Have I mentioned lately how much I hate you people? T’was a time when I wasn’t cynical; I was a happy-go-lucky Joe who, when he saw a silver lining, didn’t immediately start searching for the inevitable cloud. Those days ended forever when I joined this board. Okay, it started when I met my wife, the most cynical person I know, but decades of marriage did not wear down completely my inner mooncalf. I remained The Fool in a tarot deck, blithely walking toward the precipice, a yappy little dog at my side. But no more, to wit:
Every year my company raises funds for a local children’s home, and every year someone from the home comes in to give us a pep talk. One year he was accompanied by high school kids to show what can happen to them if they don’t study and get useful degrees. Another year it was Orphans on Parade, cute little ragamuffins sure to warm the coldest heart, except that of a person who instantly saw through it as shameless manipulation to get us to give more money. This year he told a tale of a previous visit to us. As he told of how the home takes in orphans of all sorts of storms, from real orphans to children whose parents, for whatever reason (parent in jail, no money, etc), cannot take care of them one woman in the audience got increasingly emotional. Afterwards he took her aside and the home took in her three kids.
Warm fuzzies all around, except my first thought was, “If we don’t pay her enough that she can keep her kids, that doesn’t really reflect that well on the company, does it?” Fifteen years ago I still had a heart. I still had a soul. I still had a chance at Heaven. Now that is gone. This fool is doomed to step off the cliff because a voice will always be there, telling me that there is something fishy about every situation, asking me how somebody might make a dime off it or turn it to his advantage. No longer will there be unalloyed good in the world, at least as I see it. My world is coated with a layer of tarnish and for this I thank you bastards.
:eek: Where do you work that is such a paragon of nightmares that merely taking the kids there is used to scare them straight into getting an education?
Mr Cynic believes in HELL? It’s just another BS story created by The Man to keep you in your place. Buck up! Hell is right here on Earth – wallow in it!
The Church of God in Christ teaches that God looks on the way inward man, that lusting in your heart is the same as committing adultery, that it’s what inside that counts: in other words, that God punishes thought as harshly as deed.
Oh, and a couple of people I work with said today that I have a very infectious laugh. I didn’t tell them that most of the time I’m laughing with people I called at preposterously-wrong wrong numbers. Today they included a cemetery (“We also sell markers!”), a dog hospital, and UCLA’s Board of Regents, when I’m trying to call HUMAN clinics and hospitals. I got the cemetery instead of a nephrology clinic, so I was off by just a few months or years; the vet’s office name was something like Cedar Valley Veterinary Clinic instead of the desired Cedar Valley Vascular Clinic, so I was good up to the second letter in the third word (we get a lot of those); but the Board of Regents was out of the clear blue. Plus, the lead name actually was the UCLA Board of Regents, for some ungodly reason, but the number was for some old lady’s home.
At least I’m not calling about boner pills. Most of the old guys got moved over to that program. Not young women with sultry voices–that would be too logical. Old white guys so it’s more peer to peer.
As the gentleman posted, as well hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
One of the things I liked about Judaism is that the word for sin is an archery term meaning to miss the target. One is supposed to make things better afterwards.
