Of red herrings and intermediate hosts... Part 4 of Soul Insurance (see previously)
IV. Pity the Mink
It was quite unexpected, the b-movie playing
on the mammy wagon screen
Was a romantic comedy with Doris Day and Cary Grant,
A Touch of Mink
Normally the claims adjuster would have preferred
something out of
Bollywood
But this escapist fare, even if dated,
was a worthy offering from Hollywood
Even with no song and dance, there was what he liked,
a lot of back and forth
Will she or won't she, much demure posturing,
yet it confronted the real sport
But the title gave him an idea
about how to write humanity's next chapter
By the time he was done with them,
they'd all be caught up in the rapture
As the mammy wagon entered
the gleaming environs of the Wan settlements
The claims adjuster beheld the history
of a people once known to be reticent
In days of yore, their traditional attire
was the very rich silk brocade
But they had since forsaken those rituals
for the easy profits of the
fur trade
Subjugated all their erstwhile beguiling craft
for what they called capitalism
Production was all, their society was all about
eminent domain and its enthrallment
No time for the small things,
a distorted
economics of whimsy was their prime belief
Well, before he was through with them,
they'd be sure to relearn anew
the laws of grief
As he gathered a few tools of the trade,
he started to consider the praxis
The subtle distinction between his kind of adjudication
and angels dispensing justice
In his view, the angels had no autonomy
and behaved, quite frankly, like rote zombies
Shock and awe was all, there was no skill,
so to speak, to their angelic practice
It had to be said, angels were long reputed
for bringing delight and wonder
On that basis, the tribes forgot the downside
of when they were torn asunder
For they also alternately delivered affliction,
a panoply of cluster headaches
Claims adjusters always gave humanity agency,
and the chance to correct their mistakes
The bureau stressed that adjusting
was a search for
truth and dignity
True, a byproduct of the process
was being able to determine liability
All training materials in the adjustment manual
emphasized proper procedures
People, processes and things was the mantra
of the
social software teachers
In his guise as an agent,
the claims adjuster was rather conventional
But depending on the audience,
he could feign the angelic or become feral
Thus it was that he made to approach
the leaders of the Wan, the inscrutables
Those party apparatchiks untethered from reality
who thought their operations were noble
He gave them the three standard warnings,
emphasizing the gravity of the situation
But they wanted proof (from the gods! really!),
he thought he'd heard every prevarication
In this business, you heard all manner of excuses,
but, here, there was no denial
Rather, they were going with the kind of argument
that would be tossed at a trial
This adjudication was going to be quite a bit easier
than he expected
If all the tribes would behave in the same fashion,
as he rather suspected
The local dignitaries of Wan tribe were coming upon
their Lunar New Year
Oh well, those thousand household banquets
would be the start of the trail of tears
Hubris, it was as if they assumed they could treat him
like a common lawyer
Rather than with the due respect of the gods' representative,
the claims adjuster
It was fascinating to behold the huhudious machinations
of these human schemers
Who forgot that, as the proverb went,
the okro plant never gets taller than the farmer
In the wet market, he spotted something
that could be of use as a red herring
A local trader was displaying his wares,
touting the virtues of eating pangolin
But right next to that stall was what he was looking for,
"This will do, I think"
The beast looked quite wretched,
but all's fair in love and war,
pity the mink
A
soundtrack for this note (
spotify)
Soul Insurance (Index)
A covidious folktale
- Ananse and the Chief's Scribe
- Enter the Claims Adjuster
- An Audience with the Linguist
- Pity the Mink
- Short Sale
- Excessive Liabilities
- Premiums Due
- Soul Insurance, a playlist
- Indemnity Provisions
- Full Circle
- Enforcement Actions
- The Die is Cast
This folktale is part of a series: In a covidious time.
Next:
Short Sale
File under: humour, satire, culture, observation, folktale, Ghana, Africa, storytelling, whimsy, myth, coronavirus, pandemic, Social Living, Things Fall Apart, Observers are worried, Buyer's Remorse, covidious, poetry, toli
Writing log: Part 4 March 24, 2021
