dateline 2 february 2018
boss, you are not answering your email, so i decided to help you out where my invertebrate reporting and the unique perspective of a carpenter ant will be illuminating. don’t worry, on the internet, nobody knows you are an ant. even though i can’t operate the shift key, folks will just think you are lazy, which, for you, is logical.
you got a note from your financial advisor about your 6-months portfolio tune-up. i took the meeting.
he opened with the standard wall street party line about diversification, consumer non-discretionary staples and gold in a time of uncertainty. i observed that my dark underground network is calling for a recession and a war within the next two years and that you needed to move beyond toilet paper and doubloons.
so now you own a very small share in an advanced nuclear submarine – the kind that can go anywhere undetected and that will appreciate as the war heats up. it is the ‘wave’ of the future. it is where the smart money is hunkering down. it is an opportunistic monetization of the latest budget reconciliation bill which included privatization of individual military assets to reduce costs, eliminate needless regulation and create jobs. you are still invested in toilet paper, but it seemed reasonable to hedge in the direction of ‘the big one’.
you should feel better now knowing that, as an angel investor, the sub parenthesis i cannot tell you its name on line close parenthesis will make a drive-by in occohannock creek next week on its way back from the coast of north korea to annapolis and new london. also, you get priority defense in case a chinese container ship, which btw we can see from the dock, tries to ‘sneak up the creek’ so to speak, and loses overboard a container of fake rubber dolls made to look like the grabber-in-chief with ersatz orange hair. that would contaminate the creek and mess up the fishing, boss.
so yes, i have extended our defensive perimeter way beyond the range of your puny personal firearms arsenal, which, in my opinion, is irrelevant when the missiles start to fly.
your submarine security will pay greater dividends on the run up to the next war, validating the mathematical expression;
ammo + gold + nukes = security.
amazing how a little defense makes you feel secure. in our underground network, we are no longer scared. you should be as happy as a harp seal at a sushi bar exclamation point
i leave you with this gratuitous advice on the morning of the evening of your civilization -
‘those who anticipate the fire and fury, carry extra bun wad in their subs’
cindi camponotus, financial advisor and official holly point farm investigative reporter
*Cindi is the latest in a long line of literate carpenter ants that have learned to use computers and who aspire to once again rule Planet Earth after Homo sapiens is gone. She, however, cannot use the shift key.
Dr.Tony Picardi’s professional career includes thirty-two years in the software, consulting and market research industries. He retired in 2007 to the Eastern Shore of Virginia where he now creates wildlife habitats on his farm and volunteers as an Eastern Shore of Virginia Master Naturalist and as the scholarship chair and speaker at the Academy for Lifetime Learning. He leads birding, butterfly and mushroom tours on his farm and is a tour leader and speaker at the Eastern Shore National Wildlife Refuge. He lectures on global warming, meadow habitats, butterflies and moths, mushrooms and linkages between nature and environmental services. In 2015 he published Mushrooms of Virginia’s Eastern Shore: A Photographic Tour. He bikes around the county and fishes and rows on Occohannock Creek.