My Brief Career as Sloganeer for HAP

I needed a job. They needed a writer without humanistic moral qualms to create slogans for the Human Annihilation Project that would encourage both brisk donations and 100% die-off of the human population, especially in the developed world where life expectancies have gotten way out of hand.

The irony of the group's struggle to fund-raise for survival never flashed inside their tightly focused and devoted brains.  Of course, recognition of irony requires something like a sense of humor. HAP leadership never heard a joke it could understand. This should have been a harbinger of doom both for my job prospects and their enterprise. You can get a smallish cult to drink a bitter cup of Kool-Aid, but not six-plus billion hammering away at the planet all across the planet. Nonetheless, we agreed upon a salary and I began my work.

It was tough to get started. But I had mammoth student loans to pay for after earning my MFA through the University of Phoenix Low Residency Creative Writing Program. I now realize I should have opted for the PHD in Communications, but youthful dreams of a Nobel Prize in Literature die hard.

I worked at home so the siren calls of beer and daytime History Channel alien astronaut theorists and apocalyptic plate tectonics were hard to resist. After a week of nothing, I decided I really needed the job and had to start putting words to paper.  At three AM the Monday of my first nine o'clock review meeting with the board and executive director, I had what I thought were some great slogans to share:


Homo sapiens-
the one species
the planet would
be better off
without.



Cheer for bacteria
and viruses. Let the meek
inherit the earth.



Exterminate the humans.
Leave the plants
and other animals
alone.

    

Cheering for humanity
is rather like
cheering for the Nazis.
Sure, they've got
whiz-bang technology
and boffo graphic design.
But, they're pretty much
a bunch of assholes.


I was stoked but fell asleep by three-fifteen.

The meeting did not go well.  The coffee was weak, there was no half and half, and the Danish were from Wal-Mart. The room was too bright for the PowerPoint to have much punch. And the board and director were dismayed that the slogans weren't more upbeat, subtle and subliminal. By 10:00 AM, I was out of work, again. I should have used a different font.