Thus It Begins.

 

It always begins the same way: He walks me through a randomized series of obfuscated doorways, complete with chaplaineers' despoilers and a limpid sense of morose entitlement. Then, he will pretend that we once met in an intercity bus operation where we both allegedly worked as mechanics' helpers. After that, we'll move on to unproven methods of birth control, only to be interrupted by a pastry service in memory of our Nation's Fallen. By this time, even though I've (officially) had enough, the temptation to just 'play along' usually overwhelms my dedication to anodized pentricide. So, I gather up a few former friends and we make our way to a feeding station on the South Side where a surfeit of babies patrol the perimeter in matching plaid jumpers while striving to even out wealth disparities in the lower thirty-seven. I've even had one call me up while I was at work and just 'lay it on the line'. He chewed me out and while he was at it, I thought I detected just a smidgen of regret in his otherwise adamantine resolve. When it came to working out at the end of a long day on the line, no one could hold a candle to the way some folks took their good sweet time getting settled at the wrong end of a pastinated garden hoe.

A very rare specimen of tabular vermin are now rumored to have escaped from Lab Station #4 and I'm being asked to lend a hand in the hope of preventing more deaths of despair in our Nation's mid-section. They're telling me that I've been given sanction by a minor poobah to, in a manner of speaking, lance the boil, and then book passage for the remainder to inhere in a novel switching experiment gone wrong in a premier publication of the same name. One way or another, the people who gave their lives in service to a broader loading principle are apt to face a slew of honors once our crew gets its act together in real time. Otherwise, as dependent children of irrepressible moptops can well testify, the only thing worse than capping yourself is hoping to see one give an illustrative example while bathed in the finest emolients that money can buy. I'd give my eye teeth to be involved in one of the search teams tasked with overturning Caskell v. Dorfman on a wing and a prayer. Unfortunately, not everyone made it through. Some were found in a rough part of one of the roominghouses that we've written so much about here in the last three years. The others weren't so lucky. Or lucky at all, if you ask me. 

The chain which links the sorry state of our preparedness to an overwhelming sense of incipient anoxia couldn't be more obvious. Even if you were deployed to a second country and required to fill out a prepared form, no one who entered your bed chamber uninvited would be under any illusion that your fixation on Bronze Age trivia would ever cut any ice with the Committee once we get our hands on the treaty violations of which you so manifestly approved. My sense of it is that you never had a solid upbringing. Some of us even doubt your grounding in basic Biblical Principles. And then, when you add in all the times we caught you standing near a building leafing through a stolen scrapbook, no one who was there that day wouldn't have had their appetite dissolved in a matter of seconds. It's crucial that you time your appearances to coincide with the onset of major topological disturbances. That way only a very thinly equipped gentleman of the 'old school' stands a chance of being blamed as a matter of course. Listen, I've held up my end. But, as usual, only a protracted struggle will secure us a spot in a coveted pre-teen beauty pageant. I'm bringing all my sons along for the ride. With you at their side, can anyone ever feel 'safe' again? Tell me you don't see the pattern here.

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