I took the last of Dexter as a warning of what will happen if unions really are gutted:  Already-overworked parents will never have time to cook. As someone Tweeted, thank Wisconsin it’s Friday — unions there “invented” the weekend with the 40-hour workweek. Americans are already giving up their lives for shrinking paychecks, but they could be working for the Pharaoh. Which would make it even less likely they will be able to indulge in what even the middle class can now do in India: hire help (my consort’s fixer in Bangalore had a cook before she even had kids). Mostly, though, the column made me very glad to be back among the gainfully unemployed rather than still spinning in the hamster wheel, which has to be speeding not just faster but nonstop. I’m so old I remember when a critic or wine writer could shriek when asked to produce one small extra feature in a week. Now they have to be reporting and blogging and writing and responding to comments and answering emails (slaving, in other words, like the freelancer who could never get hired on staff there). Now we know it’s not just the quality that suffers. It’s the home cookin’. If I were mean, I’d ask how this charade went on for two whole years as readers assumed all was magical. As always, the truth would have made a realer, richer story; it’s not as if this brought in the ads the magazine exists for. But I’ve been there. I’ve seen how the bratwurst gets made. . .