The corrupting value of chores

My dear Tombshard,

A quick report on what has been a remarkably busy yet marvelous day around Zero-A. It is amazing how a little thing can be so useful for planting the seeds of evil.

The Mother decided that today was high time to do a “few little” changes around the home. These changes involve quite a lot of work: a bit of minor construction, quite a lot of painting, some wallpapering, and so on. Father was less inclined to the idea. His work is done primarily out of an office in the home, which means he is actually around most of the day: and Mother decided today was a perfect opportunity to take advantage of this. Father, of course, with a little bit of nudging from us, felt quite taken advantage of indeed. This was not what he intended to do, and since he didn’t feel particularly like sacrificing we were able to tip him in favor of petulance.

Elder Brother might have been helpful but had planned other activities for the day and, taking his cue from Father (without even realizing it), he too moved in favor of petulance. Unfortunately we were unable to sway the daughter–curse her sainted little head. But I am not clear if she is being “good” because it earns her points with her parents or because she truly wishes to be. Whatever the case, she managed to balance things out.

Still, as we were able to show the interns today (Zho particularly showed his mettle here) one mustn’t count out the little things. All throughout the day we managed to draw each patient’s attention to (real or imagined) slights, insults, digs, etc. Resentment and no small amount of bitterness will hopefully be the fruit of the seeds planted in their minds. The trick is to keep their eyes on things small enough to be proudly overlooked (”shows how big I am, I will ignore this”) and not confronted, dealt with, forgiven and set aside–yet big enough to remain embedded in their thoughts and minds for days and weeks to come. This is particularly useful where the women are concerned. Women, of course, remember things forever–a fact which men can be brought to find highly annoying.

The upshot is that our interns were kept very busy, and more importantly we have managed to discover many specific little things that can trigger our patients to listen to us. At the same time, we were able to pass on “bad vibes” to all manner of people–the sales clerks at the store, the delivery truck drivers, between the Elder Brother and the Zero-B girl, between the Mother and some of her friends, and so on. We are mapping all of the relationships based on how easily certain attitudes can be transmitted. Very useful intelligence, indeed!

Meanwhile, Father is starting to feel certain pains and discomforts. Today he chalked it up to the unsual exertions. We have to decide what our strategy is going to be. I will reflect on this and report next week.

What progress on our reinforcements? I have heard nothing on this. They would have been very useful today!

Yours affectionately,
Greystone