erika, I was always an ornery little bitch....

Survivors are, a lot. There are a lot of pictures where you'd swear I'd be too young for the "You can't be serious," look on my face. But there is no denying...it's a photo.

I wish I could scan the photo of me taken - I think - a few months before I was had the nice little live serum shot that put me in that stupid contraption in the first place. It lives on my fridge, a tiny black and white photo, of about a four-year-old child, very pretty, with short dark red hair, and the little moo-cow is glaring, scowling really, and you can tell, it's the Basic Deb Look. And my father - this was during a rare period when I actually spent a couple of weeks in company with my real live parents - is sitting behind me, laughing his ass off.

If I hadn't been such a pretty kid, it probably wouldn't have been nearly so surprising and so comical. But at age four, I'd already had diptheria (too young too remember it, luckily), scarlet fever, pneumonia and then the delightful little incident with the bee and the stinger and the allergy and the glayvin.

I scowled a LOT.

I was born with a "yeah, sure...tell me another one," look on my face. Which would make sense for reincarnated po-lice.(I'm not at all sure about this, of course, but I have felt drawn to that stuff for a very long time, and also incredibly short on the kind of fluffy cute that strangers on the street expect from little blond girls...it would be hard with Stan Bolander's soul, wouldn't it? "Because everyone lies. Some because they have to. Some because they want to. And some because they can."And the more chaotic my work environment is, the more excited part of me gets.) But maybe that's a reaction to the the-rapists. Or maybe Mom and I walked a beat once.

Erika, that was great. I love the way you turn the election into a crime to be solved.

And this:

“It is such a turn-on when you act devious. Remind me not to cheat on you though.”

“This was an option for you?”

“Not anymore. Not since you’d kill me to be President.”

made me laugh out loud.

Thanks, but it's not really a trick. "Theft" and "fraud" are crimes. And you need to, when you look at a crime, look at who benefits. I'm glad you thought it was funny, too.

And you need to, when you look at a crime, look at who benefits.

goes to an Identity Crisis place

I don't understand...if it doesn't have politics or vics in it, I probably haven't seen it, lately. Explain, please.

Identity Crisis is a big DC comics miniseries event right now. And in one issue, there're two entire pages of Batman using your very same reasoning, trying to puzzle out the murderer by asking, "Who benefits?" over panel after panel.

Yep. Ooh, Batman! I just started reading Gotham Central. It's like a Batman/Homicide crossover.(Which is to say very happymaking for me.)