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I learned about the Roman calendar system last semester (it is very complicated) so I cannot say for sure that this is the Ides of January but I'm going to pretend that I can. Main plan for the day thwarted by the celebration of human rights. The financial aid office is not open. So instead I came downtown, got a fish taco, and am now at the coffee shop, where I have composed the following letters: Dear Mexicans, I love your food. Thank you for it. Thank you very much. Love,
I love you in my tacos. Love, ---------------
--------------- Myrtle and the Anchoress "You have to say the rites as you wall me in," Taffy said. "How can I read and brick at the same time?" Myrtle said. Taffy rolled her eyes. "One-handed," she said. "And hurry up. I'm getting cold." Myrtle held the book in her right hand and continued building the wall with her left. She looked at the pages and squinted. "How can I read this? These aren't even letters. What's this weird half-P thing?" "Thorn," Taffy said. "Don't you have any imagination at all? It's thorn!" She rolled her eyes again. "Thorn, okay, great," Myrtle said. She began reading the enclosure rites while trying to smooth out a glob of mortar with a stick. Taffy knelt on the forest floor and closed her eyes. "Hurry up," she said a few minutes later. "My knees are hurting. And don't forget to make the window big enough and low enough for me to climb out of." "You can't climb out," Myrtle said. "You're not supposed to ever leave your enclosure. I just gave you Last Rites. You're supposed to die in there." Taffy smiled. "You lay people are so sweet," she said. "You really think we actually stay in our enclosures without ever leaving for the rest of our lives?" "Isn't that the whole point?" Myrtle said. "And anyway, you're a lay person yourself." Taffy stopped smiling and narrowed her eyes. "Don't forget to build the servant's quarters for yourself. And remember, it should only be like half the size of my place." That first night Myrtle fell into an exhausted sleep in her half-finished room. The second night she was kept awake by the hoots and hollers of the raucous revelers in Taffy's cell. The third night she was awakened by a siren and flashing lights. "Oh my god!" Taffy was yelling. "Everybody out! We're being raided! Run for your lives!" Myrtle squeezed herself out of the hole in her wall and ran blindly through the woods. Not fifty yards from the anchorhold, she tripped and fell. She crawled next to a fallen log and listened. "What in the sam hell is this?" a man said. "Looks like some kind of orgy house," another man said. "Orgy house? Come on, Sam, you think them little girls is having orgies in the woods? They're just 13 years old." "They're 13-year-old armed bank robbers." "I guess." A third man joined the conversation. "They certainly aren't ordinary 13-year-old girls, and this certainly isn't an orgy house." "What do you think it is, detective?" "I don't know. But remember who we're dealing with: Taffy Black, a reclusive genius and expert on medieval religion, horticulture, and endocrinology. And Myrtle B. Jones, heiress to the largest artificial flower fortune this side of the Mississippi and the youngest certified architect this state has seen in over one hundred years. Together, these two little girls are responsible for three explosions, five carjackings, the introduction of black tar heroin to Johnsonville, armed robbery, and blackmail, all in the last two weeks." "What are you saying, Bob?" "What I'm saying is, we're dealing with two criminal masterminds. Two dangerous criminal masterminds."
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