy your life. Is that the policy, Christy? Am I a criminal for being unemployed? I bet you'd like my brother Roger. He's your kind of people. I found a note on my bathroom mirror a few days ago after waiting several hours to use it for a bath. It said: I can go to rehab but your stupidity is in your genes. Is that what you think of the disabled, Christy? That's what your benefactor thinks of us. And you let him move right into my home to insult me with these words. Do you think he's a better citizen for trying to make money from crime rather than going to the government for a handout? Who pays for all the drugs and crime here anyway? Isn't it largely the Ontario taxpayer through federal transfer payments? And what happens when you have a large cash flow like that going into one province? Aren't there going to be a few people who want to get rich from it? How do you suppose the Ontario taxpayer would want that money spent? Wouldn't they want you to build more jails with it instead? Do you want to discourage out-of-province undesirables from coming here to 'find themselves' through my example? Let me help you with that right now. I was attracted by the natural beauty of Vancouver when I came here from Toronto in 1995 with the intention of building a decent future for myself. I have lived here for twenty-two years now and I've only been to Stanley Park once. I have never been to Whistler or Grouse Mountain. And I drove all the way to the suspension bridge with my girlfriend back in the 90's but we thought the admission fee was a little too steep. Other than that, I've spent almost the whole time in what I might best describe as a sewer. And I have never known such crushing depression in all my life as what I have experienced on the streets of this city. Hey, I write comedy, eh? Why can't I have a decent life with a good looking wife and a nice home and a good job like Rob Petrie? Why can't I get a job with my talent instead of having my unemployment used as 'moral' leverage to take away all my work and turn it into fraud? WHY DON'T YOU ASK THE FORMER 'HEAD WRITER' OF SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE IF SHE'S OUT OF PRISON NOW? I THINK HER NAME IS TINA FEY. This is a very serious question. It shows how out of control the crime is here. I think it's about time we did something to address it. Back to concert news, did I see a poster for a U2 show? I worked on the last U2 show and I must complain over how I was treated. I did not appreciate being tripped while I carried plywood. Nor did I like being singled out to spend half the concert by myself at the extreme far end of the stadium. If I got within arm's reach of Bono with a hunk of wood, I'd find it challenging to resist the compulsion to break it over his head. Why didn't he know I was the author of my work when the Crystalids had it? I thought rock stars like him knew everything. Hey, maybe he did know and he's a fucking asshole like the rest of them! And when did that Joshua Tree album come out? 1993? Who's been writing all the rock hits since then? Right. The guy makes me feel violent. Is that why he's coming here for another show? Oh, serves me right for being unemployed, right? I don't think having a job and saving your money is a sign that you are saved by God. The focus of this mindset is too worldly. I'll tell you why that work ethic took over, not because it is spiritual but for precisely the opposite reason, because it is practical. Without the work ethic, our focus was on the afterlife, which caused conditions here to deteriorate under the church. So I think the work ethic was introduced to make our focus more worldly and less spiritual, in order to have more progress in this world. It is a very practical solution that has raised our standard of living considerably over the last five centuries, but it is altogether practical and not the slightest bit spiritual. I think it is important to remember that Christ's message was a spiritual one which dismissed material considerations. When you get to the end of your time here, you will find your RRSP useless. 2:56pm: This extra note may be of interest to Melanie Mark from my constituency. The honest tenants in my building have received such negligent treatment from the Lookout Emergency Aid Society that my building's manager and the landlord are taking steps to terminate their contract with the charity. We are tired of people who live far away in comfortable homes having the power to make us miserable in our home by sending us their personal favourites from the Living Room Drop In Center. The Living Room has a very bad reputation now, with the police showing up there every second day, and we would like to draw our tenants from a better location. I have a feeling that this will improve my life by giving my landlord more control to evict problem tenants. There is no need to worry over the welfare of an evicted tenant from my building. He or she can quickly and easily find a cheap hotel room elsewhere where welfare is welcome. I'm grateful to the Lookout for taking me in five years ago but I wish they'd hire more people like one of the tenants in our building. He is street smart and bright and can gather a lot from seeing small details. I sometimes suspect that they prefer to hire workers with no experience or insight into the behaviour of street people, in order to punish us for being unemployed. If so, it would be the kind of insanity that resulted from having a corrupt government. But I doubt that it would help to reject the NDP now. Maybe that would only make things even worse. Besides, I won't be here for much longer and I might as well not make too many waves for the ones I'll be leaving behind here. So I'll be containing my statements to this blog for the rest of the year. I don't want them uglying up my comedy posts just because the damn media won't report all the crime and punishment of their stars for stealing my work.
Arguments Copyright Issues Comedy Sketches Cartoons Lyrics Poems
More Statements Scripts Songs
© 2017. Statements by David Skerkowski. All rights reserved.