The sister

Dear Sister,
Thank you for your Valentine's Day ecard.

I don't know why you think that your sending me an ecard would make me too stupid with filial love to notice your sentence about negotiating to rent my friend's Stinson Beach cottage for the month of October for $1,400. I don't know why you think that I might have forgotten that you owe me tens of thousands of dollars, and that you periodically inform me that you might not be able to pay me this summer because you will be broke.  And no, renting a cottage on Stinson Beach isn't "just like college!"

Ah sigh, there's the sister I know:  a looonnnnnnggggg recriminatory reply email filled with accusations back to me.

Dear Sister,

Let us be clear about this:  Your crying, screaming tantrum in my car about a year and a half ago did indeed result in my agreeing that it would be adequate for you to pay me $500 a month towards the debt.  Under no circumstances should you interpret that acquiescence as a mandate to pay me no more than $500/month. In fact, the full amount is due and payable every day as far as I'm concerned. 

Your sister.

LA Stories

Tahnehisi Coates wrote about Kentucky Fried Chicken. When I was starting to work my way out of the world of Scn., I worked for a big important law firm in downtown LA. One of their clients was KFC, and one of the biggests cases they were working on was a trade secret infringement lawsuit about the KFC secret recipe. I am here to say, that recipe was really secret.