We think not.
Today, for the first time since December of 2012, Amazing Stories will not be publishing any new posts…except for this informational message informing you that there will be no posts today.
(Is the work you do to avoid labor still considered to be labor? If so, writing this post has defeated our purpose….)
Anyway.
We wish you all a wonderful Labor Day, free from labor. (This is like one of those Stephen Wright bon mots, like “why do we drive on the parkway and park on the driveway?” Except it would be “why do we rest and party on labor day? and work on non-labor days? Shouldn’t it be called “Rest and Party Day?”)
We’ll return tomorrow on a non-Labor Day day (when everyone will be working…it’s very confusing) with the fruits of our contributor’s….ummm…labor.
In the meantime, you might want to ponder these quotes regarding labor:
“Industrial man—a sentient reciprocating engine having a fluctuating output, coupled to an iron wheel revolving with uniform velocity. And then we wonder why this should be the golden age of revolution and mental derangement.”
—Aldous Huxley, Time Must Have a Stop, 1944
“I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables—slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war . . . our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
—Fight Club, 1999
“Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.”
—Oscar Wilde
“But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in the old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.”
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
“We don’t have a lot of time on this earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.”
—Office Space, 1999
“Well you said as I came in that early rising is a vice. Did you mean that seriously?”
“Maybe. Gramp Johnson claimed it was. He used to tell a story about a man who was condemned to be shot at sunrise — but overslept and missed it. His sentence was commuted that day, and he lived another forty, fifty years. Said it proved his point.”
“Do you think that’s a true story?”
“As true as any of Scheherazade’s. I took it to mean Sleep whenever you can; you may have to stay awake a long time. Early rising may not be a vice, Ira, but it certainly is no virtue. The old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed. I can’t stand people who are smug about how early they get up.”
“I didn’t mean to sound smug, Grandfather. I get up early from long habit — the habit of work. But I don’t say it’s a virtue.”
“Which? Work? Or early rising? Neither is a virtue. But getting up early does not get more work done any more than you can make a piece of string longer by cutting off one end and tying it onto the other. You get less work done if you persist in getting up yawning and still tired. You aren’t sharp and make mistakes and have to do it over. That sort of busy-busy is wasteful. As well as unpleasant. And annoying to those who would sleep late if their neighbors weren’t so noisily active at some ungodly cow-milking hour. Ira, progress doesn’t come from early risers — progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”—Robert A. Heinlein The Tale Of The Man Who Was To Lazy To Fail in Time Enough For Love
