Friday Donuts

Friends, Bank of Americas’ $1.2 billion fine for money laundering got me thinking about ice cream. What do ice cream and Bank of America have in common? I’m glad you asked. When you go to Ecuador, you might notice numerous small tents along the highway shoulder, where an informal vendor stands all day waving a giant cardboard ice cream cutout. The funny thing is that there never seem to be any customers stopping to buy the delicious helados de Salcedo they pitch. Yet the setup feels conspicuously uniform. The same tents, cutouts, signage, and ice boxes, like that of a successful chain. Where does the money come from and how do they stay in business? If I were a drug lord, I might set up an ice cream factory, offer these folks gear, inventory, and a payment for saying they sold a lot of ice cream. It is after all a cash business. Then again maybe I just have a dirty mind. In any event, I’m glad there are no roadside donuts. Yet.​ Happy Friday!

Friends, I'm thinking of a rock band that has been around for decades, and whose drummer died and was replaced by a woman. If you guessed Spinal Tap, good guess. I was actually thinking of Rush. At their Wednesday evening concert, not only was Anika Nilles' drumming spectacular, and the tribute to Neil Peart touching, but I was also reminded of how deep their lyrics can be. Although 100 dB can make it hard to make out what Geddy Lee is singing, lines like "we will pay the price but we will not count the cost", "if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice", and "we're only immortal for a limited time" always have a way of getting me in a philosophical mood (admittedly, it doesn't take much). As an added bonus, the intro short film before the concert featured Alex Lifeson as "military donut guy", which makes me wonder where the nearest Tim Horton's might be ... probably not worth the thousand-mile drive, I guess I...

Friends, This week, I received a voicemail stating I had won the "prize of a lifetime", a "$5,000 a week, forever prize, or a full lump sum payout of a whopping $5 million, with the keys to a brand-new car in [my] color of choice." As I ponder this windfall, the first question that comes to my mind is why just the keys? Also, what color should I choose, who uses the word "whopping", and how did I get entered to win this prize? The answer to the latter question, like any good horoscope, is vague enough to sound plausible: apparently, I entered a sweepstakes "based on past subscriptions and cross-promotion through credit card expenditure." And, of course, this delightful surprise was "approved by the Federal Trade Commission", so it can't possibly be a scam designed to exploit naïve suckers. Can it? As I begin to count my soon-to-hatch chickens, I will go sit outside and wait for some donuts to rain out of the clear sky. Who knows, ma...