SPECIAL 57th BIRTHDAY GREETINGS

Now, friends and neighbors, knowing me as well as you do, you know I don’t enjoy flagrant bragging. Perhaps instead I love a medium-range missile in lieu of standing a top a minaret extolling my own virtues.

But, this time, I simply can NOT hold back. This news is bigger than our collective. And, I hasten to add, that it definitely sets me apart from the common American. My 57th birthday is a full week away and yet, I have received my first birthday card from an admirer.

I bet you didn’t see that bomb-shell coming, did you? Who is this visionary? Who has their finger on the pulse to have all this prepared and staged so readily and gracefully? More empirically, who made all of you look so badly?

It is the one, the only, my mortgage broker. Perhaps he is pondering if I am interested in jumping in feet-first from that nasty fixed-rate loan to something more exciting, like an adjusted rate mortgage.

Years ago when these ARMs first came out, only one voice expressed to me that they were a bad idea and would, eventually, harm the housing market.

Well, my people, here we are. Who needs Las Vegas when you have a payment that can spiral upward at an uncontrollable rate? Spin the wheel and lose another $1,000 a month.

It is beyond me who the wizards are who designed these and other time-sensitive explosions.

One thing I do know is that I doubt I’ll be sending a card back in return. Nope, not me. I am too busy watching Sarah Palin being interviewed in an effort to convince the public that she is capable of leading our country to a total melt-down.

Earlier this evening I watched a part of the Emmy’s Show. Tommy Smothers was honored with an award he wasn’t able to qualify for in 1968 because he was viewed as a negative. He was too political. Too brash. Too honest.

The last sentence of his acceptance was this:
“Truth is something you make other people believe.”

Another winner, the director of the sumptuous JOHN ADAMS series on HBO said:
“It was so fulfilling making and watching a show where leaders of our country spoke in complete sentences expressing full thoughts.”

Now those two sentiments just out ranked my birthday card.