[asia-apec 438] A Prayer to the Global Corporate Gods

[PAN Asia Pacific]

A Prayer to the Global Corporate Gods:

O mighty global corporations, we are helpless without you. Please bring
your menial jobs here to our nation and town. Though we have little
control over these arbitrary and tedious jobs that create wealth for
stockholders rather than us, they are all that we lowly workers deserve.
Grant us your x dollars per hour so that we might have hope of
purchasing your fine plastic products that bestow lasting contentment.
Forgive us when we question your authority or do not work fast enough,
for we are but wretched servants, and please oh pretty please do not
cast us onto the street where there is much weeping and knashing of
teeth.

Drive us to serve you ever more diligently until our decrepit bodies and
minds break down, then patch us up in your hospitals and with your
anti-depressants as much as necessary to return to your service. And
when you have used us up completely, secure us in your nursing homes so
that we do not annoy you or your still-faithful devotees further.

O corporate one big happy family Fathers, some of us are so worthless
that our skills do not match your product plans, and our resultant
poverty has led us astray to where we have broken the righteous
commandments that protect your bountiful property from us.  Other
backsliders have foolishly attempted to escape the indoctrination of
your dollars through the use of mind altering substances. We accept that
the only rightful place for these shameful sinners among us is in a cold
cell of thick concrete deep within your prisons, where you will still
mercifully grace these human by-products with a few quarters per hour to
manufacture your office furniture.

For those few hours when we are not in your service, thank you for
blessing us all with the security of predictable name brand products,
and for their copious packaging that assures that no heathens have laid
their unclean hands on the wondrous gifts within. Continue to spew your
intelligent poisons into our farmland and food to protect us from the
sinister insects and microorganisms. Prepare our food and even serve it
to us, that we may have more time to serve you. We will gladly consume
whatever you hand down to us, for you are all-knowing.

Please pacify us with a plethora of prefabricated entertainment, as we
have forgotten how to entertain each other. Reveal to us through your
inspired media what we are to believe, for surely we cannot trust our
own feeble judgement. Similarly commodify any remaining life activities,
so that our angst-ridden existence is no more challenging than a series
of multiple-choice questions.

Most important, guide your wise politicians financially as they strive
to make this region of the planet more cost-effective for you by
abolishing the evil worker rights laws, corporate taxation, and
environmental protections that offend you deeply and drive you away from
us. Help them enlighten the more backward cultures by dropping your holy

bombs on the people of those demonic nation-states that still refuse to
bow down before you.

And thank you for undercutting the pitifully small local businesses that
would dare defy your divine dominance and threaten the sacred homogenous
culture in which you have safely wrapped us. Truly all resources belong
to you, and we are but humble stewards of them. Continue to devour the
land and excrete into the rivers --- the Earth is your banquet and your
toilet. For thine is the empire, the power, and the planet, until you
destroy it.

Amen.

Copyright 1996 BiggerTheyCome (TM) Enterprises, a wholly-owned
subsidiary of GlobalGobble Corporation. Just try and steal this
intellectual property, you peasant, and see what happens!