In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 67-74

My, we had an upsurge in activity here yesterday. Jeff, did you tell people we have lurid pictures on this blog? Or was it the advertisement you put on the employee bulletin board? Whatever the cause, I shall celebrate by increasing the number of stanzas in today's posting:

Now, don’t infer a lack of self-control.
They know the cost and what they can afford.
Like you and me, they calculate the toll.
Like us, they measure risk and seek reward.

For all incentive systems to perform,
we need something to want or to eschew.
With critters, pain and pleasure are the norm.
As humans, we have moral values, too.

When one of these yet ill-defined things grows
to where some feel they lack the strength to opt,
we still blame those who hold it, for they chose
to let it happen, and they could have stopped.

But stop they not, and after some delay,
a few of them drop hesitating hints.
Some others listen; some express dismay.
They all come to, but guess what happens since.

Before they get a chance to try their hand
at tricking politicians to the brink,
a comet is discovered that will land
on Earth. We’re dying sooner than we think!

The founders are ecstatic when they hear.
They hadn’t really planned the whole thing through,
and this way, they’ve no punishment to fear.
The comet’s dust cloud will be cleaner, too.

The comet won’t receive its spotter’s name.
Astronomers have simplified that job,
though some suspect it’s merely out of shame
at having one that sounds so like ‘Hail, "Bob"!’

A letter and a numeral have we
to catalogue this ball of rock and ice.
The ‘J’ is for some mythic deity;
the ‘1’ must be an ordinal device.

©2010 Louis A. Merrimac

Hail, "Bob": No doubt nearly all Subgenii, when they first heard the name 'Hale-Bopp', thought a comet had been named after J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, the High Epopt of their church. They usually refer to him by his first name with the quote marks.
J-1: Another Subgenius reference.