Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Are you overpaid and under-worked? When you go home at night, do you say to yourself, "Gee, I could have done so much more today besides play video games! And this paycheck -- it's just so fat! Hmmm?

Me neither.

Today the new Republican governor of New Jersey posted his wish list for educational spending in the Garden State. It happens that at this moment in life I am earning a starting salary as a school teacher.

The governor wants to freeze my salary.

He wants me to work five years before achieving tenure, not three.

Once I get tenure (if I or anyone could), he wants to make it easier to dump me.

Does any of this sound familiar? "Work harder for less." It's the mantra of the age, our precious legacy from the vile Ronald Reagan.

Why can politicians make such demands? Because anyone who has a job is desperate to keep it. Who am I kidding? If my salary got frozen, could I quit? If it took me five years to get tenure, would I quit?

I. Can't. Quit.

Where does it end, this attempt to freeze, downsize, maximize individual performance? Are we drifting back into the days of Dickens? I think we are.

Lincoln freed the slaves, but Republicans have been trying to reverse that mandate for 30 years. May the bored gods show them no pity.

PS - Correction. The first Star Wars movie was released in 1977. We at "The Gods Are Bored" pride ourselves on encyclopedic perfection when it comes to fact.  FACT: The rich man is dancing, and the poor man's paying the band.