How to Stay in Love

Somebody posted a discussion topic on the 20something bloggers network asking "How Do You Stay In Love?"

I think it's pretty sad that twentysomethings have to ask themselves, or advise others, on how to encourage and perpetuate the existence of love. Shouldn't that be more of a question asked on 80something bloggers?

There really isn't any secret. There isn't any answer. It's different for every couple. It's not a question like, "How do you change the oil on a 1987 Buick LeSabre?" or "What's the cheapest flight I can get from Tulsa to Albany?" And, trust me, if there is an answer, no 20something has it. We're all basically retarded. Haven't you figured that out yet?

When I last checked the discussion board, there were 105 responses to this question. There's the usual bullshit about trust and patience, communication, spontaneity, picking your battles, paying attention, compromise, showing affection... It's like those silly women's magazines you see at the supermarket checkout lane boasting, "18 New Things You Can Do to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed." I mean, are you kidding me? How many different ways can you say, "Put on a thong and suck his cock?" It's pretty ridiculous when you actually sit down and think about it.

Oh, here's a good one, related to that last point: "have a lot of sex!" Oh, hahaha! Good idea!

Here's the thing: if you're in your 20's and you're all worried about how to stay in love, you're pretty much fucked. If you're pondering that question after thirty years of marriage, well, I can understand that. Just put on a thong and suck his cock, you saggy, flabby hottie, you.

I love being in love, and one of the things I love most about being in love is not thinking about it, or how to keep it going. I trust my love, and you should trust yours too. You don't need some moron on a chatboard to tell you to kiss your girlfriend as you're leaving for the day or to write her poems or letters, or email her incessantly or to remember her goddamn birthday, or your anniversary, or to pay attention to the things she likes so you can buy them for her and be her hero. You don't need some numbnuts to tell you to respect her and admire her and tell her she's beautiful on a Thursday morning.

You want to know how to stay in love? Stay away from internet discussion-boards. I don't promise eternal love-- but it's a good start.

May I Axe You a Question?

One time, when I was a young boy, I took an axe to my parent's basement wall.

To this day, I don't know why.

If you looked at me back then, a sweet-faced little boy with a Moe Howard haircut who sucked his thumb for far too long, collected a variety of "endangered species" high-quality stuffed animals and who wore monochromatic sweatsuits until the fifth grade, you wouldn't necessarily expect the young me to have been capable of such an act.

And yet, I did it.

My sister and I were home alone and she was watching television in the basement. I wandered into the laundry room and, well, there was that axe. There was already a hole in the basement wall, from some other incident long ago-- probably my uncle took an axe to the wall back in the 1960s, you know, just to try it out. The hole penetrated the innermost layer of the basement wall, and created a crater that stopped at the actual foundation wall, which was solid stone so it's not, if you looked at our house from the street you'd have seen a big fucking hole-- it was mostly cosmetic.

Well, I thought, that looks like fun. Maybe I'll give it a whirl.

The axe was very heavy, I remember. I was very weak, of course. I remember that, too. My arms were spindly, and rather resembled a pair of brittle twigs. As my delicate fingers curled around the wooden handle of the axe, I can remember thinking one thing:

"What the hell am I doing?"

I didn't have an answer for myself. And I knew what I was about to do was wrong-- very, very wrong. I knew my parents were going to see what I'd done, and I knew they weren't going to give me a pat on the shoulder for it, or raise my allowance, or proudly race to the kitchen wall phone to tell my Bubba about it. I knew my bombastic, Israeli father was going to have a volcanic reaction to my act of mayhem. I knew all of those things.

But I did it anyway.

And I didn't do it just once, either. I did it, um, several times. Okay, maybe it was more than several. I guess it depends on whether your definition of "several" is literal or flexible. Maybe nine times or so. I remember the soft, sinking sound the axe made as it went through whatever material our inner basement wall was constructed of-- asbestos, probably. It was so satisfying, that softness, that feeling that I was deconstructing something, making a mark, if you will, that I kept on doing it. Who knows how long I would have gone on if my wanky little arms hadn't gotten tired?

That night, when my parents got home, they sat me down at the dining room table. I was in tears before they said anything. They demanded to know why I'd done what I'd done. That seemed reasonable to me, but I couldn't think of any reason why I did that to the basement wall. Likewise, I couldn't for the life of me form a rationale as to why I'd taken a graphite golf club my father had bought me in a desperate attempt to interest me in sports and made holes in my dresser with it. I also could not explain why I had destroyed some very expensive, expertly-crafted die-cast model cars that I pined for endlessly until I had them. At least I hadn't decided to give Ollie, my stuffed ostrich, an emergency appendectomy with my Ziggy pencil.

Unable to think of anything to say for myself, I resorted to the truth.

"She was supposed to be watching me," I said about my sister.

My mother pulled out the ultimate emotional body-block by telling me that she was "disappointed" in me, which is arguably the most crushing thing a mother can think to say to her child. It worked. Fresh, hot tears careened down my cheeks and I darted from their sight, slamming my bedroom door, which also bore a hole from the old nine iron, behind me.

A couple weeks later, my father took me on a special little trip. We went to Penny Wise Thrift Shop and he bought a large set of old, chipped, crappy dishes for 50 cents. I asked him what they were for, and he didn't tell me. We just got back in the car and he drove us away. We drove through the suburbs, watching the stately oak trees and the strong, stone houses pass by us through the windshield. As we neared our destination, my father turned to me and said,

"I know you like to destroy things, mummy, and that's okay. You just have to know what is okay to destroy, and what isn't. Today," he said, "we're going to break all these fuckin' dishes."

My eyes lit up.

He pulled the white Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera into the Koegel Public Works Complex, better known as "The Dump" to us locals and he backed that car up to an enormous pit filled with all manner of broken windows and split pieces of lumber, fucked up toys and old chairs and Christ knows what else, but my God did it smell. Sweaty dudes with scratchy beards and plaid shirts were wearing work gloves as they heaved undless piles of roofing shingles and old siding from out the backs of their Ford F-150s. My father pulled the paper bag containing all of the dishes out of the car.

"Go ahead. Break them all," he said.

And I fucking did. I'll never forget the first one. I threw it like a frisbee and it glided through the air and smashed to oblivion against the cold dump wall, its pieces flying in dozens of directions as it made that beautiful breaking noise. Within three minutes, the bag was empty. My father even threw a few himself.

"That was great!" I exclaimed. And he gave me a big hug. A real father loves his kids, even when they're crazy.

Of course, I don't think I was really crazy, and I don't think he thought that either. I think my parents figured out something very important, and they did it without the help of pop psychologists or talk show hosts or self-help books. I think they figured out that sometimes young boys just need to break shit.

I love the hell out of my parents. They did a great job with all three of us wackjobs, and they're doing great with their first grandchild already.

And, all these years later, I still love going to the dump.

What I Want

I know what I want now.

I know what I want to do with my life. I know it truly and passionately. Indefatigably even, if I may use so many syllables. I finally realized it this morning. I know what I want.

I want my own business. I want to work for myself.

I don't want to work for you. Or him. And I definitely don't want to work for her. Sorry, ladies, I've had three female bosses now and they all leave a lot to be desired. One of them used to leave the office mid-day and then would call me at 4:55 to make sure I was still there.

Tight.

So, yeah, I figured it out: I want my own business.

I don't know what it is, nor do I care much about what it is. I don't know what I want to sell you, or what sort of service I want to provide, I don't know how to start it or what to call it, or where to open it, but I know I want it.

I want it bad.

You want to know why I want it bad?

Because, when I work for somebody else, I have to behave in the manner and tone that they have set for the operations of the business, and I'm tired of doing that. I'm tired of kissing the puckered, pimply ass of the ungrateful world, I'm tired of bending to everbody's will, including my employer, I'm tired of small-talk and going along to get along and I'm tired of politics and I'm tired of not being able to take my balls out and swing them around a little bit.

Yesterday, I was dealing with a guy, a sniveling, manipulative, unkind and obnoxious bastard of a guy that I just wanted to kick in the knee over and over and over again, until his patella turned to dust. Now, I realize that, even if I were the business owner I couldn't really do that, but, if I were the business owner, I could have told him to fuck off and never come back here, because that's my right as the business owner. My business, my property, I get to call the shots. Unfortunately, I work for a gentle-hearted 60-year-old woman who would faint or implode before she told someone to leave. Unfortunately, I had to do likewise. I had to stand there and eat shit and defend our business practices, and myself, in a passive-aggressive, sychophantic way that nauseated me so, disgusted me to the point that I found that I was hating myself even more than I was hating this incomparable prickball, and that made me sad.

And it made me want my own business.

My uncle has his own business. It's a failing men's clothing store that is stuck firmly in the year 1958. Yellow shorts with lobsters on them. Madras dress shirts that cost $179. Cashmere sweaters at the cost of a monthly car payment. That kind of thing. Whatever you want to say about my uncle and his general ineptitude as a businessman, he doesn't take shit from anybody. If someone comes in and makes a comment about how high his prices are, my uncle merely smiles and points to the door. And he's absolutely right. He shouldn't have to listen to that shit in his own store. Yes, his prices are high, and that's why I don't shop there. I can't afford it, even with the family discount, and I have no need for lobster shorts anyway. However, when you walk onto someone else's domain, you play by their rules, or you don't play: simple. If you decide that $179 is too much for a Madras shirt, then you walk out, you don't stand there and make comments or, worse yet, try to haggle.

When I worked as an optician a thousand years ago, my boss would not only bend over backwards for insipid, cheap customers, he would bend over backwards and lick his own taint for them. He did anything they wanted, took hundreds of dollars off frames and lenses, because he was petrified of losing even one customer.

"You know," I said to him one day, "some customers you really don't want here."

He nodded his head, but he couldn't help himself. A while later, my old boss found his balls when he threw out an Indian couple who hounded me relentlessly about the cost of their glasses.

"Is that your best price? Is that your best price? Is that your best price? Is that your best price?" they repeated endlessly, as if it were some sort of tantric mantra. Finally, my boss walked over to us and he told them to pay or leave. They left.

My father has had his own business since 1987.

"Daddy can't work for anybody else," my mother said to me.

At seven, I didn't understand what that meant and, truthfully, I didn't understand what it meant for a long time, but I think I do now. It's not that my father couldn't do what someone else was telling him to do-- he was a soldier in the Israeli army, for Christ's sake, he knew how to take orders, even from people who weren't as smart or competent-- it's that he couldn't work under the tone set by someone else. If you buy a t-shirt or a thigh-support short from my father's company, you'd better know your size, because his policy is "NO RETURN, NO EXCHANGE."

That's it.

He set that rule because he's the boss and he doesn't take shit from people, and he doesn't want your smelly, stained, discolored merchandise back. You think you're an A cup and you're really a B cup? Oh well. Now, if he had a boss, the boss might say, "Hey, you know, I think we really ought to accept this return, I mean, we don't want to lose business here..."

Lose business? My father has screamed on the phone at his own customers, called them names, absolutely freaked out. And, yes, he has lost business. But the fanatics keep coming back for more, because he's honest and he's decent and he manufactures good shit. And, for lots of people, that's enough.

There is a definite danger in taking too much shit from people for too long. You become Willy Loman. And I don't want that.

So, let's be our own boss. I have two questions:

1.) What should I do?

and

2.) Wanna come work for me?

Back from a Break, It's Time to Break Balls with DEAR APRON!

Back from vacation and back in action, it's time to unleash a steady stream of piss and/or vinegar at the letter-writing public in another well-soaked edition of DEAR APRON, where we take Dear Abby letters and, um, pee on them.

DEAR APRON:

During the 10 years I have been with my husband, I have called my mother-in-law "Martha." I have just learned that she has been harboring resentment about it because she hadn't given me "permission" to call her by her first name. Apparently she would like me to call her "Ms. Smith."

I didn't hear it from her, but from my new sister-in-law who does call her Ms. Smith and has been instructed to continue doing so.

I don't remember our first meeting or when I started calling her Martha. I had no idea she has been offended this entire time. Now I'm not sure what to do. Should I ask her about it? We're not particularly close, and it would be an awkward conversation. My husband is no help. He thinks we're both being silly. -- THE OTHER MS. SMITH

DEAR O.M.S.

Wait a minute-- I think I see the problem. You've been calling your mother-in-law "Martha," a name you have contained within quotation marks, leading me to believe that this is not actually her "name." What is her actual name? You should start by finding that out, and then try calling her that. Maybe her name is Suzanne. Maybe it's Thomasina. How about Leslie? I'll tell you, honey, I'd be mighty pissed off if my name was Georganne and some uppity little moo-cow who's been banging my son for ten years insisted on calling me "Martha."

You never even took the time to find out what your mother-in-law's name was, you just blithely started calling her Martha. Jesus-- some of you people have fucking nerve.

By the way, I think your husband's being "silly." Especially when he waxes his eyelids, covers his nipples in 3-cent postage stamps and parades around the neighborhood in that wet-suit with the open butt-flap, rubbing raspberry vinagrette dressing all over the trees and undulating against them. Frankly, I was surprised that wasn't what your letter was about.

DEAR APRON:

My husband and I have been happily married for 16 years. We have one son, age 12. While writing our wills, my husband told me that his wish is to be cremated and his ashes scattered in the ocean off the beach near where he grew up.

I'd like us to be together after we have both passed on, but his beach holds no fond memories for me. I would much prefer to be buried in our local cemetery with a headstone so our son can come to "visit" both of us. I don't want to spend eternity in a cemetery plot without my husband. Any suggestions? -- PLANNING AHEAD IN MASSACHUSETTS

DEAR PLANNING:

Yes, I have a suggestion: immortality. This way, you'll never have to face this unfortunate little debacle that is threatening to drive a rift between you and your hubby-dubby-doo. If you are so concerned about spending eternity with him, why wait till death to do it? Live forever and rock on with your indestructability! Here's how to do it:

Collaborate with your husband on an expansive, creative endeavor. Write 60 symphonies, 40 full-scale operas and a thick volume of sacred music that will be of such a high caliber that your names will live on forever. That takes care of the immortality of your spirit.

Then, to address the immortality of your body, retain the services of a licensed registered nurse. Have her start an A-line of intravenous V-8 juice. Have your eyeballs replaced with Superballs, and sign the necessary legal documets to have your husband's semen replaced with liquid Kryptonite. This will require a dialysis machine, some retrofitted components, and possibly the assistance of Dr. Oz. Being a fan of your vast body of musical work, he will agree to help you free of charge.

Next, you will need approximately seven thousand tons of llama smegma. You must bathe in this for at least a month straight. According to recent reports released in the New England Journal of Medicine and Better Homes & Gardens, this substance coagulates inside the pores of quarreling couples from Massachusetts who are facing end-of-life decisions and completely eradicates toxins and harmful bacteria for life.

If these instructions are followed explicitly, you will never have to worry about what to do with your remains, or where your son will go to remember you, because you'll totally outlive that poor rotting bastard.

Of course, there is an outside possibility that this won't work and you'll both die in spite of your musical achievements and your adherence to the plan laid out in this column. If that should happen, well, it doesn't fucking matter what happens to your lousy, repugnant, malodorous corpses, because you'll both be fucking dead. And, P.S., your son won't be visiting you anyway, because he hates you and has no friends because his parents are the type of people who can't figure out their own problems and resort to writing to imagined intermediary authorities.

Plus, they're covered in llama smegma. And that's just nasty, bitches.

DEAR APRON:

What is the proper letter salutation for a married couple where the husband has recently undergone gender reassignment surgery? (They were "John and Millie Jones.") -- WONDERING IN KEY WEST

DEAR WONDERING:

I should think "Dear Tranny and Soon-to-be-Ex Mrs. Jones" ought to do it.

Forging Ahead Back In Time

While I was away on vacation, my sister had a baby.

I was relaxing on a small beach in Rockport, Maine, watching a ten-year-old blonde girl stab a hopefully deceased lobster with a stick when I got the typically dry text message from my father:

"NOAH is doing great was born
around 1 today big baby 7 lb 11 oz
everyone is doing great i love you
dad take"

My father's text messages are always the same: factual, uneffusive, grammatically dubious/containing scant punctuation and always, always concluding with one extraneous word. I suppose that, whenever he wants to send a text message, he merely recycles one he already sent, deletes most of it, starts anew, and forgets to delete the final word of the old message. Often I receive texts from him that end in a word having to do with his business-- manufacturing undergarments for sports teams. One day prior to Noah being born, he sent me a text about my mother:

"mommy is a nervous about everything
Now I know where you got it from ha ha ha
love dad phillies"


One thing he has gotten very good at with his phone is taking pictures. My wife and I enjoyed several of them while we were in Maine, sent as attachments to his bizarre text messages ("mom @ noah" [ed: I presume that meant "mom & noah"] "you sister is running away" [ed: the picture that accompanied this text is my oldest sister holding Noah as if he was a bomb slathered in radioactive honey] and, my personal favorite, "mom is high" [ed: I have no idea what the fuck that means.]) It was only upon our arrival home tonight that we were treated to the full barrage of Noah pictures on my father's cell-phone, including two others of my oldest sister holding her new nephew both gingerly and increduously. According to my father, my oldest sister's nose looks inordinately larger in these pictures than it ever has before. He now refers to her as "Pinocchio."

While a new baby was entering my family's life back in Pennsylvania, it seemed only fitting that I should make the acquaintance of an old baby in Rhode Island. Last night, I got to experience my wife as a captivating, newly-minted four-year-old girl, courtesy of some dusty Betamax video tapes, and the perhaps even dustier Betamax player that resides in her mother and father's bedroom and, miraculously, still functions. While we fumbled our way through setting up the Betamax player, which had lain dormat since, I presume, around 1987, when most of those items went the way of the dinosaurs and vinyl bench car seats, I realized that people were more intelligent back when Betamax players were popular. For example, the Betamax video cassette cases were emblazoned with the word "epitaxial." I mean, I can only presume that average, run-of-the-mill 1987 grown-ups knew what that word meant, otherwise they wouldn't buy things listing it as an apparent selling point or virtue. Also, you had to be pretty clever to actually set up the Betamax player, and being Hercule fucking Poirot couldn't hurt if you need to find the tracking dial.

I can't speak for Mrs. Apron but, for me, it was a pretty strange experience, sitting there on the edge of her parent's bed, next to my 27-year-old wife, watching her four-year-old self be-bopping around a totally different world. I mean, there she was, opening up presents that turned out to be not Anthropologie skirts but Babar & Celeste music boxes and puzzles. And, unlike in all the photographs I've seen, this version actually talked! She looked straight into the lens, at me, and she told me about how she went into the swimming pool at the Howard Johnson's and she stuck her head under! I mean-- what a big girl! What a sweet girl. A bossy girl on occasion, but, on the whole, a sweet girl. With her raven-haired father and her smooth-faced mother, clad in the eye-popping duds of the day. Frozen in time and bustlingly alive with motion, all at once. I'm glad the Betamax held on for one more trip down an epitaxial-laden memory lane.

We never had a video camera when I was a little boy. The earliest film of me comes from when I was twelve years old, filming a 6th grade English mockumentary about the Loch Ness Monster in which I played four characters, including the program host, and I referred unknowingly to another character called "Constable Clitoris." Thanks, Monty Python. Fortuantely, my English teacher refrained from calling home about that. Though it was an innocent faux-pas, the more innocent, earlier years exist only in still pictures, and I think that's actually okay. If I could see my beautiful and energetic mother moving around, devoid of her trigger finger and her arthritis, my robust father with more, well, hair, I just don't know. I don't know if I could sit through that without hot, blinding tears streaming down my cheeks. I don't know how my wife did it. I felt a thickness in my throat last night, and they weren't even my movies, my history. I guess I just look at the world differently than she does, and I think that's okay, too. Sometimes it's nice to just sit back and enjoy the world the way it used to be, without obsessing and depressing about what it is now or what it will be in days and years to come.

Well, I suppose it is anyway. I wouldn't really know.

It's okay, though. There are always new memories to enjoy, to someday join the old ones. There may not be Betamax films to preserve in a layer of dust-bunnies, but there are text messages, like the one my father sent me on Tuesday. He's been on a mad dash to find my sister, her husband, and their brand-new baby a house, seeing as they're rapidly outgrowing my sister's one-bedroom apartment. He sent me a text to inquire about houses for sale on our street:

"We just saw a twin near you the
realestate kathleen stupid blond told
me twice on the phone 185,000 i went
there at 5 to c it she said sorry mistake
its 285,000 i almost toppoled her out
the fucking window"

Doing What He Loved

As an avid and active supporter of law enforcement officers, I know all the rhetoric that gets automatically spewed from the uniformed talking heads that have the misfortune to be stuck behind microphones and newscameras.

"He was a cop's cop."

"He always wanted to be a police officer."

"He will never be forgotten."

"He knew the risks."

And, inevitably, "He died doing what he loved."

That one comes up a lot when a first responder dies while on-duty. "He died doing what he loved." Nobody ever questions these slogans, because, really, in the moment, you'd be looked at as kind of an asshole if you did-- but what does that really mean?

He died doing what he loved? The cop died chasing some shitbag through a slum apartment complex at 2:30 in the morning, all because the dumb prick was a wanted, armed felon and he wouldn't pull over to accept a ticket for a broken turn signal light? That was what he loved? The firefighter died falling through two stories of a house that caught fire because some stupid asshole kid was growing marijuana in the basement and didn't put the right wattage bulbs in the heat lamps? Who the hell loves that?

Even if you do die doing what you supposedly "love," does that really matter? Does that somehow take away the paralyzing fear and undeniable, irreversable dread you felt the instant you saw the guy in the oversized wifebeater turn towards you with a Tech-9 and pull the trigger? No, of course it doesn't. Platitudes like that are for the living anyway-- they're supposed to make the ones dressed in black the next day somehow feel better.

But I wonder if it really does.

I tried to think about the things that I do in my life that I love doing, and I couldn't really come up with much. I love being held by my wife, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to die like that-- that'd be kind of awkward for her, I think. I like writing, but I don't really love it, and I don't think it would sound quite right if I stroked out at the computerdfgjkdjhg;idgi;erag;agenk;sjdfnkxdg;dafkgnadskngdsa;kngfa;ksdjngkasdjlngfjkdabneg;

like that, and some numb-numb wrote an obiturary for me saying that I "died doing what I loved-- writing." Just doesn't sound right, does it?

I love trolling around ebaymotors fantasizing about purchasing old cars, but, again, would dying during that particular activity spur someone to report that I had died "doing what I loved?"

Weird.

I read an obituary today about a "semiretired financier" who died while surfing last weekend. Last weekend, you might remember, the east coast was visited by a rather unwelcomed friend named Hurricane Bill. The deceased surfer was a newbie, receiving a lesson. Obviously, this is a tragic event for his family, but the extremely long obituary made the claim that the family is "finding some solace in the fact that he died doing something he loved."

What was that, exactly? Taking insane risks? Ignoring dangerous surf warnings? Putting his life at risk and callously disregarding the family he would soon leave without its husband and father? Being a completely thoughtless schmuck?

His children, according to the article, had enough sense to pack it in early on that day. I guess they weren't prepared to die doing what they loved, or maybe they just didn't love frollicking in the Atlantic Ocean during a hurricane.

I'm sorry, but it's exceedingly difficult for me to find sympathy for this reckless individual, regardless of whether he died "doing what he loved" or not. If you have a wife and children, what you love should be them, not pursuing your own interests in a thoroughly dangerous environment for no reason at all other than your own selfish enjoyment. Granted, police officers and firefighters put themselves in harm's way every day and night, but they're doing it for the greater social good-- there is no social good in surfing during a hurricane, whether you're a beginner or an expert.

So go ahead and die doing what you love, but don't expect a nodding affirmation or a funeral wreath from me.

Going Buh-Byes in the Car

In just under 20 minutes, I hope to have successfully bundled my wife, my dog, and several tons of bags, clothing, toiletries and other assorted items (including my 1930s style Boater hat and some light vacation reading about explorers perishing during their ill-fated quest for the Northwest Passage) into my wife's Revolution Orange Metallic Honda Fit for our trek up north.

They tell you to never post on Facebook or a blog that you're going away on vacation, but I have reasonable amounts of faith that a contingent of my female, Canadian readers aren't going to break into my house and steal my collection of antique typewriters while we're away.

Speaking of "while we're away" you might be wondering, "Well, what the fuck?! What about us?!!!"

Well, dah-links, I had the best intentions of banging out a week's worth of blogs today while I was at work and setting them to auto-display at 8:23am each day we're away, but I could only manage one, which will go up tomorrow at the aforementioned time. If something very blogworthy happens, perhaps I'll risk arthritis of the thumbs and post a quick entry from my Treo, but I doubt it. Blogging from a five-year-old handheld device is exhausting. You practically go blind while doing it and, two hours later, you've written the equivalent of 3/4ths of an 8.5x11 sheet of paper.

Not very rewarding for blogger or blogeee.

Before I depart, I should just like to point out that I received a friend request via PoliceLink, a social networking site for police officers and law enforcement advocates/afficianados like myself. The subject header of the email read,

"Jim Bigguns wants to be your friend."

Am I a lucky sonofabitch or what?