looks askance at that last picture, redolent as it of fish and larceny, and puts on best Brother Lewis voice (Brother Lewis was the principal of the Christian Brothers school I went to as a boy. Brother Lewis was a former Marine who regarded all of the pupils in his school as Japanese soldiers who had somehow managed to get off Iwo Jima and were therefore to be treated as such) : “Mr. Porretto, have you been stealing buckets?”
Brother Lewis also had a ruler, or rather, he had three rulers taped together that everyone called Roger. If you were caught stealing you would have to hold your hand out while Brother Lewis exercised Roger across your knuckles. Give the bucket back, Fran, before you can’t feel your fingers for a week. It’s just not worth it!
The Curmudgeon Emeritus: Fran's acerbic, irascible alter ego, to whom most of his tirades are attributed.
The Co-Conspirators: Your Curmudgeon's esteemed co-contributors (see the left sidebar).
The C.S.O.: The Curmudgeon's Significant Other, a.k.a. his wife Beth.
The Place of Little Appreciation: Where your Curmudgeon earns his daily bread and struggles to afford the C.S.O's shoe addiction.
The Fortress of Crankitude: Your Curmudgeon's Long Island home, from which he refuses to budge even though it perpetually threatens to collapse around him.
The Menagerie: Keiko (Chow Chow)
Sable (Border Collie)
Electra (Shorthair)
Orestes (Shorthair)
April (Shorthair)
Uriel the Great (Shorthair)
Irving the Creamsicle a.k.a. Creamy (Shorthair)
Gentle Reader: That's you, fuzzface. Look awake when your Curmudgeon is talking to you!
The Internet Commentariat: We who labor, mostly unpaid and uncelebrated, to vent our frustrations (and, hopefully, yours, Gentle Reader) with Things As They Are.
The Punditocracy: Gasbags who recline on silken couches, eating peeled grapes and being fanned by pretty slave girls, and emit bilious nostrums about politics, culture, and society for which they are, astonishingly, paid.
The Old Media: The enemies of all that is right, true, and beautiful, i.e., they who pay the Punditocracy (and the pretty slave girls). (What, you think the lasses would fan those creeps for nothing?)
