Archive for March, 2014

We are All here for a Reason

Posted in Confessions of a Mad Philosopher, Dirty, Explicit Sexual Language, Mature Theme, Memoires of a Post-Neo Dharma Bum, Much To Good For Children, Much Too Good For Children, NSFW, Poetry, Possibly Dangerous to Everyone, Random Observations with tags , , , , , , , , , on March 30, 2014 by dreamlanddancing

Of course.

In the universal sense

this is always true,

but herein I refer to my

Cabin in the Woods,

a trailer park of Lost Souls

far enough off the beaten path

to render solitude,

anonymity,

or perhaps even forgiveness

to all who enter here.

***

Commercial fishermen

who drink a little too much

for their former spouse’s liking,

with restraining orders

and children they can no longer visit.

Here,

everyone is somebody else’s

ex-something-or-other.

Recycled hopes and dreams

and

households financed

by disability checks

and structured settlements,

where rainbow children

of every shade and hue

play in the yard

with pit-bull dogs

beside a car on blocks

that Mama’s boyfriend

is gonna fix someday

after he gets up

from his nap.

***

Disabled Viet Nam veterans

with hidden wounds that

will never heal,

tattoos and scars

or maybe a limp,

nightmares

that never end,

and that

thousand-yard stare

that betrays the pain

they never willingly show.

***

Widows and spinsters

who live for their flower gardens

and cats

to replace the children

who never call or visit,

the husband who died

or ran away,

or the gentleman caller

that never showed up.

***

Divorcee’s

whose husbands

fucked

their best friend,

their sister,

or even

their daughter

or who couldn’t

stand to be left alone

when their husbands

went to work too long

while the cable was off.

***

Rock stars who fell to earth.

Fallen Angels

with burnt wings.

Porn actresses

from the

Nineties

who knew Ron Jeremy

on more than a first-name basis,

and have the videos to prove it.

…and so much love to give…

(if you can pierce their armor)

their hearts

melt like butter in the sun

if you simply befriend them

without agenda

or guile,

because they’ve heard it all before,

and they’ve done it all before

in the name of fame and fortune,

but just for once,

if they could do it all over again

for Love,

they’d

do it all over you.

***

Enough Ink on skin

between them all

to write

War and Peace

in longhand.

There’s a story

for every tattoo

and all the time in the world

to tell each one of them,

with nothing better to do.

***

Their combined tears

could drown the

Lake of Fire,

and yet they still prefer to laugh,

and gladly share

their Nothingness,

their time,

their weed

or booze

or dope

or bodies

like philanthropic millionaires.

***

Misery doesn’t just

love company,

it thrives on it

and makes them stronger

than

most of the privileged

crybabies

I knew

in better times

and more prosperous days.

***

This place

where I have landed

is more like

a campground

for refugees

driven from their

homelands

by

“the slings and arrows

of outrageous fortune…”

who refuse to die

and can’t really seem to win,

but continue to try.

(That’s what the Lotto is for.)

***

The walls are so thin

on these foil-covered

cardboard boxes we call

home;

there can be no secrets

between us,

but no shortage

of excuses,

denials

or lies

told mostly for our own benefit

as we wander

on the tar-clad paths

between

these aluminum tents

like spaced-out

space-age Indians

with permanent

reservations

in temporary domiciles.

***

Home is where

the Art is.

Life is what

you make

of what you get.

And Love

is everywhere,

running like a river

of blood

in the streets

flowing

from all the broken hearts

that have ever lived

or ever will.

The Home for Wayward Souls and The Talking Monkeys: Transcendence

Posted in A Dirty Mind is A Terrible Thing To Waste, Crossing the Abyss, Dangerous and Unsavory ideas that are possibly harmful to the weak-mided and overly simplistic and religious, Dirty, Drug Experience, Enhanced and Fortified non-fiction, Explicit Sexual Language, Fornicating, Fun, Goddess, His Penis Her Vagina, Human Stew, Imp Of The Perverse, Interspecies Erotica, Liason, Liason Between Parties, Long Form, Love, Mature Theme, Metaphysical Action/Adventure, Much To Good For Children, Much Too Good For Children, Novel, Novel, NSFW, Polyamory, Possibly Dangerous to Everyone, Primate Romance/Adventure, Sacrilege, Sentience, Sex, Sexual Action/Adventure, The Ascent of Man, The Home For Wayward Souls, The Id, The Knowledge of Good and Evil, The Talking Monkeys, The Wisdom, Theater of the Mind with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 23, 2014 by dreamlanddancing

 

WARNING: ADULT CONTENT. NOT SAFE FOR WORKPLACE. LIKELY TO BE OFFENSIVE TO ALL BUT THE MOST BROAD-MINDED AND LIBERAL. THIS CHAPTER EXCEEDS ALL PREVIOUS CHAPTERS FOR CONTROVERSIAL IDEAS AND CONCEPTS AND OPENLY EMBRACES SEVERAL SUBJECTS THAT WILL UNDOUBTEDLY BE REGARDED AS SACRELIGIOUS AND PERVERSE, ESPECIALLY BY RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISTS. SO THERE…DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU….

Transcendence

“I realize that we have seen some very remarkable and sometimes bizarre occurrences in our encounters with this group. As earthbound Humans and one quite remarkable primate, these eight individuals, if not singularly unique, are at the very least quite extraordinary.”

“I feel as though these repeated sessions of group consciousness are having its own effect upon me as well. Not what I would describe as a ‘contact high,’ but rather an extremely powerful state of mind. One might be tempted to label it as mass hysteria, and as a participant/observer I cannot rule out the possibility, but in so doing, I would nonetheless state that there may be good reason for embracing credence in the power of such states of mind…”

Raul the Cuban Tree Frog, acting again as our reporter for Intergalactic Geographic is perched upon a screen outside The Sanctuary, teleset with boom microphone on head, and script in hand as he narrates his observations. As you may have suspected from our previous encounters, he is not exactly just your average Cuban Tree Frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis), but in order to gain safe passage in this dimension, he is in precisely the right configuration to best  dispatch his assigned mission.

Raul continued. “For one thing, sometime during the onset of this particular session, I began to realize that what I had mistaken for utterances by the individuals involved was perceived in fact within my own head, much like the experiences of the members of the experiment.”

“Upon further consideration of my animal form, I would be inclined to admit that it might indeed tend to give me a predilection for intuitive cognitive processes much like the telepathy or intuition to which Frederick, Mark, and Darcy have alluded as being distinctly animal attributes and abilities. Based upon my own subjective experiences within this context, I would concur.”

As Raul continues his narrative, the other members are finding themselves more and more sexually preoccupied, and since there are no secrets within this group (given their common consciousness of each other’s thoughts), the effect is rapidly intensified.

Who of us has not wished at one point or another to be able to “read” the minds of others? Yet the prospect of one’s own mind being equally transparent to others is not one that most of us would embrace….

It is one thing to be fully understood when we wish to be, but most of us are so addicted to our own deceits, conceits, denials, and self-deceptions that it is highly unlikely that we would be inclined to go down the road of telepathy and intuition once we realized the consequences of navigating a two-way thoroughfare.

One of the more disarming features of their current state of mind is how much their individual senses of smell have become intensified, especially concerning each other’s pheromones. Frederick has always been very high-functioning in this regard, but even he is pleasantly surprised by the enhancement.

As each member finds themself curiously testing the air as they first identify the aroma, then its source, knowing full well that everyone else is not only doing the same, but also aware of what each of the rest of them are doing, they begin to truly embrace the concept of their animal origins.

As self-proclaimed civilized humans, we have been taught to eschew all bodily odor altogether, instead preferring that our genitalia should smell like jasmine, lilacs, spices or even exotic fruits, but deep within our psyches, buried under eons of repression, our animal ancestors instinctively knew that they liked the smell of cocks and cunts…and the ocean…and seafood…and freshly-plowed earth.

For less evolved individuals, this could have spun out of control rather quickly, but given the fact that seven of the group have been using this drug for several months now together, the customary inhibitions, or conflicts that could have been stress-provoking have been bridged and assuaged…for the most part.

When Frederick suddenly realized that everyone else was also aware of his olfactory perusal of Darcy, Suki, and Kali’s nether regions, he also became aware of the fact that everyone else was doing the same according to their own tastes.

No one was alarmed or offended. In their current state of mind, everything seemed natural and provocatively intriguing. And Frederick was no longer an outsider by virtue of being merely an animal. In their minds, they had already transcended those barriers.

In their minds, they saw themselves just as much animals as they regarded Frederick to be. Just slightly different animal forms, as well as so much more….

With that, Frederick pantomimed blowing Darcy a kiss as he winked at her.

She responded by giggling like a young girl and suddenly removed her panties, which she threw to him. She then arose from her sitting position on the floor and went over to Mark, who was already removing his pants in anticipation. The rest of the group quickly shed their clothes as well.

Merle, Suki and Charles began to peruse and ponder a number of possible combinations of explorations among themselves as Ash and Kali moved together among the other members encouraging and fondling as they went.

Rather surprisingly, Darcy left her short, sheer dress on as she bent over to take Mark into her mouth. Mark was reclining, but propped up slightly on his elbows, with his head tilted back. He moaned softly and lifted his hips just a little each time Darcy took him further into the back of her throat. She began to reach a steady rhythmic bobbing of her head as Mark began to fuck her mouth.

An instant before it happened, Darcy and the rest of the group realized Frederick was about to first lick Darcy’s exposed bottom, and then her very wet pussy.

That moment seemed to hang suspended in time for a New York eternity (even though they were still in Florida).

As soon as Darcy realized that she was able to accept this eventuality, she also realized that she was in fact relieved and very aroused by her ability to be able to assimilate the experience, and so was everybody else.

In that moment in time in that particular space, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. All of them were also pondering how it must have been much like this when Man transcended and ascended from his primate ancestry by virtue of those ancient visitors so long ago, resulting in the “Upper Palaeolithic Revolution”, or the so-called “Great Leap Forward”.

As Darcy began to moan with pleasure as Frederick gratefully lavished her puanani with the most enthusiastic oral stimulation, Mark began to realize that he was nearly as aroused by watching Frederick perform cunnilingus upon the love of his life as he was by Darcy’s writhing ecstasy as she vigorously took him into her mouth and throat.

By the time Frederick finally mounted Darcy from behind, first gently, almost gingerly and then frantically thrusting his Bonanzee cock as hard and fast as he could into Darcy’s wet, quivering cunt, no one was the least surprised, offended or even uncomfortable. In their minds, this was an event that was over fifty thousand years in the making.

Only humans even attempt to protract the act of copulation in the least, but as quickly as Frederick managed to achieve orgasm, it was more than sufficiently long and vigorous enough to make Darcy climax violently as she felt Frederick’s throbbing cock spill stream after stream of warm, spurting semen deep into her pussy.

And it somehow seemed like the most natural and beautiful event in over fifty thousand years.

Mark was now quite anxious to fuck Darcy also. Frederick was already wandering around the room, eating fruit and mostly observing the others copulating, and Mark turned Darcy around to also mount her from behind as Frederick had done, but she suddenly began to grind Mark’s cock into her ass as she slowly pushed his rigid prick deep inside her.

After shucking off her dress, she then grabbed Merle as he sauntered over, and began to lick and suck his enormous member, which did not fit at all well into her mouth as she slathered it up and down with her tongue, lips and face. Merle grew hard again in a surprisingly short period of time. He had not come when he fucked Suki briefly at Charles’ request while he watched, and he badly needed release.

Merle then lay flat on his back and Darcy straddled him as Mark pumped her ass from behind. By the time both men came, she was drenched in sweat and cum. Her pussy was stretched and distended from Merle’s enormous cock and her ass was swollen, gaping and dripping.

By the end of the evening, sometime before dawn, she managed to fuck Ash and Charles as well, while Suki and Kali also took turns with all the men, but Frederick only copulated with Darcy, although he did it again several more times that night with her.

Although Frederick mounted Darcy from behind the first time, The next time, as Darcy lay upon her back, as they prepared to copulate, the air was heavy with anticipation of what was to come. The first time was as pure animals, the both of them allowing Nature to take over as they rode on waves of polypeptides and hormones into a region of the forbidden, yet eternal quest of curiosity where no action is inherently either sacred or profane. The eternally questioning mind often leads the body into uncharted waters.

Perversity does not exist in the animal kingdom the way that it thrives in the Human Condition.

But now, as Darcy lay there, legs apart, feeling the hair of Frederick’s belly, thighs and chest against her smooth, nearly hairless body, she came to a realization of who Frederick was, rather than what he was.

This strangely familiar being, this state of consciousness that so worshipped her as Goddess was in this moment realizing the culmination of resolution of desires beyond his wildest primate dreams, which were taking place in real time in a state of divine grace and ecstatic union with his own higher power, even beyond her as the Goddess, to experience an understanding of The One, feeling its movement through both him and her.

Now, as Darcy gazed deeply into Frederick’s eyes she witnessed his reflection of the Divine, peering deeply into Frederick’s soul, even as it was now, in this crucial state of flux, so also did Frederick stare into Darcy’s soul in a way he had never imagined before.

For him, it was to bear witness to the Goddess, not to know it on an intellectual level, but viscerally, the only way that one can ever really know anything when it comes to beliefs and faith.

You can’t intellectualize God into existence. The Knowledge you may experience as you feel the movement, the waves, the ripples and the winds set in motion by the gods and goddesses we know and become as we pass through this level of existence are mere reflections of a divine order that so surpasses our own levels of comprehension as to be unfathomable.

This occult world is not by definition something to be explained with words. The Knowing is enough. If it does not reveal itself to you in a way that you can allow yourself to experience, the chances are that you will explain it away with scientific beliefs based on speculation just as wild and unfounded as any other religion.

Dogma and Doctrine may be replaced by Axioms and Theorems, but both are supported by faith. Faith is what we believe in the absence of absolute proof.

If you simply believe that what happens today will indicate what will happen tomorrow, or that if two phenomena occur repeatedly together that a relationship exists between them, then your faith is no better than anyone else’s.

As Darcy lay there looking into Frederick’s countenance, she truly wanted this union in a way that was spiritual and that spoke of Majic of an indescribably unselfconscious bliss far beyond any sexual experience, and in so doing to temporarily satiate the eternally questioning mind.

It would be easy to imagine that Darcy looked down from herself to allow Frederick to occupy such personal space with her, but she was already sensing that the primal knowledge she was about to gain from Frederick, who intuitively knew what a mistake Man had made when he traded Reason for Instinct, was just as much a part of the Divine as her own..

In this moment in time, both co-existed.

And it was Good…like the way God said at the end of each day of creation.

And as it was happening, the other members of the group knew it too, as their consciousnesses exchanged with each other and their knowledge became as one.

And all the while, the Ancient Ones moved in and around them provoking and enticing the members of the group to a level of sexual ecstasy not seen since the days of the Bacchanal.

And it was Good…very, very good… like the way God said at the end of each day of creation.

Although all the members of the group agreed that there was a distinct cumulative effect that lingered well after the more immediate effects of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil had worn off, the effects it had on Frederick were the most dramatic and lasting.

From that point on, he was truly sentient; not human, but deeply aware of himself, his surroundings and peers in a way that would have been previously unimaginable. His abilities to communicate with the others took a quantum leap that was similarly intensified for all of them, who now managed to communicate intuitively and without words in ways they had never before imagined.

And it was all very, very Good….

 

 

The Home for Wayward Souls and The Talking Monkeys has its own Page

Posted in Dangerous and Unsavory ideas that are possibly harmful to the weak-mided and overly simplistic and religious, Enhanced and Fortified non-fiction, Interspecies Erotica, Long Form, Mature Theme, Metaphysical Action/Adventure, Much Too Good For Children, Novel, Possibly Dangerous to Everyone, Sexual Action/Adventure, The Home For Wayward Souls, The Talking Monkeys with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 14, 2014 by dreamlanddancing

I have put everything written so far on its own page. I will update it on a (fairly) regular basis until the novel is complete.

This is an opportunity to give me your honest feedback, which I would greatly appreciate.

Dragon Loyalty Award…Thank-you Shaun

Posted in Appreciation, Award, Dragon award on March 10, 2014 by dreamlanddancing

dragons-loyalty-awardMy sincerest thanks go to Shaun Gibson for this award

http://prayingforoneday.wordpress.com

He is one of the most consummate bloggers I have read to date, and his range of interests is far-reaching and most informative. I highly recommend visiting his site, and following his posts. He has opened my eyes on more than one occasion.

I would like to recognize a number of writer/reader/friends…to whom I must apologize, I do not comment or correspond to nearly as often as I wish I did.

A few of you may not even know who I am…and that’s OK, because I read your works, and enjoy your posts…sometimes I do not even comment, but several of you have been regular readers, and vice-versa…some I have not heard from in awhile, and you are missed…I understand how life takes the front seat sometimes, even for writers.

I am primarily more of a writer than a true blogger, although I must admit that the liaisons I have formed here have helped me develop and produce in a way that solitary writings (such as “Dancing in Dreamland”) seem almost like a vacuum by comparison.

I received this award in December, right before a series of losses, tragedies, hardships and adversities threatened to completely overrun my life for far too long, and these recognitions are long overdue.

I probably broke a few rules here and there, like too many awards, or not quite the right presentation or format, but more than anything, this is a sort of “Shout Out”…and besides, who of this group would not agree that rules are made to be broken…and bent…(over)…and perhaps even spanked….

Thanks to you all…Baraka Bashad

awarded to:

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/56207492/ ‘Tis Personal

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/49179812/ Astral_Travler

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/28599423/ Daily Incarnate

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/28599423/ Elene Sallinger

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/32316523/ Eric Keys

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/42501733/ Grey or Gray and Flyker1970

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/29642096/  ladybluerose

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/51900519/ Erotic Arousals

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/53402089/ booknvolume

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/60636918/ Garrick’s Kitten Slave

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/41802238/ Growing Up Little

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/38567650/ Life of A Fallen Angel

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/37479595/ MaríMar

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/58955391/  Miss Lizzy

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/28930315/  moviejoltz

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/54209903/  Must Be This Tall To Ride

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/50865739/  My Esoteric Flux

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/17306864/  SHIRLEY MAYA

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/56266749/ Pandora’s Box

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/39008191/  polysyllabic profundities

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/55655911/  Pushing our limits

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/59050911/  Sea of Desire

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/45355670/  ShaNu Water

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/37358114/  Temperature’s Rising

http://wordpress.com/read/blog/id/35710440/  thekinkyworldofvile

Dharma for a Friend: お待ちください 忍耐、お願い

Posted in Bardot Thordol, Confessions of a Mad Philosopher, Crossing the Abyss, Dancing in Dreamland, Knowledge, Liason, Love, Memoires of a Post-Neo Dharma Bum, Poetry, Sentience, Zen with tags , , , , , , , on March 8, 2014 by dreamlanddancing

Dharma for a Friend:

、お待ちください忍耐、お願い

 

You seek the Ultimate Truth.

Instead you discover the

Ultimate Void.

Matte Kudasai.

、お待ちください

This is truth

but it is not the Ultimate Truth.

Form is Form,

Emptiness is Emptiness.

Form is Emptiness,

Emptiness is Form.

No Form,

No Emptiness.

Only

The Void.

What comes next?

Madness and Magic.

Trade back your Reason for Instinct.

Matte Kudasai.

、お待ちください

A dog howls at the moon.

The sound drowns out

All the voices of all the Buddhas.

Patience please.

忍耐、お願い

Your words speak volumes

of questions seeking answer.

The earth beneath your feet

bleeds with each step you take.

You feel the pain as I feel yours.

Everything is just like this.

See yourself

as the main character

in the novel of your life

as you have written it,

as you are

in all your unselfconsciousness.

See yourself outside your ego.

Stand naked before yourself

Protecting nothing.

Defending nothing.

Justifying nothing.

Ashamed of nothing.

Embarrassed by nothing.

Embrace your self-imagined imperfections,

just as you are.

Forgive yourself of everything.

You must stand outside yourself to do this.

As you do,

ask yourself

“Who am I now?”

“Who is asking this question?”

No words can describe your understanding.

Matte Kudasai.

、お待ちください

Patience Please.

忍耐、お願い

As you stand in Dreamland

you see the detonation.

You feel the blast

as everything you knew

is blown away

by the Crown of Destruction.

In the stillness

of the void

before the backrush

of Nothing Special,

suddenly you see

everything

is exactly

as it is.

I am doing the

Ghost Dance

for you

in Dreamland.

Life Returns

all by itself.

Baraka Bashad.

THFWS & TTM’s: Some of my Best Friends are Telemarketers

Posted in Boiler Room operations, Enhanced and Fortified non-fiction, Liason Between Parties, Long Form, Mature Theme, Metaphysical Action/Adventure, Much To Good For Children, Much Too Good For Children, Novel, NSFW, Possibly Dangerous to Everyone, Primate Romance/Adventure, Sentience, Telemarketers, The Home For Wayward Souls, The Knowledge of Good and Evil, The Talking Monkeys, The Tyranny of Evil Men, The Wisdom with tags , , , , on March 2, 2014 by dreamlanddancing

THFWS & TTM’s: Some of my Best Friends are Telemarketers

Telemarketers are one of the most maligned groups of people in the world…and sometimes, for good reason.

First of all, they practice their craft by way of home invasion via the telephone.

The vast majority of them sell everything from extended vehicle warrantees, long-distance telephone plans, re-financing of debit, new furnaces, new air conditioners, re-roofing, kitchen or bathroom remodeling, mobile cellular service, to schemes that allegedly allow you to buy anything from appliances and power tools to home remodeling supplies at a fraction of their retail cost (neglecting to mention that you have to pay the freight and shipping costs, with no guarantee that any of the vendors you wish to buy from have any such arrangement to sell directly to you, plus the exorbitant annual fees associated with joining their “club”).

It was almost twenty years ago that PharmaCorp decided to develop a sales task force to market home delivery of prescription medications as a subsidiary to their pharmaceutical manufacturing company.

Then came the Medicare Part D enrollments of 2006, which was a massive boondoggle for the insurance companies competing for an estimated market of seventy-five million prospective targets to be enrolled in less than forty-five days. Tens of thousands of agents were trained and licensed as healthcare insurance agents for all fifty states to enroll prospective Medicare part D recipients over the telephone.

They made upwards of ten thousand dollars in six weeks, only to be faced with going back to selling long distance plans and extended vehicle warranties once the smoke had cleared.

As a general group, telemarketers act as agents for some of the most despicable scams ever devised, and there is little or no true value to what they do, which is essentially to separate people from their money. They are like trained assassins, who work for the highest bidder, so it is no coincidence that they refer to their intended customer/victims as “targets”.

Fifty years ago, most of them would have been “traveling salesmen”.

When the real estate market tanked, the industry became flooded with failed mortgage brokers and real estate agents as well as automobile salespersons.

Not all of them are necessarily “snake oil salesmen,” but there comes a time when one must choose between a telephone and a gun just to feed your family.

Their rationalizations are almost endless, and their aspirations are high. Sometimes, they make huge commissions, if they are involved in launching a new program that is as yet untried, or has failed or been met with marginal success at another call center or by a different team.

Once the core group has defined and honed the pitch and the approach, they will hire a boatload of new people, who they will then train, thereby watering down the available market, and knocking the bottom out of their commissions.

There is a paradigm in sales that mandates that less than 20 percent of the sales force will make more than 80 percent of the commissions. It has nothing to do with fairness or the ability to climb the ladder by proving your worth. It is a purposeful manipulation of basic motivations and drives, and on a purely Machiavellian level it is the most efficient and successful way to exploit your sales force.

The idea is to give the impression to the main body of the sales force that they could do just as well as the top performers, if only they worked a little harder, or were better at their job, while the elite members are treated like gods, to be emulated and worshipped. Little other than personal favoritism initially determines who is favored and who is not. Talent and personality may enter into the equation to some extent, but once the choices are made, unless you screw up and do something to alienate yourself to Management, it makes little difference. Why? Well it goes something like this:

Most clients know that only a certain percentage of their potential customers are viable, qualified targets, but the sales force is tasked with going through the motions of giving presentations to everyone targeted.

Given the choice between a level playing field with a resultant $45 thousand dollar average yearly salary, with top earners getting less than ten thousand dollars more than the average, or presenting the possibility of being one of the fortunate, and earning one hundred thousand dollars per year, with everyone else getting only about $36 thousand, the logic is to create as wide a margin as possible for the top salaries so as to create the impression that if they only worked a little harder, or handled their after-call work a little faster, that they too could be a top dog, rather than one of the doomed.

Thereby, the doomed work very hard to eke out marginal commissions from marginal possibilities leaving the privileged to be free to grab all the low-hanging fruit with ease. The first question that comes to most people’s minds is to wonder how anyone can control who gets what opportunities. It goes like this:

There is a feature of most computer-controlled automated dialing systems that allows for a practice called “skill weighting”, meaning that a select group of “closers” get access to the wealthiest, or most vulnerable targets, or the ones who have never been called before, people who are new to the offering, never cancelled the service, never declined the product, etc.

Also, the difference between being next in line for the first available call, as opposed to waiting your turn as the dialer marches through the list of assigned positions makes a huge difference, especially on inbound callers. It quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy as to who are the top dogs and who are the underdogs.

It is no accident or euphemism that sales call centers are called “boiler rooms”. The pressure is intense. The time constraints are totally unreasonable, and no one is such a superstar as to be immune from having their jobs and success dangled over their heads like the proverbial carrot on the string hanging from the stick in front of the jackass that continues to plod along relentlessly, just a hairsbreadth away from its goal.

Heart disease, stroke, diabetes and clinical depression run rampant among the sales force due to a combination of stress, too much coffee and too many cigarettes, sitting for too long without regular opportunities to get up and walk away from their desk, and poor diet due to a limited ability to access nutritious meals in the half-hour allotted for meal breaks.

Most modern call centers now track every second of every aspect of your workday. How many “personal non-work related (“bio-breaks”), counseling time, meeting time, time spent getting back online after the meeting, after-call work (the amount of time it takes to record the results of the call and get back online), “system problems” if your computer, or the mainframe, or some aspect of the program you are utilizing fails or slows down, including the amount of time it takes for you to re-boot or initialize your system…all of it is recorded, and reported and printed out and presented to you on a weekly basis. No one is immune.

Middle management is prohibited from fraternizing with the rank-and-file, even the top performers, and generally given such ridiculous workloads (as exempt salaried employees, they are the new wave of indentured servants) that they have little time for friends or family anyway. They have a gun to their heads to extract as much work from their charges and are just as likely to be terminated as the other employees are. This tends to bring out a very mean-spirited neurosis very quickly in even the most well-adjusted supervisor.

Years ago, factory workers who were subjected to repetitive motion injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome were finally recognized as a legitimate work-related health insurance claim. Until it actually cost the employers money, they paid no attention. Workman’s Compensation claims finally got their attentions long enough to result in attempts to prevent the injuries by modifying their methods to more worker-friendly conditions.

A very good case could be made for repetitive thought injuries being documented amongst telemarketers. The data is certainly there to support the claim. The victims are everywhere you look amongst any telephone sales force, but PharmaCorp’s casualties, including suicides were becoming difficult to ignore.

Had they been test subjects, it would have been obvious, but no one was paying much attention or tracking the data, except to suppress it.

Although human Resource departments are quick to reassure the employees that because it is so costly to advertise, recruit, train and hire new employees, they are a valued asset, in truth the longer they stay, the more benefits they accrue and use, and the more their salaries rise, the more of a liability they represent, especially in terms of matching 401K pensions and healthcare benefits, considering that the longer they work, the sicker they become.

Workplace employee surveys began to show an alarming degree of mistrust, dissatisfaction, resentment and outright hostility despite the fact that most employees did not believe the surveys to be confidential or without some risk of retaliation.

An online internet survey of adversarial workplaces placed PharmaCorp so high on the list of worst places to work in the country that even their board of directors began to look for band-aids to cover up the problem so as to create the impression that they actually gave a shit.

It was like giving cough drops to tuberculosis patients.

The real shock came as a result of the “Talking Monkeys Project”. More and more of the Chimpanzee test subjects began to develop gastric ulcers, heart conditions, and suffer cerebral vascular attacks (“strokes”).

Because the chimps returned to their natural environments and families at the end of their workday, alarmingly higher and higher numbers of incidents involving violence among other chimps, including mates and their offspring were being recorded and documented.

Keep in mind, the entire project was unknown to almost all of the employees in the sales force, and the use of the chimps as “feeder-qualifiers” was considered to be an experiment conducted by one of PharmaCorp’s subsidiary research companies to test the cognitive, learning and language skills of primates. It just happened to be convenient to use their sales and marketing operations as their test lab.

The stress-induced physiological effects and behavioral dysfunctions began to become so prevalent that the handlers of the chimpanzees began to express concern and alarm.

Management’s answer to the growing dilemma was to strongly discourage written reports being generated in favor of unrecorded “discussion forums” and “feedback opportunities” in dialogues between the staff and Management.

Frederick was such a high-performing test subject that he was quickly utilized as a liaison between the trainers, handlers, and the chimps themselves, so he was not subject to the rigorous demands placed on the chimps on a long-term basis, and therefore had not suffered the mental and physiological damage that his comrades faced.

Mark was in charge of the American Sign Language training of all the chimps, including Frederick. Darcy was assigned to Lilith, Malkira, and Frederick as a family group. Each handler was responsible for one family group, including all offspring. Frederick’s superstar status within the research group brought many perks, bonuses and unofficial accolades to both Mark and Darcy, but because of the secrecy surrounding Frederick’s very existence, they were prohibited from publishing any of the results.

As was stated before, even a massive conglomerate corporation like PharmaCorp is answerable to “other concerns” known to only the most highly-placed corporate officers who are subject to being played like marionettes if the right strings are pulled by the right individuals.

Off in the distance, those other “interested parties” were monitoring the results of the entire “Talking Monkeys Project” for entirely different reasons. Fortunately (and somewhat amazingly), this necessity of distancing helped preclude detection of Mark, Darcy, and Frederick’s extra-curricular off-campus activities.

And that was especially fortunate on this special weekend when Frederick became truly sentient by virtue of administration of The Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

 

 

 

Age-Defining Expressions

Posted in Humor, Just For Fun with tags , on March 1, 2014 by dreamlanddancing

Age-Defining Expressions

I talk to people on the telephone almost every day. I never see their faces. I never see their homes. But in less than a minute, I could tell you more about them than they probably know about themselves.

I recently began to realize how quickly and definitively we date ourselves by the words and expressions we use.

The following is a list of words and phrases that are rarely used by anyone other than octogenarians, unless you still live in the same county in which your grandparents were born, and have rarely traveled more than fifty miles from where you live.

  • scallywag
  • bamboozle
  • finagle
  • smarty-pants (or the Yiddish variant: “Mr. Schmarty-Pants”)
  • feisty
  • frazzled
  • discombobulated
  • rapscallion
  • Carpet-bagger (but not tea-bagger, or carpet-muncher)
  • hoodwinked
  • spry
  • reprobate
  • peckerwood
  • pecker
  • you ‘uns
  • colored
  • schnockered
  • spring chicken
  • anywhoo
  • horse feathers
  • bushwhacker
  • tallywacker
  • hankering
  • negro
  • do lolly
  • thing-a-ma-jig
  • naysayer
  • flimflam
  • charlatan
  • a rat’s patootie
  • hornswoggle
  • snake-oil salesman
  • tarnation
  • dad-gum
  • dad-burned
  • dagnabbit
  • court-and-woo
  • okeydokey
  • la-tee-dah
  • fixin’ to (or the African-American rural version: “fin-to”)
  • harrumph
  • golly
  • gosh-all-mighty
  • gumption
  • get-up-and-go
  • curmudgeon
  • ballyhooed
  • factotum
  • outlandish
  • shanghaied
  • gall-darned
  • loopy
  • be-Jesus
  • bent over a barrel
  • corn-holed
  • corny
  • sacrosanct
  • bedraggled
  • fiddle-faddle
  • a fiddler’s fuck

And you are probably a “Baby-boomer” if you use words or expressions like:

  • far-out
  • hey, man…
  • gnarley
  • spaced-out
  • what a trip
  • head-trip
  • power trip
  • laid back
  • peace (as a greeting or a farewell), rather than Peace Out as a farewell
  • balled or ballin’ (engage in sex)
  • military-industrial complex
  • the man
  • pig (a policeman)
  • cop-out
  • rip-off
  • riffs or riffin’ (originally a guitar solo, but later to express oneself verbally)
  • cop (to obtain, usually in reference to drugs)
  • groovy
  • good vibes (not Lionel Hampton)
  • bad vibes (definitely not Lionel Hampton)
  • heavy (no reference to weight)
  • acid (no relation to Ph)
  • mama (as in reference to your “old lady”  but not your mother)
  • old lady (see above)
  • old man (you get the idea)
  • one mother of a…(fill in the blank)
  • the powers that be
  • the power structure
  • bogart
  • roach
  • roach clip
  • “Dave’s not here…”
  • tasty
  • tripping (on drugs)
  • tripped out
  • tripping over….
  • trippy
  • bummer
  • bummed out
  • My Axe (i.e. your guitar)
  • turkey (as an insult, or to set fire to the last part of the roach while it is held in the roach clip so as to inhale the very last of it)
  • the feds or the federales (somewhat still in use)
  • I’m Hip
  • square (no reference to geometry)
  • capitalist
  • brother, or ‘bro (but no relation to you)
  • sister (also no relation)
  • spare change
  • happening
  • macramé
  • macrobiotic
  • solidarity
  • solid
  • freaked out
  • freaky
  • keep on keepin’ on
  • keep on truckin’
  • head (acid head, a person who gets high in general, Dead Head, etc.)
  • pad (one’s domicile)
  • feed your head
  • crash (to sleep over, or to “come down” from your high)
  • shoot (inject drugs)
  • needle freak
  • shooting gallery (place where needle freaks shoot up)
  • funk or funky
  • afro  or ‘fro (as a hair style)
  • ‘fro comb (very widely-spaced teeth with a long handle, sometimes an angel-food cake cutter was used)
  • rock on
  • burn-out

Admittedly, I rarely hear a few of these expressions in the course of conversation, especially on the telephone, and I suppose I got a little carried away, but every once in a while I feel like I’m either in the middle of a Cheech and Chong movie or talking to a modern-day Rip Van Winkle who overslept the day after Woodstock, and just woke up to answer the phone.

In another twenty years, this will be the jargon of the new octogenarians.

 

 

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