{"id":88116,"date":"2024-08-15T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-15T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=88116"},"modified":"2024-08-14T10:22:23","modified_gmt":"2024-08-14T15:22:23","slug":"joy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=88116","title":{"rendered":"Joy!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SCENE:\u00a0\u00a0 A small postwar “starter” home in New Hope, Minnesota.\u00a0 It is about 10PM.\u00a0 Josh McGILL, 35 year old estimator and sometimes technician for a family HVAC business, and Cassie McGILL, 33 and an office manager for a real estate firm, have finally gotten their kids to bed for the evening.\u00a0 They are working on the bills as the evening news plays on the TV in the background.<\/em><\/p>\n

JOSH:\u00a0 Well, if we just had $100 more, the budget would be balanced.<\/p>\n

CASSIE:\u00a0 But Junior is going to need new skates for hockey soon.<\/p>\n

JOSH:\u00a0 Ugh.\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t know that I’m going to be able to get a lot over overtime.<\/p>\n

CASSIE:\u00a0 And then there’s the elephant in the room – this house is just too small for three kids.\u00a0<\/p>\n

JOSH:\u00a0 The way mortgage rates are going, we can’t afford to move.<\/p>\n

CASSIE:\u00a0 And with food up 30%, gas and heating up…<\/p>\n

JOSH:\u00a0 …don’t forget taxes on everything <\/em>going up…<\/p>\n

CASSIE:\u00a0 …that too – I don’t know how we make that work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

JOSH:\u00a0 And with our commercial customers dropping like flies, we are going to wind up laying people off at this rate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CASSIE:\u00a0 (sighs heavily<\/em>). We’re still paying for that catalytic converter that got stolen.\u00a0 What are <\/em>we going to do?<\/p>\n

(The TV mysteriously gets louder, and Kamala HARRIS and Tim WALZ dart their eyes to CASSIE and JOSH, through the screen<\/em>)<\/p>\n

HARRIS:\u00a0 Feel joy!<\/p>\n

JOSH:\u00a0 DId you say something Cassie?<\/p>\n

CASSIE:\u00a0 It’s…the TV.\u00a0<\/p>\n

HARRIS:\u00a0<\/p>\n

WALZ:\u00a0 Do it for One Minnesota!<\/p>\n

CASSIE:\u00a0 Oh, Madame Vice President and Governor Walz.\u00a0 Hi.\u00a0 It’s just that things are kinda…stressful…<\/p>\n

(The sound of Beyonce’s song “Freedom” turns up, and HARRIS and WALZ start dancing)<\/em><\/p>\n

JOSH:\u00a0 It’s kinda like, prices have gone up way, way faster than our incomes, and business is slowing, and interest rates for my business are crazy, and whatever savings we have are getting bled out, and our kids school just isn’t doing the job, and…<\/p>\n

(The music stops abruptly.\u00a0 HARRIS and WALZ’s eletronic gazes fix upon the McGills<\/em>)<\/p>\n

WALZ:\u00a0 Perhaps you weren’t listening.<\/p>\n

HARRIS:\u00a0 Don’t be weird ,Josh and Cassie.\u00a0 Feel joy<\/em>!\u00a0 Because joy is what you should feel if you don’t want to be the weird person who isn’t feeling joy.<\/p>\n

JOSH:\u00a0 Er, that’s great, but it doesn’t…<\/p>\n

HARRIS:\u00a0 (Scowling). I said feel joy. <\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

WALZ:\u00a0 Now.\u00a0 For One Minnesota.<\/p>\n

HARRIS:\u00a0 And One America, not weird America, a joyful America, unburdened by the weight of what has been. \u00a0<\/p>\n

(And just as suddenly as they appeared, they are gone, as KARE 11 shows TikTok videos of the Saint Paul City Council dancing.)<\/em><\/p>\n

CASSIE:\u00a0 What was <\/em>that?<\/p>\n

JOSH:\u00a0 I have no idea.<\/p>\n

And SCENE.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCENE:\u00a0\u00a0 A small postwar “starter” home in New Hope, Minnesota.\u00a0 It is about 10PM.\u00a0 Josh McGILL, 35 year old estimator and sometimes technician for a family HVAC business, and Cassie McGILL, 33 and an office manager for a real estate firm, have finally gotten their kids to bed for the evening.\u00a0 They are working on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[425,20,426],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-88116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-24","category-democrats","category-orwell-overestimated-democrats","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88116"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88128,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88116\/revisions\/88128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}