It’s me, standing on an optical illusion. This is right outside the front door, in the Executive Lounge (aka Wallace’s Patio) on the nearly famous Jamus Boss Cruiser. It is about as ordinary a picture as you can get, except it appears as if the rear bicycle wheel is larger than the front. Also, the bike seems small overall, but it is a full size 26.125” adult model. The orange object in the back carrier is my fluorescent “flak jacket” for night riding.
I am again reading “The Ugly American” (Lederer & Burdick, 1958, Norton, New York) mainly because I like the authors’ note which contains the phrase, “the rendering of fact into fiction”. The details it talks of are so carefully real that the book might have been written today. The only worse diplomatic crowd I know of is the Canadians, who intentionally recruit ethnic minorities to represent Canada abroad. One Canadian diplomat I know of was born a native Philippino. He immigrated to Canada at age 22. By 41 (when I met his mother), he had lived in Canada less than eight months, and was stationed not in Manila, but in Paris. She did little but tell about the constant expensive booze parties he threw up to six nights per week, often bragging the cost of each of these parties to be “at least $50,000 just for the drinks and all taxpayer money”.
Pudding-Tat is in a fit. I slept in until 6:40 a.m. and was late for her belly-scratch. I have one thing on schedule today, and that is buy shoes. My, given enough time. doesn’t life get exciting? (The fact is, I haven’t had time to shop since September.) Here are some details that were missed during the week.
Remember the foxy babe at the wig place? She called for some computer help; it seems all the staff wants to know when I’ll be coming back. That’s easy. Never. But I was quite curious to learn that pushy “CPA” last month was a fake. The one who phoned demanding my social security number. The one whom I told to go see a psychiatrist. Turns out it was neither an accountant or a man, but a mouthy woman filing clerk who “smokes heavily”.
Who is Patrick Kolla? I’m going to put in a plug for the guy. To any one who has used Spybot Search & Destroy, he is the man who wrote the program. You may have noticed that tiny “donate” button? Click there and take a look. He lives in Wicklow, Ireland, and you should each end him a dollar. Cash. Put a piece of tinfoil in the envelope to get past the detectors – the instructions are on the web page. It is a great program that rids your computer of spyware, and it is easily worth the dollar.
It is a fact of life that no-nonsense women attract the weakest specimens of men, and Anita is no exception. Her blog reveals the IRS wants to know why she deposited more in her account that she reported earning one year. That’s also a wake-up call for those who think the principle of self-assessment is still valid. The real crooks deal in cash while the IRS is tied up snooping on honest people. It turns out she was cashing her ex’s paychecks because he had no account of his own. That’s my Anita.
Dickens called. There haven’t been any decent offers on the shop and he is convinced Hillary is the next President. Both events make roughly the same difference to the economy around here. Dickens wants to move back up north, which brings up an interesting absurdity--while real estate ads are still saying that a thousand people a day are moving into Florida, the government office reports the population is declining. Feel free to develop your own statistics.
Oh, and instead of the shoes, I bought a refrigerator.
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