The Olive Press

This is BTW, an old, old story:

Once a long time ago, the Devil and his ministers and demons held a conference. The Devil was tired of using all his manpower to assign a devil to each person in order to squeeze negativity out of each one separately, and he sought for a way to set up a kind of "toll booth", or other such contrivance that would squeeze and suck out the negativity of many people at once, or at least free up some demonic power to be used on another front.

There were many suggestions, but the one that interested the Devil the most was the idea of the "olive press".

If you know anything about olive oil, then you won't have a hard time following this logic: First and best olive oil is called cold pressed extra virgin olive oil, which is really sweet high grade olive oil. Then there is second cold pressing, followed by third cold pressing, after which the olive need to be heated to get out more oil. Then there is final pressing which crushes as much oil out of each olive as can be gotten. The remnant is simple pulp which is thrown away.

One of the Devils most trusted Demons, who had been studying engineering in his spare time suggested setting up mechanical devices all over the world that would squeeze the oil of negativity out of people as if they were olives.

First cold pressing virgin olive oil could be gotten from small children simply be placing obstacles in their way, like high walled cribs, and those leashed that parents put their children in, and they invented the word NO, which they taught to parents all over the world...

Every time a parent or guardian would tell a child NO (try to imagine how many times a child hears that word before it is even 5 years old -- it's astronomical), a little trickle of really high quality negativity would be squeezed out of the child, and eventually the word NO would have a siphoning effect, and the child would learn the word and use it on it's parents and then the olive press would work on the parents too, so that this one word, a negative word, NO, which had never been in Man's vocabulary until then, would serve as a wonderful way to introduce children to the world of demonic negativity. At the same time, at about the age of two, soon after the child started to talk, it would learn this negative word and use it on the parents, and the oil would start to flow from all sides.

Yummy, thought all the demons and imps. They applauded this engineer Demon and called him a genius and immediately began teaching the parents to say NO to all sorts of harmless things like a child exploring it's world. They added "DON'T" and other spicy words to the parents vocabulary and the olive press was all set. Nothing for the demons to do but sit back and enjoy their contrivance at work. Wonderful juicy extra virgin oil out of mankind.

Then they thought about the adolescents, and their natural rebelliousness, and they added a few adjustments and they managed to create huge fights between parents and their teenagers. This is "wonderful", they thought, "magical", now they had a second pressing and got tons of delicious oil from families.

The engineer demon wasn't finished. He called together all the architect devils together and asked them to influence the world by setting up devices all over the place to squeeze negativity out of otherwise calm and "good" people.

They worked all through the night (which in hell lasts forever), and then put their plans into action. Some examples of "olive presses" that squeeze negativity out of ordinary folks might be:

Hotel elevators that are too small, so that when everybody checks in or checks out they have to rub up against one another.

Construction on highways that cause bottlenecks and traffic jams, which drive people nuts and cause them to honk their horns at each other (which by the way, does nothing positive - makes nobody go any faster, but just increases everybody's tension)

Squeaky brakes. General increase of noise in cities. Narrow sidewalks. Detours. Crowded shopping malls.

You name it... the list goes on and on. And on and on and on.

Now, I play a game. I listen and look for the olive presses. When I see one I yell out (not out-loud but to myself),

"OLIVE PRESS, OLIVE PRESS, OLIVE PRESS!

I ask myself if I am going to let the olive press squeeze negativity out of me and I use their own word on them and say inside, NO.

I see "olive presses" all day long, and hardly any of them get any negativity out of me because I see them for what they are. Contrivances set up by the Devil and his cohorts.

How do you re-act when you are face to face with an "olive press"? Do they "get you", or do you recognize them?

Now that I have explained this subject, I wonder if it might be of any use to anybody else, to be on the lookout for olive presses and resist letting them squeeze you? Or will they succeed day after day getting the oils needed for the fires of hell? It's up to each of you your very self. Please let me know, and if you notice any "olive presses" that I have not mentioned, please make me a list, so I can be on guard for these nasty devices.

Right now they are using a jackhammer in front of my apartment, and have been making all kinds of noise from 8 in the morning till 5 at the very least. I know that they are only doing their construction jobs, but they are also without even knowing it, acting as an olive press to all the tenants in my building. They may get oil out of my neighbors (in fact I have heard some of them complain in the elevator), but they get very little out of me.