Ten Deals with the Devil

Deal with the devil.  The Faustian bargain.  The proverbial selling of ones soul for a time of unlimited magic and knowledge.  Well if your deal involves something less than unlimited magic and power, then the payment will end up being something less than your soul.  Of course, ultimately it's still the same.  you want a shortcut to something you want and you will pay later, possibly more than you want.

1 - Credit cards - So you're saying that I can have this money NOW.  I just have to pay a portion of what I owe over time plus a small fee?  Many people only hear the part where they can get that big screen TV now.  That's it.  The whole part about payments and interest and whatnot are just little Jiminy Cricket's whispering annoyingly in our ears.  Mmmmm...HD TV.  Then you get your credit card statement.  True to the bargain, you are paying a piece as you agreed.  If you calculate that piece out, you are paying for that TV nearly 3 times over by the time you are done with your payments.  That's if you just buy the TV.  Next month you want a few other things to go along with the TV.  So you defecit spend yourself into the next many years getting the things you want now and paying for them for a long time to come.  Bad Deal.

2 - Pets - They are so CUTE!  I love little puppies and kitties and every little animal!  There is the rub.  Animals are at best a responsibility, at worst, you have this cat or dog that has grown up and is no longer cute and is kind of annoying.  Layer that on to the fact that every time you want to go on vacation, you wonder if the pet is doing ok at the Kennel or with friends visiting them.  If you are getting a pet because of the cute beginnings, you will find that they outgrow that pretty quickly.

3 - Tattoo - One hazy night worth of chemically altered vision and you get a big chunk of ink plastered who knows where.  Of course you'll claim that it's exactly what you want and something that you really love.  But only you know if it's any good or what you really wanted.  When you first saw it, you decided you wanted to live with that design forever.  Years later...who knows?

4 - New Car - They are so expensive and much like credit cards, you can drive them right away with only a manageable payment made per month.  Everyone will tell you that a car is not an investment, it's a tool.  But it's a tool that will wear out relatively quickly compared to something like a hammer. You hope the car you get will be able to last as long as the payments and even if it will, your love of the car will not.

5 - Not Brushing Your teeth - each night a child goes to bed a vigilant parent checks and pushes them back into the bathroom to actually brush their teeth.  Children do not realized the amount of trouble that can be avoided by just maintaining a good tooth brushing regimen.  Adults often bemoan the lack of wisdom of their youth and are doomed to repeat the warnings they heard as kids.  This deal with the devil gives you an extra 3 minutes of sleep nearly every night in exchange for excruciating pain on a few days of your life and eventually implants or dentures.  Ick.

6 - Book/Record of the month club - In my day, this was the first exposure that a kid had to the world of contracts.  The come on was simple.  Pick any 10 records for 1 penny.  1 sliver of copper would give you more music than you could listen to in an entire night!  Amazing!  All you have to do is agree to buy a certain amount of records over time, and to make it easy, they will send you a record a month unless you tell them you don't want it.  Pretty soon, you are getting records that are kind of expensive when you add in shipping and that little imp of mail sales HANDLING.  Like a credit card, if you work it correctly, you actually could buy records on average for a slightly better rate than retail.  Get done with your obligation, quit the club and rejoin.  This deal was made better if you rejoined through a friend and took one of the 2 free records he would get for signing you up.  This was all a clever scam if you paid enough attention to run it.  Like credit, most don't run it right.  Boom the record devil gets your soul.

7 - Votes for a Politician - In this deal, you actually don't get much of anything at all.  Politics are more like rooting for a team than voting for an individual.  It's impossible for you to know the individual unless you already knew him/her from a prior meeting.  So you are voting for the best portrayal of a politician.  On top of that, everything a politician promises are not at all binding by law and the circumstances of being president appear to circumvent any walking up to the promises you make.  So you cast your vote for one devil or another, but the deal is the same.

8 - Education - In this version, you decide to avoid college alltogether and venture out into the world looking for a job on just your good looks.  With the right attitude you get employment, you get reccomendations and connections and eventually you end up in what you would call your career.  The entire time, you wonder if your life would have been better if you would have actually gone to college and gotten X.  X is the degree you DIDN'T get.  Because unless you got a doctorate, you will see people that ventured to get degrees beyond the one you achieve and wonder if their life is better.  So short term time and experience but it's paid for with a lifetime of doubt.


9 - Education - In this version, you get as much education as you can afford through student loans and mom and dad and wherever else you can scrape together money.  You finish your education and you continually wonder if the career you get is worth the money you paid for the education you think you needed to get it.  Often you get a career in a vocation that has nothing to do with your educational field.  The student loans seem to stay with you a lot longer than the actual accumulated knowledge.  Short term you got the education you thought would guarantee you success.  Long term you wonder if you needed to burn that much money to get what you got as well as continually tell yourself that you were glad you got the education no matter what it lead to because it broadened your horizons.

10 - First Home Loan - This one FEELS the most like a deal with a devil.  The first home you get a loan for, you see the piles of papers and the signatures and initials that are required and then the sum total of the loan you are getting and you KNOW this is serious.  Up to now, you've been paying monthly rent and there was nothing much more to it.  They raise your rent a few bucks every other month, and you agree to pay.  NOW, you are on the hook for 15-45 years.  You feel like an indentured servant.  Thank goodness, you get used to that payment in 3-6 months.







Well, it's time to vote again.  I would suggest that you vote for someone you know something about if you approve of them.  Those of you that just stopped by and especially those of you that read all the time...you know who you are.  Thanks!  I really appreciate it!

top 10 inventions by the Devil

Satan is an interesting character.  He's often blamed for influencing us poor humans into doing some pretty bad stuff.  I know in my own case, I have nobody to blame but myself for the stupid/bad things that I do.  I'll take full credit when I ring my items out of the convenience store checkout counter of life.  There are some things in life however that I think may have in fact been invented by the father of lies.  They seem to be there and yet serve mostly an evil purpose.  I realize that all of the things I will mention have actual originators that may be offended, I'm sorry.  This is just my take, and perhaps the take of the Dark Lord of the Netherworld who had no part in this blog...that I'm aware of...


10.  Insurance - Every kind of insurance is based on a couple of things.  Distributing risk, and fear.  Invented by the Dutch to offer an alternative to bankruptcy when your ship sank at sea, Insurance is the sale of perceived protection from fear.  Without the fear part the whole thing doesn't really work.  Distributing risk speaks more to the product.  Fear speaks more to the profit.  In the end, no matter how much you pay, you rarely ever get your money's worth out of insurance.  Anyone who is a big proponent of insurance in general is probably someone that thinks that they benefit from it (like an owner or shareholder) or someone who is deathly afraid of having sudden expenses in the case of illness or accident.  Which they will anyway even if they DO have insurance.  The Devil thrives on fear, so if he didn't invent it, He'd be proud to take credit.

9.  Pharmaceuticals - Medical Doctors take an oath  to 'do no harm'.  I don't think there is any such motto in the Pharmaceutical industry.  I think it's motto is 'do harm that is small enough to not get you a class action suit'  Which I'm pretty sure is not even translatable in Latin.  Medicine tries to lengthen life.  Pharmaceuticals try to lengthen treatment.  Why cure something in once dose if you can do it in 20?  This has Lucifer's hoof prints all over it




8.  Teeth - Lets be serious.  Our teeth are a big part of enjoying food which is a big part of life.  If you had to eat everything from a straw, then things would get pretty boring on the food front.  So we have teeth that are great for tucking into all kinds of victuals.  If these teeth were designed like shark teeth, we would be just fine,  tooth goes bad, pop and in clicks a new one.  no problem.  Of course we have the other kind of teeth that get ground down and decayed if you eat anything sweet (which we happen to like a LOT). Pain and suffering?  Yeah, I think we know who appreciates that and it's not your middle school Gym teacher...wait a minute...it all makes sense now!



7.  Motion Picture council of America - Jack Valente is the leader of this OH so secret band of movie judgment passers.  You just never know what they are going to do on any given day.  The reason this group is probably spawned of Baal is due to the fact that they seem to be followed blindly and yet are so capricious in their judgments.  Sometimes you see a movie that's PG and it seems really violent.  You see a movie that has a little bit too much innuendo and it's Rated R.  Sure the ratings help us as parents and consumers, but it seems to also be a tool of money making for the film industry.  They can decide if a film makes money or not just by the right or wrong rating.  There are shifting standards and subjective rules.  I believe the Devil is in these details.

6.  2 and a half men - I just know the devil is involved with this show somehow.  I just KNOW it.
















5.  Publishers Clearing House - As a kid I was CERTAIN that we would win the PCH if we would just get a couple of subscriptions and do all the little things correctly we would be walking away with a giant cardboard check.  It was really my first introduction to gambling.  Those things were loaded with lots of hope but only offered vague despair.  Not only did you not win, but you had to send a self addressed stamped envelope to see if you won.  I never got the list.  I guess I never expected to be on it.  If this isn't the magazine club of the Devil himself, certainly it is that of a lesser demon since most paper publications are going the way of Ed McMahon.





4.  BCS Bowl system - This is more about protecting money than evil.  On the other hand, it's pretty evil to not let teams play in a bowl game just because they aren't a part of the 'club'  or better yet they can't play for the large rankings because some bunch of minions of Satan decide which direction the votes go.  If the college football Gods would deign to interfere with Beelzebub's racket I believe they would institute a end of season tournament.  Of course some sacred cows would have to be melted down in order to get that to happen.

3.  Technology - You buy something that is the treasure of your heart initially.  5 years later.  It is garbage and might not even be worth throwing away because it's probably too heavy.  Does it work?  Of course it does, perfectly.  Who other than the son of the morning would give us such a maddening situation as technology.  Working for things we throw away?!?  Talk about slaves.  My shackles are as great as anybodies.  I just hope that 3-D TV is the end of the road (as far as flat panel displays go.  I think we are a ways off of holographic style displays.  Lucifer LOVES to keep you buying the same things over and over again.

2.  Cabbage Patch Kids - I Still remember the year that the Cabbage Patch Kids came out.  It was my first experience with hot Christmas toy fever.  You see, the same year, Laser Tag hit the market.  It was HUGE!  but not nearly as huge as those butt-ugly collections of cloth and stuffing.  Each one more hideous than the next, but they were IT.  I saw lines of people waiting at stores at the mere rumor of one or two becoming available.  It was bizarre.  Only a true serpent would influence a child to love this kind of rubbish and in turn enslave their parents to burning blood and treasure in the pursuit of a silly toy.  A greater, more ironic perversion of Christmas there really couldn't be.





1.  Post Classic Loony Tunes -  Loony Tunes are a quintessential classic cartoons series.  Created in the days when censorship was limited to adult themes and even that definition was pretty loose.  Loony Tunes were so great that every cartoon series that came after was, and still is, influenced by the creative genius of the greats of the day.  I'm speaking of course of the Artistic direction of Chuck Jones, Bob Clampet, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Robert McKimson along with the ubiquitous vocal talent of Mel Blanc.  If you have read my blog on how suits ruin everything, then you know that this is no exception.  There have been so many re-mixes and re-makes of these classic cartoons and they all fall so far short of the Mark that Only Satan with his clever counterfeits of truth and beauty could create such monstrosities.  The vocals are usually done by Mel Blanc's son.  He has some of the pipes of his old man, but not quite.  The cartoon direction falls under any one of many nameless wannabe's.  The sad part is you can tell that the bottom line is the only bottom line in the production of these horrible rhinestones. 

If this is what awaits me in Hell, then I hope I'm only visiting.  Thanks for reading.  click on some ad's If you all do several times, I'll make something on the order of .38 cents.  SWEET!