Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Keeping Us Safe

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Today’s guest post comes from 9th District Congressman Loomis Beechly

Greetings Constituents.

I’m a lawyer and it’s my job to write laws for a living. I know you don’t have much respect for that kind of work, but I’m a Congressman. I’m used to not getting much respect. It comes with the job.

But recently I’ve noticed a movement on the state level to add things to the State Constitution as a way of setting new law and preventing interference from the courts. I’m intrigued by this and I have to admit I rather like it because it gets around the tiresome talk-talk-talking about issues with people who aren’t smart enough to agree with me already.

Getting something into the Constitution is a great way to pre-emptively deal with things we imagine could become a problem sometime down the road if “those people” get their way. And you know who I mean. Everybody has some of “those people” who haunt their dreams.

Critics say this wave of amendments is like a child piling his toys against the closet door to keep the monsters from coming out. I get the connection, but I don’t much care for the tone – belittling such efforts as childish. Closet monsters are real. In fact, the U.S. Senate has cloak rooms where members are supposed to talk about issues and come to some kind of agreement. For a lot of people in Washington and St. Paul, coming to agreement is a very scary thing indeed, and they avoid it the same way you would steer clear of Frankenstein. Imagine a big, green, flat-headed lurcher named “Amity”, and you’ll get the idea. Very disturbing.

Personally, I have a thing about Vampires.

Vampires have been gaining ground in recent years. When I was a kid they only appeared in movies and always in their proper role – as scary bloodsucking beasts who could only be killed by a stake through the heart. But lately, they’ve been depicted as sexy, misunderstood lover boys who might be decent marriage material. Even though, as Vampires, they don’t have photo ID! They can’t even appear in pictures! Or is that werewolves? I’m not sure. But I do know that Vampires have lots of rich moviemakers on their side, and there are probably quite a few judges who are strong sympathizers as well. Think about it – they all wear black robes.

So my point is this – Vampires should be kept in their place as a threat and should not be allowed to become part of the mainstream in any way, yet there is a real chance that doors will be opened to them that would be very, very difficult to close in the future. Little girls already want to marry vampires as long as they are named Edward. And just think about vampires voting. What will candidates of the future have to do to appeal to the vampire base? Bite the head off a chipmunk? There are people running for office today who would do that with very little prompting.

That’s why I would welcome a constitutional amendment that states “Vampires are evil and are not entitled to any of the rights afforded human beings in the State of Minnesota, including marriage and voting.”

Since I am not a member of the Minnesota legislature, I can’t introduce this bill myself, but I hope someone will pick it up and run with it. People want protection from Vampires, and even though they enjoy Vampire-based art and seem to love Vampire-inspired style, I think they will see the sense in it. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to be scared. Let’s nail shut the lid on the next Dracula’s coffin before he even has a chance to climb out of it!

What else is a Constitution for?

Sincerely,
Loomis Beechly

How would you vote on the anti-Vampire amendment?

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Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

I admire people with drive and ingenuity. When I saw that someone invented a gizmo to screw on to the top of a mason jar that will turn it into a travel mug, I thought, “That’s really clever.” So I ordered one online. When I showed it to my husband, he snorted and said “you can’t drink hot things out of a mason jar, it’ll burn your hand.”

He’s right, of course. But the people who came up with this idea are brilliant, anyway. So I insist on using the gizmo to drink extremely hot things out of mason jars, even though we have a cupboard full of unused travel mugs that we got as public radio membership premiums. I do it to honor the spirit of invention and also to stick a heat-blistered finger in my husband’s eye for pooh-poohing such a cool product.
Oh, the things I endure to preserve my dignity.

That got me thinking that I could market something called “The Travail Mug”. Cool, huh?

“The Travail Mug” would be this line of designer insulated mugs, each one bearing witness to a burden you have to bear in silence. You know, like one would read “Mean People Say I’m Stupid” and another would say “Nobody Gets My Brilliant Ideas” or “My Spirit Gets Crushed Every Day.”

I just made those up as random samples of the sort of travail anybody could relate to.

When I mentioned this to my husband, he said the idea was “idiotic”. “First of all, everybody’s got too many travel mugs,” he said. And then he added this – “The whole concept is a thin joke built around a play on words. Where do you think you live? What century? Most Americans don’t know what ‘travail’ means, and they don’t care. Wordplay is a game for people who think they’re smart, and Americans don’t like smartypants. So what if ‘travail’ sounds like ‘travel’? It also sounds French. This idea is guaranteed to fail. Give up now.”

Dr. Babooner, I know he’s right. But why does it bother me so much? Is the idea of selling “Travail Mugs” really so disastrous? And do you think having to live with a grouchy spouse is enough of a travail to print on the new cups? It is definitely the heaviest burden I bear.

Sincerely,
Lovable Mug

I told Lovable Mug that her husband is a bully, but he’s actually doing her a favor by raining so constantly on her parade. If her brainstorm can’t stand up to harsh criticism, it will never succeed in the marketplace of ideas because the history of innovation has been written by people who were told over and over again that their inspired concept was ridiculous. Some of them never lost faith and proved their critics wrong! And a whole bunch of others spent the rest of their lives fruitlessly pushing impractical notions that really were not very well thought out. But that’s not the point! If you don’t love your ideas, who will?

But that’s just one opinion. What do you, think, Dr. Babooner?

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One With The Universe

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Today’s guest post comes from marketing expert and dealmaker Spin Williams, the man who runs The Meeting That Never Ends.

Hello Digital Content Consumers!

This is the morning after the greatest communal event of our age – That Big Game That I Cannot Name For Legal Reasons!

I love/hate it more than I can say.

I’m writing this message to you before the game happens because the outcome doesn’t really matter. There will be another game next year, just as big and gaudy as this one. T.B.G.T.I.C.N.F.L.R. is a totally meaningless and completely superficial event. It is important for the amount of attention it consumes and nothing more. And believe me, it consumes a lot of attention.

Human attention is the focus of my universe. It is all that matters. And it is all that anti-matters. Getting attention and keeping it – these are the only achievements that impress me. And T.B.G.T.I.C.N.F.L.R. is the biggest, baddest attention-sucking black hole on the scene. That’s why I love it! Nothing can match T.B.G.T.I.C.N.F.L.R. for sheer size and scope. At a time when entertainment bombards us from all directions, it is exceedingly rare that so many people look at any one thing at approximately the same time.

But what’s even better – those few who don’t consume T.B.G.T.I.C.N.F.L.R. must decide to avoid it on purpose. Their rejection may be on moral or aesthetic grounds, or simply because they find big men in tight pants repulsive, but they T.B.G.T.I.C.N.F.L.R. demands that they make a choice! That is one thing we all share, like breathing air, liking chocolate chip cookies, or having to excrete them later on. The necessity of facing up to T.B.G.T.I.C.N.F.L.R. creates common ground, and common ground unites humankind in a place where we can sell things to each other. What could be more thrilling? The only thing I can imagine that would qualify – having enough money to sell things on the common ground that is created by T.B.G.T.I.C.N.F.L.R.! That’s why I hate it!

At any rate, I will watch so that I can feel united with all the many human beings who give into T.B.G.T.I.C.N.F.L.R.’s strong gravitational pull. And I will belittle it at the same time, so I can also be connected with the rest of humanity.

Yes, I am truly one with the universe! Thanks, T.B.G.T.I.C.N.F.L.R.! And damn you!

Hmmm. I’m wondering if Spin had a little too much to drink at his T.B.G.T.I.C.N.F.L.R. Party. But I think I get his point. He’s saying a mammoth attention-getting machine is an irresistible object for someone who thinks about marketing 24/7 at the helm of The Meeting That Never Ends. And he’s also saying he doesn’t have a client with a big enough marketing budget to advertise on T.B.G.T.I.C.N.F.L.R.

What did you think (or not think) of the game?

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Called To Service

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Today’s guest post comes from Dr. Larry Kyle, Produce Manager at Genway, the Supermarket for genetically engineered foods!

I do love it when people who work in a lab finally get some small portion of the adulation they deserve. For me, the key has always been my beautiful animal-vegetable hybrids – the celery-snake and the pumpkin that screams like a hyena. Others scientific attention-seekers less creative than I are left with the more difficult task of making progress against major diseases. That’s hard work, and the visible successes are rare.

But every now and then something comes along that feels like a true step forward – when a malady that was not fully understood quite suddenly becomes less mysterious. The latest news about how Alzheimer’s spreads is just that sort of thing – a landmark discovery. Now we know that Alzheimer’s Disease moves from brain cell to brain cell in synch with a malfunctioning protein called tau. The next steps are obvious. We know where the disease starts and how it travels. It should be a relatively simple matter to wait along the path, throw a sack over its head, smack it a good one, drag it to the car and throw it in the trunk.

Then we can drive Alzheimer’s far out into the countryside and push it into a roadside ditch, with a stern warning not to come near us again!

OK, that may not be practical. But what we need is something that works like the Endangered Species Act in reverse. A deadly illness extinct-ifying process. I’m not sure exactly how that would work, but I know it takes a special talent to take a thing that is already in the world and completely lose it. Usually a little residue always remains. And yet there are so many bad things that need to go away.

That’s why I, Dr. Larry Kyle, would like to offer myself to the next president as the first manager of a new government agency – the Department of Oblivion. At D.O.O., we would be all about thoroughly misplacing things. As Department of Oblivion Manager, I would have the coolest acronym in all government service! Under my direction, the Department would so completely lose track of Alzheimer’s it would be gone from human memory inside a year. Same with most of the cancers, all of the vascular problems, lung disease, tapeworms and mange.

Yes, I am a scientist and a capitalist at heart, but I would change my focus and join government service in this noble cause! But only to lead the Department of Oblivion, because keeping inadequate or non-existent records would be central to our mission, and not doing paperwork is one of the things I do best!

Take me seriously, Mr. President-to-be. Choose me to be your D.O.O.M.!

Like many in the private sector, Dr. Kyle overestimates how effective he would be as the head of a public entity. But you have to admire his enthusiasm.

If you ran a government agency (real or imagined), which one would it be?

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Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

I’m not a mean person, and I love animals. I really do. The thing that got to me about our little dog Rockne is that he was, well, obnoxious. His original name was Mr. Fluffs but we re-named him after we realized he was going to be a loud, persistent, yappy pest. Calling him “Rockne” was part of our private joke. We live on a banana plantation in southern Florida and he absolutely loved the fruit. So whenever one of us went into the yard the other invariably said “Go out there and skin one for the yipper.”

I guess you had to be there.

Anyway, Rockne’s vocalizing would come in waves. Sometimes he’d be quiet for almost a day, and then the following week he’d go at it non-stop. What really grated on my nerves was when he would go off while we were in the car. Something about the enclosed space magnified his yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, and it didn’t help that he simply couldn’t abide the site of a jogger. Something in his worldview totally rejected the concept of a human being in a designer sweatsuit, running.

And we saw lots of them. Weird, I know. You’d think people wouldn’t have to lift a finger, much less a foot, to break a sweat in south Florida. But run they did, and Rockne let ’em have it every time we spied someone chugging down the road. The sound inside the car was excruciating. Finally one day I stopped to let the jogger go by before opening the door and telling Rockne to get out and chase her. It was a foolish, spiteful move. I figured he would run for a short distance, wear himself out, think better of his compulsion, and that would be the end of that. No more barking at people along the road. I was counting on the day’s high heat and humidity to drive home the point.

I’ll never forget it – just before he sprang out of the car, Rockne gave me a long, last look. There was something potent in it. Not reproachful, just … accepting and maybe a little judgmental. But it was profound. And then he was gone.

He skittered off after the jogger just as fast as his little legs would carry him, but before he got close enough to catch her he quite suddenly veered into the underbrush and disappeared into what I then realized was The Everglades.

I was kind of heartbroken. I mean, on a certain level I was happy to be rid of him, but on the other hand I realized he probably couldn’t survive out there. I mean, the Everglades has bobcats! Not to mention crocodiles AND alligators! My wife was deeply ticked off – this was six months ago and she still won’t speak to me. And now today I see THIS!

Apparently Burmese Pythons are killing just about everything in the Everglades. My only hope is that Rockne managed, through some unexpected combination of wisdom, yappy persistence and canine guile, to convince the pythons that they were brethren, and rather than lunch he became King of the Released Pet Nation.

Otherwise, I’m feeling really, really guilty right now. But should I?

Sincerely,
Remorseful About The Fate I’ll Never Know

I told R.A.T.F.I.N.K. he should absolutely feel remorse. Putting any creature out of the car within shouting distance of the Everglades ought to be a crime, but especially a tempting morsel like Mr. Fluffs (or Rockne, if you must). But I would not comfort myself with the thought that your dog somehow became King of the Pythons. That would not be a good development for you. Just in case, you should stay far, far away from the swamp.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

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Book Worm

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Here’s a note from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden. And as usual, he needs last minute help with an assignment for some activity he’s in at Wendell Wilkie High School. But I don’t mind the last-minute, panicky attention. I’m flattered that he thought to ask.

Hey Mr. C.,

On Friday we got a assignment from Ms. Filcher – she’s the faculty advisor for our Young Moguls Club.

She gave us until this afternoon after school to come up with a business plan to save the publishing industry, which is going to disappear, if Barnes & Noble goes out of business.
Or so they say.

I remember going into Barnes & Noble when I was a little kid. We would head over to the children’s section and I had a great time pointing at stuff and begging mom and dad to buy me more than they had planned on. I was always able to come away with two or three extra books that I HAD to have – all because the folks thought it would help my education. Who woulda guessed I’d get stuck in 10th grade for, like, 20 years! Maybe it woulda turned out different if I’d read those books I went to so much trouble throwing fits to get, but reading a whole book takes time, and I just liked having ’em. They pile real nice and are a great material for building forts!

Anyhow, now I have to come up with a plan to save the publishing industry. I guess the thing about Barnes and Noble is that they’ve gone in whole hog to the e-book idea, selling their Nook e-reader in the store and trying to stay important in the book business all the way until some future time when there aren’t any, y’know, books.

Like, maybe, five years from now.

Anyway, I was hoping your blog people could tell me which one of my ideas I should present to Ms. Filcher when she asks for our plans. Here they are:

Plan 1: Barnes & Noble should give every high school sophomore in the U.S. a FREE Nook e-reader! Seriously, nobody in our generation is going to shell out money for this thing, ’cause we’ve all got computers and cell phones and our parents are on us to keep the costs down as it is. So give us free Nooks instead and who knows? Maybe we’ll use them. Or maybe we ‘ll sell them to our grandparents. Either way … Barnes & Noble would be helping the youth of today get a foothold in the economy of tomorrow!

Plan 2: Barnes & Noble should come out with a special e-reader for my age group with a name that really connects us to the kind of reading we do. I’m thinking they should call it the “Cram”.

Plan 3: Buy the company, fire everybody, sell the inventory, the fixtures and the stores, and run for president.

I’m pretty sure one of these answers will get me an “A”, but since Ms. Filcher is a lot closer to your age than mine, I was hoping you could help me decide!

I’m about the worst person in the world to ask for help with a business plan, but I have to admit I gave Bubby extra points for #3. So, how should he save the publishing industry?

Choose one of his options, or make up your own!

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State of the Bunion Address

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It’s time once again for that annual address by Congressman Loomis Beechly of the 9th District, representing all the water surface area of the State of Minnesota.

Greetings Constituents!

Each year around this time I make a speech where I try my darndest to sound like I’m giving you an honest overview of how things are going in the 9th District. And I’m here to tell you that the district is solid, just the way all water surfaces should be at the end of January!

Some gloomy negative-thinkers will say that our solidity is just barely there, that there is a lot more open water than usual and silver carp and zebra mussels are gaining ground every year. But I can’t agree with that. Because we all know there are things you don’t want to hear, and it’s up to me to remember NOT say those things out loud, even if I happen to be thinking them. Over-sharing is a terrible social error, and at times I have been accused of providing Too Much Information. This year is no different. I have a whole list of stuff I’m not going to mention to you now. If I sound a little loopy it’s not that I’ve been drinking. It’s just that I’m biting my tongue. A lot.

Some have said there’s a kind of disengagement going on, where people are too focused on their own personal problems at the expense of meeting our shared challenges, and that this widespread self-indulgent pettiness is the cause of many of our current problems. But I know you don’t want to hear about selfishness, especially not your own. And anyway, I don’t think you’re self absorbed at all. And I know it will make you happy to hear that I’ve been thinking about you so much.

One other thing that’s been on my mind pretty much non-stop that I definitely don’t want to talk about is weird thing going on with my right foot. My big toe has turned inwards and is rubbing up against all the other toes. It’s like looking at a line of plump, misshapen dominos. One irritates the other and the other and the other, right on down the line. The doctor says I have a bunion. All I know is this – I used to have toes that lined up nice and worked together. Everybody knew their role. This Little Piggy went to market, this Little Piggy stayed home, and so forth. Now they all want to have roast beef and they’re climbing all over each other and it looks like a rugby scrum inside my shoe.

But I’m not going to talk about that. I’m here to tell you that in spite of the murmurings, everything is fundamentally O.K.. And even though I’m limping a little bit I’m pretty sure that I could beat anyone who challenged me to a footrace, because I have the greatest feet the world has ever known. Even though the big toe thinks the little toes are useless, and the little toes think the big one is a greedy, self important stinker. But really, the brutal truth is that none of them smell too good.

I’ve said too much.

So if anyone should ask, my message to you is that The State of the Bunion is good, and strong, and super-powerful, and a lot of other positive words that may or may not really apply. And if anyone tells you otherwise, and that person is running for office, please tell them to run against me because they obviously have no idea what people want to hear!

Thanks for your attention, and God Bless the 9th District!

I have no idea what that was really about, but it read like a serious speech and it took up a lot of time, so I’ll have to concede that Mr. Beechly appears to be doing his job. But I am a bit worried about that bunion.

How do you feel about your feet?

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Open Season

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Another breathlessly hyped dispatch has arrived from once legitimate journalist and now attention-starved, sensationalist scribbler, Bud Buck.

Messenger Shot, Attacker Collects Reward
By Bud Buck

Newt Gingrich, the winner of Saturday’s South Carolina Primary, is widely thought to have received that prize as a reward for taking extreme umbrage to a question from reporter John King during last week’s CNN “debate”. Gingrich said he was “appalled” that King would open the proceedings by repeating accusations from Gingrich’s second wife that he wanted her to agree to an ‘open marriage’ so he could stay with her and continue a relationship with the woman who ultimately became his third wife.

The audience cheered Gingrich’s response, and he went on to win handily. Today, my head is spinning. How can a person who behaves like Newt Gingrich win favor with any segment of the American populace? I didn’t think such a thing was possible, but by merely attacking a reporter he has managed to pull it off.

This is alarming news for journalists everywhere. I’m afraid it is proof positive that we now have open season on anyone with a microphone, camera or notebook. If delivering a verbal slapping to John King is all it takes to make a quarter million people believe someone as caustic and overblown as Newt Gingrich should be president, no reporter anywhere is safe. And I say this with the full understanding that in South Carolina, marital infidelity and lying by high officials is as common as dirt. And I mean actual dirt.

In the immediate future, look for this trend – whenever a reporter asks a question that is uncomfortable for the candidate on the receiving end, that journalist will be told in no uncertain terms how horrid and despicable he/she is. In fact, I suspect the remaining candidates are busily scouting around right now for a reporter to lambast. If Romney, Paul and Santorum don’t get a John King of their own, this contest could be over by February.

Of course no respectable journalist can hold back on the tough questions in this charged environment. And yet it is by asking tough questions that we will make it possible for the politicians to deflect attention from the miserable things they’ve done. And not just politicians! I expect the captain of that Italian cruise ship to go after the media very soon. What could he possibly lose? The world already thinks he’s a cowardly, selfish boor.
A little bit of scribe bashing could only help his image.

That is why I, Bud Buck, would like to offer myself as a reportorial sacrifice. Yes, I am making myself available to any campaign that would like to have a journalist to chide, browbeat and abuse. I’ll be your hapless media elite. I can ask Romney about the dog on the roof of his car. I can bring the “Google search” question to Santorum. And I can get in Ron Paul’s grill about those old newsletters. Why would I set myself up for such harsh treatment? Because it’s obvious – American hates journalists. And if that’s the only kind of spotlight that’s truly available for the reporting class, I want it all. The most despised journalist in America is, by default, number one! Newt Gingrich learned this long ago.

Getting attention is the only thing that matters.

Candidates, call me! This is Bud Buck!

I doubt any major campaigns will choose Bud Buck to be their designated whipping boy, but Mitt Romney has to go ballistic on someone, and soon. Who will it be?

When have you been yelled at?

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The Silent Treatment

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An anguished dispatch came in late last night from perennial Sophomore Bubby Spamden, still swimming upstream at Wendell Wilkie High School.

Hey Mr. C.,

Boy am I confused!

I have a paper that’s due today in World History and I don’t think I’m going to get it done, all because of two mean girls named SOPA and PIPA. I don’t know who they are, but they’re so upsetting they’ve shut down the whole Internet, almost. Everywhere I look, it says the website is “closed in protest of SOPA and PIPA”. Geez, what did they do? The shut down even includes Wikipedia, which is, like the storehouse of everything that would be in my brain if I studied and was able to remember the tiniest details of things I don’t care about at all.

All I know is that when I look for Wikipedia information on the Barbary Pirates, I can only get it in Portuguese.

Piratas da Barbária, Piratas da Berbéria, piratas barbarescos, piratas berberescos, piratas berberes ou corsários otomanos, foi a designação dada aos piratas que até meados do século XIX operaram no Mediterrâneo ocidental e no Oceano Atlântico nordeste a partir de portos sitos na costa da Berbéria, ou seja na região litoral do Norte de África correspondente hoje às costas da Argélia, da Tunísia, da Líbia e a alguns portos de Marrocos.

I don’t have a problem with that personally, ‘cause it makes as much sense to me as the English version. But I can’t just cut and paste it and hand it in as my report because that would be wrong. To be ethical you have to go in and change a bunch of words around so you can legitimately pretend the writing is really yours. How can I do that if I don’t know what the words mean? I tried that and then ran it through a translating website and all I got back was useless hash.

Pirates of the occidental person, Pirates middle of the Berbéria, pirates, pirates, berberes or Ottoman privateers, were the assignment given to the pirates who Barbarism of century XIX had even operated in leaving the Mediterranean and the corresponding ports Atlantic pirates of the barbarescos ports sitos in the coast of the Berbéria, that is in the coast of the North of Africa to the coasts of Algeria, Tunisia, the Lybian and to some of Morocco region.

Even I can see that doesn’t make any sense. Mr. Boozenporn is bound to figure it out. This is horrible and I’m going to get an F in World History all because of SOPA and PIPA. They are really messing up my head, which is something that is already being done by KATIE and ASHLEY and GLORIA! GLORIA especially, who I thought kinda liked me but lately she’s been hanging out with this guy CHRIS, who is, like, a super basketball player. Yesterday I went up to her at her locker and she said she couldn’t talk – she was going to go watch CHRIS practice. So I’ll show her – I’m usually nice to her and all chatty but I’ve decided I’m not going to talk to GLORIA at all today.
When she realizes how rotten it is when I’m all silent, she’ll realize CHRIS is a moron and she’ll tell me she loves me.

That’s what I’m counting on, anyway. That, and that Mr. Boozenporn can’t read Portuguese.

Seu Amigo,
Bubby

I told Bubby it is always a risky choice to withdraw with the expectation that certain people will miss you and will wait and wish for your return. The world is a busting crossroads and once you go out the door there are plenty of others conveniently nearby who are just as fascinating as you. Ignoring a person does not make you more attractive. If you want GLORIA to notice you, turn towards her, not away. For that matter, SOPA and PIPA might be worth your attention too.

How do you feel about the silent treatment?

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Benny and Al

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Today is the shared birthday of two American icons, Benjamin Franklin and Al Capone, in 1706 and 1899 respectively. One is widely respected but also known as a bit of a scoundrel, and the other widely known as a scoundrel but also a little bit respected.

I’m not about to suggest they would have been friendly, though it’s possible Franklin would have found Capone interesting. And Capone? He might have found Franklin a pine box to lie down in, given the right circumstances.

Of course the Internet is lousy with quotes from each, and who knows if they’re accurate? But by process of elimination, it’s easy to tell who said what.

This one is not from the author of “The Art of Virtue”:

“Today I got a letter from a woman in England. She offered to pay my passage to London if I’d kill some neighbors she’s been having a quarrel with.”

And this one is not from the author of “The Valentine’s Day Massacre”:

“Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.”

These, I suppose, could have come from either one:

“My booze has been good and my games on the square.”
“Drive thy business or it will drive thee.”
“I’ll have to hand it to Napoleon as the world’s greatest racketeer.”
“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
“Public service is my motto.”
“He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.”

Could there be a book or a movie in the meeting of these strange fun-loving bedfellows? All it would take is a nifty solution to the problem of time travel, and finding a proper wig for Mr. Capone or a suitable hat for Mr. Franklin.

Nominate someone to be your foil in a true “Odd Couple.”