allover

Another Armageddonite, standing on the street corner, naked except for a sandwich board. Scrawled across the board the words, “Kill YoUrSeLvEs™.” In a corner of the board, the corporate logo, a circle filled with a toothy grin. I swear it’s a Ponzi scheme, my friend says as we enter the coffee shop. How else can you describe a multinational corporation whose primary product is a lottery funded with the total possessions of everyone who participates and where each week the winner becomes one of the world’s ten richest people? The more people who participate, the more money. The more people who kill themselves, the greater the chances of winning. There’s just something not quite right about the whole business model.

We sit down. They’re everywhere. Armageddonites here. Armageddonites there. They look down their noses at anyone who doesn’t have a sandwich board. Not to have a sandwich board means you are poor. Poor in heart, poor in spirit, poor in hope. There is no place for people like you in a hopeful world, their glances seem to say. But then again. Every so often one of them will step forward with a smile. You seem like a pretty reasonable person. Let me ask you something. Do you have life insurance?