Alibi For Sale

If you are one of those who enjoy an occasional escapade, especially to a 'Love Hotel', and you are married, therefore worried about not being able to attend the secret meeting with that desirable someone, or about being caught out, help is now easily available at the click of a few buttons. And some cash naturally.

This is apparently big business. It has flourished rapidly for the last couple of years in Spain, and most probably longer in other countries too; America being the pioneer of such enterprise years back. Eliot Spitzer, the - Ex governor of New York, who was found frequenting prostitutes leading to his resignation, obviously didn't know about it. Shame!

 

Several Spanish companies are operating quite successfully, organizing clandestine love encounters in discrete tucked-away hotels. They take care of the reservation and pay the bill so as to avoid leaving trail of you ever having been there, and providing excuses and 'evidence' to present to your wife/husband/boy-girl friends, with solid 'proofs' that your absence from home/office is legit, with ample fool proof alibis.

You need to get online first of all. Click onto tucoartada.com (which in Spanish means youralibi.com) and is one of the several, establish a connection, pay about 200 € for a fake invitation to business seminar, old school reunion, congress, lecture ... whatever to be agreed upon or suits your status better, confirmation of your attendance, so that your wife/husband would be convinced that you are going away for the weekend or even a whole week earning your keep and hers. She might even lovingly pack your bag, and see you to the door, with a tender or tearful kiss, depending on how long you are going to be absent from home for.

Then on the appointed date, hour, location, you drive directly into the hotel car-park, where somebody would be waiting to pounce on you with canvas to cover up your car, and especially the number-plate. You will be escorted to the lift as you are not supposed to go up to the hotel yourself, in case you bump into a friend or, worst still, your wife's sister or your husband's brother-in-law. At the end of your stay the procedure would be repeated until you are safely away from the location.

Depending on how much you need for your alibi, and pay accordingly, there are small 'gifts' for you to casually drop out of your pocket, or spill out of your suitcase, like a box of matches with the hotel name, little bottles of shampoo or slippers from a certain hotel you never stayed in, trophies of some sport championship you never took part in, or receipts of meals in non existent restaurants but in that same location where you were supposed to be. Even disposable telephone numbers of the hotel where the conference was supposedly held, in case your wife called; and these numbers would be disconnected without a trace afterwards.

According to some of these companies, more and more women are going away for 'cooking seminars', demonstrations by famous chefs and culinary schools. The ladies too have learned the game that what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

I reserve my comment on this.

Tags:Alibi,LoveHotel,Goose,Gander

Adding Up My Sins

The Vatican had somehow taken centuries to perceive, that the accumulation of wealth impoverish a lot of people to enrich a relatively few, and had just declared it as mortal sin, to be added to the well established capital sins. This new list contains also seven in number like the other familiar to all:

 

1. Bio-ethical violation: like anti-conception - As a great many other women, I am guilty
2. Experiments morally questionable: investigation of stem cells - Not guilty
3. Drug addiction and trafficking - Definitely not guilty, hate it already without trying it
4. Contamination of environment - More and more conscious of and abiding not to
5. Contributing to the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor - Not in position to do so
6. Excessive wealth - Me? Wishful thinking!
7. Generating poverty - I never generate it but nearly in it
    

The capital sins established, if my memory serves me more or less right, by the Pope Gregorio in the 6th century were the following:

 

1. Haughtiness - I have been told in fact that I am over modest
2. Envy - A teeny weeny bit can serve as incentive, striving for what you envy about, I think, no?
3. Gluttony - Hmmm I do have a hard time checking myself with my favourite chocolate, Ferrero Rocher ... Okay, one or two other delicacies too, red wine ...
4. Lust - Does it count if only lusting over the person you truly love?
5. Anger - Only when unreasonably provoked; does it mean only half guilty?
6. Greed - With certain study, good books, I never think I had enough, maybe just a defect not a sin?
7. Laziness - Guilty!! With housework especially. I don't suppose I can argue that I am not in other areas?

 

So my self assessment would be, that I am not a bad person even with a few occasional sins, which are not illegal, not exactly harmful to myself, and definitely not to others.

 

Would I be wrong if I venture to sum up that, looking at the lists, most of us are sinners? To greater or lesser degrees that is. Personally, I would even venture a little further that, just tiny little doses of some or all of those sins, committed at least in the mind and imagination, is almost quite normal, being human that we are. Some of them even healthy not to go too far as to say beneficial and invigorating, at the right times and under the appropriate circumstances.

 

A person void of all sins and always saintly, to me would signify a real timid, dull and very boring character, lacking self pride of one's achievements, without the slightest dosage of ambition to strive or to go further to see if one can, a very hungry and poor lover, and an aimless workaholic with no desire for success.

 

Gee Whizzz ... Maybe I am even a bigger sinner than I first thought!

The Nobody Who Is Somebody

When I arrived at my usual cafe this morning, there's no newspaper available; all were taken by other customers. So I had the chance to look around while sipping my coffee, instead of having my head buried deep in the paper. A casual lady acquaintance was at a table right across mine, also alone. We never share a table but we have sort of brief chats occasionally at a distance, close enough to exchange a few words, the kind of conversation that whether you really hear each other or not doesn't matter in the least.

 

Then a young man, total stranger to me, walked from his table way down the back heading for the door. On passing my table, I don't know for what reason, he smiled and said good morning to me, also nodded to my acquaintance before he left the cafe. I noticed that my lady neighbour was looking at me, so I shrugged my shoulder, made a face, indicating I was puzzled why the man I didn't know at all greeted me.

 

That was enough invitation for the lady to say to me, that she worked with him in the same office, that he was a very good man, intelligent, trustworthy, hard working, always helpful to others, and everybody loved him, concluding that ' He could have been 'Somebody' if only he had some ambition'. All that expressed in the tone of a disappointed mother. A resigned maternal reproach.

 

I replied, that she herself had indeed just defined the young man as 'Somebody', trustworthy, useful, helpful and appreciated by all. Isn't that the best anybody could aim for in life, to do a honest day of work, to be loved by one's family, friends and coworkers? What better accolade can a person expect? That stranger is already Somebody in my book.

 

Children are always told by parents and teachers to study and work hard, so that one day they can become Somebody. Instead of Nobody. This is a very ambiguous term or expression, depending on each individual's own interpretation or definition who this Somebody is. Each era has it's heroes. Al Capone was somebody is his day, so was Hitler, or Bin Laden in his day by millions of his followers. Or even Superman or Harry Potter. I guess most would take it as to mean somebody rich, famous, successful in the material and commercial sense; celebrities that constantly appear in television and prints.

 

A society functions well or not depends on lots of Nobodys, honest and capable ones, who are willing to do their best in however humble or menial jobs, to yield the maximum results through their hard work. Their names never appear anywhere, you never give them a thought. Their absence you only notice when everyday things go wrong. But each one of these Nobodys is Somebody the country can't function and go forward without.

tags:Nobody,Somebody

Penny For Your Thoughts ...

I met an English lady this morning, whom I haven't seen for few years. When I inquired about her husband, rich & famous singer, she said they had divorced, and 'That son of a bitch, with his millions, gives me only €14,000 a month'. Had she not referred to the ex-husband with the connection of a dog Mother, I would have congratulated on her fortune. For most people this sum would have been considered a gift from heaven, not a bitter disappointment. I could certainly live very comfortably for less than half of that.

Most of us are familiar with the saying that money doesn't buy or guarantee happiness, amply demonstrated by a great number of cases, when even the very rich as well as the famous have their fair share of miseries, albeit they could have the benefit of being unhappy in absolute luxury. It's hard to determine whether wealth or fame is responsible for the most part of their unhappiness, likely the combination of both, because they are usually linked.


If you are very rich, you immediately become famous even if you are an idiot never having done a single deed worthy of mentioning. It's easy to conclude too, that if you are famous, money would somehow roll in, whether you need it or not.

People, however, would not let the likely prospect of being unhappy deter their zest, determination and effort to make as much money in the shortest possible time as their life's ultimate aim. Not to become a better person, or happier ones, or more productive, more useful, more knowledgeable ... but more money in the least time and, if at all possible, accompanied by fame. Even infamous is better than poor. They measure success purely based on prosperity in the economic sense.

Naturally children grow up governed by this same idea, more like a doctrine, setting the same goal for their lives. Especially in families where the parents feel nothing is too much for their children, giving them all what they themselves never had. This sets the mind of the young with the false notion that money should be the highest goal of their aim in life. 

 
If they make it, they have the money and not much else. If they don't, that is in the majority of cases, they have to live their lives considering themselves a failure, however much they had achieved in worthwhile fields.

Tags:Fame,Wealth,Success,Failure

God & St.Francis Discussing Lawns

GOD: St. Francis, you know all about gardens and nature. What in the world is going on down there in the USA? What happened to the dandelions, violets, thistle and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect, no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honeybees and flocks of songbirds.

I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But all I see are these green rectangles.

ST. FRANCIS: It's the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers weeds and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.

GOD: Grass? But it's so boring. It's not colorful. It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees, only grubs and sod worms. It's temperamental with temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?

ST. FRANCIS: Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.

GOD: The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast. That must make the Suburbanites happy.

ST. FRANCIS: Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it, sometimes twice a week.

GOD: They cut it? Do they then bale it like hay?

ST. FRANCIS: Not exactly Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.

GOD: They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?

ST. FRANCIS: No, sir - just the opposite. They pay to throw it away.

GOD: Now, let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will grow. And when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?

ST. FRANCIS: Yes, sir.

GOD: These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work.

ST. FRANCIS: You aren't going to believe this, Lord. When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.

GOD: What nonsense. At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer stoke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. Plus, as they rot, the leaves form compost to enhance the soil. It's a natural circle of life.

ST. FRANCIS: You'd better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and pay to have them hauled away.

GOD: No. What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter and to keep the soil moist and loose?

ST. FRANCIS: After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which they call mulch. They haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves.

GOD: And where do they get this mulch?

ST. FRANCIS: They cut down trees and grind them up to make the mulch.

GOD: Enough! I don't want to think about this anymore. St. Catherine, you're in charge of the arts. What movie have you scheduled for us tonight?

ST. CATHERINE: Dumb and Dumber, Lord. It's a real stupid movie about ...

GOD: Never mind, I think I just heard the whole story from St. Francis

Tags:God,St.Francis,People,Lawns