Insurance

Let me ask you this...have you thought about what your family would do if you weren't around? Ah...yes/no.

If there is an occupation that finishes below used car salesman on the socio-cultural barometer it might be insurance salesman. Specifically, Life Insurance. However, insurance companies happen to have the financial clout to name the tune the rest of us will have to dance to. They pretty much own everything.

So, it's a simple matter for them to hire think tank guys to put their heads together. Monitor the human weathervane for a while, see which way the wind is blowing, then two parts prediction, two parts precedent and five parts manipulation they create the new stew. A brand new way to force feed the public a benevolent, munificent image and high moral character. Ascribing all the highest human qualities to an institution/corporation or entire industry. Insurance.

I suppose insurance is a necessary evil, and it can in fact come in handy when you have to bury grandpa and you don't want to deplete your entire life's savings. The cost of a funeral these days...oy vey.

But these agents they hire to tout the product, they just can't wipe all the slime of greed off their hands so when they shake yours to say hello, it's hard to hold the pen to sign your name on the dotted line...as it keeps slipping out of your fingers.

And the scripted sales pitch is monotonous, predictable, manipulative and dishonest. The scenarios the script writers have devised are like the Bush strategy for invading Iraq. Shock and awe. Fear. Get your prey on the defensive...you can't fight the inevitability that we're all going to kick the bucket.

That's it for now. Much more on this subject later.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken

The wrath of the Grape. Uffda. After alkaseltzer, aspirin, cod liver oil, vitamin A, B and much C I'm finally feeling almost normal. I cannot do this much longer. Reverie? Fuck it.

I will say that every...well most every courtesy has been extended in every direction during the siege of the Norseman. This is not typical for an invasion force, so I sense there is an under lying ulterior motive? Spices? Gold? I don't know, I sense some thing. Maybe to lull us in to a false sense of security and then down comes Thor's hammer exploding asunder all that we hold near and dear.

Or not?

To be or not to be, that's still the question.

Much more power simply to be than not to be. What? Anything. Axioms from the family vault, "Stand for something or you fall for anything". "Our doubts are traitors and often times make us lose that which we might gain, by fearing to attempt". "To thine own self be true, and it shall follow, as the day does the night, that thou can not be false to any man."

I may be paraphrasing a bit, probably mostly Shakespeare:

That's all for now. Telephone is ringing and I think it's Chairman Mao.

Benevolent Invasion

It's like Karl Marx's dictatorship of the Proletariat. Supposedly a benevolent dictatorship. Isn't that an oxymoron? And, perhaps it starts out with good intentions until Stalin takes over and begins to get paranoid. Purge time.

I'm not sure that anyone with an ego large enough to want the job as head of (any) state can separate his own ambitions and desires from those that should be "for the good of the people". Most "leaders" are really not that. Unfortunately great leaders are usually found "in the heat of battle". Rarely is a worthy chairman, president, CEO born from good times when livin' is easy.

Human history is written in blood. That's all there is to it. I know that's a cliché but it's true. As a former History Major in college it seemed to me that any vital development in the socio-cultural progress of human beings occurred either leading up to, during, or reconstruction after a war. Perhaps that's what organizations like the Free Masons or Skull and Bones have always realized and when they design global events they emphasize the ebb and flow of the human need for a wartime fix? Knowing that...keeps the cats fat.

Maybe our planet needs it's alien version of Captain Kirk and his "benevolent" crew to hold Earth peacefully hostage while they lay out the blueprint plan that their once warlike and violent society followed to reach it's epoch of peace and harmony. Maybe, but there will always be Klingons and Romulans.

Streams from the mountaintop of the proverbial wise man, carrying clean, fresh, ice cold water to the parched throats below. I wish I knew that guy, but every mountain I climb, when I get to the top, there's nothing there? Not even trees. Just snow.

I don't know?

Stygian

Stygian words from the heart of my own darkness like a black hole in the infinite soul otherwise surrounded by brilliant white light. Scratches sculpted on polished onyx.

From nothingness; meaning.

Here come the Longboats, God help me now, save us from the Berserkers. They say they come to trade, but like the scorpion couldn't help stinging the frog the Norsemen can't help pillaging a little.

I will see about a daily entry to this blog. I borrowed some building material I found scattered along the road to hell, broken bits and pieces of good intentions and I used it to build these musings.

Phase one, "in which Doris gets her oats".