Which Reminds Me

Anyway, it is perfectly legal to quote any book you want as long you attribute it to its source. Thus, you really should be thanking Google for helping to level the playing field, thus neutralizing the artificially purchased advantages of foreign invaders who sometimes forget that we are all equals under the law, unless you are planning to cancel the bill of rights. Needless to say.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, there is really nothing of a personal nature that I would need to discuss with Miss Knox. She probably has her own life there ministering in the peasant village of Yuma, but somehow I don't think that she would understand anything about my life. I could probably say something similar about Bruce Broccoli in Tucson. I am not hugely fond of broccoli, just another vegetable that our parents forced us to eat at a young age, not something that we would choose for ourselves. Broccoli is tolerated only when well cooked and smothered in cheese sauce. Otherwise, Arizona is so boring.

Which Reminds Me

I rode back to college on a bus and called the dorm and maybe Dauna answered the phone and someone volunteered to go to downtown Santa Ana to get me, so that was nice of them to do that. Otherwise I would have had to maybe pay for a taxi or try to find a city bus or something.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, who were those girls who were living with Dina Knox in Yuma? I really don't remember their names. One day I went with them to a county fair and we rode on a type of ferris wheel, but of elliptical shape, and there were so few people at the fair waiting in line that the operator kept it running for what seemed like a very long time, longer than expected, and then when I got off that I was feeling somewhat dizzy but I don't remember anything else about the fair. When I was younger I had more endurance for amusement park rides but I am too old for that now.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I do remember reading something about the unique coding of the human fingerprint, and also the palm of the hand, without which one imagines it possibly would be difficult to get the movie rolling. So how cruel is that, to punch holes in the hands? Who would have thunk such a thing? I cannot even imagine what you were thinking.

Which Reminds Me

While I was at journalism school in Virginia, someone from Concerned Women for America invited me to some sort of party where we all sat around processing forms or post cards for some sort of petition drive. So I accepted the invitation to attend the CWA post card party but I can't remember any other details of that. It was a matter of copying whatever they provided for us to say about something of a political nature.

Which Reminds Me

During the time that I was at SCC, a small college in California, my former 6th grade teacher, Miss Dina Knox, called me and invited me to go to visit her in Yuma, Arizona. She had been visiting California and was returning home, so since she was going to pick me up at the college and take me with her (I would have to take a bus ride back to college), and since it was Easter Week, I did accept the invitation and spent a week there in Yuma with plus-sized Dina and the two or three foster children who also lived there, girls who were maybe high school age and separated from their families for whatever reason. So that was a rather long week, the days going very slowly, interminably waiting for the week to end so that I finally could get out of there and never have to go back there again in this lifetime. So?

Which Reminds Me

Yes, my mother has a bottle of tiny little pills and she takes one every day unfailingly. Why? Because she has a thyroid problem so she has to take those pills for metabolic reasons. (Not to be confused with Carter's little liver pills.) But I already explained that to whoever asked about that. So?

Which Reminds Me

Some recent genealogical research uncovers the name of Barbara Dunn, the second wife of Ogden Johnson and stepmother to his children, the grandchildren of my great-grandmother's cousin Nancy. All of these people are unknown to me, and I never had any contact with the Pennsylvania Smiths, so it is hard for me to comment on persons that I do not know exist. Thus my silence on the points of Barbara Dunn does not indicate complicity so much as utter ignorance of what they are talking about or why I should care about that.

Which Reminds Me

Pronoun: I, me, he, she, herself, you, it, that, they, each, few, many, who, whoever, whose, someone, everybody, etc.

It is quite weird, I think, their neurotic obsession with my use of pronouns. Verbal slop is dished out on a daily basis by them, and in a multiplication of words there is no lack of sin or, at the very least, potential misunderstandings, so I really do not see a need to revisit the many mistakes I too may have splattered all over the air waves in a sometimes misguided effort to explain that there really is nothing that I needed to say about that.

Which Reminds Me

Afterward, possibly years later, I was reading in the alumni news for the Southern California College, my original alma mater, and I noticed that some former classmates of mine were employed at the Library of Congress for a number of years, John Williams and his ethnic trophy wife, Karen Ha. Oh, I didn't know that. Just think, if I had known that I could have looked for them to say hello the day that I was there. But then again I really didn't know them that well that I should go to such extensive trouble just to figure out whether in the world they were. I wasn't paying attention to them. Yes, I suppose you could say that I really didn't care that much.

Which Reminds Me

During the time that I was attending journalism school in Virginia, one day early in the morning I got in my car and drove all the way to Washington D.C., went one part of the Library of Congress and there looked for some things useful for a school project that I was working on. I really didn't do any sightseeing that day. It was February or March, a rainy, drizzly day. While I was there, I went to a small shop nearby to buy lunch, chicken salad on a croissant, delicious. Strange that you should be asking me where I went. I didn't have any other scheduled appointments that day so there was no reason for anyone to be noticing that I was not at home. Oh, are you the beggar who accosted me on the sidewalk outside of the sandwich shop? Strange that a visit to the nation's capital should bring me in contact with such panhandlers dawdling on the sidewalks, not really the powers that one would expect to see prowling about the corridors of power. Needless to say.

Which Reminds Me

Kim Coffaro, a classmate in 7th floor dorm for only one year at SCC, obviously Italian, liked to boast of the amazing spaghetti sauce that was prepared by her father using a secret family recipe, with fresh tomatoes and various herbs and spices of unknown combination, cooked and placed in a jar in the sun to ferment further by sunlight until reaching the proper level of zesty flavor. Ok, so, that's nice. Even so, obtaining the secret Italian recipe is not that important to me as a priority in the whole scheme of things. I am content to buy my pizzas at the local Italian restaurant, usually for pick up myself, only 5-10 minutes drive, to avoid having to pay the added delivery tip, although if convenience warranted a pizza delivery we have done that also on occasion.

Thus, I see no reason to continue this conversation with the dreary Coffaro clan, always so full of themselves and not much else. San Francisco is just too far to go just to get a pizza.

Which Reminds Me

Molly is the type of activist who might make one feel guilty about not being out in the streets carrying signs and placards to protest whatever is wrong with society. Lori Kelderman, on the other hand, was commenting on the sadness of Molly have a police record at such a young age. So either way, you can't win for losing if that is what you want to do, because anyway I only remember something that Lori said about Molly. However, I don't feel myself personally called to do street protests. I can't quite see how all these loose ends got tied together in a huge knot.

Which Reminds Me

I vaguely remember the name of Molly, who was a student at CBNU when I was there. In the classroom she was very opinionated in her possibly Irish Catholic way, but I'd only be guessing. Some people were talking about her and her activist activities because she was involved in actual protest movements but I never talked to her myself about anything of a personal nature so I really wouldn't be a good person to ask to explain anything about Molly. 

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I know, how do I explain, without taking the bait, that in economics class I never had any real communication with Stephanie, that I will never speak to her again in this lifetime due to some earlier incident even though I can't quite remember what that was about, so I guess that means that I just live in this private bubble unaffected by the crazy things going on around me because I can't get enough information to explain that in any type of satisfactory way without making another mess, so whatever. Anyway, I only care about finishing this class and graduating from high school. Yes, if only, if only. If only I had been more social in high school and talked to people more but then they would just cut me off anyway so why bother. Why should I give them any such opportunity? They aren't that important to me that I should be bothered to help them with that.

Which Reminds Me

So even though the Johnsons like to boast of their LBJ Texas namesake, nevertheless my grandmother most likely preferred to vote for Nixon, as history has doubtless recorded, for better or for worse, come rain or come shine, in the good times and in the bad times. Thus, LBJ was not the elect so, anyway, there is nothing of a personal nature that I would need to discuss with Mark his dreary hideous Garlic bimbo. 

Which Reminds Me

Looking at my genealogy chart, it is sort coincidentally noted that my great-grandmother's cousin, Nancy Ermina Smith (1870-1963), was married to Edward Randall Johnson (1867-1955), and they had three Johnson children of whom nothing is known, just that their names appear on the genealogy charts. So?

Which Reminds Me

The high school term paper that I wrote on the assigned topic of population growth met the minimum length requirement of 20 pages and featured Turabian-style footnotes. It was written at home using my parents' manual typewriter. It featured various statistics projecting the growth of the planet's population, then estimated at somewhere near 4 billion, soon to reach 6 billion. Where are we now? Could there be a time when the population outstrips the food supply? These are mind-boggling questions for a high school student to contemplate. Dr. Bidle's criticism was mainly that it was "amorphous," not very organized, although I think that I did get a good grade. Yes, even so, there probably are some other points that I did not elaborate or even touch upon in my term paper. So why do I sometimes get the feeling that I am being called to account for someone else's lousy term paper? How ridiculous is that? There were probably 20 people in the classroom, all writing term papers on the same assigned subject. So why do I have to explain what I did or did not write about in mine? I really don't care to know what they wrote in their term papers, those other dummies.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I vaguely remember in high school writing a 20-page term paper on the subject of population growth, only because the topic was assigned by Mr. DePaul, our economics teacher, and duplicated for Dr. Bidle's English class because any topic was acceptable to him as long as the paper was at least 20 pages long with footnotes, thus demonstrating the ability to write in clear and grammatical sentences, so writing one term paper for two classes saves me the agony writing two 20-page papers when I cannot imagine even writing 1 or 2 pages on such a boring topic as population growth. So I wrote whatever I wrote about that, although I really don't remember what exactly I wrote. It was not an issue upon which I felt any type of crusader passion, it was just a matter of filling 20 pages at least in order to fulfill the academic requirement of the assigned topic. I really don't remember whether I still have that term paper somewhere in my notebooks. It really wasn't that important that I would want to resurrect that topic for national discussion. There are many other topics that I would rather talk about than that. But of course some term paper thieves have very tiny little minds, needless to say.

Which Reminds Me

I hope you were not expecting some original work from me. Unfortunately, I have to spend all my time cleaning up the vomitings of stupid Monica and the ridiculous San Francisco fascists, so there is really not much room for improvements due this problem of the idiotic rantings of Monica.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, it is sad to see the entanglements of Church and State that may be found in European countries, where the state governments in centuries past had taken upon themselves to administer church tithes and the church meddles in government affairs. We never had this type of tithing law here in the United States. There are two sides to the tax coin. Jesus said, Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. We must pay property taxes, gas taxes, income taxes, and more taxes to the government for the operations of the state. But when it comes to the church tithes and offerings for the operations of ministry, you are highly encouraged to give to church and charity. You might even get a tax deduction, and also a blessing, for doing that. But it is the church's job to instruct in regards to the tithe, not really the government. So if you look at it that way, yes there is a separation of sorts between church and state here in America. I know, it is complicated.

But anyway we never got our money from Spain so there is nothing that I would need to discuss with them.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I am getting very tired of all these back-cracking jokes. Just because my cousin David once cracked my back, that does not give everyone else license to do the same. That was a whole different story of ancient times. I don't have license to do back-cracking therapy so I restrain myself from saying more about that.

Which Reminds Me

I do remember in high school, that Sharon Turner was talking about her secretarial work for John Bueno, and how impressed she is with how he never makes a mistake, and his wording in the letters she types for him is always so perfect. So that was her opinion. I really wouldn't be able to comment on that. I wasn't paying attention to that.

Which Reminds Me

Please don't act so surprised when the taunts of the shrill Italian hags go unanswered by me.

Which Reminds Me

Needless to say, I can see that you have mistaken me for Patty or Kathy, the two main fans of the Persian connection. I really don't know anything about that. I wasn't paying attention to that. We had both Sol and Luna in our high school class, but whatever. There was no time for that in high school. I did not pause to quiz people on the meanings of their surnames and their deeper ancestral ties, although maybe I did overhear some of Kathy's chatter. She chatters continually about nothing much. But there is not really any reason to care about what those chatterboxes are actually saying. I am trying to use study hall to do my homework.

Which Reminds Me

During high school study Kathy sits over there chatting with her best buddy Patty Cruz, talking about her Persian roots, or how she is so dark her ancestors probably came to Sicily from Africa during the Middle Ages, or something to that effect. Apparently it is easy for these Italians to get in thick with the local natives due to their common heritage.

Which Reminds Me

It is confusing how during World War II the Italians under Benito Mussolini were closely allied with the Nazis, constituting the Axis powers. Now in these present times we see these dark brown Italian people closely allying themselves with black people, because Kathy certainly is so dark-tanned as to almost pass for black, at the expense of white people and/or Nazis. So if I am white skinned, does that make me a neo-Nazi as opposed to a Fascist? No, I don't think so. It is not so much a matter of anything I did but actually a matter of them wanting to obfuscate and reconfigure the political map for their own personal reasons.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, during high school I do remember reading in the newspaper about the various Nazis who were found to be hiding out in South America, I think that it was mostly Paraguay, but I have no personal knowledge of that. Paraguay was quite a distance away from where we were. I only know what I read in the newspaper about that. However, I do seem to also remember some chatter about the Italian fascists who fought against the United States during World War II, now desperately trying to pass themselves off as American patriots. That is something that I have not quite heard explained in a clear way. This Nazi distraction only detracts attention from the Italian Fascist question that was the more proximate subject of discussion during high school, although I can't quite remember the details of that. It wasn't my job to seek out and destroy Mussolini's cousins.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I did have the chicken pox for an entire week when I was in first or second grade, attending a Lutheran school. I still remember being so depressed because my birthday was that week and I was not able to have a classroom party on that day to share cupcakes with the second grade classmates (or was that first grade). I had to sleep all day and be miserable with fever and little red spots all over my skin. But that was only one week. Life goes on and I no longer can recall why I cared about seeing those second grade people again. We can't go back to second grade. We can't go back in time to relive that all over again. It was only second grade. There is much water under the bridge since then.

Which reminds Me

In a way it was nice of you to offer to protect me against the Chinese invasion, but actually it is too late for me. They are just everywhere spreading their insidious disease and ruining everything so there is nothing to be done about that. I suppose that we could say that same thing about the dreary Mexican invasion and many others. It is just too late to do something about that. Time is of the essence in that question. There is just not enough hours in the day to tackle all these questions in the way that would be appropriate so we will have to cut you short and flip the dial because anyway it is none of your business what I do with my personal life.

Which Reminds Me

In ancient times, the sins of people were noticed by external burn marks evident on their skin, people were flogged and branded and tied to scaffolds and tormented in various ways as a memorial of their many wrongoings, but in these modern times we don't do that. We no longer use such barbaric methods of torture so we don't know who the sinner is or is not just by the branding marks on their faces.

So just because someone has freckles on their face, that does not mean necessarily that they are a sinner.

Unless you speak Spanish, in which language the word for "freckle" is "peca" and also the word for he/she "sins" is "peca." Strange coincidence is this of the Spanish language. Does this word "peca" necessarily mean "sin" or is this case of a word that has more than one meaning: "freckle" or "sin"? In my opinion, the latter case, that of two different meanings, applies, but I suppose you will want to mindlessly follow John's directions anyway, because you don't care about being wrong. You just want to be on the side of power, no matter what the word actually means.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I do vaguely remember at age 7 having met Heather Grease-On, a dreary horrid person from Hong Kong, actually an MK. Am I the only person who is bored of listening to her ridiculous online rantings? She now lives in Washington state, which is apparently not far enough to spare us the nonsense.

Which Reminds Me

Needless to say, I do not wish myself to be represented in the marketplace by some dreary boring man of stupid Heather's choice, never mind the accidental circumstances that have surrounded me with such boring specimens as these. Perhaps I was born in the wrong place and time and never will find true love under these circumstances. Ah, such is my sad fate, 'tis true, to have glanced upon Heather's hideous face at one time or another, and thus to have become myself a target of them, Heather's white trash comrades, unbeknownst to me.

Which Reminds Me

Needless to say, it is not within your powers to dictate the ethnicity of my future husband. I have not much affinity with your ethnic interests which are to elevate your own white husband and the expense of my ethnic collectibles, although I really don't have much to show on that point.

Which Reminds Me

You have a lot of nerve accusing me of the racist crimes of which you yourself are guilty. You say that all people must have a uniform appearance, all black and brown, no freckles allowed, and that no variations will be tolerated. You have ways of preventing reproduction of freckled specimens that do not fit this predetermined mold, ways to discourage any pairings of which you disapprove. And what if I don't want to look in the mirror and see Dauna's ugly face staring back at me? My opinions and choices matter nothing to you. You only care about your boring master plan. And if there is no place for me in your master plan, well, even so I cannot feel guilty about that. That is just your problem, not mine.

Which Reminds Me

Sometimes I think that I hear in the background high school classmate Patty Cruz screeching and screaming in her shrill way, a dreary boring person of no interest to me.

Which Reminds Me

Everybody already knows that there might be Nazis in Latin America. Is it the job of a high school student to identify them? I think not. I think my job is to do my homework and get good grades. If I happen to trip on some information, well, I wouldn't even know who to talk to about that. That would be just be sort of weird.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, what is the Colonel babbling about anyway? He is a fat cat collecting big fat pension retirement checks and all he wants to do is take shots at poor little white girls such as myself. Well, we understand that those military people have to do what they have to do when they are out there fighting in the bushes, but we are not a military family, the only exception to that rule being the Butterfield cousins. So anyway there was no reason for us to continue this conversation. We prefer to stay far away from the bushes, where there is a high risk of being assaulted by bandits.

Oliver Twist was a miserable little street urchin tricked up as a Broadway spectacle, which worked fine for New York dance studios. But anyway the problem of child labor continues unabated in some remote areas of the planet so that you can dance on your plush carpets.

Sometimes life just isn't fair. At one time, my mother's supervisor was a Cuban accountant, Carmelo, whose strange Spanish Cuban dialect was barely understandable, you had to ask him to repeat things because nobody understands what he is saying and he doesn't speak English, but anyway those days are gone, those people are many of them passed away.

Time heals all wounds and everyone has long since forgotten the mysterious Iran-Contra affair which had no apparent significance that anyone should care whatever happened to the Contras. It was apparently just a matter of a colonel and his secretary shredding all the documents so that nobody understood whatever happened. So apparently the military had to do what they had to do, as they often do. So whatever. So?

Which Reminds Me

Yes, the Dewey Decimal system works fine for categorizing books in town libraries, although university libraries use a different numbering system. Either way, the system must be flexible to accommodate new books in categories yet unheard of. And then there are volumes of knowledge not yet encapsulated in books. Thus, no person who thinks they already know it all will be admitted to the system.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I would be happy to help you sort through these e-mails and contribute whatever I can. There might be many things I don't know but at least I could possibly refer you to persons more informed than I on these matters.

Which Reminds Me

It was Dauna who tried out, unsuccessfully, for cheerleader. However, she did successfully find a place on the girls' volleyball team. She was full of information about Jennie's conflicts with her roommate but I wasn't paying much attention to that.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I probably would not explain this matter of birth control in the same terms used by my mother but unless or until I have a husband of my own, there is no reason for me to further develop this subject discussion. I am not interested in a further exploration of Catholic opinion on this topic, which is already well known. Besides which I don't work for Jennie so I don't have to do that.

Which Reminds Me

Elizabeth was talking about why she contributes financial support to Jennie Cerrullo and her ministry, but not to me. I never get a chance to explain that I object to this framing of the matter in terms of a rivalry between myself and Jennie, who I remember from college. At college it was known that Jennie was a cheerleader from the Planet Preppy, which also entailed a certain clothing style, but I was never particularly impressed with that type of thing. Yes, I tend to take the path of least resistance and not bother to try out for cheerleader. So fine, I really don't care what Elizabeth does with her money. Why am I dragged into Jennie's sphere when I really don't know exactly what she does. I prefer to have no comment on the subject of Jennie.

Which Reminds Me

I remember well the sting of being cursed and insulted by that vicious nasty Italian witch Elizabeth Iaturro, but whatever. I don't behave in that nasty Italian way of hers, generally speaking. I can only hope that  she may trip on herself someday and then figure out that I am not her problem, that she is her own worst enemy, because anyway her name seems to have disappeared from the record books and no one can remember who she was or why she thinks it her responsibility to go around sneering at white people such as myself in that contemptuous Italian way. Ok, find, kill me now and relieve me of the misery of seeing your hideous Italian face all the time because anyway it is not all about you. I never asked for your dirty Italian money and don´t want it.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I think that I do remember that you were recommending that I commit suicide. That certainly would simplify matters. Everything would just go to my sister and her family and my titles would be non-existent. Very convenient for them but yet so very messy and inconvenient and painful for me. Just how they want it. This method of consolidating the inheritance is a common practice of rich people who want to control everything very tightly in their own hands. They want all the cards for themselves and nothing for me. Needless to say this is very uncomfortable, yet the earth belongs to the Lord. If it is my time to go, fine, why tether this my mortal body to some meaningless  pile of garbage. When I am gone the land will still be there for somebody else to fight over. But in the meantime, until my time arrives to fly away, o,glory, it is very hard for me to get a job and work properly when all these people are throwing things at me. Something is wrong with this picture. I need a break.

Which Reminds Me

Why complain that "It Took A Miracle"? I rather like the song if done well.

Which Reminds Me

Someone was wanting to make some points about Lottie Moon (1840-1912), a single woman missionary to China for the Southern Baptists. Although there were thousands of single women missionaries in China at one time or another during the 19th century, she was certainly very prominent amongst them. But I really cannot say very much about that. I wasn't paying attention to that. There were just so many. Perhaps they did succeed better than they knew in awakening the sleeping giant even with whatever personal flaws they brought with them, but only time will tell the whole story.

Which Reminds Me

Susie likes to talk about the fancy fondue restaurant where they eat bits and pieces of food dipped in various types of fondue sauces. Was it called The Melting Pot? I never ate there myself, only heard Susie talking about that, more than once I think,oddly.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I am vaguely aware that Judy Umstead is dating Larry Salvemini, and I really don't care that much. Larry never meant anything to me so whatever. I have no interest in socializing further with these dreary boring people. They just want to grandstand for no apparent reason and I don't see why I should care. There never was anything nice to say about them.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, at Evangel college I roomed firstly, for two months, with Judy Umstead from Pennsylvania.It was a huge relief to all when Judy moved downstairs. It was a huge relief to be rid of Judy and her strange temper tantrums. She would often launch into strange screaming fits for no apparent reason so whatever. Pennsylvania is a place of no interest to me.

Which Reminds me

Yes, I seem to remember receiving some message from the Chinese complaining about Smith. I believe the reference was to Arthur Henderson Smith (1845-1932), who served in China many years as a missionary. Coincidentally, there is an Arthur Smith who is a cousin or uncle of my great-grandmother but that is a completely different story. You were complaining about Smith's severe descriptions of "Chinese Characteristics" in his book of that title. So I looked at the book and agree that it is not very quotable in some places. And yet paradoxically he was very prolific. I don't know how to explain that. He was very accomplished at what he did, even if some people looking to find fault with him and missionaries generally are wanting to use that antagonistic spirit as a device for furthering their own anti-American interests.

Which Reminds Me

How dare you ask me to defend the innocence of Diana? I am not able to vouch for what she did in her spare time apart from me, which is actually most of the time. I cannot be expected to track all her of gossip avenues, even if I cared about that, which actually I don't care that much.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, Who,was,that Samoan lady who lived down the street from Grandma Calkins? I really don't remember those people.

Which Reminds MeI

From our double bookings we learn that it only takes three or more false witnesses to establish the lie. Truth or lie matters not so much as whatever they say. This is how the false witnesses may collude to slaughter the innocence. Yes, I was discussing this point with someone. This is why it is better to be corrected at one to two than to colliude with 20 or 30 and then learn that you are on the losing side, but nobody would listen to me so you are juat out there on your own.

Which Reminds Me

While living in California I once attended a Bob Bennett concert with Marlene Harvey. Afterwards, all she could talk about was how the words and lyrics did not make any sense to her. Yes, well, this matter of interpreting metaphors, similes and other figures of speech seems a very difficult thing to discuss with the mentally retarded Harvey sisters from Arkansas. If you were not paying attention in English class, and also doing your share of reading, you will always be several steps behind me, needless to say. There is nothing further of this nature that I would need to discuss with the country bumpkins of Arkansas.

Which Reminds Me

During college sometimes a bunch of girls would go to a restaurant to eat something other than cafeteria food. The term Dutch applies when each girl pays her own bill. I do not think that I have any outstanding unpaid "Dutch" bills so there is no reason to continue this discussion.

Which Reminds Me

Not being related to the Maltese branch of the family does not make me an Italian, needless to say. So while it seems sort of understandable that Sharon would be overly obsessive about justifying her existence because she really is an ugly thing, somewhat horrifying to look upon, even so this is not an argument that requires my participation. These ying-yang logistics do not work for me.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, back in the old days I did not think to ask whether Sharon Turner might be related to the Maltese Turners who are the descendants of the Baron. We are so far removed from the Baron as to not consider this distant connection worth mentioning in our genealogy book, unless of course we are going to trace our own family tree back to Tudor times, in which case a paragraph or so might be mustered to acknowledge our European roots. We have no reason to be dialoguing with Malta, needless to say, much less their Turner in-laws in the U.S. It is just not worth it.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, I do think that we need to be moderate and conservative when configuring our ballpark numbers so as to not seem too self-aggrandizing, and also to leave room for ourselves to be pleasantly surprised when we learn that our numbers were better than we thought although the context of that escapes my mind. Never again will I have another personal conversation with some mentally retarded bimbo named Sharon Turner. Do you think that I am so stupid that I am just going to put the contents of my brain on a platter so that the stupid Turner idiots can just help themselves to everything about me? No, this experience is teaching me about the necessity of playing hard to get. Thanks for the catch-me-if-you-can strategy lessons.

Which Reminds Me

Yes, that was strange. Why all this prattling about the fictional character of Claudine? The Claudine novels were written by Colette, a French author of a somewhat racy repute. During high school we were required to read one of the Claudine books, maybe it was Claudine at School, although I cannot remember very much about that. The French books that we read in Spanish translation were rather depressing. The spirit of a book sometimes is something that one does not want to wear permanently. Sometimes one prefers to cast aside these ill-fitting things as not worthy of further attention. They are just there to remind us that there is a darker side of things that perhaps serves as a warning or caution about not doing or saying anything more about Colette.

Which Reminds Me

It does make you wonder why all these horrid dirty foul-mouthed Chinese pigs think that I would want their dirty money.