Federal Employee Disability Retirement: The Game of Calumny

If not one’s reputation, what is the remaining value? If truth is not a goal, then what fills the void? Yes, from ashes to ashes, and back to dust, and the elements which make up man are constituted by nothing unique beyond the environment from which he originates, and to which he returns; but the linguistic act of reductionism fails to achieve a full embrace, and just like the defensive football player who hesitates for a moment and sees the blur of the ball carrier speed past, so the aftertaste of materialistic reductionism is somehow unsatisfying. […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The 1956 version of the film (the only one worth watching) was in black & white, and created a sensation among French Existentialists for the greatest horror committed upon a human being: to strip one of all human emotion, and transform the person into a robotic automaton of sorts. Camus’ novel, The Stranger, reveals a similar theme through the titular character, Meursault, where the absurdity of life, the indifference of humanity, all serve to compel him to commit a murder without reason or rationale, in a universe without emotion — until the very end when, faced with the certainty of the guillotine, […] Read More …

OPM Disability Retirement: Masking Imperfections

Have you ever noticed how British actors don’t have the same perfectly white teeth as their American counterparts? Or, for that matter, any non-American, foreign television personality; unless, of course, they have lived here for a few years, in which case they have already undergone the cosmetic transformation of dental voila. Beware of that which one preaches for others; for, someday, it may come back to embrace the hypocrisy of one’s being. Yet, when something becomes the normative standard for everyone, then boredom and monotony of purpose begins to set in. […] Read More …