“Futures” by Jimmy Eat World, Monday, January 4, 2021

Let’s call this part two of yesterday’s post. I’d like to quote a few lines and dissect them. This is my view imposed on the song. "Why is it so hard to find the balance/ between the cold and real?" I started to think of this song as the futures contract market. I don’t really have a mind for economics, but as far as I can tell the futures contracts are bid on in hopes that the venture will make money and that the economy will be good. But it doesn't always work out, like the housing crisis in 2008 or the current pandemic. Future markets bid on the fact that the economy is going to be as good as it is as the time the venture starts. Throw in a few misguided or bad actors who have access to our pension and retirement funds (Enron?) and we get ourselves into a real problem. 

HOPE FOR BETTER, IN NOVEMBER. I get very depressed whenever I think about money. My generation is pretty screwed and all I can rely on is keeping a job and making the payments to pay off my student loans. I'm thankful for my job teaching English overseas, but it seems so unlikely that I will be able to teach middle or high school in America and have the nice things I have here. The American system is broken, and it's left my generation broke. This song is political. At the time of its release, The Bush administration was allowing big business to screw with our futures, cut our jobs, and give themselves a raise. Three years later the housing crisis happened. Change hands with Obama, and now there's Trump. Nothing changes. The middle class gets smaller and smaller. 

SAY HELLO TO GOOD TIMES. Jimmy Eat World is a pop-punk band with a political message. Peaking in 2001 with their album Bleed American ( which was omitted from the cover post-9/11) and followed up with Futures, Jim Atkins talk politics without being preachy--unlike me in the first few paragraphs. Many say that rock is dead. Generation Z is killing rock. That may be true, but the breeding for punk (and literature for that matter) is stronger than ever. Income disparity will keep punk rock alive.