That’s how I remember the Seven Deadly Sins — Envy, Greed, Gluttony, Sloth, Lust, Anger and Pride. It’s a mnemonic device that you are free to borrow or even take credit for. No, don’t thank me. It’s my little way of trying to deflate at least one of those mortal failings.

For slapped with egg is how I feel when I have to confront my own weaknesses. When trying to chart such murky territory, the original maps are still the greatest. Los Super Seven are the basis for much of the accounting AA members do of themselves, as described in The Big Book and they also made for the best supporting cast since the Seven Dwarves in the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore film Bedazzled. (Raquel Welch was typecast as Lust but she didn’t have to say, or wear, much to make her point; Pride had a mirror fastened before his face and was forever falling down.)

I went to bed last night thinking about Greed. I just quit a job I was working for at least one wrong reason. Though it concerned a topic of importance to me, and I saw the potential for this unlaunched venture to actually be of some value to many people, I ignored early warning signs that the folks I was working with were, perhaps, incompatible for one overriding reason. I thought I would make a lot of money.

Not that there’s anything worng with that. Old hippie that I am, I never said no to a windfall and actually made some dough from investing time and even some money on internet ventures in the past. And retirement is a subject that is less abstract every year and would hate to end up a greeter at McDonadld’s (“Will dance for fries”). But here I ignored my own instincts about this gig (perilous both on the street and in the work place) and proceeded through a mine field with my eyes on some imaginary furture. Is there any other kind?

In fact, if it’s not too late, I would like to add Future Tripping to the list of Deadly Sins. I know, it ruins the mnemonic device (“Fegg Slap” sounds like a banjo style or a lost lyric from “I Am the Walrus”) but I think the projection we do, sending ourselves into some imagined outcome, makes the other sins more palatable. It’s an enabler, if you will. To be greedy of what you have is one thing (think Silas Marner) but to be possessive of that which is not in your possession, that which is not real, is a chump’s game. Hand me a handkerchief.