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It’s become almost quaint to remark on how early the holiday season starts each year. It’s hardly any wonder. Every year we add another food, another holiday soundtrack, another round of gifts, another Television Special. Let no tradition ever be forgot! It’s the war cry of the nostalgic, the emotionally underserved, the soon to be bankrupt.

I largely do not like holidays and I do not make much effort to participate – Christmas can begin in February for all it particularly matters to me – but I never cease to wonder at just how strange it all is.

Santa, is, of course, the most singular manifestation of collective neurosis that ever was. Religion may be fake, but there are at least a few who argue the point. No one argues Santa is real – except when Children under 12 or so are in the room. That trigger justifies the most expansive lies, the most creative diagrams of fiction, the most elaborate ruses ever to be devised by the better part of humanity.

And it’s basically only America. We, the country of the atomic bomb, the microwavable burrito, and the low interest mortgage, engage each year in collective insanity to prevent it from getting out that, indeed, no jolly fat man breaks into homes across the world to deliver them gifts such as found in the Sunday circular. The lie is ridiculous – the extent to which we enforce it is sublimely insane. Indeed, I would hazard to guess that the average television station will show profanity, then violence, then sex, all before it allows a single word to be spoken undermining Santa Clause – unless the story ends at Santa is Real™.

I just have to wonder what will be written once America is gone. It’s largely recognized that America prefers to say than to think, and it prefers what it thinks to what it knows. Reality has never quite been a boundary for America. Perhaps that which has inspired America to the heights of power simply has the unfortunate side-effect of incurable psychosis? Will our inability to recognize the benefits of truth in spite of it all be our undoing? I would not be surprised – but I’d still put my money on a natural disaster instead. If we were not supremely capable of weaving fantastic stories this nonsense would have collapsed a thousand times over.

And really – it’s impressive. The man who runs about the mall yelling that Santa isn’t real would be tossed out and subject to opprobrium largely unknown in a culture where freedom has long since trumped civility. I can think of no other culture, no other aspect of American society, no other idea, concept, event, or invention that involves quite so many people all showing tacit acceptance as the idea of Santa. Perhaps the Chinese and Tiananmen Square? That at least has some basis in reality. Our obsession with Christmas is relatively new, but I can only imagine it comes from a desire to create a better fiction than reality – that is the basis of many stories, no? As a culture, we wish we were innocent. We wish the world were better than it is. Instead of finding some value in the simple truth – parents buy the presents as gifts for their children – we instead create some magical world that has far more promise and mystery – until such time as it inevitable collapses. It seems rather cruel. I have to think Santa is more for the benefit of adults than children. They may enjoy Santa for a few years, but at least a few have to wonder about a society so keen and unified on lying to its children. It’s for adults trying to give children what they never had – a world that can never exist. Managing expectations as its very worse.

We are a deluded culture. I can’t imagine that turns out well for us. Let it not be said that we don’t try, though. We have created something impossible. For as long we last, we can take solace in that much. And every year we will push it just a little bit earlier. Until it all implodes, we can hardly do otherwise.

Today we’re going to try something a little bit different. You see – I know I need to write something, specifically a writing exercise, but I’m also in a state of apoplexy. Usually I can maintain my employment through enforced dedicated apathy. As long as I absolutely don’t give a shit what happens here, I can cooly solve its problems and ignore everything else. Sometimes though… something triggers this wave, something instantaneous and compelling, of pure unbridled fury. In this case, a vendor, with a long history of having an inadequate product, providing inadequate support, and making changes without any forewarning, decided to make one of these changes, botch it, and then call me in to fix it.

Allow me to describe this sensation. I envision it as sort of a lock and key. The lock is a cranky mood primed to be angry. Generally speaking, I’m more of a depressed self-defeatist than someone poisoned to rage, but I also respond quickly to irritation. When I’m irritated I start to cycle through my real and perceived injustices. That puts the lock in place.

The key is the single spark that unravels everything. Seeing that the vendor had installed a FTP server without talking to me – that was a grevious breach of etiquette, best practices, or general knowledge. It’s a security risk, it took down a production environment during production hours, it was something well beyond his right or capacity – and that was enough. I felt may face get warm, my tongue go dry. The heart sped up and my hands started to shake. I began to pace around – I could tell that there’s too much adrenaline in the veins.

This is the most dangerous moment in the rage. I retain some capacity to think clearly, but I find myself unbearably cruel. This is when I’m most apt to quit my job, dig into someone for better or worse, to bring forth all the running grievances I have against the world. Over time this lowers my adrenaline rage, but fuels an extended bad mood that persists for a few hours. I best spend this time pacing around until something distracts me – in this case a friend with a corrupt word doc that was easily fixed. I was able to recognize quite keenly that this fix was unrelated to my rage – and thusly I’m pulled away from my cyclical whirlwind of rage leading to rage leading to rage. It breaks the cycle and calms me down…mostly.

I’m still suffering spasms of intense disagreement with existence, hence I’m writing myself through to the end. It’s a rare sort of thing for me to be angry, but then again I rarely have much to be angry about. I rather hope to have a proper writing exercise next week. For my employments sake, I hope it stays quiet. Otherwise, I’ll be back and quite a bit worse off.

I’m a glutton for projects and entirely incapable of approximating how much work I’m capable of, how long I can sustain my interest, and how effective an idea might be. With that as my premise, allow me to introduce Occupy – a new online magazine dedicated to publishing short stories (under 3k words) that won’t occupy too much time to read (the lose derivation of the name).

What is Occupy?

It’s an online magazine for SHORT stories. Authors will be given a token payment for online publication.

What types of stories does Occupy take?

Anything really as long as it’s not poetry, not fanfic, not overly obscene, and meets the overriding theme: short. To clarify, I don’t mean flash fiction (fiction that’s 500 words or less.) Occupy is looking for complete stories with the usual well-developed settings and characters, just not especially long ones. We want full-fledged narratives that live within the confines of a few thousand words. The idea is that I’m impatient, the internet is impatient, and a person trying to read a quick story between the morning meeting and the mid-morning coffee break needs something that won’t take longer than 20 minutes to get through – better yet 10.

Is non-fiction acceptable?

True, false, don’t care as long as it’s a story. We don’t want analysis.

Why start Occupy when there are already a million other online magazines?

Because it was an idea generated over baklava while we waited for the rain to die down, because none of the online magazines have really created a brand as strong as say Rolling Stone, Playboy, or the New York times – there’s still room for bit players, because we wanted experience editing, because it’ll be nice to reject a story for once instead of being rejected, because we’ll (hopefully) get to provide detailed feedback instead of form rejections at least for a little while, and because, hey, why the hell not!

How do you have time for this?

I don’t. I absolutely do not. Luckily, that might not matter.

Officially speaking, my contribution is primarily technical. I got the site set up and I’ll be around to fix problems, but a close friend of mine will be managing the submissions. I might review the short list of the stories she chooses, but I don’t intend to be an overly active participant, at least not at this time. Inevitably, these projects always wind up taking a bit more time than expected but for now I’m editor #2 and intend to stay as far from the front-line as possible.

That’s all for now. The link again is Occupy-Online.com.

I have a list of services. I know that I need to attempt to measure both objective considerations like capacity and cost, as well as quality concerns.

This week I’ve come across the SERVQUAL methodology. This framework breaks services down into five categories: Reliability, Assurance, Tangibles, Empathy, and Responsiveness. For any given service, individuals are given 22 questions in regards to how they believe the service performs in these categories and then again as to how well they expect the service to perform. In theory, the gap between expectation and performance measures the overall quality of a service.

From my reading, there appear to be a number of issues with SERVQUAL as far as its statistical reliability and the generally subjective nature of the questionnaire. Alternatively, SERVQUAL has a great deal of research behind it, is relatively straightforward to implement (though perhaps too long), and efficient to analyze. There don’t appear to be any other particularly adequate frameworks that have been used to nay substantial degree in Information Technology. I’ve come to the tentative conclusion that I’m going to used a heavily modified version of SERVQUAL along with some direct follow up questions in order to tease out issues of quality.

Along these lines and in continuation of previous work, I’ve set up a document:

Function:
Objective Measures (Capacity & Cost):
Subjective Measures (Quality & Expectation)
Target Audience
Concerns

Function refers to the specific departmental service provided to the system. Email Hosting is one simple example. Objective measures are things like number of accounts, cost, etc. While in theory objective, these questions do sometimes come on value judgments like ‘approximately how many hours do staff work with x’? My differentiation between objective and subjective is actually between cost (direct or indirect) and quality. I’m sticking with my words though.

For both I’m developing all the questions I think might be necessary to get the information I’m hoping for. The problem I’m quickly running into is number of questions. For email along I have almost 15. At this rate, the questionnaire is likely to be some 300 questions long. I suspect I will have to put holes in my own study for the sake of brevity and satisfactory completion.

Target Audience becomes interesting. For all questions, the target is the IT manager of each system &/or the director. For the quality questions, the preferable audience is actually the member libraries. Unfortunately, it’s difficult and potential unviable to survey them specifically. As always, there is some expectation and hope that all parties are honest but it’s entirely possible for the IT manager to really not have a solid comprehension of the problems faced by their libraries…I sure as hell don’t really know the general performance of us here and our appraisals here to date have been golden softballs.

Concerns is everything else. Some things just can’t be addressed or only poorly.

So far I’ve got a handful of services put together. I’ve got a dozen or so left to do. Upon completion, I can adapt SERVQUAL to my quality questions, remove questions, figure out implementation (SurveyMonkey), and get it propagated to the systems. With luck I’ll get 16 responses and can spend the next few months making sense of them. Onward!

A listing of services with concerns

Helpdesk: number of calls, categorization of calls, length of calls, length of resolution, quality of support, potential number of calls if quality improves, helpdesk hours, helpdesk methodology and software.

Email Hosting: number of accounts, number of groups, size of mailboxes, quality of spam filtering and service used, email hosting used & cost, availability of email on mobile devices, retention policies.

Website Hosting: Number of websites, amount of traffic, size of websites, platforms used, hosting companies used, frequency & time of changes, overall quality of hosting, type of analytics used

Grant Assistance: which grants, how many libraries, extent of assistance provided, value of grants received.

Onsite Support: number of calls made, length of calls, potential for calls to be addressed remotely, quality of support

Purchasing: amount of product purchased, purchase methodology, contracts made.

Computer Configuration: number of computers reformatted, process, shipping methodology

Training: number of trainings provided, attendance, cost, topics

Server Room: UPS backups, number of servers with function, amount of electricity used, presence of racks, managed environment, outside services, etc

Database Assistance: which databases, number of issues and response

Vendor Relations: number of outside contracts, scope and expense

Personnel: number, salary of individuals, responsibilities of individuals, hours

I need to formalize this and clean it up, but something to start with.

I’m currently scheduled to do an independent study next semester – my last and final assuming I pass everything from now to then. Formally speaking, this study does not begin until January, late January actually, but as with anything effort in equates result out. I’ve put some amount of time into planning the study already – a necessity before essentially marketing the project to prospective professors – but there’s a great deal undone. I’m using this time and space to roughly organize myself.

The summary is as follows: there are 16 cooperate library systems throughout New York representing the majority of the state (geographically), which support the public libraries within their regions. These systems are essential autonomous and distinct, yet nevertheless provide roughly the same services to their various member libraries. This study intends to establish the feasibility of merging, sharing, outsourcing, or consolidating technical services (my area of expertise) throughout the 16 systems.

What services are we really discussing? The answer depends slightly on which system you refer to but overall: email hosting, website hosting, helpline, ILS management, website design & maintenance, onsite training, offsite training, computer repair, IT purchasing, IT grant writing, IT policies, vendor relations, monitor/battery/computer disposal, internet service, network administration, and database support (such as tech support for Overdrive, the ebook/audiobook distributor).

There is some current discussion as to how many of these services I might consider. To start, I believe helpline/helpdesk service is the easiest to approach – logs show the number/categorization of calls, how long they took, how they were resolved etc. It becomes a relatively easy appraisal, at least in theory.

In aggregate, each service, IT or otherwise (and there is definitely room to merge the other system services), has to be appraised in two ways: capacity and performance. Capacity refers simply to the ability of a given entity to respond to the current and potential load of a service. For example, my email server currently has 20 odd email accounts. It could hold somewhere around 5000 to 10000 more. We only provide email for current employees and not for member libraries – if we were to do so, we would likely have maybe an additional 1000 accounts at a high end maximum. Across the state, there would be up to possibly 20,000 accounts, and if we only did system level staff, there would be something like 500. In this rough appraisal, a single server has the capacity to provide email for the entire state, two for all the state with member libraries. Let’s call it 4 with backups, and that’s still 12 less email servers than are currently in use.

Performance is tougher to gauge. Returning to the example of email, there are a few sources of poor performance – too much spam, false positive spam filters, stringent policy regarding attachments, slow access, inability to use mobile devices, poor designed web access, security issues etc. Whereas, the capacity may already exist to provide email across the system, can it be done so in a way that improves or at least maintains current performance. The answer is almost assuredly yes, but capturing that becomes an exercise in creative writing. It much harder to glean anything quantitative from performance measures and qualitative measures add subjectivity that weakens any final conclusion.

Strictly speaking, the goal of this project is to do something interesting while gaining 3 credits and graduating. A slightly more ambitious objective is to take the results of the study and publish them in one of the various library journals. Beyond that, the real purpose of this research is to actually affect change across the system. In theory, if feasibility can be shown than the state (more specifically the system directors) has an oblique obligation to follow through, at least as far as requesting more specific research. The more specific, the more objective, and the more complete this research can performed by me now, the better apt it will be to facilitate this conclusion. Again,effort in, result out.

I suspect I will have more to say soon. I’m currently doing a literature review specifically looking for performance measures that have been used for helpdesk scenarios previously. I also want to clarify the various services more specifically and elaborate the various sources of efficiency that may be present as well as performance complaints that might be valid. The short of this is to expect more entries on the independent study, possibly in place of writing exercises. Yep, I’ll do anything to get out of my own self-assigned work. Not sure why that is…

I’ve recently been posed with the following scenario in regards to a short story I submitted for publication.

“We generally like the story – it’s sharp, insightful, and fun – but the ending is terrible. If you change it, we’ll consider publication”

I suppose there are some people who would get rankled at the idea of modifying their story. Frankly, I never even considered being the slightest bit miffed. If anything, I’m enthralled that they liked the story enough, in spite of the ending, to give me the opportunity to resubmit. I might obliquely argue that writing is something I put myself through for more meditative or transcendental purposes. That might even be true. But while the initial writing may have been entirely for me, the subsequent attempts at publication are for other people to read the story. If the editors wants a new ending – a new ending it is. I can always keep two copies for myself…

No, my only issue is that the ending was shoddy in the first place. I admittedly have a tough time bringing stories to a satisfactory conclusion. This is an inevitable consequence of my writing process – I think of a scenario I consider unique, or interesting, or whatnot, or I start writing with barely any plan at all. Regardless, I have this interesting premise (to me anyway) and never actually consider whole the piece comes together. When I’m inspired to write, it’s because I have an inspired introduction not an elaborate conclusion. As far as my process is concerned, the story is finished when I’ve run out of things to say – which means the ending is never much more than a period plus The End. I struggle to provide the sort of emotional conclusion Aristotle demands of drama.

The solutions remains a bit out of reach. These entries themselves are representative of a quick idea jotted down with no particular finale in mind. This very posting, hell this very paragraph, ends when I hit enter a few times and not beforehand. There’s no particular discrete piece of data or information that I’m trying to convey. The closest thing I have to an upper bound is the word-count, which I try to push above 500, but keep below 1000 or so. Even that’s informal and oft-broken.

The key, in abstract, is to retain the jolt of energy that converts a one-off idea into something I’m willing to sit down and spend time on but allow for a more introspective conclusion. Outlining is too slow, too formal. I outline occasionally but only haphazardly. It’s not a process I generally enjoy. The other alternative, perhaps more to my approach, is to just assume from the start that I’m going to write three or four endings to everything. With a novel, that’s excessive but for a short stories it’s completely feasible. I could very were conclude each story in a handful of different ways and then pick between them. There’s some inefficiency there (and I do try to efficient!) but maybe that solves the issue, at least in part.

The ultimate conclusion – occurring to me in real time – is to make my next writing exercise something with conclusions. I am convinced that writing is a practice based activity. I’m not sure generic textbook assignments necessarily account for all that much, but it’s an actionable step – something easy, something finite.

The real challenge, coming soon, is to take the story mentioned above, and actually fix the ending. They’ve given me this opportunity. I obviously have to take it. Maybe, just maybe, I can get something put together and published. Conclusion…coming soon.

Fantasy team won. That’s 4.0 going into this week. Best start I’ve ever had. Huzzah.

Now down to a writing exercise. For this entry, I’m going to follow up on the October 2010 writing challenge put out by About.com. Directions found here.

After dinner, our host, who was then renting the place, told us that the house was said to be installed with a rather peculiar assortment of plumbing. Our host, a solid Oxford man, was not himself much accustomed to the peculiarities of pipes, valves, and whatnot but in elaboration he was able to convince the lot of us, some better acquainted with the subject, of its strangeness.

You see, the pipes were, by all appearances, made of bone. Our good host showed us a solid white femur that he swore used to connect the radiator in his bedroom. One late evening, taken of a momentary fright, he stumbled about the room in search of something to defend himself. The antagonist was ultimately a stiff northern wind off the mountains, but until that was ascertained our good host had thought to array himself martially. In his fit and panic he saw the radiator. Through some amount of strength he ripped the piping right out and began to swing it about in self-defense. It was only later, when the apparent howling and rattling of the house gave way, that he realized his mace was the bone he now presented before us.

As you can imagine our party of friends was taken quite aback. Our friend was known as a stoic man of business. He had never shown the sort of wit or mirth that might make one find a bone prop and tell such a fantastic story. Nevertheless, this sole accusation could hardly be believed.

To our great surprise, our host presented three additional pieces of bone. The first was, as Dr. Mortimer confirmed, was a knuckle. It was apparently part of the faucet. The second object was a half skull that had been pried off a water heater and laid out on the table. A last bone was an arm presented to us exhaust for the second floor.

Like a group of amateur sleuths, we analyzed each object in turn. They were as they appeared to be: human bones. The only peculiarity was a channel drilled through the middle, presumably to allow for the passage of water. The good Dr. Morthmatch was more certain that the bones were been carved as such in order for a medical skeleton to be assembled. He showed how a metal rod might be used to connect these bones together and make it sound for a class or public viewing. This seemed reasonable.

Our host shook his head. In response to this accusation, he took the knuckle and screwed it onto the femur. He then socketed it into the skull. This new creation did indeed appear rather akin to a sort of plumbing mechanism. Even though the parts were from disparate parts of the system, our host was adamant that the entire house had been done up in just such a manner. We could not rightly disagree.

In the end, we decided that it was late and that we had all imbibed too deeply to be experts on anything. Untimely, our concerns turned more toward the calls of wolves and owls that seemed to have swarmed the household. We went to our rooms immediately thereafter.

The next morning returned by train to London. Everyone had pressing business. No one was too keen to follow up on a drunken tale told with mirth by delaying their absence. Besides, our sleep had been universally horrendous with the perpetual swaying of that ramshackle lodging and the putrid aroma it aroused.

Many years later, our friend was dreadfully murdered. It was a great scandal, of course, not soon to be forgotten. You see, the worst part was they found his body intact from head to foot – except all his bones had been removed. The cause was given down as dropsy. No one ever did return to the lodging to see about the plumbing.

The End

Short quick story. Sort of fun. I should write these quick vignettes rather more often. Oh, and happy Halloween…soonish. Ha, topical! Completely unexpected. Probably won’t be next week. Adieu!

In theory, I write these silly entries in ‘real-time’, as in I post them as soon as I’m finished. That’s usually true with the exception of a few pre-planned items like the end of year vocab list or certain holiday postings. Then there are the rare times when I write something early.

Now, the only reason I might do this would be to get a foot ahead into my next week’s todo list. Over the years, I’ve changed my Servusamanu posting schedule repeatedly but I’ve always followed it with a fervency boring on the moronic. I get into a mood to write, I have the time, I try to figure out what I can do to make my next week a little bit easier. This is one of those articles.

So what do I have to discuss? My fantasy team has yet to play so I can’t even go into that. I’d like to call it a win – I’ve done well so far, but the team I’m opposing has had an equally successful year. It’s a 50/50 across the board. I could always write something and change it later, but frankly that defeats the point of me writing at all – the list demands completion.

A few more worthy topics: I read the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. That’s a Phillip K Dick book which means it’s weird and confusing and possibly the greatest thing ever written all in one. I still prefer Ubik and Valis, but I’m convinced everything Dick ever wrote was amazing.

The trick seems to be to write a story that can’t be spoiled – as in, I could describe what I know of the plot and still tell you nothing of the story. Here’s the synopsis: psychic product manager and his boss sell hallucinogenic, possibly magical drugs. A better drug is introduced. The new drug might be a hyper-intelligent interspatial lichen/mind-bending alien race or it could be a God or everyone might just be crazy/stuck in a hallucinogenic coma. In theory I’ve told you everything. In reality, I’ve said absolutely nothing. Honest truth is I have no idea what exactly happened, but some way or another it was amazing.

Next on the docket is A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin. Favorite living author. Longest f’ing book. His first book has supplied material for a full HBO season and even that with long sections cut out. That was his shortest. The current book is about twice or three times as long and technically runs concurrently with the material in the previous books. The short of this, the only short related to this, is that he’s managed to write two full massive bible sized books covering a few months of time featuring hundreds of characters. If nothing else, the scope is mind-bogglingly impressive. I can’t seem to write a full short story without continuity errors. Genius takes so many forms and sometimes they weight about 5 pounds and take half a year to read. Such as it goes.

That more or less concludes this particular descent into irreverence. For what it’s worth by completing this article in exactly 17 minutes, I’ve freed up some time and concentration for school, work, consulting work, and the other writing I keep telling myself I’ll do. One of my recent stories was rejected but with comments saying to polish and keep at it. I intend to do just that. I should do so now, but the mind is tired, the fingers hurt, and I’ve got a 950 page book sitting on my lap. It’s not a good time. Soon though. Soon. I will get to it. Just as soon as I finish this…yes, that’s how my mind works. It not such a pretty sort of madness, but so far it seems work. Or maybe not. Too tired to care. Good night.

[[Note - I did win week 3. Awesome!]]

My fantasy football teams wins again! That’s two weeks in a row meaning I’m obligated to mention here just as often. You’ll know next week how I do this coming Sunday. Overall feeling pretty happy with my team. Even the RBs that flailed Week 1 did well. I really could write about this all day…

But I shouldn’t. Servusamanu is supposed to be about writing and this is one of the weeks of generally promised to do some sort of writing exercise…let the googling begin.

“Comfort zone – 10 minutes: Come up with a character that represents an aspect of the place you live now (or where you grew up – somewhere you know really well). Try to avoid stereotypes. Spend a bit of time to think about: physical descriptions, where they live, what their values are.” Care of: http://www.lightningbug.com.au/Activity%20page/activity%20page.htm

This could be sort of interesting…

Allow me to introduce, Mr. Newt Pfaltz. He’s a professor by trade, generally meaning by attempted trade. Hasn’t actually worked a day in life, you must understand. He’s much too busy following the latest and greatest in outdated social trends – hats , cornhusking, even the Macarena. Someday he hopes to do just enough social networking to write a book disparaging it. Such are the ways of Mr. Pfaltz, the water-eyed, dough-faced emaciate (vegan on Sundays) ambulator. Don’t forget to put out your unneeded flyers and organic free-range treats. He comes by every Tuesday to pick them up and blog about them.

Don’t get me wrong – he’s not merely an avant-garde trend-setting luddite, he’s also a communist libertarian, pot-smoking social conservative, and free market environmentalist. He spends half his day at the library, the other half Starbucks, and the remaining seven halves of his personality at the various bars and antique hostels scattered about his territory. These are the markings of Mr. N. Pfaltz.

But how, you ask, would I recognize him? To begin, allow me to say that his is short, rumpled, largely unkempt, and smelling of coffee. When it rains, you might wonder if he was fishing in the Wallkill river. When he’s been fishing in the Wallkill river, you wonder if he’s spent too much time in Newburgh. He has a strong visage marked by a clipped nose, thrice chins, and droopy ear-lobes. He’s taken to a cane, likely to be replaced by something motorized, such as perhaps a steamroller, and he stares at everyone until they feel awkward and go somewhere else. That only refers to people, of course. Animals don’t mind being stared at and they all rejoice in the presence of Mr. Newt P. Faltz.

I wouldn’t call him a wealthy man, merely a man of means. Those means are largely unknown but presumed to derive from a wife, an ex-wife, or a harem of would be creditors. He’s been known to charm the local constabulary into ignoring his tendency to not tip. The waitresses pay his parking tickets (for the steamroller, you remember). Also, don’t let me forget to mention his glorious inheritance: he owns no less than 14 bankrupt laundromats. He tried to sell the once. Soon thereafter the Burger King went out of business.

I’m not sure there’s all that much left to say. All in all, Mr. Pfaltz is a wonderful man. It’s just a shame he can’t do anything about the hippies that hang outside his favorite café. That’s really very annoying.