Thursday, January 2, 2014

Selling out

I often think that I would like the opportunity to sell out, but I have yet to receive any offers. Maybe my expectations are all wrong. I keep expecting a group of polite but humorless, impeccably turned out business people to take me to a swanky lunch and make me a grand, Moment-With-Destiny kind of offer, a single place in time and space where I would encounter an ultimate reckoning. But in my heart of hearts I know that the officers of giant corporations, the representatives of the world's governments, and the agents of Satan have long since shrewdly industrialized this whole process. There are no epic, refuseable bargains. Chance is removed from the equation. There are in this life instead a maddening series of relentless, automated choices, swarming on us like mosquitoes. We may smash one, we may swat away seven, we may put on thick, inpenetrable layers, but there are so many, and they are so relentless and we must live. One gets in a bite on an exposed bit of neck, one's attention need slip only a fraction of a moment to find one of these pernicious beasts, the moral aptitude tests, sunk hungrily into the back of one's hand. In the end it cannot be stopped. There is no real reward. Blood is taken.

So perhaps I need to recast my whole scenario. What happens if I just let the mosquitoes at it? What happens if I offer my blood freely? I stand quietly. I am immune to madness for twenty seconds.

They bite, and they bite and they bite. I am covered in welts and I itch.

So I might as well kill as many of the little bastards as i can. No tolerance. Minute victories in the satisfaction of destruction of a scheme that dooms us. Kill as many as possible however few and futile that is. Fight. Slap. Swat. Dance. Eat garlic. And mosquitoes are famous for hating smoke too, aren't they?

What in this world can we burn?





Blog Study Group Discussion Questions.

1. What is this really about?

2. Are the mosquitoes analogous to really tiny, impeccably turned out business people, with teeny wings?

3. Would you describe this post as optimistic, or pessimistic?

4. Should we contact the authorities?

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