Forecast Fun

Insurance is like a myth. From one small seed of truth, a fairytale the size of 1000 giant sequoias has sprung up. Reality is blocked from view. Surely, you’ve noticed all the giant, sequoia-like buildings are owned by banks and insurance companies. Where do they get all that money? How much money do the executives make? Who pays for it all? Grab a mirror. “Magic mirror on the wall, who’s the biggest sucker of them all? What’s that you said? The Masses!”

Insurance is yet another unquestioned social reflex. You just buy it. You must. The banker insists you have to purchase insurance or you don’t get the loan. Your government orders you to buy auto insurance at any cost. Hence, it must be really good for you. Hell, why not stock up on some of the non-mandated insurances as well? You can’t have too much of a good thing. Can you?

Somewhere in the dark, murky corners of our minds we hide our thoughts. Like The Emperor’s New Clothes, no one screams out, “But he has nothing on!” or “Hey, this is just bullshit!” You are not alone in the darkness. We all think it. So you are no longer scared to speak, here are some of those secret thoughts voiced out loud for the first time:

1) If I speak out against insurance, I will be jinxed. My home will surely burn to the ground and I will look like a moron.

2) If I speak out against insurance, some pecker-head who heard me will have an accident and sue me because folks are not responsible for their own choices.

3) Insurance is betting against myself. Why would I bet against me?

4) If insurance companies must charge such high premiums because they’re losing so much in payouts, how do they afford all those big buildings?

5) What do insurance companies sell? Air? Promises they intend to deny via small print? Contracts? Wouldn’t I rather buy an IHOP franchise with that money?

6) If government represents the people, why do they make me, a people, a criminal when I cannot afford auto insurance to get to work and feed my family?

7) How much in dollars and perks do insurance lobbyists put into the pockets of politicians?

Do I really need trip-cancellation insurance? Why would I buy a dream trip, and then bet on my canceling it at the last moment?

9) If I put all the money I spend on insurance into the bank or toward building success, how much money would I have for coping with my problems on my own terms?

10) If I buy the extended warranty, will I remember I have it or be able to find it when my widget explodes?

11) Shouldn’t companies make quality widgets that last three years in the first place?

12) And finally, did Jennifer Lopez really insure herself for hundreds of millions of dollars? What? She is already rich. The agent who sold this policy is phenomenal.

Yes, we all know the system is way out of hand! The blame lies with insurance companies, greedy bankers, spineless politicians and with the Masses unquestioningly supporting these absurdities. Every frivolous lawsuit provides government an excuse for mandating people be protected from themselves via costly insurances and removal of individual freedoms.

Before long, we will be required to carry Coffee-Burn riders on auto insurance and Cell- Phone-Earring-Tear addendums on HMOs. These days Sleeping Beauty would have sued the castle owner (a.k.a. Dad) for that prick on the finger, lost wages from the coma and for trauma from the scar. Uninsured sewing needles would be outlawed throughout the kingdom.

With a system this out of control, how do you protect yourself? You cut the fat. Quit betting against yourself. Think about all those different types of insurance. Stop buying out of reflex and decide for yourself what you can kick to the curb. Consider the variety out there and what you truly must have.

Life Insurance is for betting you will die such a loser that you can’t pay for your own funeral or leave your kids any inheritance. Extra Car Insurance-How much you betting that you will crash? Not to mention, homeowner’s, mortgage, trip cancellation, emergency evacuation, unemployment, boat, credit card, business interruption, earthquake, disability, dental, smoker, expatriate, backpack traveler, winter sports, flood, warranty and health insurance. The list goes on.

Here is a new monument to the ludicrous: Terrorist Insurance. It’s even pushed at Art Gallery Owner’s in isolated communities of the Northern Great Plains. And, why not? No doubt Osama is crouching in an Afghan cave right now, plotting to rid the world of those pesky Remmington Cowboy bronzes.

Insurance agents prey upon these new fears like snakes on wounded mice. Apparently, companies want to terrorize you into buying coverage. Another possibility is a rebel SCUD aimed for Mount Rushmore may slam into a Canada Goose and go askew. It sucks when this happens! No doubt your goat ranch in Chug Water, Wyoming is in eminent danger from this likely chain of events. Perhaps, you should add a specific ‘Unpasteurized-Cheese Addendum’ to your Terrorist Policy. Call your agent today and ask them. See if they will sell you one.

The odds of you dying of a mosquito bite are better than the odds you will die at the hands of a terrorist. Well, crap! The government better permit companies to require we all carry Mosquito Insurance. Maybe you can get a DEET discount! Better still; why not turn over all our bothersome responsibility, like freedom and privacy, to the Feds. Then good ol’ Uncle Sam can protect citizens from the winged menaces that haunt our very souls.

Congress could raise taxes to fund Bug Inspectors. Their job would be to comb through your private life, home and property looking for freestanding water. They would not look for anything else (roll eyes here). Still cancer and glaucoma patients might want to keep the baggies away from the birdbath.

Speaking of cancer, the Air Force could spray us all from above with a perfectly “safe” mixture of insecticides called Agent Tan. Coincidently, that day your governor vacations far away. Is there anybody in his or her right mind who would elect an insurance salesman to public office? Of course, both politicians and insurers are selling you hot air, so perhaps it is a match made in H…

A very few insurances are worth buying, such as liability insurance for cars and real estate. Once you have something to lose, it’s a sure bet some lazy troll with an entitlement-mentality will try to sue you. In this case, you want the giants on your side. Insurance companies provide lawyers to run evil little trolls back under their bridges.

Insurance prices in America are out of control. The wide range of insurance the bureaucracy would have us believe we cannot live without is genuinely insulting. Buying all the coverage companies would have you believe you need wastes thousands of your dollars each year. Look over policies and eliminate what you can. Insurance is just legalized gambling. If you are betting against yourself, how can you take a gamble on yourself? Pursue your dreams instead!

The preceding is an excerpt from the book Keeping the Masses Down. Satirist Nola L. Kelsey (www.NolaKelsey.com.) is the coauthor and “primary scribe” of this twisted political satire. Kelsey is also the author of the scathingly wicked comedy Bitch Unleashed: The Harsh Realities of Goin’ Country. August K. Anderson, a former lawyer, long time CEO of Golden Quest Enterprises (www.chevalinternational.com) and one of the country’s top equestrians, is the primary political force behind Masses. Her ideals formed the cornerstone of this motivational, life-conquering manual.

© Copyright 2005

“MURALS”
( A brief excerpt from our book )

The abstract notion of ’society’, much touted by politicians, is, of course, a shibboleth. Society is the sum total of human relationships especially those we designate as “role-playing”. Man is a social being and his life is by definition contextual. How he relates to himself, his work, his friends, his past, his present, his future, his family and the world in general determines his life and defines him. From the wastelands of the social pariah to the media touted ‘pillar of the establishment’ is a broad spectrum indeed. It is a spectrum explored by satirists in general and by many of the major playwrights. Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”, for example, is essentially an expose of the craziness of man as a social being. The theatre deals expressly with all aspects of social relationships. Is theatrical expression political? How can it not?

Painting deals with context quite consciously. Context is as much a theme of Manet’s ‘Dejeuner Sur L’herbe’ as it is of Beckett’s “En Attendant Godot”. It is as much exemplified in Picasso’s Guernica as it is in the work of Magritte and De Chirico. All art is social. All art is therefore political in essence. Whether it becomes overtly political or covertly political has as much to do with context, as it has to do with the artist himself. A portrait of Hitler would be a revered object in a Neo-Nazi’s lair but in a Jewish synagogue it would be something else entirely, if indeed it managed to hang there for more than ten seconds. Just as a man can attain immediate notoriety by streaking in the wrong place at the right time so careerists in the art world manipulate context in order to win maximum attention for themselves. Advertisers too like Benetton have not been slow to learn the trick. Therefore, to label certain artists as ‘political’ is simply to say they are ‘overtly’ political in the same way as a pickpocket is conspicuously a thief while the retailer who overcharges for his merchandise is merely a ‘respected businessman’. Both are playing the same game. The word is not the thing.

How we relate to things will have a lot to say about the choices we make. After all, bigotry itself and its extreme manifestation racism, is at heart a relationship problem. The antithesis of the ugly and the beautiful is primarily a contextual problem whose parameters are always shifting. Consequently, modern art critics, bereft of any normative frame of reference in our time are all at sea as to what constitutes ‘good’ art and what ‘bad’. Wily businessmen like Saatchi and Saatchi and unscrupulous curators everywhere are ever ready to capitalize on their ignorance and on the befuddlement of the public in general.

Since the ’scandalous’ arrival of Duchamp’s urinal the use of context has become a favorite weapon in the artist’s armatorium. From that point of view there is really nothing new about Hirst’s work. Surrealism, as a movement outside of its psychological pretensions, was pragmatically an investigation into context. In the era of New Age thinking, of course, and technological “advancement” all this seems like old hat these days but in their time these cultural statements were radical in the extreme.

In the case of The Bogside Artists the context was given. We were born into it. The site we chose to paint our murals, The Bogside, was a familiar part of our habitat. It was a daily fact of our existence, where we had lived and played, our history. It was drenched in blood. This by itself would, paradoxically and despite the blunderbuss abuse of our critics, make our work very reflective of where modern art is headed at the moment. For, it has long been an embarrassing fact to many curators that the gallery itself provides a false context for the viewing of art. The gallery in effect becomes a mediator between the viewer for whom the work was made and the artist himself. This leads to a reification of the work and a corresponding alienation of the work, the artist and his public. Art galleries therefore look wistfully at community art and the work of muralists like ourselves. They establish ‘Outreach Programs’ in the hope of redressing the balance. Performance artists, let us not forget, came into being explicitly to fill this gap.

With public art the modus operandi of the careerist artist whose will is to challenge the viewer on the presupposition that the viewer is actually blind and stupid, would nakedly contradict the context in which the mural artist seeks to live. The muralist’s first remit is to communicate; else he would not have chosen a public site in the first place. He is willingly addressing public context, public mind, public belief, public perceptions in all their variety and contradictions. He is not appealing to the dilettante or the culture vulture. He is a rebel, painting with passion because he knows that true art is poetry and poetry is not the proper arena for careerism, which rightfully belongs to the market place and its chicanery. He is appealing, first and foremost, to the man in the street, on the assumption that the man in the street is not completely blind and no crazier than the artists who address him. This is the context in which the muralist places himself. It can be thin ice to walk upon, as the experiences of The Bogside Artists will readily testify; because it involves the whole social context. There are political currents to avoid and tribal rapids to negotiate. We seek to honor the context we have been given; not to abuse it in the name of an infantile delusion of license masquerading as ‘freedom’ which alone characterizes much of what passes for so-called ‘contemporary art’.

About the Author

William Kelly is one of The Bogside Artists. He is author of Murals. More info about the artists can be got at;
www.bogsideartists.com