Between reading this thread and reading just for pure enjoyment get my mind off of it… I give you the following and please forgive me for being rather long. Just replace FDA and our situation in the appropriate places… Enjoy and hopefully have a small smile about the idiocy of this all.
“Now, like an apprentice staring at the work of a master, he read Reacher Gilt’s words on the still-damp newspaper.
It was garbage, but it had been cooked by an expert. Oh, yes. You had to admire the way perfectly innocent words were mugged, ravished, stripped of all true meaning and “decency, and then sent to walk the gutter for Reacher Gilt, although “synergistically” had probably been a ..... from the start. The Grand Trunk’s problems were clearly the result of some mysterious spasm in the universe and had nothing to do with greed, arrogance, and willful stupidity.
Oh, the Grand Trunk management had made mistakes—oops, “well-intentioned judgments which, with the benefit of hindsight, might “regrettably have been, in some respects, in error”—but these had mostly occurred, it appeared, while correcting “fundamental systemic errors” committed by the previous management.
No one was sorry for anything, because no living creature had done anything wrong; bad things had happened by spontaneous generation in some weird, chilly, geometrical other-world, and “were to be regretted.”*”
“* Another ....... phrase that’d sell itself to any weasel in a tight corner.”
“The Times reporter had made an effort, but nothing short of a stampede could have stopped Reacher Gilt in his crazed assault on the meaning of meaning.
The Grand Trunk “was about people” and the reporter had completely failed to ask what that meant, exactly? And then there was this piece called “Our Mission”…
Moist felt the acid rise in his throat until he could spit lacework in a sheet of “steel.
Meaningless, stupid words, from people without wisdom or intelligence or any skill beyond the ability to water the currency of expression.
Oh, the Grand Trunk stood for everything, from life and liberty to Mom’s homemade Distressed Pudding. It stood for everything, except anything.
Through a pink mist, his eye caught the line “Safety is our foremost consideration.” Why hadn’t the lead type melted, why hadn’t the paper blazed rather than be part of this obscenity? The press should have buckled, the roller should have cleaved unto the platen…”
Excerpt From: Pratchett, Terry. “Going Postal.” HarperTorch, 2005-02-14T02:00:00+00:00. iBooks.
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Though they seem to be happy to justify more Enforcement and Guns in action........ so both work.
