by Steve Cook
Don't ask me how I came by this leaked email. It presents a pretty damning insight into the inner workings of Chaos Inc (also known as Earth Company) and its Infernal Subsidiaries. I'm taking my life in my own hands making it public. By the time you read this I will probably be heroically dead. Or (heroically) not.
To Wolfin Sheepsclothin, the Brain-U-like Institute
From: L. Beelzebub, Grimm Reaper Pharmaceuticals Inc.
As you are no doubt aware, The Big Boss (He whose name we cannot speak lest we be struck down and considerably mangled) has made known his satisfaction at the results forthcoming from our Swine Flu campaign.
Our media arm once again succeeded in its primary role of shepherding the herd in our general direction, whereupon we were able, as ever, to crowbar a handy wadge of petty cash from a few million mangey wallets.
This was no mean feat considering the Indeep and Drowning Debt Emporium had gone overboard on its recession thingy and almost left the Great Unwashed too strapped to make a useful contribution to the Help Your Local Global Oligarchy fund.
The Boss was none too pleased and has told the boys in Debt Slavery to watch it. Chaos may be profitable but you can have just too much of a good thing sometimes. Milk the cow half to death by all means but don't kill the ruddy thing. It's a big pie (or cow) after all and there's surely enough to go around but there'll be no pie (or cow) at all if the whole Earth operation goes pear-shaped. I don't fancy having to wait for the Unwashed to get around to building a new civilization from scratch before we can start milking again.
Anyway, the Boss will cracking heads the next time the Board of Chaos Inc meets so I'm sure our over-zealous brethren in Debt Slavery will be whipped into line. Even so, a word to the wise: it might be a good idea to have your Doctor Torquemada on stand-by just in case the Boss decides to make an example of someone, just to underscore the necessity for greater coordination. Section anyone a little too slow to see the error of his ways and a couple of lobotomies or sessions with the electro convulsive machine later, the rest will fall into line sharpish.
But I digress. Turns out we manufactured much too much vaccine; enough to vaccinate China eight times over. We've managed to shift two thirds of it and our distribution centres - the governmental health departments - are making a fair job of unloading it onto the population but we're running out of governments to sell it to. We may therefore have to stockpile a sizeable surplus in readiness for the next epidemic, which is scheduled for 20012. Three years is enough time for the public to have forgotten about this one but a tad close to the end of the vaccine's shelf life for comfort so the timing will have to be good in 2012 and the media will have to be on the ball vis a vis whipping up a scare sufficient for us to be able to shift our stockpiles.
We can repackage current stocks and as the next outbreak - which will be Gibbons Droop - will have the same symptoms as the current one (basically a heavy cold, often fatal for anyone with pre-exisitng health issues such as Bubonic Plague or over 103 years old) so the vaccine will work fine. Projected profits from the 2012 pandemic are in the region of five billion at today's prices.
There's a lingering worry though about the press. They pulled this year's caper off by the skin of their teeth and the word is the Thought Control boys have a shake-up coming their way. Panic engineering works well provided the trigger, the Message of Doom (MOD) has a plausible scientific gloss and doesn't come across as too rabid. However, some of TC's organs overdid it a bit this time and came across like medieval soothsayers or Macbeth's three witches, so much so even the Unwashed started to notice. A re-think will be needed and perhaps less sniffing of the nose candy on the part of many of our TC operatives will be required. Yesterdays headline in the Daily Scare is a case in point. "Aaargh! We're all doomed!" really doesn't cut it. The boys in DD (Dumbing Down) have done a fine job on the rifraff but not THAT fine, sadly.
To be honest I'll be glad when the day arrives we can just bring in compulsory drugging and have done with it. Then we can dispense with all these tiresome shenanigans.
And something will have to be done too about regional management. Their performance over Swine fever has lacked a certain amount of lustre. The British regional office under Brown for instance, issued a booklet entitled "Important Information about Swine Flu," which quite frankly was nowhere near scary enough. It was basically a brochure about the common cold with "common cold" edited out and "swine flu" inserted in its place. Detailed instruction on how to sneeze properly and advising the pubic to stay away from hospitals because they are full of germs (which the British Public know already) is hardly conducive to the creation of some profitable hysteria. Brown and his team are due for a bollocking as you can imagine.
We rely on the creation of fear for mass acquesicence to our siphoning billions out of the public purse. Without that fear, our minions in government cannot convincingly justify their munificent role in our little wheeze. Should such a nightmare scenario come to pass, they would not feel free to hand us the loot as they have in the past. Sadly, we still must be wary of provoking the wrath of the hoi poloi. Efforts are being made as you know to relieve the masses of their democratic burden and the European experiment in mass disenfranchismement is yielding encouraging results but the time is still a little way off when we can truly return to the feudal idyll.
In the meantime, we must continue with our charades and pursue improved performance in the manufacture of epidemics and other threats and scares. A scared population is a malleable population or, as we say in the drugging industry: a depressed citizen is a customer, a drugged citizen is a customer for life.
On that happy note, we are looking to psychiatry and the Brain-U-Like institute for further sterling work in disease creation. As you know, we have half a dozen new formulations that will need to be marketed and sold and these will need illnesses or disorders to cure so we look to your experts to invent some.
I know this will not present your team with too much of a problem; there are still many nuances of human behaviour as yet un-labeled as disorders and thus virgin marketing territory still waiting to be tapped.
Half a dozen mental illnesses to be phased in over the ensuing fiscal year will do nicely. Your usual sidestepping of scientific research in favour of a show of hands at your conferences should enable you to fast-track new ailments into the Diagnostic Manual: from idea to publication in just a few weeks. Hopefully you guys will have them online ready for your pushers to start writing prescriptions by June latest.
We have seen your radical proposals for a more ambitious approach to disorder marketing. We like the concept of the "Brain Laundromat," although Ruth Less Marketing Inc have advised that Brain-O-Mat is catchier.
The Brain-U-Like Brain-O-Mat sounds pretty cool and much more "twenty-first-century" than "Mental Health Centre."
We do feel however that you should avoid using the term "Brain Washing" in your promotional literature on account of its undesirable conotations. Brain Cleaning or Brain Laundering would be better terms for the Brain-O-Mat service. Experience shows that if you simply change the term, the public never catch on.
In the matter of new disorders, using the well tested technique of observing characteristics of human behaviour and declaring them symptoms and then thinking up a name for what they are symptoms of, I've had my marketing chief, Joe Satan, and his team dream up some proposed disorders for which we can rustle up a drug to treat.
You will be pleased to know that all of our new drugs are addictive and induce complications that your people will be able to diagnose as symptoms of further disorders requiring more drugs to treat. Thus you will be able to create more guaranteed repeat business, usually for the lifetime of the patient.
Fortunately the public still believe anything they are told a long as it (a) sounds a bit technical and (b) is uttered by a bloke with "doctor" in front of his name.
Here are our proposed disorders
Compulsive Credulity Disorder (CCD)
Over half the adult population believe without question what they read in the papers even when it comes across as written by a hormonal twelve-year-old or a crack-head. This presents a wonderful opportunity to call it a mental illness. Symptoms include a conviction that immigrants are eating our pets, a fear of venturing outside one's house, a tendency to deify minor celebrities or even Presidents, a belief the world is going to end at any moment, a fear that we are going to be invaded by the Liechtensteinian war machine of one reconditioned Sherman tank and a solitary Sopwith Camel that won't start in damp weather; dis-association from reality and a host of other symptoms that can be thought up later. CCD of course routinely works in our favour, otherwise how would the TC crew pull off their stunts? Fortunately our new CCD medication does not actually cure CCD but merely "contains" it, which another way of saying, "cures diddly squat."
Yarnspin Incredulity Disorder (YID).
A tendency to disbelieve anything one reads in the papers. Also known as Smartarse Syndrome. Symptoms include the making of intensely sarcastic comments about press items and the compulsive writing of spoof articles satirising the press and the various agencies of Chaos Inc and even his unHoliness the Dark Lord and Grand Lizard, Emperor you-know-who. Sufferers tend to view all news in the context of a covert global crime syndicate that relies on economic duress and media spin and the ongoing ignorance of the masses for its hold on power. Heavy medication, committal and lobotomy is recommended for these people as they are a menace to society and truly dangerous.
Religion Disorder.
The holding of beliefs that one is more than a fortuitous aggregation of chemicals or a animal driven exclusively by biological imperatives.
Right and Wrong Disorder
The sufferer views the world in terms of some actions being just plain wrong and one should not do them. Harmless except when they moralise and expect others to have standards of conduct. Dangerous when they become vociferous in their objection on grounds of illusory immorality to the arming of ruthless dictators, suspension of civil rights and other tough but necessary policies.
Obsessive Nice Disorder (OND)
Sufferers can be annoying. This ailment compels individuals to go around being nice to others. They put about the dangerous, subversive notion that the world would be a better place if we could all be nice to one another. The spread of human niceness would be seriously detrimental to our business so in the name of pharmaceutical profits such lunatics shoud be locked up as well as drugged into a stupour.
Hyper Responsibility Disorder (HRD)
Sufferers assert that one is responsible for one's actions rather than the truth, which is that no-one (especially thee and me) is responsible for anything and things just sort of happen of their own accord without anybody in particular actually causing them.
Pitbull Obsessive Disorder (POD)
Compulsion to own a pitbull terrier for no apparent reason. Sufferers usually male 20-40 years old.
Chirpy Disorder (CD)
Sufferers persist in being lighthearted and buoyant of spirit despite being presented with a thousand and one very good reasons not to be. Deserve everything they got coming.
Uncouth Disorder (UD)
Sufferers compulsively conduct themselves in an uncouth and boorish manner in public places, often aggressive towards perfect strangers, will frequently urinate openly and/or belch loudly in the street and can be rendered violent by accidental eye contact or the endeavour not to make eye contact. See Adjective Deficient Disorder (ADD) and Boulogne Day Trip Disorder (BDTD)
Adjective Deficient Disorder (ADD)
Related to and usually a precursor of UD above. Sufferer loses the power of adjectival expression and becomes unable to utter any adjective except the word "f***ing."
Boulogne Day Trip Disorder (BDTD)
An acute and virulent variant of UD above. So-called because it is most often manifest in English youth who are struck down by it the moment they disembark from the Channel Ferry in Boulogne.
Well, that's enough Disorders to be getting on with.
I think we need to meet and discuss the feasability of simply declaring being human a disorder.
We at Grimm Reaper have a whole cornucopia of chemical concoctions capable of terminally relieving the sufferer of such a condition- and of course the contents of their wallet.
Yours,
Lucifer
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