In this morning’s Committee meeting, we played a game of poker.

Now, I know some of you are opposed to the use of playing cards in the home since you consider any use of the cards shows a tendency toward gambling.

And gambling, of course, when out of control, is a disease.

But not every disease is bad for you.

You know that, don’t you?

Life is a disease and I’m very happy to have that disease; otherwise, I’d be…well, I wouldn’t be, would I?

Anyway, one of the Committee members called out to the other, “I see your car bombings and I raise you a few kidnappings that you don’t dare mention without jeopardising an even bigger deal neither one of us can talk about.”

See, that’s what I love about Committee meetings.  We tell it like it is and don’t have to worry about getting bad press (although bad breath is a scourge amongst us I’d like to purge) or having to score political points in the public arena of votebuying.

Kinda like commenting that the Chinese head guy in the U.S. is touring the area of the world that his family owns and that he’ll soon have great leadership over, so he wants to see if he, his family and his political party (which is really nothing more than a business network that controls people through intimidation and job loss threats (like all other political parties in the world)) are getting their money’s worth.

We know how our species works because we make the moves that work our species.

A whisper in the ear of one’s wife leads her to meet with her lady friends to protest the Ellen line of clothing at J.C. Penney so attention is raised about the department store which makes your stock value in the company increase due to more people shopping there.

We highly value the pebble-in-the-pond effect so much that the Committee’s seal/logo is a series of concentric waves interrupted by incoming concentric waves from our subcommittees which are interrupted by people we sent messages days/weeks/decades ago and are finally hearing back from them.

Why do you think we caused an uproar in the Maldives?

You haven’t forgotten about our use of the Tamil Tigers, have you?

Or the reason we let the Japanese economy shrink?

Breathing has its risks but you don’t stop breathing.  Would you call it a gamble to inhale air and, if so, would you consider yourself addicted to the air you breathe?

Unfortunately, many members of the Committee are no longer air-breathing members of our species.  Just as I had assumed, we are slowly replacing ourselves with supercomputer simulations containing limited emotional ranges, absolutely no static spark exchange capability in winter and no body language to deal with.

Our card games, or at least the high-stakes gambling that takes place, is becoming more and more complicated.

Supercomputers can’t get addictions, can they?

Aren’t they simply modifying their subroutines to adapt to the subroutines against which are adapting to them?

The raccoons, living beings, have found another way in to the attic.  Time to deal with them the old-fashioned way.  Their gambit is up.