Patriotic Pork
Freelancing during wartime.

October 29, 2001 8:45 a.m.

any Americans are looking around for good wartime investments. This is perhaps especially true of the nation's freelance writers. Many of us are feeling the pinch these days; some are indeed being licked by the hot tongue of panic. If things get much worse, we might have to go out and get real jobs. If, of course, we can find them. Not only is there a war on, but a recession as well.

For those unfamiliar with the way freelancers live, perhaps a short tutorial is in order. Then we can look at a promising investment that might also serve a patriotic function, even more so than buying a new car or flying to Disney World.

Freelancers work on what is known as the no-salary, no-commission plan. Not surprisingly, many of us start most months broke and end the month pretty much the same way. Since health insurance is so expensive we become adept at doing our own dentistry and minor surgical techniques. In a pinch can distill liquor from any number of sources, including boots and roofing tiles.

Insurance companies will not offer us disability policies. They apparently believe we are crazy to live as we do and are prone to any number of disabilities, including the much-fabled writer's block. Our view is that writer's block is a malady associated with big-money advances, which tend to elude most of us. I did once know a freelancer who came down with writer's block. It was cured after he was forced to eat tree bark in lieu of dinner.

There are perils, but from time to time the Almighty smiles upon us. We're sitting around minding our own business and the phone rings. On the other end is an editor with a big idea and an expense account to match. Or it's a CEO or politician needing a speech, or some other rich guy or gal needing their autobiography written.

In the good old days, some executives would pay a hack to write an expansive memo, just to see what their ideas looked like in print. What was a few thousand to them? Nothing. They'd pay a buck a word to touch up some blank verse they had stashed away in a safety deposit box, and some would even pay you to write letters to editors. I kid you not. Those were the days of serious Merlot Flows.

But the phones don't ring like they used to. CEO's aren't buying words. Instead, they're spending their money on gas masks, reinforced concrete bunkers, and machine pistols. They're not going out and giving many speeches. Indeed, they're canceling conventions, which is also wreaking havoc with innkeepers, bartenders, and others in the service sector.

Meanwhile, most publications want stories about one subject only: The War. As a result, every writer in the Western world is writing about the same thing, even as news holes shrink. For some publications, it's worse than that. American Media, which would pay good money for a Bigfoot Sighting (I have been to that well only once, during a very trying time) was apparently attacked for informing its vast readership that bin Laden's anti-U.S. fury is the result of having been ridiculed by an American woman because of his underdeveloped sex organs.

Unfortunately, that's not the case for all of us. Which brings up that promising investment. As it happens, an enterprising writer sent around an idea on the Internet suggesting that there will soon be big money in Hog Futures. This analyst foresees a massive grassroots push for converting pigs into weapons of war, especially if enough freelancers get behind the idea.

The idea does seem to have promise. As its supporters point out, the creed that animates our enemies holds that a run-in with a hog can do lasting harm. Indeed, even a chance meeting may bar a person from paradise. Flying a planeload of innocent people into a building full of innocent people can get you to Heaven, while munching a pork rind can get you a ticket to Hell.

This is a strange discipline, to our ears, but to each his own. The larger point is that pigs clearly constitute a much more devastating ordnance than smart bombs and, indeed, nuclear weaponry itself. Our foes might not flinch at the prospect of being blasted to bits, but will be thrown into an existential tailspin by the prospect of being splattered by Spam. Similarly, cropdusters loaded with pig plasma could be unleashed if bio attacks on our homeland continue. In this spirit I've developed a machine that aerosolizes pigs into a weapons-grade mist; anyone coming within 100 yards of my property cannot help but get a lung full of swine. That should keep the bad boys at bay, and perhaps bring in a few dollars down the road.

Meanwhile, we are sensibly advised to go about our lives as normally as possible, which among other things means it is time to start giving speeches again, writing that all-important "autobiography" (if yours has been written, don't forget the pets) and otherwise flooding the marketplace with words. Our enemies must not be allowed to silence us. Deep discounts are available.