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Greetings Friends,

Here is the holiday greeting from this particular address.  I really hate writing something like this, but I hate getting them even more, and figured I could use this as a sort of revenge against the people I know who insist on sending these.

Every year I get bunches of generic family news notes, not uncommonly on dark paper with weird decorations and blurry pictures.  If I could say anything, if I felt like taking the time to respond, it would be to say something like this:

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Happy holidays.  I see that your evil spawn are a year older now.  I dearly love children.  You seem to as well, because you’ve run about a dozen through your wife and the local school system.  Those kids will be a terrific burden to the state, increase levels of pollution, and probably not rise about the average level of social contribution.  God knows, they’ll likely start sending me generic holiday message letters as soon as they’ve decided to marry some other like-minded idiot.  By the way, I don’t have children.  I have had something called a ‘vasectomy.’  It’s a little operation undertaken by responsible people, but never mind.  In civilized places they require them for pets. 

Speaking of which, I see your dog figures prominently in your note.  I have two dogs.  That is all you’re going to hear from me about the subject.

I see also that you’ve had a promotion.  I can tell because you now own a really big SUV—a sort of dreadnaught of the roadway.  It’s there in the picture, blotting out the skyline behind the family portrait.  In the navy, I served on destroyers that weren’t that big.  How many tugboats does it take to get you onto the freeway?  Let’s see—my thirteen year-old, six-cylinder truck has 153,000 miles on the ticker.  I only drive it when I have to, but hell, I don’t have sixteen kids to take to soccer practice.  I guess you need a battleship for that, eh?

How nice that you vacationed in Europe last summer.  I knew you went because you sent me a postcard of Florence to an address I hadn’t lived at in a decade.  Hey, we have something in common:  last summer I read a book about Europe and drank some German beer.  Did the travel broaden you?  It sure looks like it. 

And it’s really great that your second son is doing so well at Duke.  Let’s see, if I remember correctly, he was doing pre-med but fell in love with humanity and changed his major to Sociology.  That’s okay, I couldn’t do chemistry, either.  But isn’t that a lot to shell out for Max Weber?

And the girl who was at Cal—she’s not in this year’s huggy family shot.  I think she was the one who told me I was a fascist because I had a mutual fund.  Did you have her killed?

Speaking of vehicles, your wife certainly has a lot of miles on her.  I bet she’s shrunk half a foot from bone loss already.  Isn’t it time you ran off with a sexy younger colleague like last time around?  By the way, my wife and I have been together 25 years.  Actually, we’ve been married that long, but she hasn’t paid much attention since our honeymoon, when I told her that space aliens would one day make me king of the world.  She doesn’t believe in monarchy.

I said I wasn’t going to mention the dogs, and I won’t.

To tell the truth I sometimes feel like I should have a big family picture here like the one you sent me.  Instead, you can see a photo of one of my hobbies.  From time to time I drive the old truck up through the San Joaquin Valley.  There’s lots of bugs out there.  When I get to where I’m going, I take a picture of the ones stuck on my radiator.  They make interesting patterns; sometimes there are more wasps than beetles; sometimes the other way around.  I’ve developed this theory that the presence of particular insects is strongly related to the use of pesticides, all other things being equal.  But then, so much depends on size; the smaller ones tend to remain in the airstream and just flow into the windshield.  I’ve got a lot of charts developed, but there’s a lot more work to do.  Maybe by next Christmas I’ll have something to publish.

I see that you don’t have any advice about the elections this time around.  I thought it was very helpful that you provided me with a bumper sticker from your candidate a few years back.  Wasn’t he the guy who ended up getting nabbed in that airport men’s room?  I kept the sticker—it’s holding the muffler together on my truck.

I guess that’s about all I’ve got to report, except for the news about the dogs.  I promised not to say anything about them because they have their own little letter that will be going out in January.  By that time Tulip will be done with her dissertation and Rosie will be back from her junior year abroad.

Much love, Michael and the others

Today’s note of interest comes to us from Prince Fayad Bolkiah, who writes:

Dear Friend,

I am Prince Fayad Bolkiah, the eldest son of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, former Finance Minister of Brunei, the tiny oil-rich sultanate on the Gulf Island of Borneo.  I will save your time by not amplifying my extended royal family history, which has already been disseminated by the international media during the controversial dispute that erupted between my father and his stepbrother, the sultan of Brunei Sheik Muda Hassanal Bolkiah. As you may know from the international media, the sultan had accused my father of financial mismanagement and impropriety of US$14.8 billion dollars.

This was as a result of the Asian financial crisis that made my fathers company Amedeo Development Company and government owned Brunei Investment Company to be declared bankrupt during his tenure in office. However my father was kept under house arrest, his bank accounts and private properties including a crude oil export refinery were later confiscated by the sultanate. Furthermore during this unfortunate period, I was advised to evacuate my immediate family outside the sultanate to avoid further prosecution from the sultan and his security operatives, but before I could do that I was placed under house arrest after being beaten by the Sultans security men and I had no access to phone, but I have a laptop from which I am sending you this mail. Some of the guards here are still loyal to me.

Before my Incaceration, I went ahead to dispatch the sum of Four hundred and twenty Million United States Dollars (US$420,000,000.00). The money has now been deposited as valuables into different private security and trust company for safe keeping abroad. The money was split and kept in the following countries in this proportion: US$50 Million is in London, US$160 Million is in china, US$40 Million is in Thailand, and US $170 Million in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Please if you know you can assist in claiming and investing it in real estate/property to guarantee the future survival of my family, contact me fast so that I'll give you contact information of the security company in Europe and other parts of the world where the funds are deposited. For your assistance i will compensate you with 25% of the total sum and another 5% shall be set aside to defray any expenses that may arise.

Please I count on your absolute confidentiality, transparency and trust while looking forward to your prompt response towards a swift conclusion of this business transaction through my email address as follows:  [email protected]

Thanks & May you remain blessed.

I remain yours sincerely,
Prince Fayad Bolkiah

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Dear Prince,

I am pretty busy around here today but decided to slip you off a quick note.  The plumbers snaked the bathroom drain yesterday and made a mess everywhere.  The tile has to be scrubbed and the shower I won’t go into.  But I can always take a moment for a friend.

I see that you are in real trouble over there.  Lucky for you to have a laptop, eh?  Just the thing when you’re being held under house arrest.  Come to think of it, some dude from the royal family of Siam sent me a line the other day—they were holding him in some dilapidated palace under heavy guard and he only managed to get a text message out to the world through a smuggled cell phone.  Hard times for the upper crust, I guess.  Most likely it’s just jealousy. 

As for your family trouble, I hadn’t heard.  Mostly I try to stay out of international disputes—I’m a Democrat and we leave that sort of thing to the other side. 

Right now I have to tell you it would be hard for me to get involved with any banking stuff.  My credit cards are pretty maxed out and there have been some minor disasters around here apart from the plumbing.  My motorcycle got a cracked cowling and a scratched mirror that together will run me just about six hundred basically for the parts alone, you know?  I looked for old parts from a junkyard but those were no bargain.  In short, I’m not the go-to guy for this one, you know what I’m saying?  I’m no cheapskate, but you kind of caught me on the down side.  Maybe another time.

Or hey, now I think about it, maybe you could make some calls and see about getting me a front cowling for an ’06 Kawasaki Concours and maybe the left mirror, too.  See, if you can use your royal influence to score me the parts cheap, I can maybe make you up the diff and help you get some of those millions out of storage.  Or at least send you a new battery for your laptop.  Give it some thought, okay?  If not, maybe you could write to one of those paycheck loan joints they have around here.  Most of them will give you three, four hundred if you can prove you’ve got a job.  Get your Dad to co-sign and you’re good for a grand.  Best of luck.

Michael McGrorty

June 26, 2007

Dear Ginger,

The wife is out of town this week.  That means we save considerable money on electricity because I don’t run the air conditioning and prefer the rooms to be dark when nobody is in them.  That way you can’t see the socks on the floor.  The socks are down low where it is cooler anyhow and have never complained about the heat.

When my wife is gone, I try to make my way through the different types of food she has purchased.  This prevents having to go shopping for anything more than beer and perhaps the odd bag of pretzels.  It also clears out the refrigerator to some extent.

This morning, after my coffee, I decided to rustle up some breakfast.  Having tired of cold cereal, I went on a fridge safari and discovered a covered plastic dish hiding behind some bottles; the dish contained a slab of some pale stuff with a dark rind.  I recalled my wife offering me some grilled swordfish the other night and figured that it must be the meal that I turned down.  Swordfish seems to smell like most other fishes.  It also tastes like other fishes that have passed their prime.  If I learned one important thing this morning it was that old swordfish steaks are not improved much by either tartar sauce or ketchup.  The dogs on the other hand found the swordfish delightful, right down to the fishy gelatin in the bottom of the dish.

After that episode it was necessary to resume serious foraging.  Discovering nothing of interest in the top part of the ice box, I headed for the freezer, where I discovered just about nothing except frozen water, frozen vegetables and a brace of sad looking “free range” turkey sausages.  But then a carton of chocolate ice cream caught my eye; a few scoops of this and my morning turned bright again. 

After breakfast I had a shower and then proceeded to the gym for a row on the machine.  Back home again, I found that the house seemed to smell rather strongly of swordfish; in fact, the dogs seemed to smell of swordfish too, a fact which bothered them not at all.  If their expressions said anything it was, ‘How’s about more of that stuff?’ but there wasn’t any more stale swordfish and I had to give them their ordinary dog food, which they accepted without enthusiasm. 

For myself, I prepared a luncheon of peanut butter and crackers, plus a glass of warm tea. The crackers ran out before the peanut butter, and I had no way to get the last of the brown stuff out of the bowl.  At last it occurred to me to give Rosie a chance to clean the dish.  She gladly thrust her face into the bowl, but didn’t get the idea quite right:  instead of licking, she rubbed off the stuff onto her nose, then tried to lick her face clean.  A white dog with a peanut buttered snout is something to behold.  Her sister arrived at about this time, discovered that she’d missed out on the treat, and began to bark.  I could see a disaster in the making if the peanut buttered dog and her sister began to tussle on the carpet, so I wiped Rosie’s snout as clean as I could get it and left the two of them to hash things out. 

After this I lay down for a nap.  The moment I hit the bed, Rosie and Tulip jumped onto the covers to share rest time with me.  And so I fell asleep between two terriers, enveloped in the aroma of swordfish and peanut butter.  And that is how things go around this house.

Michael McGrorty