The Old Man and the Rain

INFERIOR - DAY

It's raining on an old man up on the roof. Bleak, soggy, grey, and miserable. He doesn't have on rain gear. He isn't smiling. Looks grim. Wizened, lined, ancient. Staring off-camera. We slowly pan forward. He's just sitting there on the roof, not even moving.

VOICEOVER

I am told by Ralph the Roofer that most leakage can be stopped by simply sitting on your roof. I sit up here on all my roofs. I haven't had a leak in a hundred years. Ralph the Roofer knows what he's talking about. You think my opponent, that Other One, can protect you from leaks? You think he'd be so wise, with all his Harvard, to sit up on the roof in the rain? Not a bit of it. He's an elitist. Meanwhile, I'm on the job, sitting up on my roof, in the rain, and I have the sniffles to prove it!

Cable News Smackdown

Olbermann has a horse who broke a leg. I hate these kind of stories. It will have to be "put down." It's a completely disheartening tale.

Faux Noise has filed suit to stop it. They're flashing their "pro life" cred. Don't kill this horse, they say. The Terry Schiavo contingent gears up. And any cockamamie notion has its full day in court.

So lawyers from MSNBC and the fascist folly channel square off over equestrian equality. I go from a parking lot somewhere and here comes one of the Faux folk. He's in a bright orange jumpsuit and I'm thinking, he seems just like ordinary folk. And I remember, the guards at the death camps were mostly just your average Wermacht warriors with bad knees disqualifying them from the Eastern Front.

Red Roadster

I arrive in my little blue auto in front of a row of one-story stores. The district is clean if uninspiring, like me. I go through a walkway bounded by more shops to an open courtyard. Back here is an industrial sector where they build products. Some guys wander about in no hurry and a woman waits at a desk. I have no idea what they make, but they must ship it out because there is a truck waiting over by the rear exit to the wide parking area.

I go see someone named Beaumont. Are you Beaumont? Yes. Hi, Beaumont! We shake hands. He agrees to transfer to me for valuable consideration one each sporty small red roadster. Gee, thanks, Beaumont!

I leave to go back to high school. (In my dreams I carry along the same consciousness always but my outer being is obscure.) I next return to the shopping district.

Hey, the roadster, my roadster, it's gone! Where is my roadster? I better go see Beaumont right quick now.

I go back to the industrial area. Different folks are loitering, moving about in no hurry. I say to one of them, hey, can you point me to Beaumont? No, he says. I ask again, some other one, who says, no, but maybe that one knows. He points at a desk, and a lady is talking with a gent there. I'll wait. Meanwhile I look around for Beaumont. He sold me his roadster, I say to no one in particular, and now it's gone. I left it up front and it's gone now.

Oh, hey, wait a minute. I remember now. I drove the roadster to high school! It's not Beaumont's fault, it's mine! Of course, if I drove to high school, then I didn't leave the red roadster here, and that would explain why I didn't find it when I looked here.

Sorry, Beaumont! I say. But nobody pays any attention, and nobody is Beaumont anyway. 

Now I must find the red roadster. It must be over by high school, but I don't remember where. I must've parked close. I mean, why take the roadster to high school if you're going to park far away? 

I must start on one side and work myself in concentric squares ever wider until I find it. That's the ticket.

I think, hey, wait a minute. Whatever became of the blue sedan I had this morning when I went after the red roadster from Beaumont? Better worry about that in good time. First I better find the red roadster.

Let me see, I'll start on one side of the high school. I'll park here then.

Wait a minute.

What's this I'm driving?

Acceptance of Excellence

We eagerly rush from one meeting room to another. We are earnest and attentive. We are expected to be.

The course is Acceptance of Excellence. The motivator has been on Oprah. 'Nuff said. He tells us to visualize, optimize, upsize, categorize, fantasize. We only see him on tape, but he looks prosperous and there is a panel of eager and attentive fledglings amidst the potted plants. 

You create a sight picture then you fix items within your new context, like sales, salary and benefits. You are ever so much more successful than you believe. Most never realize their potential, and realization is a state of mind, after all.

He is an ex-football coach, our motivator. He never mentions his record. We assume it's excellent. 

Our business is selling ice cream. Our location is a summer tourist island. Our sales go up with our expectation and visualization after Memorial Day, and then we lose our focus around Labor Day. Every year it's like that. We spend our winter in meetings, mostly. How can we fix this attitude of ours? Why do we allow ourselves to wallow in the pit of despond?

Our recovery of Acceptance of Excellence rudiments takes six months. Come next Memorial Day, sales go through the roof. It's because in December we were ever so slothful and disbelieving. Also, some skipped the motivation seminars, and not all the chairs were filled at the optimizer meetings. 

But can you imagine how it would be were we not Expecting Excellence? It would be flat the whole year. We are so fortunate to have found our motivation. Now if we could only find out why we lapse so consistantly each fall.

Heart of Darkness

The news cuts away to someplace called "The Heart of Darkness." I listen, and it is not further located on any map.

A pretty lady in cammie gear speaks seriously to us before a backdrop of dense jungle. A tribe, she says. Not hunter/gathering, but planter/migrant, which means they place seed in the ground then leave.

Another tribe is more the hunter/gathering paradigm. They find fields which have been planted and abandoned. Then they harvest. Then they eat.

The planter migrants are extremely emaciated, whereas the hunter gatherers are definitely not.

We see a still shot of an obese native, chomping on an ear of corn.

The migrants captured a monkey, she tells us. They handcuffed him in front with a stake behind his back placed horizontally with both arms looped around it. Then they sent the monkey to the hunters.

From the studio: How big was the monkey, Felicia?
Felicia: Somewhere between a chimp and an orangutan.

Immediately the gathering tribe released the monkey. It did not, however, run off into the jungle, but it hung around. We figure it only wanted to see what would happen.

From the Heart of Darkness, this is Felicia, returning you to our studio ...