Stockholm Syndrome

My sponsor has noticed a growing trend amongst peer pressure victims and fear-biters world wide to join and clamber for "Green" causes so as to feel good about themselves and, additionally, promote their wares. Being aware, as they are, of my branding acumen and extensive history in psy-ops, they asked if a campaign couldn't be created that would immunize them against this sort of adverse propaganda and make the world a better place for their installations, which convert wholesale quantities of fresh water into sewage and spew an amount of particulates into the air sufficient to bring down a 747 should one attempt to fly through the semi-solid haze lingering above their many smokestacks scattered around the planet.

I suggested a campaign that positioned the Earth as a terrorist kidnapper holding mankind hostage and slowly killing us off one-by-one using the Stockholm Syndrome to explain why certain misguided individuals felt the need to browbeat the rest of us on the subject of ecology. They liked the idea very much and asked if I thought the message would carry. After a great deal of thought, I said that it would. All they need do is add a musical track that would appeal to fourteen year-olds in the background and their troubles will be over.

They wired the money straight into my account!

Unconditional love

Unconditional love. Now that's an expression found on greeting cards and trinkets in souvenir shops around the world. It sounds great and makes the purveyor sound noble, but has anyone actually read the terms and conditions of "Unconditional Love"? You see, each section of law has its own set of definitions to be used in the context of the section. It harkens to what the definition of "is" is.

As best I can make out, unconditional love is that which one gives to oneself. Temporary, conditional and limited use love is what is offered to others. One of the first clues to this being true should be when it is is discovered that she (or he) is still undergoing couples therapy with the "ex" though purporting to offer "Unconditional Love" to you. This may seem obvious to most, but you'd be surprised to learn who missed that particular signal. Or maybe not.

These thoughts are provoked by the sudden re-appearance of the désespérée in the hotel lobby. True, she has shaved her head and was all but unrecognizable, but it was she. I had a momentary pang of longing for her; it didn't last, needless to say. But it was comforting to be able to recall that every word she uttered could be believed utterly. How nice that was!

The Mountain would like to come up, Monsieur.

We seem to have returned to the natural order of things and the Mountain is once again coming to Mohammed. It was ever thus, but I confess I passed a moment where I was uncertain from whence my next Bentley Continental would be coming and this-that-and-the-other-thing seemed out of grasp. I'd heard that one should work hard, strive to do well, give full support to those we care about and live for your dreams. I followed these dictates to the letter, of course. What a total waste of time that was.

Hiding in the closet of my (junior) suite, I am being hounded by offers of all sorts as though the finer things in life are my due and that it was daylight madness to think that diligent, hard work in a good cause would gather them to me like so many cows around a feeding trough.

It might be said that I deserve these things because I am me. The sad part, though, is that some effort was actually involved in this return to normalcy. You see, it is hard work being me.