A bit of a Short Story
Short story
Edward Harding sat in the large overstuffed, very high backed chair in the centre of his cavernous drawing room. Expensive paintings cuddled by heavy, ornate gold leaf covered frames lined the walls. Several ornate sculptures stood on pedestals in various places around the room. He was reading a newspaper. A smirk was once again on his lips. He loved to watch the writhing movements of this huge multi-headed beast called humanity. Once again the news media, which he was proud to have a large financial stake in, was reporting on one of those issues that could be played up to a fever pitch of emotion, completely diverting attention from the really bad things happening in the world.
The fate of a woman named Terri Schiavo once again was in the hands of a judge, following an extraordinary political fight over the brain-damaged woman that consumed both American chambers of Congress and prompted the president to rush back to the White House from his Texas ranch.
Taking the Senate’s lead, the House passed a bill to let the woman’s parents ask a federal judge to prolong Schiavo’s life by reinserting her feeding tube. President Bush then signed the measure less than an hour later. A White House source said he was woken from his sleep for the signing.
This issue had been ping-ponging back and forth in various courts for years and the life, or existence, of the woman was in the balance once again. Any individual on the street would most likely say that he or she would prefer to simply have an end put to their earthly existence if the prospects of their life was going to be from the point of view of a turnip, but when the collective voice comes together and the controllers of those voices begin to sing, existence takes precedence over all.
News broadcasts all over the world reported traffic accidents as either deaths or “non-life threatening” incidents. If the beast called humanity could spend a day as the non-life threatened person who was to look through the eyes of a potato for the rest of his life or experience life as a head connected to a lifeless mass of rubber hoses, it might consider quality of life as opposed to the simple switch of life or death.
Edward Harding’s main interest was in the drug industry he controlled and the various underground sideline industries that made even more money than the supposedly legitimate ones. Biological research was extremely lucrative, and research carried out fifteen years ago was finally making him a large amount of money. Harding had commissioned research into Prions, a simple form of pseudo life made of proteins. These had been discovered to be the substance of the disease BSE or mad cow disease. The disease wasn’t transferable from one cow to the next unless one cow consumed protein from an infected cow. This means of course that the milk from a cow could pass the infection to her calf. What was even more interesting to the silent emperor, to which he often referred to himself, was the fact that if one ground up the parts of the cow that people didn’t normally eat and mixed them into the feed of other cows, they grew bigger and faster. Most people eating a steak might find this to be offensive in itself, if they only knew. If he mixed the discarded parts from an infected cow, into the feed that was to be given to cows in specific locations such as the province of Alberta in Canada, where great quantities of beef were raised, then eventually he could cause the disease to rear its ugly head, the source to be banned and shunned and then shortages to appear in other places. He was now taking advantage of the laws of supply and demand, and by the fact that the border from Canada to the US was shut down due to political pressure from a number of Montana Cattle ranchers called R-CALF and the United Stockgrowers of America, protectionist ranchers' groups long opposed to the beef trade if it meant less money for them.
These groups along with Harding, were now making money hand over fist, even though the infected feed for cattle on both sides of the border came from the same feed mills in the US. Harding had been dropping suggestions of whose pockets to line and the fact that Montana federal judge Richard Cebull would be quite willing to manipulate federal politicians, through the use of a corrupt American legal system. Harding and many of the members of R-CALF had been buying cattle at dirt cheap prices on the north side of the border, buying land from ranchers who had lost the life savings of many generations, unable to survive the financial pressure. Harding had used his influence in three large beef processing conglomerates, that he had stakes in to gain control of the processing industry north of the border as well. He even had total control of whatever government aid went to try to keep the industry alive.
Even though the US government had collected ample evidence to show that Canadian livestock did not present a health risk and that Canadian beef was among the safest and highest quality beef in the world, Harding continued to hold their strings so that the border remained closed.
His control of the media allowed him to keep the attention of the multi-headed beast, away from this subject and many others.
In the country of Somalia, hundreds of thousands would die due to the greed of others secret Uranium mines in the Galgadud and Bur Hakaba areas as well as gold mines in various other regions were making Edward Harding rich from this angle as well. Though world relief had not been supplying the workers since the early nineties. The sale of enriched uranium to various groups in Iran and North Korea made this a minor detail. Somalia was generally regarded as an arid part of the world with absolutely nothing to offer the industrialized world in the form of raw materials, so it was an easy matter for Harding to keep it almost absolutely invisible to the rest of the world, even with the amazing amount of human misery manifesting itself there.
…
This is a descriptive snapshot into the life of Edward Harding the antagonist in a book I have written but not yet published. It is not part of the book but could be similar to the extra little cartoon included in “The Incredibles” was not really part of the original movie but could have been. I might continue this little thread (putting some action into it instead of pure description). It depends on whether people prefer this type of prose, or “The Simple Life” style, which I probably won’t find worthwhile writing.
Edward Harding sat in the large overstuffed, very high backed chair in the centre of his cavernous drawing room. Expensive paintings cuddled by heavy, ornate gold leaf covered frames lined the walls. Several ornate sculptures stood on pedestals in various places around the room. He was reading a newspaper. A smirk was once again on his lips. He loved to watch the writhing movements of this huge multi-headed beast called humanity. Once again the news media, which he was proud to have a large financial stake in, was reporting on one of those issues that could be played up to a fever pitch of emotion, completely diverting attention from the really bad things happening in the world.
The fate of a woman named Terri Schiavo once again was in the hands of a judge, following an extraordinary political fight over the brain-damaged woman that consumed both American chambers of Congress and prompted the president to rush back to the White House from his Texas ranch.
Taking the Senate’s lead, the House passed a bill to let the woman’s parents ask a federal judge to prolong Schiavo’s life by reinserting her feeding tube. President Bush then signed the measure less than an hour later. A White House source said he was woken from his sleep for the signing.
This issue had been ping-ponging back and forth in various courts for years and the life, or existence, of the woman was in the balance once again. Any individual on the street would most likely say that he or she would prefer to simply have an end put to their earthly existence if the prospects of their life was going to be from the point of view of a turnip, but when the collective voice comes together and the controllers of those voices begin to sing, existence takes precedence over all.
News broadcasts all over the world reported traffic accidents as either deaths or “non-life threatening” incidents. If the beast called humanity could spend a day as the non-life threatened person who was to look through the eyes of a potato for the rest of his life or experience life as a head connected to a lifeless mass of rubber hoses, it might consider quality of life as opposed to the simple switch of life or death.
Edward Harding’s main interest was in the drug industry he controlled and the various underground sideline industries that made even more money than the supposedly legitimate ones. Biological research was extremely lucrative, and research carried out fifteen years ago was finally making him a large amount of money. Harding had commissioned research into Prions, a simple form of pseudo life made of proteins. These had been discovered to be the substance of the disease BSE or mad cow disease. The disease wasn’t transferable from one cow to the next unless one cow consumed protein from an infected cow. This means of course that the milk from a cow could pass the infection to her calf. What was even more interesting to the silent emperor, to which he often referred to himself, was the fact that if one ground up the parts of the cow that people didn’t normally eat and mixed them into the feed of other cows, they grew bigger and faster. Most people eating a steak might find this to be offensive in itself, if they only knew. If he mixed the discarded parts from an infected cow, into the feed that was to be given to cows in specific locations such as the province of Alberta in Canada, where great quantities of beef were raised, then eventually he could cause the disease to rear its ugly head, the source to be banned and shunned and then shortages to appear in other places. He was now taking advantage of the laws of supply and demand, and by the fact that the border from Canada to the US was shut down due to political pressure from a number of Montana Cattle ranchers called R-CALF and the United Stockgrowers of America, protectionist ranchers' groups long opposed to the beef trade if it meant less money for them.
These groups along with Harding, were now making money hand over fist, even though the infected feed for cattle on both sides of the border came from the same feed mills in the US. Harding had been dropping suggestions of whose pockets to line and the fact that Montana federal judge Richard Cebull would be quite willing to manipulate federal politicians, through the use of a corrupt American legal system. Harding and many of the members of R-CALF had been buying cattle at dirt cheap prices on the north side of the border, buying land from ranchers who had lost the life savings of many generations, unable to survive the financial pressure. Harding had used his influence in three large beef processing conglomerates, that he had stakes in to gain control of the processing industry north of the border as well. He even had total control of whatever government aid went to try to keep the industry alive.
Even though the US government had collected ample evidence to show that Canadian livestock did not present a health risk and that Canadian beef was among the safest and highest quality beef in the world, Harding continued to hold their strings so that the border remained closed.
His control of the media allowed him to keep the attention of the multi-headed beast, away from this subject and many others.
In the country of Somalia, hundreds of thousands would die due to the greed of others secret Uranium mines in the Galgadud and Bur Hakaba areas as well as gold mines in various other regions were making Edward Harding rich from this angle as well. Though world relief had not been supplying the workers since the early nineties. The sale of enriched uranium to various groups in Iran and North Korea made this a minor detail. Somalia was generally regarded as an arid part of the world with absolutely nothing to offer the industrialized world in the form of raw materials, so it was an easy matter for Harding to keep it almost absolutely invisible to the rest of the world, even with the amazing amount of human misery manifesting itself there.
…
This is a descriptive snapshot into the life of Edward Harding the antagonist in a book I have written but not yet published. It is not part of the book but could be similar to the extra little cartoon included in “The Incredibles” was not really part of the original movie but could have been. I might continue this little thread (putting some action into it instead of pure description). It depends on whether people prefer this type of prose, or “The Simple Life” style, which I probably won’t find worthwhile writing.