Shut Up and Eat Your Cucumber

There is a research study out there some place using multi million dollar equipment, mostly involving clip boards and thousands in federal grants to some research institute’s AMP  (Academic Money Pit) Department that has to do with envy. This was on a History Channel program recently on the seven deadly sins. It seems that capuchin monkeys can be used in experiments where two monkeys have to cooperate and share with each other. If they do, they both get a treat such as a piece of cucumber or GM stock. Alright, the monkeys always refuse the stock. They learn how to work together in order to obtain equal shares of the reward. Very socialist.

After a while the experimenter pulls a little switcheroo and gives one of the monkeys a much tastier treat. Say, a grape. The other monkey gets his usual piece of cucumber. The result is that the cucumber rewarded monkey gets envious of the other guy. ‘How come he gets a grape and all I get is this stinking cucumber?’ is apparently the reasoning in his hairy little envious brain. In some cases the insulted monkey throws his cucumber away in disgust, as if to say, ‘Get this f-ing cucumber out of here, lab coat boy!’ That, of course doesn't make sense since the monkey is getting nothing instead of at least something, even though it's inferior.

Well, besides the fact that it doesn't take a Degree in Duh to show us that most creatures don’t like being upstaged, it does suggest a response. To all of those monkeys in board rooms comparing their 130 foot yachts with the VP of Falatio’s 132 foot yacht, or those lower level office monkeys with their tape measures marking off their cubicle territory to the mili hectare, I have one thing to say. Shut up and eat your cucumber. Never mind what the monkey in the next cage is doing. Don’t look up from your computer screens and howl in rage at the ape in the corner office. Just shut up and eat your cucumber. Jeesh, already. (Now, if you want me I’ll be on my 133 foot yacht.)

And while on the subject of seven deadly sins… You know, they're not really sins, are they? They're just goofy things that people do but don't want anybody else to do. Nobody would get bent out of shape about the seven goofy things that people do, now would they? Hey, that sounds like a Neil Simon play. And each sin has a demon of its own. A kind of spokesperson or rock star of rancor. The demons are all hideous and green and look vaguely like Richard Nixon.

What hell needs is better PR, of course. The demons just need a makeover and sin needs spin. Propaganda for Purgatory. Well, maybe an extreme makeover. And maybe a new title, too. Instead of The Demon of Lust, how about The Minister of Lust? What's wrong with The Secretary of Envy? The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Anger? The Federal Chairman of Greed? The Vice President of Sloth? The Executive Grand Poobah of Pride? The Concierge of Covetousness? The Head Chef of Gluttony?

Well, a little makeup, a new suit, and a week at the Psychobabble Management Retreat for Executives Shedding Money (don't forget to try the heart shaped bath tubs!) and I bet some air head English major could clean up their acts in no time, um, I mean two weeks with options for refresher seminars semi annually, books, DVD's and be sure to like us on Facebook! (Now, Gluttony. Get away from the buffet and get back to that trust exercise with Anger! Did Sloth sleep in again? And I don’t want to know WHAT Lust is into this time!)

It's all about marketing, people. You know those motivational seminars they shuffle mid-level managers off too? The ones where some failed condo salesclone expounds upon the virtues of their consulting firm’s unique method of doubling, tripling, and quadrupling your office charisma? They all have titles like, ‘Pride Goeth Before a Fall, and How to Best Exploit It', and 'Feet of Clay Save the Day.' A forty five minute cranial wash cycle, followed by an exercise on the flip chart treadmill completes the indoctrination.

And the books! They are all so mathematical sounding they must be good. The Seven Habits of Highly Obnoxious Executives. Nine Words of Power and How to Abuse Them. Three ways to put the Torque Back in Torquemada. Seventeen Ways to Overcrowd Your Enumeration.

And what hell really needs is a theme song. 'It's a world of slaughter, a world of tears; it's a world of pretzels, a world of beers....' See? How easy is that?

The right press secretary can turn Satan into Santa.