the news from the Canadas

(ivica)

:     Jerry “The Shoe” Sugar 

 

"Patience is the virtue of an ass"
(George Granville)

Some people tell me you're a thief and others call you a scam artist. You can level with me. Which is it, Sugar?
Well, I travel a bit. But I've never stolen from a person in a bread line.

Where do you travel to?
Well, I have to think of a plan first, and then I go to where my chances are best. It's kinda like a card game. You have to set it up and control as many of the wild cards as possible within your budget. (And you have to take a loss sometimes! Walk home at supper time, when you've only earned your breakfast that particular day.)

Like where?
Like Las Vegas or Prague. I have to go where the greedy people are or where the crooked politicians live or where your particular plan calls for a particular type of fish.

You cheat the casinos in Las Vegas?
Naaa! Those guys are pros. You don't attack the pros! Your chances are very poor there. ivica, you don't walk into the saloon and challenge the fastest gun to come out into the dusty street! You try to pick out the slowest drunkest gun in the room: "Hey you! Yeah, you! Step outside ya lying prairie dog!" But the dumb rich gamblers, say, or the crooked politicians looking for a hi-tech company to provide fake jobs, or say some silly bureaucat who has a lotta tax-dollars he has to spend real soon.

So give me a good example.
Yeah! I'd rather not! There was a guy however, a politician from South America, who had millions belonging to his country. I almost earned a bit of that, but the land I had lined up in Mexcio City he didn't like. I lost a bit of money there with some options I took out. He took his stolen money to an insurance company and built some hi-rises in the east end of Hog Town. I don't do business in my own country. By the way, making my way back home was a lotta fun: stealing cars and scrambling all the way back to Fat City. You gotta pick your car carefully though. One nice Buick in a rich parking lot in busy part of Miami paid for all my travelling expenses.

"The oldest sins the newest kind of ways"
(William Shakespeare)
"I love thee to the depth and breadth and height"
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

What's the secret to your success?
Yeah! Well, I don't sell weapons, or do nuclear, or set up chemical plants in third-world countries, or fill up the city with plastic spoons, or scrape the metals from the surfaces of the earth like a lot of you Canadians do. And I don't own anything, except for one luxury: my little house here in town. Not even a car. So right from the word "Go" I'm not very greedy or murderous. One key is that I always find a local associate who can help me with the other yokels...and I pay him or her fairly. There are strange customs and laws and languages everywhere you go.

 

And retirement?
What's there to retire from? Life? No thanks! But I am always on the lookout for that right girl. That would change a lot of things in my life. I wouldn't mind buying a little business in the sun to quietly book or bagel our way to heaven. It would depend on what she liked to do, whoever she might be. I'm, as you well know, flexible!

What about personal computers and all that software out there? Is that----
Now, that is gunpowder. While the rest of the world is trying to become industrialist we in the West are shooting into a post-industrialist world. I don't know what we're evolving into, but I recognize what we're leaving behind.

Litter?
Sure, who doesn't? But it's like gunpowder in the 1400s. The old feudal world in Western Europe was simply blown away like an outdated suit. You didn't need land, peasants, and a castle anymore. You simply needed this new technology: a handgun or a cannon.

"All archaic societies feel themselves bound to a 'melancholy wheel' of endless recurrence."
(Barbara Ward)

You have your money stashed away for a rainy day? In Switzerland or wherever you guys prefer to do that kind of stuff?
"You guys?" No. Got no need for that kind of security. That's for another type of person. Except for my house, I spend every last dollar I have. It forces me to go back out into the world again. It's just not worth anybody's bother to rob me! I couldn't live like that anyway. Weekly hours, bi-weekly pay, the constant pressure of bills, routines here and there, office girl friend, Friday wife, PTA, groceries, Sunday sleeping in, Saturday lawn, Wednesday restaurant, savings account, selfish wife, stupid kids, rude neighbours, tick-tock-tick-tock...Gawd, life is for the living. Some are wolves and some are sheep!

And some are moral wolves?
(We gonna play some snooker now, or what? I think that cute girl over there by the window is loitering with intent.)

Yeah, sure! But thanks for the interview, Shoe. Oh yes! One more offical question. You enjoy your life?
Sure, well, I learned a long time ago that the world wasn't put here to supply me with amusement or pleasure. That's MY job! (I hope the eclipse tonight is a nice shade of red.)
 
 

keep kewl, ivica-chalking-up-his-stick

[III EST TURBA]

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