Wannaskan Almanac for Tuesday, April 21, 2026 The San Man Cometh

The Day We All Woke Up and Said, “Wait… We Pay Who How Much?”

Historians will someday mark it as a turning point in human civilization: the morning when the world collectively rubbed its eyes, stretched, checked its bank apps, and suddenly realized that the people we’d been paying the most money to—actors, athletes, and musicians—were not, in fact, the ones keeping society from collapsing into a feral, post‑apocalyptic wasteland. It was a shocking revelation, especially for those who had spent decades believing that a man who pretends to be a superhero on screen was somehow more essential than the person who grows the food that keeps us alive.

The shift began innocently enough. A famous quarterback signed a contract worth more than the GDP of a small island nation, and someone—no one knows who—muttered, “Huh… but he doesn’t actually feed anyone.” The comment spread like wildfire. Within hours, millions were asking themselves why a person who can throw a ball really far was earning more than the farmer who grows the wheat for their morning bagel. It was the first recorded instance of mass economic clarity.

Real Stars!

Construction workers were the next to be reevaluated. Society suddenly remembered that these were the people who built, well… everything. Homes, bridges, schools, hospitals, the stadiums where the overpaid athletes performed—turns out, none of those structures had been assembled by a pop star with a fog machine. Once this clicked, construction workers found themselves being thanked in grocery stores, applauded on sidewalks, and—most shockingly—paid salaries that didn’t require them to moonlight as amateur mechanics on weekends.

Then came the mothers. Oh, the mothers. Humanity finally acknowledged that raising tiny humans into functional adults might actually be the most valuable labor on the planet. Economists tried to calculate what mothers should have been paid all along, but their calculators burst into flames. The number was simply too high. In the new economy, mothers became the highest‑paid professionals in the world, and no one complained—not even the former celebrities, who were now busy learning how to pack school lunches without the grapes rolling everywhere.

Jed signs his first endorsement deal with John Deere

Meanwhile, actors, athletes, and musicians found themselves in unfamiliar territory: the middle class. They adjusted surprisingly well. Some even admitted that it was kind of nice not to have people photographing them while they bought toothpaste. A few athletes took up farming, discovering that throwing hay bales was just as satisfying as throwing footballs, only with fewer endorsement deals and more actual purpose.

Hollywood adapted too. Instead of paying one actor $40 million to whisper dramatically into a camera, studios began hiring farmers and construction workers as consultants to make movies more realistic. Audiences loved it. “Finally,” they said, “a film where someone builds a house correctly.” Musicians, for their part, started writing songs about crop rotation and the emotional journey of drywall installation. Surprisingly, they were hits.

By the end of the first year, society had settled into its new priorities. Food producers, builders, and caregivers were compensated like the indispensable heroes they always were. Celebrities still existed, but now they were more like decorative houseplants—pleasant to have around, but not something you’d stake your survival on. And the world, for the first time in a long time, felt… balanced.