My dear Jeffrey,
Yippee!! Splendid, Jeffrey, simply splendid!! Your cunning, determination, and compassion throughout this negotiation deserves a standing ovation! At $33,000.00 a grease bomb, Accounting predicts we will profit $154,500,000 dollars, all within the span of two years! What I adore most was your anticipation and marshalling of Dr. Steward’s opinion prior to the rendezvous with Siddiqui. You foresaw Siddiqui finding Dr. Steward’s expert opinion persuasive. Impressively, you commissioned a comparative analysis on a competitor whom we could not identify. Rather than resigning to the fact that our competing bidder’s identity had been concealed, you accurately figured we were bidding against one of the top five food ballistics manufacturers. You produced more work than was required; by doing so, you imbued Siddiqui (and me) with confidence. You faithfully represent the Buttered Up work ethic.
Now Jeffrey, my dear, poor, confused Jeffrey, your tender negotiations with Mr. Siddiqui should have stimulated jubilee. Not only have you made Buttered Up enough profit to last a generation, but your individual food artillery bonus from this year alone will enable the escrow of that island off the coast of French Guinea you keep mentioning, and its original inhabitants. You should celebrate your accomplishment with profligate expenditure! To my chagrin, you punish yourself, claiming that you feel guilt for potentially destabilizing the region.
I feel sympathy that you, at this late stage of your life, are still crippled by the pangs of conscience. The conscience is useful insofar as to attain revenge against sadists that repress you. It functions to temper other people’s aggression. You don’t need it unless you intend to counter-repress a sadist. In the proceeding email, I will describe to you how I overcame – guilt.
Ever since I was a young boy I felt repressed by my mother. I can recall as a mewling infant breastfeeding upon my mother’s milky breasts, and her shunning me away from them once I grew teeth. She punished me, depriving me of her milken splendor – all because I involuntarily clenched my jaw at an inopportune moment. She punished me for a transgression – biting – I had no control over. I can’t help growing teeth, just as corn can’t help to grow stalks. The earliest memories as a child are my mother repressing me, sundering me from her swollen pepperonis.
Next, I tried engaging her breasts with tact. I would sleep in her bed, feigning a nightmare, and fondle her unhinged pajama boobs into the night. The problem was that she eventually caught me, and banished me from sleeping in her room!! That night, within the belly of a nocturnal, sullen brood, I resolved to never get caught acting bad again.
Once my mother permanently sequestered her bosom, I endeavored to invent substitutes commensurate to it. One such object was a binky. While it lacked aliment, it retained the same texture as an organic breast. For a brief moment I was happy with my binky, it reminded me of the happy times – until my mother deprived me of that, too!! To my horror, one night she entered my room and threw away my pleasure button! “You’re too old to suck on a binky,” she scolded, as she handed me a stick of deodorant. It’s as if she wanted me to suffer! Not only did the violence of my mother’s repression proscribe the mammary nectar, but she also proscribed all substitutes commensurate with sucking!
My happiness deprived by feminine repression, I resigned that my happiness resided in plotting revenge against my sadistic mother. Repression circumscribed my happiness to the extent of my mother’s misery. The more miserable I made my mother, the happier I’d become! The obstacle to my revenge, however, was the looming threat of escalation: if my mother ever unearthed my contribution to her emotional disturbances, she could justify not transporting me to karate class! My method of revenge had to unconditionally exclude the possibility of getting caught. The mode of retribution, therefore, needed to be unconscious.
Within the fiery pits of my righteous indignation I invented the most vindicative, most cunning, most subliminal form of revenge: the artifice of conscience. Yes, my dear Jeffrey, it was my conscience – my sense of right and wrong – that I leveraged against my mother’s happiness. The only way to rationalize my mother’s repression is that she is a sadist: she repressed me out of a sick, perverted desire to watch me suffer. The artifice of conscience, however, discourages predicate acts otherwise warranting cruel punishment. The conscience prevents bad acts – ones my mother secretly desired for me to commit in order to justify torturing me. Without a predicate act to justify her illicit pleasure, my voluntary abstention from proscribed acts counter-repressed my mother. My conscience is useful insofar as to counter-repress my repressive mother, robbing her of her right to punish me. My revenge, my ambition, my happiness, hinged upon me being “good.”
Alas, I restrain myself to write further. I must prepare to attend a poetry reading tonight at Aesthetique. Margaret Accoutrement just published a new book of poems, and I wish to interrogate her on some of its themes, including the docility of nature. I will continue our correspondence tomorrow morning after meeting with Mr. Lindquist.
Until next time,
Edwin Buttered
Chief Executive Officer, Chairman, Buttered Up, Inc.