The SoapBoxers

Randall Baker stubbed out his cigar and stood to address the room.  He cleared his throat and eight eyes focused on him.

“Our people have been talking discreetly with the clerks.  It appears that if the panel were to rule today, we would lose by at least a 5-4 margin and possibly 6-3.  MacFarland is difficult to read, but there’s a strong chance that he would vote against us.”

“That’s not a surprise,” replied Harvey Colan.  “Nonetheless, it’s disturbing.  That would be a disastrous result.  It would cost our companies billions.”

“Disastrous” concurred Prescott Fitzpatrick.  He did not look well – his face seemed a bit green, as if the news was about to make him physically ill.  In truth, Fitzpatrick did feel a bit sick to his stomach, and he was pondering the question of whether or not he could make it to the bathroom if a fit of nausea overcame him.  Probably not.

“There is a possible course of action.”  Again, the men focused on Baker and he continued.  “The man in charge is sympathetic to our cause.”

“Fat lot of good that does us” piped up Colan.  “He can only fill vacancies, and it’s quite unlikely that a vacancy will occur in the timeframe we need.  Much less two vacanices.”

“Gentleman,” smiled Baker “We are men of action.  There are steps that can be taken to expedite the process.”

The five men huddled, and Baker shared his master plan with them.  The plan was expensive, and it carried an element of risk.  However, it was the best chance to win.  With billions of dollars at stake, the quintet reached a unanimous decision.

Three days later, the funds were in place, and Randall Baker retained the services of Bob Herndon.  Herndon enjoyed his work, and the plan unveiled by Baker greatly interested him.  It was interesting work, and the impact of his work would be felt across the country.  Herndon prided himself on professionalism and spent a considerable amount of time on the preparations for the project.  When the preparations were complete, he jumped into his pickup and headed for some hunting ground upstate.  It was deer season.

Herndon settled into a spot on the hill that overlooked the clearing.  When his quarry finally entered the clearing, he took a close look through his rifle’s sight and fired.  He aim was true and he scored a kill.  A man rushed into the clearing.  Herndon waited, and held his fire.  Two other men followed in quick pursuit.  Yes, the fat one, this was the man.  Herndon took careful aim and fired again.  He watched the man topple to the ground and slowly eased back into the woods to make his escape.

Randall Baker was settling in for a cup of tea and a plate of scones when the television broke in with a special report of the good news.

“Shocking news tonight” declared the vacuous (and physically attractive) anchor.  “Supreme Court justices Alfred Morris and Clarence Casey were fatally shot today while deer hunting at Casey’s farm in upstate New York.  Police believe that foul play may have been involved.”

Baker smiled.  There were now two vacancies on the Supreme Court.  The president’s nominees for the court would certainly be sympathetic to his client.  Herndon’s work would save the companies billions of dollars, and Baker himself would reap a generous bonus.

This article is completely fictional.  I have a great deal of respect for the real-life Strasburg.  Strasburg transformed himself, through hard work, from an undrafted high school player to the consensus top prospect in this year’s baseball draft.

San Diego State pitcher Stephen Strasburg is certain to be a top selection in June’s baseball draft.  We at The Soap Boxers are big baseball fans, so we had reporter Scoop Chevelle hop on the first plane headed west to catch up with Strasburg in San Diego.  The interview got off to a bit of a rough start, as Scoop was unable to find Strasburg at the Aztec training facility or his apartment.  Finally, Scoop’s bloodhound instincts sniffed out Strasburg at the beach.  Strasburg was hesitant to interupt a leisurely day in the sun, but Scoop prevailed and Strasburg eventually agreed to an interview.

Scoop: Stephen, there have been reports that your agent, Scott Boras, is asking for a contract upwards of $50 million.  Many observers consider this to be an obscene amount of money for a kid who has never toed the mound in a professional game.  What do you have to say to those critics?

Strasburg:  Well, Scoopy,  it’s definitely a boatload of cash.  On the flip side, though, take a look at some of my newspaper clippings.  Oh, darn, I left my scrapbook in my room.  Well, anyway, there are a bunch of writers who are saying that I’m a once-in-a-decade prospect.  Last year’s #1 pick, Tim Beckham, signed for $6.15 million.  A once-in-a-decade talent is obviously worth ten times that amount.  The math is pretty simple – my fair market value is $61.5 million.  Who can blame Mr. Boras for asking for $50 million?  In my opinion, he’s being rather generous with the discount.

Scoop: Well, that’s definitely an interesting way to look at it.  The Washington Senators, er Nationals, have the top pick in the draft.  Do you expect them to select you with that pick?

Strasburg: No, certainly not.  Mr. Boras had some preliminary discussions with the team, but negotiations broke down over the non-financial terms.

Scoop: Wow, that’s incredible news.  Tell us, Stephen, what was the sticking point?

Strasburg: Well, as you know, I have always had an interest in politics.  I’m a public administration major, and always wanted to leverage my education into a spot in the US Senate.  Washington, as it turns out, is the home of the federal government.  Since the Capitol has spots for 100 senators, I thought that the Nationals could find a way to get me appointed to one of the seats.  Perhaps the vacant Minnesota seat.  They kept yammering about things like “abuse of power” and “age requirements”.  After a while, Mr. Boras and I realized that the Nationals simply weren’t going to negotiate in good faith, so we broke off the talks.

Scoop: Well, then, where might we  expect to  see you land?

Strasburg: The Pirates, Scoop.

Scoop: The Pittsburgh Pirates, Stephen?  Is that some sort of a joke?

Strasburg: Well, they wouldn’t be the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Team officials are working with the mayor to change the name of the city to Strasburg, Pennsylvania.  Clearly, this is a team that has been fighting a lot of bad luck over the last few years, and they are destined for a breakout.  Hopefully I can pitch well enough down the stretch to get them to the World Series this year.

Scoop: Yes, that would definitely be quite the achievement.  Well, Stephen, it has been great talking to you.  I’m absolutely famished.  Where’s a good place to eat around here?

Straburg: Well, there’s Tony Gwynn’s bar and grill.  They have a half pound burger – all lean meat with no bull.  They call it the Strasburger …

Like this article?  You might enjoy Scoop’s interview with Manny Ramirez from last winter.

I wrote this quirky little story in 1999, so if it seems a little rough around the edges, this is why.  In order to maintain the integrity of the original story, I have published it ver batim as it was written a decade ago.

Tina awoke amidst the screaming of her alarm clock.  As she glared at the inert plastic clock, she saw that it read 6:45 AM. She rolled over, slammed her hand onto the snooze button, and tried to savor the final fifteen minutes of sleep.

A quarter hour later, Tina sluggishly pulled herself out of bed and toward the shower. Soon, the water was rushing down and Tina was lathering her long hair with shampoo.  As she shampooed, she inhaled the wonderful strawberry aroma.  With life kicking her in the teeth as it was these days, this was often the highlight of her entire day, and she longed to savor the moment.  But as all good things must come to an end, the shower was soon finished, and Tina hopped out to face the real world.

Tina tapped her foot to the rhythm of “Cheeseburger in Paradise” as she waited for the red light to turn to green.  As Jimmy Buffett gave way to some up-and-comer on the radio, the light finally turned, and she eased the Grand Am into the intersection and headed north.  A few short minutes later, she had pulled into the parking lot, jumped out, and raced to her eight o’clock class.  She eased into her seat a moment before Ms. McAnally entered the room.

As Ms. MacAnally yammered on about how to compose a business plan, Tina’s mind began to drift.  Why on earth would a nurse have to know anything about business writing, anyway?   As long as they could somehow find a way to read doctors’ handwriting, that would be enough.  College was enough of a pain without useless classes. She gently sighed to herself as she forced herself to listen to the instructor.

After what seemed like an eternity, the class was released and Tina quickly raced across campus to her next class.  When she entered the room, there was a note of the board that Mr. Nelson was sick and that class was canceled.  She could barely contain her joy.  She would have some time to do some homework and catch a quick nap before work.

After a quick meal of chicken noodle soup, Tina settled down for a nice midday nap. As the warm sun poured through the window and bathed her body in its beam, she fell into a cozy sleep on her futon.  After what seemed like only minutes (but had actually been nearly 3 hours), she was once again awakened by the alarm.  Once again, she reluctantly pulled herself out of bed to start the second half of her day.

When Tina arrived at the hospital, she was disappointed to find out that she would be stationed in the geriatric ward once again.  Some people found the old people interesting, but she found them very boring and would usually be extremely tired when she got off a shift hanging around them, not because she worked any harder on those nights, but because their lack of energy was contagious.

Her first patient of the night was old Mr. Burns.  The guy was ancient, had an artificial hip, and was ugly as sin, but that didn’t stop him from being the most notorious skirt chaser in the wing.  Luckily, because of the hip, most of the nurses could easily out run him.

At his birthday party last month, someone had the smart idea to actually put ninety two candles on the cake.  A small fire had broken out, and poor Mrs. Frederick’s hair had been burned to a crisp.  And just when it had grown back after her radiation treatments.  It was quite traumatic for the old witch.  So much so that she had stopped attending birthday parties entirely, which was probably a good thing for her, since she carried quite a bit of weight.  Her fondness for angel food cake was the main reason for the considerable weight that she has gained during her stint at the hospital.

Tina was able to quickly check in on Mr. Burns, and since he was asleep, she got out of there in a matter of seconds.  She had avoided the first major obstacle of the night.

She wasn’t quite so lucky at her second room, though.  Mr. Vincent wouldn’t let her escape.  She was forced to listen to several of his tales about how he led the confederate forces in the civil war.  Despite the fact the war ended in the mid 1800s, Mr. Vincent not only claimed to have fought in the war, but actually thought that it was still going on, and that the South would eventually prevail.  What a fruitcake.  Who’d have thought that a little pneumonia could do that to you?

After what seemed like a lifetime, Mr. Vincent got a visitor, and while he was distracted momentarily, Tina bolted out the door.  As she hurried down the hall, she could hear the old man yelling “Missy, missy, don’t you want to hear more about my friend, Mr. Jefferson Davis?”

After a dozen more visits to the old folks, Tina was finally able to escape to the ER.

It was a pretty quiet night for the ER – a couple of broken legs, a kid with his head cracked open, and a self-inflicted gunshot wound.  How someone could do serious damage to themselves with buckshot was beyond her reasoning ability, but some fellow named Billy Bob managed to do some very serious damage to some pretty serious parts of his anatomy.  They really should think about locking up stupid people for their own protection.

Around nine thirty, John Wilson checked in with what seemed like a little case of mono.  When Tina did the blood work on him, she took a little more than was necessary – about a pint more, to be exact.  John was one of those guys who always went around bragging about how far he had gone on his last date (and usually stretching things a bit).  He had dared to pull this stunt on Tina’s friend Jill, so this was her revenge.  The poor bastard would recover just fine, but he’d feel like hell for a couple of days. A fitting punishment.

Andrew Olsen settled in for another night in his multi-million square foot home. He set a few motion detectors around the perimeter and secured his laptop. He settled in on the couch that daytime occupants used for informal meetings.  The motion detectors were connected to his cell phone via Bluetooth and would cause his phone to ring if anyone approached.  It was not unusual to see programmers crash at the office on occasion.  Aaron’s situation was slightly different.  Although he did put in some late night hours, it was mostly for show.  Aaron had decided to eschew the more private housing options preferred by his friends and spent each night in the comfort of the massive office building.

He was not completely free of lodging-related costs, of course.   Andrew rented a small storage facility where he could store his possessions.  As a recent college graduate, Andrew had not yet accumulated the large volume of personal possession that most people find themselves saddled with, so he was mainly storing clothes and books.  He visited the facility periodically to grab a different batch of clothes and a few new books to read.

Andrew also belonged to a local gym.  By most standards, it was a sub-par facility.  The weightlifting machines were obsolete, the basketball court was warped, and pieces of the running track had begun to come loose.  The gym, did, however, feature a first rate locker room.  The water was hot, the towels were fluffy, and the showers were clean.  Also, the gym was dirt cheap, even before considering the corporate discount.  Andrew began each day with a very light workout at the gym.  Andrew had no interest in exercise, of course.  This was just a ruse so that he could use the showers every day without attracting suspicion.

Andrew’s official residence, of course, was not the office,  the gym, or the storage facility.  It was PO Box 78655.  Andrew paid a visit to his mailbox once a week to pick up his rather small assortment of mail.  He had no mortgage, no electric bill, no landline phone bill, no cable television bill, not even a water bill.  Most often, Andrew found his box full of junk mail, with the occasional credit card bill.

After waking up, showering at the gym, and putting in a full day of work, Andrew typically escaped from the office for a few hours.  Occasionally, he would visit friends, although he never never asked them to visit him, of couse.  Sometimes he would eat out at a restaurant, although most nights he was happy to grab one of his frozen dinners from the break room freezer and toss it in the microwave.  Andrew did, however, enjoy the simple pleasures of life in the city.  He was a frequent visitor to the zoo, museums, and the library.

As late afternoon eventually gave way to evening, Andrew would return to the office.  The company had begun embracing a mobile concept, so it was very easy for him to move around without attracting attention.  Andrew spent much of his time surfing the internet, although he would often read while he pretended to wait for code to compile.  When the building finally dropped to a skeleton crew of zombied programmers – dead tired from incredibly long days – Andrew would find a couch in a deserted corner of the building and settle down to sleep for the night.  He moved around a lot, and while he was occasionally spotted by people, they just chalked it up to a programmer crashing after a hard day.  The next night, he would be in the opposite side of the complex, so nobody ever spotted a trend.

Andrew always had very pleasant dreams, as he counted the money that was was saving each month and counted down the days until he would be able to leverage this sacrifice into a down payment on his dream home.

Bob Morris yawned and took a bite out of his grape jelly donut. It had been sitting on his desk since morning, and it was stale. Bob had barely made it to his desk when the call came in. A hiker had stumbled across two bodies in the woods. Bob had been at the scene all day, and was now buried in paperwork related to the murder/suicide.

Ann Marks was walking briskly toward Bob’s desk; she was clearly agitated about something.

“The ME is still working on the autopsy, but he noticed something immediately,” she said. “Although the stab wounds were made by very similar knives, they were not made by the same knife. “

“There is an imperfection in the blade of the knife we found on the scene,” she continued. “This imperfection is present in the girl’s wound, but not in the man’s”

“What are you saying, Ann? That he stabbed her with one knife, then stabbed himself with a second knife and then tossed it into the woods before he died? That seems rather unlikely.”

“Or perhaps the perp took the knife with him,” she responded.

Bob spit out his coffee. “The WHAT?” he exclaimed. “The guy’s hands were clenched around the bloody knife. It seems pretty unlikely that someone could have planted it there. Obviously he is the perp.”

“Oh, I agree that he killed the girl, Bob. I just don’t think he committed suicide. Doc also thinks the that trajectory of the wound would have been an unlikely path for a self inflicted stabbing.”

“Ah, shit” muttered Bob.  “This one seemed so nice and clean.  Sounds like his partner might have killed him after they stalked and killed the girl.  Sick bastards.  Heck, he probably did the world a favor by killing Hepner.  It hardly seems worth the effort to track him down.”

“The only problem with that, Bob, is that Hepner probably won’t be his last kill.”

“OK, we need to track down all the known associates of this Hepner asshole.  Maybe someone will have an idea who his accomplice might have been.”

“Hepner doesn’t have much of a criminal record, but I’ve also put in a request with the IRS.  The guys have a file on everyone.”

A short while later, Ann’s IRS contact got back to them.  Hepner had been a bit of a drifter – he had lived in eighteen cities in seven states in his life.  The IRS file contained information on a multitude of different employers over the years.  Bob sighed.  This day was about to get even longer.  He split the list with Ann and they began the tedious task of calling each employer to track down people who may have known Hepner, beginning with the most recent.  The progress was slow – Hepner had been a real loner with no close friends.  Many employers had difficulty remembering that he was employed at their business.

Hundreds of miles away, the lion was sharpening his claws and focusing on his next prey – another predator who was about to fall within his grasp.

Today’s edition of Fiction Friday features a short children’s story about Ferdinand the Turtle.

When he was young, Ferdinand the Turtle did not like his name. He was a small turtle, and the name was too big for small turtle. The other turtles made fun of him, because his name was bigger than he was! Ferdinand asked them to call him Ferdie the Turtle for short, but they would not. Everyone called him Ferdinand the Turtle.

Eventually, Ferdinand grew into his name. Ferdinand became a big turtle. In fact, he became king of Turtle Island. Ferdinand was a very good king. His generosity was known far and wide. Everyone on Turtle Island loved Ferdinand.

Ferdinand’s best friend was Bob the Squirrel. When he was very small, Bob had fallen asleep in a packing crate and had been shipped to Turtle Island by accident. Ferdinand quickly befriended the misplaced squirrel. Ferdinand and Bob had lots of fun playing together. They would climb trees, swim, and ride around in Ferdinand’s red wagon.

When Ferdinand became king of Turtle Island, he quickly hired Bob to be his gofer. The greatly confused Bob, who thought that Ferdinand was hiring him as a gopher – and Bob was a squirrel, not a gopher. But the pay was pretty good, and the work was interesting, so Bob the Squirrel who worked as a gofer did not complain.

The residents of Turtle Island are completely free of income taxes. Many tourists visit Turtle Island to see the weekly parades, and a small hotel/motel tax completely supports the government of the island.

Turtle Island has parades every Wednesday. People from everyone around Turtle Nation to see the parades. The schools and factories are all closed on Wednesday so that everyone can see the parade. Lots of candy is thrown out to the little turtles watching the parade.