“The shadow moves as the sun commands.” It’s a figure of speech in the Romany language, one I learned last week. That’s right, I was kidnapped by Gypsies, and that’s where I’ve been since two days after my last post.
Now, Gypsies have been kidnapping people for centuries, and it could happen to anybody. Well, anybody who isn’t a Gypsy, anyway, since Gypsies don’t kidnap each other, unless you count Gypsy boys who kidnap Gypsy girls in order to indicate to the community that they want to marry them, but that’s a special case, to be sure. The first thing you need to realize about it, however, is that being kidnapped by Gypsies is not like most kidnappings, not by a long shot.
Because when the Mafia, the Medellin cartel, Islamic terrorists, the Irish Republican Army, an urban inner-city gang or somebody like that kidnaps you, it’s a very serious and dangerous situation. Gypsy kidnappings aren’t like that at all – in fact, they’re sort of a backhanded compliment. Gypsies don’t kidnap just anyone, you know, and their objective isn’t revenge or ransom or anything along those lines. No, if Gypsies kidnap you, that means they like you and want you to join them.
Specifically, the Gypsy who likes me and wanted me to join them is the daughter of a Gypsy chieftain. Apparently, she’s been reading this blog for a while and decided that I’d make a good Gypsy and maybe an even better husband.
I can’t say I wasn’t tempted, either, although maybe I should, since Cerise reads my blog posts. On the other hand, I’m sure Cerise will understand. The chief’s daughter was certainly beautiful enough, and maybe ten or fifteen years younger than me – what guy wouldn’t be at least tempted?
The abduction itself was quite clever. When I got to the office at about eight in the morning, I found a message from Gretchen on my voice mail saying that she was going to be late because her car had two flat tires. Right there, I should have become suspicious – first of all, Gretchen just bought that car, having spent many months trying to qualify for a loan, and second, how the hell do you get two flat tires at once? But I was preoccupied with meeting my first client of the day, and didn’t take time to analyze the situation as I should have.
So there I was, alone in my office suite, and completely unsuspecting. My first appointment turned out not to be the Bhutanese attaché for economic development, but three burly Gypsies, who had me tied, gagged, out the back door and down the stairs into a van waiting by the parking lot stairwell in less than five minutes.
I spent most of the last nine days somewhere up in the Appalachians. Where exactly, I can’t say, but it was truly gorgeous country, looking, as all the Appalachians do this time of year, like a true slice of Heaven. I think it was Melungeon territory, though. I saw a lot of them while I was there, and the Gypsies told me they’re good friends with the Melungeons. Not that I can verify that assertion, of course.
A couple of hours after I arrived, the Gypsy chieftain met with me and explained the situation. Then he handed me his satellite phone and asked me to call whomever I thought would be most appropriate and explain that I was safe and would contact them later. So, I called Gretchen and told her that I had been seized by an uncontrollable desire to visit Buenos Aires.
“No problem,” Gretchen assured me, “I hear there’s a lot of that going around lately.”
“Cancel all my appointments for the week,” I directed. “Say I’ve contracted swine flu.”
“Will do,” Gretchen cheerfully chirped. “Does that mean I can have the rest of the week off, too?”
What could I say? Of course she could. After that phone call, I attended a sumptuous feast, where I was the guest of honor and formally introduced to the Gypsy chieftain’s daughter, who turned out not only to be astoundingly hot and one truly bodacious dancer, but also capable of drinking like a sailor on shore leave.
I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it thoroughly. By midnight, I had completely forgotten about being kidnapped, and the next eight days were idyllic, to say the least. But when at last the time came, I decided to throw in my lot with the life I know and, well, if not love, at least fondly lead in Washington. The chieftain’s daughter was disappointed, and warned me that I would see her again and again in my dreams. I expect she’s right about that – she paid me a visit last night, for example. Her father, to his credit, was properly philosophical – from his point of view, he’d given me a fair chance to change my life for the better and I’d made an informed choice not to do so. “O ushalin zhala sar o kam mangela,” he declared with just a hint of sadness in his deep and sonorous voice – “The shadow moves as the sun commands.”
And with that, I’d like to start off the Quarterly Mailbag with a deeply felt note of thanks and appreciation to all the wonderful folks who wrote in to ask after me when I didn’t post anything on June 27th and thereafter. I really had no idea how many of my readers actually care enough about me to worry if I don’t update my blog regularly. And now that I do know, all I can say is, I feel like I’m the luckiest blogger on the whole World Wide Web.
My post about the impending demise of General Motors as we know it brought a few messages saying that Detroit is finally getting what it deserves, a few more saying that Detroit doesn’t deserve what it’s getting, and a slew of e-mails reminiscing about the hot muscle cars Pontiac used to build back in the day. And oh yeah, a couple of little old ladies wrote in to say how much they miss the Oldsmobile.
Although I did indeed receive many e-mails regarding “tea bagging,” both mocking conservatives for using the term and defending them as innocents who knew no better, the bulk of the correspondence concerning the post about my brother-in-law Hank’s discussion of tea bagging with me and Rob Roy in my basement related to the billiard game we were playing while we were engaged in that conversation – eight ball. I now have about three megabytes of text describing the trouble a person can get into playing eight ball, with many horrific anecdotes, not a few of which feature extremely gory, disgusting endings. Dear Reader, I implore you – never play eight ball for money, especially with strangers.
My post about the gentleman from Texas who visited me for advice about how best to secede from the United States drew a flurry of responses from Texans who enthusiastically proclaimed that, yeah, by golly, it’s high time Texas told the rest of the country to go take a long leap at a galloping goose. These were accompanied by an even larger number of e-mails from people in other parts of the country (most notably in Oklahoma, New Mexico and every state in the South) who think that getting rid of Texas is a really fine idea, and why didn’t we think of it earlier? So, I would ask, what the hell is everybody waiting for?
What I wrote about Williams at the GSA and his reaction to the swine flu threat seems to have touched a nerve with many of my readers. Yes, the idea that a GS-15 would abuse his position in the federal government to procure anti-viral medications for himself and his family on a preferential basis got many good citizens very riled up. Practically nobody, on the other hand, seemed to care about that same GS-15 abusing his position shilling for Microsoft in federal information technology procurements. Go figure.
A lot of people (mostly from Pakistan) wrote in to insist that President Asif Ali Zardari isn’t anywhere near the clueless idiot I depicted him as in my post that recounted our telephone conversation immediately preceding his visit to Washington for talks with President Obama in May. To that I say: oh yes, he most certainly is. But, I would hasten to point out, being a clueless idiot didn’t do anything to stop Ronald Reagan, and he was president of the United States for eight years, wasn’t he? I mean, nobody’s going to convince me that Ronald Reagan was any better at figuring out time zones than Asif Ali Zardari is, that’s for sure.
The predictable knee-jerk reaction which some people have to mention of anything Jewish in anything but the most positive light brought down the avalanche of e-mails I expected, each accusing me of being an anti-Semitic so-and-so. Look, people, I did what I could with my contacts at the British Embassy, but they aren’t taking Mike Guzovsky off that list of individuals banned from the United Kingdom. Hey, I’ve got an idea – all you shmucks who sent me those e-mails – why don’t you send them to Queen Elizabeth II instead? And be sure to say exactly the same things to her as you did to me!
The post about Arlen Specter’s problems with switching to the Democratic Party resulted in the predictable “serves him right” responses from the usual suspects, of course, and, perhaps more remarkably, hardly any epistles of commiseration. Several folks did write in, however, to assure me that plenty of Democratic men are manly men with hairy chests, deep booming voices, muscular physiques, finely chiseled features and plenty of testosterone. I was almost universally told, however, that they are, unfortunately, all gay as jaybirds on a cockwalk through the Castro. No doubt that’s how Harry Reid likes them.
My description of Veronica’s predicament regarding her boyfriend’s ill-advised advocacy of the Apple Baby Shaker app resulting in an avalanche of e-mails from irate readers (mostly women) who told me, in no uncertain terms, that anybody who writes, sells or uses an application which allows people to shake a virtual baby in order to make it stop having a virtual colic fit should either be locked up with Bernie Madoff for 150 years or, perhaps even better, shaken until their brains hemorrhage and they die. Well, I agree that the Baby Shaker app is in very bad taste, anyway. On the other hand, a surprising number of folks wrote in saying that they would love to have some of the other Apple iPhone apps Veronica’s boyfriend Brian advocates, and, frankly, I find that even more disturbing.
The account I posted of my cell phone conversation with House Minority Leader Representative John Boehner’s staffer drew a lot livid fire from rock-ribbed Republican conservatives and an approximately equal number of very positive, complimentary e-mails from intelligent sane people. A few posed what I consider a very interesting question – are the Republicans worse off now than they were when Barry Goldwater screwed the pooch back in 1964? Hmmm…
My post about the visit I received from a representative of the United States Chamber of Commerce regarding the information that Baird’s CMC posted on www.usafricainvestment.com at their behest didn’t generate very much e-mail – all I got a was few heartfelt kudos from international policy wonks. But boy, howdy, did it generate one boatload of business for me! I got seven new clients out of that blog post, and the money I’ve earned from them makes all the effort I’ve put into this Web log so far totally worthwhile. Maybe I should turn this blog into an international macroeconomics site. Write in and tell me what you think.
The vast majority of folks who contacted me with respect to my conversation with my sister-in-law about how my dear brother Rob Roy reacted to the latest Star Trek movie agreed with Rob that it’s an egregious travesty and wrong, wrong, wrong in so many ways. In addition, however, several readers wrote in to dispute the quantum mechanical rationale I used to provide him with a soothing resolution to his disturbed mental fugue state. Furthermore, three of them actually presented mathematics to support their contention that what I told Rob Roy is, in fact, erroneous. To Mike at MIT, I would point out that in line 6(a), that should be a minus sign on the left side of the equation in your brane tensor reduction. To John in Chicago, I would note that your lepton wave functions violate parity, and to Hilda in Tokyo, I would observe that your basic assumptions regarding the nature of the space-time continuum, as stated in your e-mail, are directly contradicted by your use of Newtonian coordinates in the accompanying mathematical model. And to all of you who took issue with what I told Rob, may point out that there’s a reason why they call Star Trek science fiction, okay?
Cultural elitists joined with tasteless philistines to upbraid me for what I wrote about my dear nephew Hank Jr.’s surprise trip to the fifty-third Venice Biennale. The former called me a tasteless philistine and the latter called me a cultural elitist. I take those responses as proof that I’m doing an unbiased job here at Tom Collins World Wide Web Log.
Most of the correspondence I received about my post concerning the DOJ’s questionable efforts to deal a deathblow to Internet poker was from rabid poker players who are, to put it mildly, quite livid. What, they almost universally demanded to know, is DOJ doing persecuting Internet poker players when our fair Republic is beset by this or that truly threatening plague (drugs, gangs, guns, abortion, black helicopters, UFOs, DMCA violations, the Bilderberg Group, Scientology, President Obama, etc.)? Good question.
The post relating my telephone conversation with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad drew voluminous cries of opprobrium from advocates of Iranian freedom and, of course, advocates of US invasion to accomplish it. Many others were incensed that I did nothing to correct President Ahmadinejad or contend with his numerous bald faced statements, particularly those where he compared himself to former US president George W. Bush and likened his supporters in Iran to the Americans who backed Bush in his various tilts at sundry windmills. To them, I would observe that Ahmadinejad was expressing his opinions, and opinions are like fundaments – everybody has one and nobody’s is any better than the next guy’s, either.
Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge the many angry e-mails I received from members of the American medical profession concerning Dr. Benway’s visit to my office and our discussion of the ongoing health care crisis. Typically, they expressed a sincere desire that I get very, very ill and then end up in their emergency room, office, surgery or, in some cases, collapsed on the street in front of them, at which time they would, of course, just stand there and let me die a horrible, degrading and agonizing death. Many were also quick to point out that anybody else who doesn’t agree doctors should all be paid as much money as they want deserves the same. In response to that, I would say I expect nothing less from America’s medical doctors.