Stratum V Hertwall Codicil Notes by Courier One

Stratum V Dictaphone Transcript by Courier One at the Orville Corporation’s Hertwall Codicil:

  “...According to your memo — January 12th — as to give you some remarks in reference to investing our [redacted]... looked at this and thought, ‘Golly, it’s a lot of paperwor—’”
  “This is a bunch of s**t, I’m not gonna do this...”
  “...Started reading the instructions, [...] ...that was shown in the book, and was quite amazing to find out [redacted].”
  “...Really is a bunch of s**t—”
  “...The calls that we did make — with certain customers — could be cut down based on the volume of their business...”
  “...Especially, those who’ve given us zilch.”
  “...Approximately fifteen percent of our customers gave us about eighty-five percent of the business. And some of the businesses given to me — was really, really bad.”
  “...That do not give us —”

[end tape]

Malos Modos a Mach 9

The Price is Cheap... The Cost is Right

CHEAP GRACE IS, by definition, cheap, along with other hastily cobbled platitudes and saccharine notions bandied about to bolster one’s Public Cred and silent Ego Insecurities.
  After all, if Timeless Truths are said to be proverbially etched in stone, what is one to make of knee-jerk bromides scribbled on cardboard and marched around High Street, just to be discarded into the gutter an hour later on the way to The Gristle for Social Hour?
  The price you pay for your crayon and placard may have been chump change — nay, free, if indeed Free Speech is ineluctably free.
  But the cost of credibility proves too high a toll when Ventilated Feelings fall flat in the eyes of John Q. Public, who knows that informed persuasion trumps emotional, low-value pleading.
  To state the obvious, the price for anyone to open their mouth is cheap. But whether your words become an expense to your appeal, or become an asset to your very assertions, the cost is commensurate.
  [Insert staid but true maxims along the lines of “Money Talks...” or “Walk the Walk...”]

  The Onus is always upon the Persuader.

The Cascarrabias Inversion

“HARRUMPH! Kids today!” grumbles the Serious Older Gentleman seeing young collegians cavort about without a care in the world.
  “What do they know? They have no perspective!”

  That used to be the timeless generational cliché, right? Experience plus knowledge equals wisdom — or crotchetiness, or what have you...

  Well, it’s the Current Year, as the kids say (circa Stratum XLIV), and what has changed? Everything, yet nothing.
  At Café Geherhaus, two young Latté Septoid co-eds furiously scrawl ad-libbed banalities onto posterboard in breathy anticipation of the impending protest against the latest Emmanuel Goldstein.
  Across the aisle sits one Johnny Gutts sipping an espresso, watching with wry amusement.
  “Aren’t those girls too young to be so bitter about that which they do not know? They’re half my age, abounding in a hurry to signify something. Maybe they should smell the daisies they are afforded in their spoilt station in life — just as I am about to do the same in the station of life I have made for myself.”
  Perhaps Mr Gutts is coming off a bit pompous and judgy, but in fact he will be on stage later that evening to perform at a packed concert. No, this is not a ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’ case of extended adolescence, for Gutts has seen the depths and pinnacles of a life appreciated. From the drudgery of gruntwork, $5/day touring per diems and toiling as a Paste-Up Monkey, to the grand zeniths of globe-trotting, meeting heads of state and helming a billion-dollar multi-national corporation, maybe there is some validity to the perspective of Johnny Gutts.

  “You know, there’s something wrong when 20-year-olds are the curmudgeons and ‘old-man’ me is the one rocking out, getting chased by women and enjoying the hum of life...”

  Don’t stop preaching, Johnny. Don’t stop.

Æwyrpen Freolslic