Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a really rich
Sultan. He's got General attached to his name and God is thrown in there
somewhere too. He loves horses. He owns hundreds of em. He,
also, kind of owns this country, or is partners with another Sultan. Now
this rich Sultan named God goes and makes Endurance riding a National Sport in
the country that he owns with this other Sultan. His countrymen, they
all love him cause he's rich and he employs all of them, and he looks good on
a horse. They'll do anything the Sultan wants. They learn to
ride, and they ride well. They ride all over the world. And
endurance riding is their specialty.
Now the Lord General Sultan decides he wants this National Sport of his
country in the Olympics. So he goes and heads up on the main board that
controls everything in his neck of the woods called the Foreign Endurance
Idiot's Board. They run everything in the world of endurance
riding everywhere except for a couple places like Australia and America,
those damn renegade countries where the folks there don't have the respect for
Sultans like they should. The people in those countries act like they're FREE
or something, but the Sultan knows better.
So, he decides to infiltrate these places by hiring people in each of
them to go work for him and buy up their good horses for his
stable. They're paid lots of money and their job is to let everyone know
that to love money is to love a Sultan, which in turn, is to love
God. And this seems to work pretty well, especially when he makes a rich
guy out of a poor one when he buys one of his horses. The price of
horses just went up in the two renegade countries, American and Australia,
cause the Sultan has that much money.
Then someone, who has the Sultan's ear and knows what he wants, suggests
that they start advertising in the Endurance publications, to get the word
out. And the word is "Olympics;" you too can be a part of
it. We can do it if we just unite into one world entity headed by
General Lord Sultan, of course, and accomplish this. You just have to
join us, and by the way, the Foreign Endurance Idiot's Rules apply, but don't
worry about that, y'all will adjust to the uniforms, the rules, the stewards,
and the bullshit. Besides, it's one world order now, so you MUST CONFORM
and do it our way or hit the highway. But, it's too early to let that cat out
of the bag, even though this is the overall plan.
And then the Sultan decides to put out a magazine, he calls it World
Endurance even though the pictures of endurance equestrians only
show members from his country. This will get the word out, and those
pesky Americans and Aussies will get in line. AFter all, they need the
money, they want the money (especially those greedy Americans), and Lord
General, King of Kings, has the money.
And to top it all off, he invites them all to come stay with him for a
spell in his castle, has a big horse endurance race and pays for
everything (even flies their horses over the big ocean). He brings
in the best riders from the renegade countries and others to show that it's
all one big united world, and we all are in this together. ONe big team,
with Lord General Sultan as our Leader. And this has quite an effect,
the great riders from their countries go home and tell everyone just how great
Lord General Sultan is.
And if someone questions what's going on, as in, isn't this a conflict
for this guy to get his hands in every pie all over the world, and also, be a
participant in the sport? Wouldn't that be like Shaquille O'Neil playing
basketball, owning the team, and owning NBC Sports coverage as well? And
all the commercials we see are enterprises owned by Shaq? To this, the
well known riders reply, "This is no man, this is a GOD. And every rider
wants to ride with, and follow, God; don't you?"
Now, my story isn't done yet, it's still a work in progress. It
changes day by day. But for some reason, call me silly, this is where I
believe the PRIME CONFLICT OF INTEREST LIES.
Now, I will warn those of you who intend to flame me with hate mail ahead
of time. I know I'll get some and those that call me RAcist cause I go
after one guy and he just happens to be non Jewish, can go pound sand.
My warning is if your hatemail is really well written (this is rare, I admit),
I just might share it with the group, cause well written hatemail should not
be kept to oneself. That would be incredibly selfish of me to do
so. So, just cause you think you might have a special bond with me and
think that I should keep this special bond of hate secret and
between the two of us, DON'T COUNT ON IT.
cya,
Howard (if only I could convince VAl that her comparison between FEI and
AHSA is my comparison between AERC and FEI)