The Devil

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***Warning..the following article is *not* a christian article.  It
was written in a very liberal newspaper in Indianapolis.  I am
reprinting *some* of the story to show a point the writer made
which is so true today. I have taken the offensive stuff out of it
but it still talks about drinking. This is not the whole article but
bits and pieces of it.
			

DRINKIN' WITH THE DEVIL
article written in Indianapolis Liberal paper called Nuvo.

     My wife was gone one evening not so long ago and I was at
loose ends. So, I went up to have a few drinks at Casa Maison,
the hot new bistro that's lakeside on Angst, the next reservoir up
from Geist. I could tell they were having a bad night. The wait
persons were getting their orders late and mixed up. The beer
kegs kept blowing foam out of the taps at the bar. I would learn
later they had found half a mouse in the soup de jour of the day.

     But I sat quietly at the bar, thinking some more about Sharon
Stone's career as a serious actress while I sipped a glass of
beer from the Cicero Brewmeister Commune. Or I would have
been thinking some more about the Stone career if the man
sitting next to me hadn't been muttering so much while he did
shots.  He was a middling sort of man -- middle-aged, middle-
weight, middle-height -- but well dressed. Or, at least he had
begun his day well-dressed. Now his silk Armani was wrinkled
and stained. His Egyptian cotton shirt had lost its starch and
gained some spots. His tie -- it was a Liberty of London -- was
wrinkled and ruined. "Tough day?" I asked.

      right it's a tough day," he said. "I got laid off. After
     all these years, after putting my territory into the top ten
     worldwide . . . I walk in today somebody and then I walk out
nobody.  It's all over. Just like that." "What's the company?" I
asked.  "Probably not one you know -- we're unlisted. It's sort of
a service company, one of the biggest. But we keep a low
profile. I keep saying We. But it's not We any more. Now, it's just
me. Me and them."

He gave me his card. I didn't recognize the name, but I noticed
the telephone number had a 666 area code. I gave him my card.
It has a 317 area code.

"How long were you there?" I asked.  "How long? Let's see. This
is 'ninety-six, right? And I got here in 'eighty-two. So, 'eighty-two
from 'ninety-six is, what, a hundred and fourteen years. Right?"
"It probably seemed like a hundred and fourteen years," I said,
"But fourteen is long enough.""I said a hundred and fourteen
years and I meant A HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN YEARS!" he
said with sudden anger. I smiled and nodded, trying to be
agreeable.

"You don't understand," he said. "I am a devil. A devil! Like in
evil incarnate. The Spanish Inquisition? MY IDEA! The Ku Klux
Klan. MY IDEA! Women's shoes? MY IDEA! When they said
lynchings were history in America, I'm the guy who made
lynchings happen up in Marion -- the last lynchings north of the
Mason-Dixon Line and I make them happen in Indiana, my
territory. I'm a devil. Now I'm just another guy, sitting in a bar,
doing parlor tricks."


"But I guess I don't understand," I said, "Laying off devils? What
 is going on?"
"Same thing down there as up here," he answered. "Cheap
labor.  Outsourcing. There used to be some real loyalty, some
real pride in the work, but now it's just the bottom line. That's all
that matters with the big guys anymore -- how does it play out in
the bottom line."

"Well, I guess I just don't understand the bottom line aspects of
your industry," I said.
"It's like this. For the last million years, ever since Eden, we've
been producing all the world's evil in house and then marketing
to you mortals. We were a full-service, vertically integrated
company -- from R&D to point of sale, we did it all.
 "Like, someone would come up with a new concept, say
imperialism or date rape or maybe the right to bear arms, and
then we'd have to go out and sell it in the real world, making it
look good to people like you. If we came up with a good concept
and if we sold it well, then we'd improve our market share in
souls.

"But then you people began producing your own evil and doing
your own marketing . . ."
"So, you're telling me that Hell has lost its monopoly on
supplying the world with evil?"
"Yeah," the devil said.
"So, that's what we're competing with in the world -- a market
that has learned how to make its own evil. And down in Hell,
we've got senior management that doesn't even know how to
surf the 'Net."

"If I understand what you're saying, then Hell's got a problem
with excess capacity . . ." I began."Yeah, right. It's like The
Hundred Years War. You remember that one? It was one of our
best wars. I mean, we had Protestants and Catholics ripping up
Europe, killing each other by the million for a whole century. Do
you realize how much planning and organizing it takes to get a
million people killed with primitive technology? I mean, they
were still using swords.  They hadn't even picked up on
gunpowder when we got started. And even after we got them
some guns, you try killing a million people with single-shot
muskets . . .     "Let me tell you, those were times when evil
meant something, when everyone in Hell had to pitch in to get
the work done. But now any person with an airforce and
automatic weapons can kill a million in a week and still have
time for a little golf on the weekend."


"So, Satan begins calling us in and laying it out for us. There's
too much capacity for evil in the world, the big guy says. There's
too much competition, with both the quick and the dead
undercutting each other for market share. He shows us the
charts and he runs the projections . . .

"And then he goes, 'God knows I hate to do this, but I got to
     downsize and you're on the bubble.' And that was it. Security
takes my ID badge, my pitchfork, even my horns. And then they
walk me out of Hell. They had been packing my desk stuff while
I was getting the word from Satan. It was really smooth. But at
least I've got my health."

 "What do you think you'll do?" I asked.
"I've put some resumes out and I've been talking with the
headhunters. I already got some interviews lined up with some
of your big media companies. I might look at Disney. They've
been trying a little evil lately -- flashing a little here and there in
their movies, showing a lot of cross-marketing greed in their
'toons --  but they've got no tradition for serious evil, none of the
institutional memory you need to do evil big time. I could help
Disney," the devil said.

"So, it looks like you'll land on your feet," I looked down as I
spoke and saw the devil had hoofs, not feet. I was embarrassed.
 "Oh, yeah. I'm better off than a lot of the others."
----snip-----

Well, you probably seen the same thing I did...so I will spare the
monlogue for now.  Pretty sad to think that the world could put
the devil out of business, BUT I dont think he is sad about it, do
you?

C.Sterrett