I used to work at a hotel outside of Yosemite. It’s a place that gave me a little preview of how I suspect a larger portion of the population is going to live in the future: the workers stayed in dorm housing, 4, 5, 6 crammed in together. The rent came out of our paycheck. If we complained about housing, it was pointed out there was nowhere else to live, and it was cheaper than most. Though this wasn’t exactly the case. I was a manager so I got to split manager housing: two to a 400 SQ ft studio. We each paid $500 a month. When I moved away, I got a two bedroom with a yard for that much (and now I live in a place that charges double that).

Still. It was a beautiful place, felt a bit like summer camp, and a lot of fun was had. And it can’t be denied–it was easier to save money living and working there than anywhere else. But that was in the beginning.

By the time I left, the place had foreign workers sleeping in tents outside. Mountain lions and bears were frequently on the property. And later, about two years after opening,  when they ran out of housing, rather than build more, they had the foreign workers sleep outside. And charge them rent.

I really want to pause here to emphasize: I really liked my bosses, there. My memories are mostly happy. Im sorry to say, I feel a guilt every time I mention this one little horrifying detail. Because by the time you’re entrenched in a place like that, you feel like family. And obviously they didn’t mean it like that–people go camping all the time in Yosemite! It was only temporary, until–

Well, it’s five years later, and now they have more tent housing. They never built more dorms. Why would they go to the trouble? Everyone thought the tents were fine.

And when I hear Beaver (that’s my new code name for the orange one. Watch Leave it to Beaver and tell me they aren’t the same dumb-as-rocks, functionally-illiterate, girl-hating losers. The man is Beaver Cleaver) talking about “owner responsibility” of their…well, slaves…I remember the hotel I worked at, and I remember all the times I heard the argument when I was a kid that “Some slave owners were nice to their slaves.”

And then I get a sick feeling about what is to come.

In the north coast of California, the houses are all ground level and made of thin wood. This was all worker housing, too, once upon a time. But for lumberjacks. My old digs were a historic site–a side by side duplex that was supposed to represent how worker housing could be glamorous. And in certain ways it was. It was certainly cute. But since it was an old Victorian, it was also dangerous, nothing worked, and cold damp was everywhere. With worker housing, it doesn’t matter how it functions. It only matters how it looks.

The low wage earners 5 to an apartment. Managers 2 to a one room studio. Foreign seasonal workers in tents with the mountain lions (“Hey! They’re glamping tents! Doesn’t that make it better?” 🤬). 

And lumber jacks in a nice enough tinder box to get properly laid.

And that was before the government was hunting down brown people to send to concentration camps.

Slavery can creep in. We can see that now. Now that it’s coming on fast.

But it’s funny how even the slave owner will start to believe in lower standards for themselves when they enforce them on other people…

For instance, Z’s  enormous drta centers are currently just living in tents.

These big, complex machines that power this entire disgusting enterprise, and which hold all of the contents of our own brains to be used to mindfuck us into oblivion so they can really and truly enslave us all–are just sitting in the Louisiana sun, under tents.

It gets very hot in tents.

And they provide no protection at all from mountain lions, or bears, or..apex predators that work with tools…maybe a raven. Yes, if a raven got itself a hammer, it could go right up to the center with the hammer in its beak and go smash smash smash.

Isn’t it funny how complex machinery that prides itself on thought–like a human or a robot–are still vulnerable to smash smash smash?

We put workers in tents when we don’t value them. I can’t believe that Z doesn’t value his robot baby more –it seems mighty important. But I guess he figures, even human beings live in tents. It’s probably fine.

Everything is fine until it’s not fine.

Tents are susceptible to fire, to teeth, to hammers to animals with a mission to destroy.

All that said, Mom and I have a tent ready to go should we have to move in a hurry. We are still working on a tow for the boat will be living in until we can build a house, and when you get tickets to “Process: A Digital Cabaret,” or when you load up on Bones, you help us create a safe space to live and work! We can do this!