A few entries back I alluded to Mike Reed and his enviable ability to fill great gobs of white space with words and more words, all while holding a job, having a kid, and staying married.  In that entry, as a sort of tribute to his prolific writing, political savvy, and the currency of his journal (named Mad About Memphis, as I recall), I included a graphic of a $100 bill with his face where Ben Franklin's ought to be.  He e-mailed me to complain that it depicted far more forehead than he felt he deserved. 

In the days that followed, I took no corrective action.  This was a mistake.  A faux pas.  I was playing with fire.  How so?, I hear you ask.

Well, clearly the man's feelings were hurt.  I know this because he has mentioned my journal in his entry of January 4 wherein he states he knew that he would not be swamped with new entries from Evaporation upon his return to a normal schedule after the holidays.  He rhapsodizes on how dependable and comforting my lack of production is for him.  Then, to add insult to injury, he couples me with this Chuck person, a truly sporadic journal keeper, as if to suggest that my output is somehow as shamefully lacking as his.  Now that hurts.

While it is good to know that by simply sitting here and doing nothing I can give succor to needy Tennesseeans (sorry, redundant), I can't help but suspect that Mr. Reed might be employing sarcasm and avoiding a defense by erecting an aggressive offense.  Look closely.  You may have noticed that his dispatches come only during office hours.  For someone raised in a culture where a work ethic is prized, where the balance of pay and work is appreciated, where shoes and socks are worn, such a practice might seem distasteful.  But not so for this Reed fellow.  From this we must conclude a: he is a whirlwind of word processing during his donut and Fresca break in the morning, b: his superiors at work are neither superior nor at work, or c: Mike Reed is actually Al Gore fishing for a personality and, having almost found one, continues to emit reports from a "university" under the guise of a public relations typist.

If I weren't so level-headed, Mr. Reed's accusations of sloth might have thrown me into a mad campaign of vengeance and piercing retorts.  I would've gone overboard painting word pictures of barefoot boys with cheek of chaw playing banjo out behind the administration building.  But you know as well as I do that such efforts would be wrong.  Wrong wrong wrong.  At my advanced age I have found that it's best to wash all wounds with the pristine dew of reconciliation, and to that end I offer this compensatory olive branch...

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