Another of them tracer thingies
You'll recall that I traced (in "A Saga, Chronologically" the story of Joyce Park's (Troutgirl's) firing. It's time for me to do this again, taking a number of entries from different dates and stringing them together in almost chronological order. Well, no one gets fired for blogging this time around. There are just a lot of people that die. Let's take a tour through the mind of the Inland Empress (no relation).
7 October 2004
Blogging will be light for a few days while I finish a short story for the writing workshop I attend once a month.
The story takes place in a parallel world where corporations simply execute unneeded or incompetent employees instead of laying them off. The main characters work in the morgue disposing of the bodies while trying to avoid a similar fate.
It's a satire, of course. Not many yucks, but plenty of sneers and malevolent chortles....
Then some clown got into the act on 8 October 2004:
Watch out; some companies might get ideas. But they're not profitable....
In that post, I then quoted from a source that identified a particular type of insurance:
The basic idea of COLI is that a company buys life insurance policies, payable to the firm, to ensure against the economic loss occasioned to the firm when an employee dies. The employee dies; the company gets the benefits....
Now, the policies might be dreadful PR, and thus a bad idea. But I don't see how they're particularly immoral....
Not that this had anything to do with the Empress' story, for which she was solicting help on 8 October 2004:
Is it funnier for them to try and squeeze the body into an SUV and take it to the landfill, or call a taxi? Should it not go to the landfill? Maybe they can ship it someplace? Where?
By 12 October 2004, the story had been shared with the story group. As one who isn't brave enough to submit fiction work to a bunch of people for critical review, I admired the Empress for this. Well, maybe the group admired the Empress also, but they didn't care for her work. Such is life (or, in this case, death).
My writing group savaged my short story last night, the one about the company that kills employees. The worst blow was that no one knew it was supposed to be funny. Whoops. The group moderator/writing coach deemed it insufficiently satirical. It needed more bodies, less corporate stuff....
Well, this was back in October. The Empress has again submitted her work for review, only this time she submitted it to the blogosphere. She posted part 1 on 4 January 2005 and part 2 on 11 January 2005. I encourage you to read both entries; I found them captivating, even if there weren't any insurance policies involved.
The whole creative process fascinates me, since when I do anything creative, it's something that's very short and not submitted for review. At some point I'll challenge myself. Or not.
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