Absolutely!

I know. I've been delinquent in writing. It's been a week and a half now since the auction, which netted $159,000 for the World Domination Fund, with one of Gloria's emerald bracelets held over for me to send to Flora Pachado, the Most Beautiful Girl I Ever Saw in Peru.

What's that — gauche, you say, to give one lover's gift to another? Well, how about when the first lover is wealthy and powerful beyond your wildest dreams, and the other lives humbly in the Andes mountains, and her father has to sell cheap blankets to eke out a living for the family? How gauche is it when the first lover loved you basically for your body, and the second lover for your mind? Does that alter your opinion at all?

Yeah, see, Brother/Sister: it's not healthy to deal in absolutes. Take, for example, that ABSOLUTE killer of a three-day post-party we had in the Marriott Marquis after the Sotheby's gig. I'm still hurting, B/S — today's the first day I've been able to sit up and eat anything other than hot cereal. And I'm strongly considering burning Dead-Eye's transcripts from Friday and Saturday night: some things are best stricken from the record.

After factoring in all the damage and cleanup costs, we're looking at a $10,000 hotel bill from Marriott. I don't know what to say on that score: sometimes you just have to let off some steam, and smashing the hell out of that toilet really did seem like a good idea at the time. Looking back at the transcripts, I see now that I didn't make the strongest case as to how that particular act of vandalism fit into my grander scheme of taking over the world. But that's 20/20 hindisight. The logic of it was perfectly clear to PePe and me at the time.

Like I said, Bro/Sis — you need to be careful with Absolut. But hey — we're in the money right now, and a ten grand party won't exactly put us into bankruptcy.

Naturally, everybody in the crew threw up on the Acela train back to Boston last Sunday. It's a smooth ride, but not that smooth. Did you know you can get a ticket for puking in a railway compartment? They have these railway cops on Barf Patrol — it's friggin' absurd. The stenos are just going to waive process and pay the fine; PePe and I are going to court. We had the car to ourselves, and no one saw any of us do it. They can't prove anything.

Remind me, Brother/Sister, to tell you about all the connections we made with wealthy elites at the auction. Many of the guests at the reception viewed the World Domination Project with skepticism, but lively debate ensued, and I managed to win a number of them over to my side with wild promises of exclusive timber and natural gas extraction contracts. The champagne was flowing, the credentials flashing, and deals were taking shape. Whew! It was exhilarating, I tell you.