Sloth (Blogophilia 3.11)

"Okay, everyone. Let's get settled again."

Marty takes a sip from his cup.

"I have to give you folks credit on your stamina through all this. Usually at this point, everyone is kvetching like an Israelite in the desert." A gleam comes across his eye. "Of course, I'm a Demon and my lips are sealed. And that gets us to the next presentation.

A slightly disheveled man in a battered hat holding a jack o'lantern enters and stretches.

"Yaaawwwnnn" He pulls out a melted clock, brushes the horse manure off it and looks intently at the dripping face.

"Oh, crap. Am I late again?

Marty gives him the stink eye.

"Yes, Rip, you are."

The old man makes an obscene gesture.

"You said I had twenty years to rest and I took it."

With a wave, a small dragon replaces the pumpkin. The old man tosses it toward the back of the room. There is a thud and scream. No one turns around to see the result. The smell is enough.

"Hey, just because this is about Sloth, doesn't mean you get to sleep."

Seriouly annoyed now, Marty chucks the remote at the figure. He snatches it without looking.

"My name, if you haven't guessed, is Rip Van Winkle, world famous sleeper. You try to kill time and this is what you get. Teaching the number 2 of the number 2 of sins. It's enough to make someone not give a...whatever word... about it. And it is what is important in this discussion. I'm so lazy about prep, I stole Ichabod Crane's bit for my act."

A touch of the clicker brings up another picture of Father Paul. This one shows him in a ripped robe, dejected as the congregation points the way out the door.

"Picking up from Draper's blather earlier, we see Father Paul being ordered out of his position. We might not know the details, but rest assured DQ was involved. It may have been directly through him or one or more of the church members. It doesn't matter. We got this phase of the job done."

The next picture shows people mourning at a grave site. A group stand apart with their heads low, apparently speaking about the situation.

"The next phase is to remove care and passion about what happened. Rumors and bad data are important tools in this. By diverting their coping scripts, we inactivate a number of the support programs such as community and compassion Maker wrote into Mortal. This can have some interesting effects. As mentioned in the last class, The Supporters will follow the leader as the Deriders try to pick up the pieces. The message we at DQ give to both of the them is: 'The future is no more uncertain than the present.' Soon both groups lose energy and become Cynical. They know it can't be better. It is useless to try."

"The more cynical Mortals, the less work is done on behalf of Maker. We have found Mortals are much easier to control when divided. Let's go back to the Mortal 3.16 project. Granted, Maker had his own agenda when we started, something about giving them one last chance or such. Our job was to break the target. Ultimately, we weren't able to. But enough discord was generated to scatter future generations to the winds like weeds."

"And in this dispersion, we energized a lot of other parts of Maker's group against the the concept of Charity, while scared Cynics did nothing and watched as the weeds pulled from the garden by their own kind. Maker wasn't completely pleased with us, but we are set when the next project comes. And there will be fewer Supporters or Deriders who care when it does. This cycle of divide and conquer will continued forever"

"In conclusion, I want to remind you there is no finish line here and the next project probably won’t be the last. Maker is in it for the long haul and so are we."

"After all, where is he going to put us if he lays us off?"

“Thank you.”

Rip then lay down on the stage and caught fire.

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Topic-Tyler Myrth

Pic- Dahlia Ramone

Blog guesses: Melted face (in blog), Killing time (in blog), Dripping face (in blog), surreal, Dali, Slipping away, Icing, second hand.