Planning Purgatory

The Industrial Revolution played havoc on God's civil engineers. Oh sure, Heaven and Hell were always pretty easy to organize. The people in Heaven were always treated like kings only much much better, and Hell was set up to treat its residents like some combination of prisoners and peasants, only worse. That way everyone felt appropriately awarded or punished. Purgatory, post Industrial Revolution, however, was a nightmare. It used to just be luke warm gruel and a typical day in the fields for the poor and for the wealthy a calf that was kind of fatted followed by a jester who had a couple of good jokes, but were all pretty obvious. Differences between men and women, the quality of tavern food, and complaints about work. With the rise of the middle class, and then further, the striation of the upper, middle, and lower classes into their own self contained upper middle and lower classes and the number of purgatories that God's civil engineers had to coordinate became a hydra to slay, for each slice of the population had to have an afterlife carefully blanded to their own life experiences. A hundred tv channels was a perfectly fine purgatory for the lower-middle class, but was practically heaven to the upper-lower. Supermarket beef wellington and chicken cordon bleu for dinner each night was hell for the lower-upper class, heaven for the middle-middle, but perfectly so-so for the upper-middle. Purgatory's designers breathed a sigh of relieve that at least a long work day with stupid co-workers stayed consistent through each level. After carefully constructing the Nine Circles of Purgatory, funding for the afterlife skyrocketed. Too many special orders, too many administrators. “Maybe it would save us money,” the engineers said to God one day after a budget cutting meeting, “if we just re-widened the gap between the rich and everyone else like the good old days.”

- Originally mailed to M.J. Navoy in Picayune, Mississippi

The Shopping Demon

Oh the ridicule Beelzebub endured every year come late December when he haunted the halls of the uptown mall, searching for the best deals on clothes and shoes and sunglasses. The other denizens of the infernal pits would torment him for this (verbally, of course, not the blades and fire and acid sort of torment reserved for their day jobs, because who wants to take their work home for them?). Not that they had a problem with shopping. No, demons loved the infatuation people had for mindless consumption and consumerism. It was like gluttony and greed and pride and avarice all rolled into one, and on Black Friday, they could even squeeze in a little wrath. Few activities aside from genocide and DVRing Jersey Shore* could be so evil. No, they teased him for going to Christmas sales.

“I'm just shopping to over commercialize the religious holiday. Just trying to undermine the message of goodness and generosity and care for one's fellow man by spreading the enthusiasm for rampant selfishness.”

But they knew the truth. He was an amazing demon, but his shopping addiction had nothing to do with it. Sometimes a demon just wanted a stylish suit.

*Jersey Shore may not seem so evil, but it is actually a lynchpin in one of the more diabolical and secretive of Hell's nefarious schemes too complex to discuss in this post card. 

Originally mailed to M. Wilkes in Ridgeland, Mississippi

Counting Palettes

The Crate and Palette, a shipping store, first opened their doors for business, there was one question they had never thought to ask. When receiving a shipment of palettes, does one count the palette the palettes come on? It seemed logical that one would. After all, why add an extra palette and the extra shipping weight just to create a flat surface to stack goods on? After all, the product itself was a flat surface for stacking and shipping goods. Naturally they took it on good faith that when nine palettes arrived stacked on a palette that their order of ten palettes had been fulfilled. A quick call to their supplier confirmed the practice. Then other products started to come in. The crates came on their own palette, as did the boxes and bubble wrap, and as far as they could tell, those palettes didn't need to be purchased or even requested. Further, though they ordered ten palettes, only the top nine were new. Having been used for shipping, the bottom palette was often scuffed and sometimes broken, and thus couldn't be sold as a new palette with the rest of them. It was obvious their distributor had been ripping them off. However, after some number crunching, management at The Crate and Palette decided to let it go, for though they were getting cheated out of a new palette, gently used ones sold for only ten percent less, and with the free palettes that came with the crates and boxes and bubble wrap, they turned a higher profit than they might if they confronted their supplier and risked having him ship their goods using some other medium of transportation.

- Originally mailed to M. Bennett from Plano, Texas

Inflation

When the bottom of the economy finally fell out, inflation kicked in with a vengeance. Being an intelligent guy, Hans Mauer immediately took all the cash he could find and went to a store, knowing that goods would always be worth something, whereas his money might not. By the time he arrived, the price of candy had already almost doubled, so he bought the whole box. Candy was a luxury good, after all, so those lucky few who had wealth would pay a hefty sum for it later. When he arrived home, the same candy was selling for five dollars. A pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups came to more than fifteen by lunch, and by the end of the week, inflation has spiraled so wildly out of control he could have bought a brand new car with the money he made, presuming of course that the price of automobiles had not also skyrocketed. But nothing lasts forever, and Hans knew this. When it looked like the economy could take no more, when the neighboring nations would have no choice but to intervene, he sold every scrap of candy he had. He made hundreds of thousands of dollars, and exactly as predicted, the government stepped in with a new gold standard currency. The old money was virtually worthless. As a sort of kindness, the treasury allowed for the old currency to be traded in for pennies of the new stuff, but Hans didn't take the deal. Instead, he waited for all the old cash to die away, to be collected and burned. Then, two years later when he had one of the only supplies of the old dollar bills, he sold his hoard off to museums and collectors one bill it at time, on average getting twice the printed dollar value. In the end, his box of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups netted him a cool million goldbacks. He retired early, all over a little candy and a lot of patience.

- Originally mailed to J. Ransom Raper in Batesville, Arkansas.