U.n.c.l.e. is the guy married to your aunt - but what of Thrush?

Fisher King, you think you've got problems...

At 49, I was often told I looked like Mel Gibson.

Att 50, I started being mistaken for Willie Nelson.

Rough year, babe, rough year.

Shark, so you are the missing link?

Mel Gibson before or after blood?

Jeez you poor guy(s). Well, at least you don't look like Willie's Johnson.

I've been told I could do a mean Dick Cheney if I cut the wisps and dug out my fat suits. Show up at various corporations with a flotilla of secret service agents (guys with cell phones and earsets), you're in the door. Cash only, we're in a hurry, come on, let's go. They wouldn't know the difference. They don't know what Cheney sounds like. I could speak, say a few words: "Thanks for all your hard work, your talent, and yes, your treasure. On behalf the P of USA, bla bla bla," then bolt. Just ahead of a spray of bullets. Not to hurt anyway. Just a little whack at Dick's rep.

I have to do something. This sounds like it could work. I might even make the papers. CHENEY PULLS DOWN MILLIONS. He's done it before. Nothing breeds success like the idea it rubs off, which it doesn't. All the most successful robbers say you literally have to take it. Rubbing does nothing.

Thanks for all your help. And the federal prisons are very nice, I hear, with libraries.

FYI:

I looked like Mel before he started that strange eye-twitch that makes him look like he belongs with the cast from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

re: Cheney -

They'd know you were a fake Cheney because he never goes out.

Your best bet: wear camos, tote a shotgun, and keep asking "When do they release more pheasants?"

Your *cup will overflow.


*no, not that one.

Here in Illinois we don't wear those things on our geniteels. But I had a nurse at the dentist's office today who appeared to be wearing one, in addition to the mask and the visor and the hair net and the hood and the yellow raincoat. But in general we don't like to bind ourselves up up here. You may wonder how it is I can speak with authority on such matters, and I can't in all good conscience, but since I have a very small conscience, I'll go ahead anyway. Illinoisians wear no cups. We pee freely into cotton underwear and wash them regularly. Having once been the Laundry Guy at a local homeless shelter, I speak from authority -- and not because the homeless have the dirtiest underwear anywhere: they don't. In fact, the homeless people I served were more likely to have brand-new used-once underwear fresh out of the package from last night. You'd think the homeless would have filthy teeth, right? Wrong. I've seen them glob on a heaping helping of toothpaste, brush a while, add some more -- no spitting -- foaming at the mouth -- then throw away the toothpaste... then throw away the toothbrush. And no, I'm not lying. This is what people do with plentiful free stuff. I also cooked and cleaned up. Gluttony in America is alive in every caste.

What this has to do with looking in a three-way mirror is nothing.

Thank you for your comments.

Yah, but it keeps the ol' essay alive!


(You *OWE me!)


*visit "**Aristide's Diary" soon and receive 10% off on your next Caribbean Cruise!


** "It reads like a hot, throbbing, dollop of sexual manliness! I couldn't put it down!" ---Nora Roberts