In Which the Hammer Comes Down Around the Mark With Some Melodramatic Bullshit

Having considered the situation and weighed the options, and knowing the value of the words that will follow to the various organizations outraged by or involved in the by now all too famous scandal, I have consented to allow the publishing of my father’s suicide notes. I write ‘notes’ because, although my father was not such a monster that even death would not welcome his matriculation unless he proved he meant it through repetition, the changes of mood, tone, and state of mind suggest that he kept the following as a running commentary of the last weeks or months of his life (those familiar with his story will have little difficulty guessing which episodes correspond to which points in his confessions), jotting down what he could when he could. I leave this to you in the hopes that my father will be remembered for what he was: an upstanding businessman and contributing member of society, not a Dracula in modern dress preying on the elderly.

Arthur J. Munny III

* * * * * * * * * * *

The miniature proles act out parts written for them by Ayn Rand in some shitty novel of hers, slow circles round the terrifying giant at rest, shaking gas cans and juggling matches. I survey them, wondering how they dare be so bold as to do this with my eyes open, secure as Lilliputians in the wan thread they’ve made to bind me. I am not amused.

The whining of the elderly is rainwater in a gravedigger’s unfinished ditch.

Work went well today; inventory suggests our supply will keep up with demand. Rather surprised by the height of the demand this quarter, but we’re agile enough to handle it. There’s a wonderful feeling to running a company put together well enough to adjust to a changing market smoothly, every element specified to my needs. A shame so few have ever felt it.

Any fool with money can mount Everest if the sherpas are good enough, but send a top-notch climber up with some saccharine York housewife or Stephen Hawking as a guide and what do you get? Frozen corpses.

It is surprising the lengths somebody will go to achieve something he has no interest in beyond having been denied it. I would have thought that those years of experience would have removed so childish a whim.

A press conference is a conversation with a Hydra. A dumb Hydra, as far as Hydras go.

Courts are silly things in this country, grown men in wigs and formal dresses talking things over when they should be engaged in laughing themselves dry at one another’s costumes. Two lawyers to do one’s job. Has a theatrical air, which calls its results into question, a boring play I was duped into attending by some jackanapes idiotic enough to believe newspaper reviews. It is a joke that I must care about the play’s denouement, a long and convoluted joke that even the teller no longer finds amusing by the time he’s finished with it. Better to have stayed in the Midwest.

I have been a bad boy. I spoke out of turn. I should be made to sit facing the corner.

Fuck that old cross-dressing cunt in each one of his ass-wrinkles. I wish him an atrocious life and then the fires and ice of hell and in the execrable generations to come an honored name.

I am sometimes oddly comforted when I recall that the plot of Othello revolves around a silly bit of sewing.

Odd turn of events: the new accountant’s eyesight not being what the old one’s was, a decimal point was misplaced, and this malingering dot of ink has ensured that roughly one fifth of the orders already in will not be filled. There are more coming in every day, but these will be returned with polite words and sad smiles explaining the truancy of this small mark. I remember when bad math existed in grade schools and cloying films about John Nash, but never in my books.

The shadows you cast while walking at night are some of the most fascinating, three or four of them dancing around you, converging, blending into one another, all with the skill of Chinese acrobats. Cast a strong enough light and the many become one. A shame when long walks at night are the only time one can witness this phenomenon.

If all men are created equal, they do not remain so into their great old age. Ugly but self-evident. More accounts dissipate like a reflection punctured by a dropped brick.

My office has begun to smell unpleasant. My showroom has not.

I wonder if I might be able to hire children to manual labor. Stone-breaking, perhaps. I see no reason why they should be denied the opportunity.

Hundreds of cars stopped on the freeway to watch EMTs prance in synchronization around sculptures in steel, plastic, and flesh, simultaneously the world’s newest form of performance art and its oldest. I, of course, take my seat in the theater with the rest, not yet ready to assay the stage. I wonder how one prepares for such a role.

How does one?

The meek inherit the earth, the putrescent my fiduciary independence. Cheers, all, the view from here is breathtaking. Wish you could see it.