The Unknown IMF Mission.

"We have an extremely difficult mission this time, and I want to make sure you understand how dangerous it is before any of you agrees to it."

"Come on, Jim -- the government didn't name this the Possible Missions Force. We know what we signed up to do." 

"Thanks, Barney. All right -- here are the basics. You may have heard that the nation of Lmnopystan has been refining radioactive material in the hope of creating nuclear weapons to threaten Western targets. The Secretary says that we have managed to stop their acquisitions, but our mission is to retrieve their stockpile. Sources tell us that it is hidden in a leaden vault in Fort Stunckenholff.

"Within two days we will be in position. Roland and Cinnamon, your job will be to infiltrate the fort using the false identities of Major General Hrump and his wife, Sheila. The actual Hrump family has been detained in Milan. I will be stationed in a safe house fifteen miles from the fort. When you get the passcodes, you will radio them to me. Then Willy will deliver a truck full of supplies, including Barney."

"Yeah, man, in a box again, I dig it."

"Barney will be able to crack the vault that holds the safe, and Willy, well, he can lift heavy things. You will signal me when the vault is on the truck; I will signal Roland, and you will meet at the gate. Naturally there is a very good chance you will be detected soon after exiting."

"So we make a run for the border?"

"That's the problem, Roland. Look at the map. We will be meeting a ship to take us out of country. Our rondezvous point is here, at Port Snyegrump, five hours away from the fort, on heavily policed highways and through multiple checkpoints. And to make the ship we will have to get to the port in just two hours."

"They'll be all over us. I say it can't be done."

"Well, Willy, that's why I've called in a special operative for this mission, a fast driver with a faster car who can draw off and lose the authorities while you shoot through with the truck. Allow me to introduce the Bandit."

"Hiya, boys. And girl."

"I'm riding back with him."

Business writing, song, dog.

Continuing the theme of clarity in writing we began yesterday, I thought I would pass along some advice on business writing in the modern era. There are two key things you should bear in mind at all times whenever you are engaged in business communications. People are taught these in school, but we could always use a refresher.  

The first is: Clarity is king. The e-mail, cover letter, formal request, summary report -- none of these is an appropriate place to go into a Song of Myself. You may use some style, a little razzle-dazzle if it highlights the message, but stick to the point and leave personalities out of it. If clarity is king, brevity is his viceroy. Don't give your audience time to get bored. 

As an example, I would like to use the clear and brief instructions in the chorus of that seminal hit by Jim Stafford, "Don't Pet the Dog." 

Don't pet the dog, don't pet him whatever you do

'Cause he ain't been fixed, he knows some tricks

That'll sure make a fool out of you

Don't pet the dog, he gets it confused with romance

Don't tickle his sides or look deep in his eyes

Or he'll be taking your leg to the dance

Six simple lines that convey clear, crucial information. The first line is a simple declarative statement, repeated and emphasized to impress its importance: 

Don't pet the dog, don't pet him whatever you do

The next sentences outline the source of the issue, and hints at the consequences of ignoring same:

'Cause he ain't been fixed, he knows some tricks

That'll sure make a fool out of you

The fourth line explains the problem in a little more detail, explaining the current state of the problem:

Don't pet the dog, he gets it confused with romance

And finally, the last two lines add more detail of the range of the warning and the depth of trouble for those failing to heed it: 

Don't tickle his sides or look deep in his eyes

Or he'll be taking your leg to the dance

You can see how effective this short message is. The verses go into greater detail, but you can think of that as the full report; the chorus is like the executive summary. 

The second piece of advice is: Be careful. 

Another reason to be brief, if not terse, in writing for work is that you probably would like to leave your job on your own terms rather than be defenestrated. Do not give in to the temptation to spice things up with a little levity or gossip. Companies are so terrified about being sued by their oversensitive and high-strung workers that they want us all to spy on one another like the Stasi and report the slightest infraction to human resources. Written communications can and will be presented at your drumming-out.

That e-mail you sent your best work buddy Bob, the one with the blonde joke? Someone looking over Bob's shoulder is going to report you for it, and maybe him as well for laughing at it. There is no freedom of speech. There will be no right to confront your accuser. The only question will be how big a box you will need for your desk tchotchkes, and whether you'll be escorted out by security. It really is like penny-ante East Berlin out there. 

It's funny that companies are so terrified of the reputation risk that comes with these kinds of lawsuits, and yet are so often run by idiots who will send the company down in flames to follow DEI and other PC nonsense at the expense of their customers and shareholders. That kind of foolishness seems like a much bigger reputational risk to me. But this is the world in which we live now. 

So, in brief: Be brief. Don't make eye contact with the crazy people. For job security, have no personality at work. And if the dog ain't been fixed, don't pet him. Whatever you do.

Mission: Get into places and back out.

In the old Mission: Impossible show, the one thing you could always count on was that the team would have really good forged papers. They never got caught because they used a Form 13-F when the guards would have expected a Form 16-B. Peter Lupus just handed over the clipboard, a guy looked at it, and soon a mysterious crate with Greg Morris inside would be delivered. Later it would open up and the cat burglar would get to work. 

In the days pre-9/11, a friend of mine was convinced that you could get into any office building in Manhattan with a clipboard and maybe a lanyard. Just look like you know what you're doing and brazen it out. Sometimes it wouldn't even be that big a deal. I read an article about how gorgeous the lobby and elevators are in the Chrysler Building, so one day I just went in there wearing my suit and tie. Went straight in, rode in the elevator, left. Didn't even have to sign a guest book. (They are gorgeous, BTW.)

The clipboard act might have been worth a try to get into more secure properties back in the day. But security began to tighten after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and now, well, it would be easier to get a four-ounce bottle on an airplane than to sneak into a building with such a simple trick. 

However, something tells me this probably would still work.

It's the same principle as my old pal's clipboard gag -- use the appearance of mission and authority to do what you're not supposed to do. It won't work in a Manhattan office building now, but apparently you can take whatever you want from stores. This is partly because security in a Walmart isn't that great, but partly because no one cares anymore. If Target and other stores in California are just going to let looters and thieves take off with whatever, why should a branch in, say, Omaha care that much? 

So that's the world we've built in the new millennium -- maximum security for everyday schmucks, crooks running wild in the streets. For the first time in my life I hear about stores being shut down because people are stealing too much. That's serious. Ordinary petty theft is a minor infection; this kind of thievery is a fatal disease. The parasite has taken over the organism.

I had another friend whose son got in trouble with the law back in the oughts. This Napoleon of crime had the idea with his buddy to go into Target, grab all the video game discs they could hold, and dash out the door. So, the kid got a criminal record for his trouble. Now it appears he wasn't an idiot, he was just ahead of his time. 

Licence to veil.

James Bond's car in Goldfinger was the greatest. Machine guns in front, oil slick, smoke screen, bulletproof shield, tire-slashers, ejector seat -- every other Bond car after that one was just okay, even if it had silly things like an underwater mode, exploding theft prevention, remote control, or invisibility. That Aston Martin D85 was the gold standard.

One of its lesser features, but perhaps the one many of us would want in real life, was the automatic license plate changer. At the push of a button, the plates would change, the identity of the car thus obscured. "Hmm! I was chasing an exceptionally expensive silver sportscar down this country lane, but it had different plates than the one up ahead. I shall look elsewhere for the one I want." Okay, maybe it wasn't the greatest -- but if I'm driving a dull gray Honda and switch the plates, it might keep me from being caught by the law if my car has been tagged as belonging to an undesirable. 

So it's a clever device. This? I'm thinking not so smart. 

I was behind this Dodge with its blackout windows and, at a light, examined its blackout license plate cover. What the hell is this? In the old Hardy Boys days, crooks would just splash mud on the license plate to obscure it and provide plausible deniability if the cops noticed. (It was a trick used in almost every book.) But completely covering the plate?

Apparently in New York you can tint the hell out of the rear window as long as the side mirrors give the driver a clear view of what's behind him. And this guy's rear window looked like it had been painted black. But what about the plate?

Sure enough, smoke-tinted plate covers are a thing--easily found on Amazon and eBay--but there's got to be a catch, right? First of all, what legit reason would make you want to tint your license plate cover? Worried about the glare? It's supposed to have one; maybe other states are different, but in New York the plates are reflective to make them more legible at night. Afraid to damage your precious license plate? Are you kidding? If something hits you that hard, you're going to have much worse trouble than the condition of your plate. Want to preserve your beautiful plate from sun and weather damage? What, and then cover it up so no one can admire its beauty anyway?

Sure enough, the Q&A section of one Amazon seller notes that these covers are illegal to use except on the front vanity plate in a one-plate state (despite the fact that most of these covers are sold in two-packs). So this driver in front of me was totally breaking the law. Why? Probably to avoid paying tolls, as it turns out. He's not a mob hitman; he's just a damn cheapskate.

I have to suppose that this is a wink-wink situation, like all those years that bongs and hookahs were being sold at record shops for "tobacco use." But why wouldn't the police pull over someone for obvious misuse of an obscuring product?

I hate when the government is oppressive, and I hate being pulled over by cops, but were I a policeman, I would pull over any driver with one of these. There's a reason people put up with license plates on their vehicles, and that's because bad actors can cause a lot of harm in an automobile. Someone trying to mask his car is a bad actor or wants to look like one. That's not James Bond driving a Durango in front of me. 

And hell, the way our so-called intelligence community has been acting toward innocent US citizens while letting known wolves go about their business, if it was one of their agents, he ought to get a ticket just on general principles.

Monday go to memein' time!

Some Thanksgiving memes go get you sparked up for the Thanksgiving week. Clip, share, throw away, I don't care. Hope you laugh.

I have my doubts about some of those dishwasher commercials. And how much water do they think we're using to rinse a few dishes, a 55-gallon drum?

Okay, this last one's not Thanksgiving, but I've been hoping to put this together for a long time.

heh

Big Amphibian is watching.

Are the frogs taking over?

Fiction Thursdays!

Hi, gang! Going forward on this blog I was thinking about running stories and such every Thursday. Found an old book of mine, a very early effort that never went anywhere, but I thought I could spiff it up and serialize it.

Haven't started that yet, but I also found this old chestnut I thought I'd share with you today.

CLOAK AND ÉCLAIR

by Frederick Key

💣💀👥🔫🔪💵

The sweat was hot on my brow as I turned the corner and stopped. Hands shaking, I let a cig. Don't show it, I told myself. If you show your nerves, you're a dead man. 

My opponent was smooth, though. I didn't know if he was still following. I didn't dare turn to look. That would reveal my face. Be cool, I told myself. It's just too important.

The big boys play for keeps in this business. Not a racket for the weak-kneed. Or the fainthearted. The lily-livered do better than you might think. But the pigeon-toed, forget it.

I had to keep moving. I had taken enough chances, and it was getting so every nerve in my body was doing the mambo. Had to give this guy the slip but good.

I darted into the next door along the Strasseheidelbergen. Took the rattling elevator to the second floor and broke into the fourth apartment along the hall. "Hi, honey," I said, kissing the Teutonic woman inside. Before she could scream I jumped out the window onto the roof of a passing bus. Leaping from bus to moving van to box truck to cement mixer (that kept me on my toes!), I managed to get across town. Then I shinnied down a lamppost, flagged a cab, handed the driver a fistful of counterfeit Euros, and said, "Airport! Schnell!" Then I rolled out the passenger side as he took off. I did that with other cabs, sending them to museums, theaters, massage parlors, and the zoo. That last one looked like he could use an outing. Soon I was all alone on the Himmelstrasse except for a potted fern, which I kicked over, sharply. Then I started for the shop. 

It was two blocks away, so to be safe, I walked 67. When I finished the hike the sweat on my brow was still hot. I should see a specialist about that. But I had made it, and I hadn't given away its location. It stood before me like a pub before a thirsty footballer. 

Ye Olde Spye Shoppe said the sign, cleverly covered in cloaks and daggers. Strips of microfilm dangled around the window, and track lighting illuminated racks of guns and knives. 

The boys had done a swell job. 

Double O No.

Too late, Bond remembered selecting his corkscrew watch
instead of his laser watch that morning.

Signs.

Strange symbols appearing on the street:

My neighbor thought this meant they were going to tear up the road to go after the sewer lines, so we would have weeks of open sewers and no street. But I know better.

Aliens.

That's right: Landing instructions for the little green men. (They really are little and green, according to my secret UFOlogy connections. I'm not trying to be sexist here---they really are all men when they go on off-planet missions, but once home they can change back to one of their three primary genders: Male, Female, and Caitlyn.)

How do I know all this? My connections keep an eye on the spies planted by the little green men, the spies who go around painting landing instructions on quiet suburban streets, that's how.

I don't know too much more about the aliens, except that they intend to subdue us, have spent a lot of time on our planet, and they are said to be in control of all our major colleges and universities---which would explain a lot. I also have reason to believe these strange creatures are in control of the following:

• the We network
• Amway
• the Presbyterians
• Luxembourg 
• the zinc trade
• most U.S. Laundromats
• Kim Jong-un
• the Academy Awards
• Portland (both of them; actually pretty much anyplace named Portland)
• Hillary Clinton's e-mail server
• the weather

If you think about it, it answers a lot of strange and mysterious questions. Why is The Simpsons still on the air? Aliens. What happened to all the bowling alleys? Aliens. The popularity of soccer? Aliens. The EU not falling into smithereens? Aliens. Trump? Aliens. Missing socks in the wash? Do I even have to say it?

The little green men, by the way, have a terrible weakness for Easy Cheese, so carry a can with you at all times. Keep an eye out for mysterious markings on the street, and keep watching the skies.

Secret installations.

We know that the suburbs are full of secret spy stuff. Oh, yeah, we do.

After all, when you're planning your secret installation, whether for the CIA, U.N.C.L.E., Dr. No, the FBI, CONTROL, SPECTRE, the Слу́жба вне́шней разве́дки, SMERSH, Chinese Ministry of State Security, KAOS, or anyone else, you want to be out of town so no one sees you digging this big hole in the ground, but you don't want to be so far in the countryside that it takes your top agents eight hours just to drive their sports cars there. You want the suburbs, where there's not much going on, someone's always building something, and people schlep from there into town every day. 

Things are quiet in the 'burbs, and there's tons of nondescript wilderness around to build in. 

Blah, wilderness.

Another advantage is that everyone drives in the suburbs, so no one will come across the secret entrance to your lair.

No one... but the DOG-WALKING GUY!

(Me, that is.)

Secret entrance hatch.

I was rather surprised that they didn't even bother to put any signs around the hatch, like "KEEP OUT" or "HIGH VOLTAGE" or "NOTHING TO SEE HERE" or "PERFECTLY ORDINARY CIVILIAN HATCH HERE." Don't they know how suspicious things are when there's no signs?

I'm hoping it's CIA; at least they'll be on our side. Not evildoers like SPECTRE or the NSA or the IRS. I totally would expect the IRS to have secret headquarters where they bury incriminating hard drives.

But I don't know who it is. Not that they aren't clever, despite their lack of signs. I saw a big tank truck with "markings" from the county "sewer department" running "hoses" down the hatch. Yeah, right. Maybe delivering stolen gold through those hoses. Or maybe delivering SECRETS!

So the takeaway now is that you need to be alert to these kinds of installations in your neighborhood. There's plenty of Web sites for UFO sightings; bah! We need to start monitoring secret installation locations. Maybe if we can mark them, we'll figure out what they're up to. Pay especial attention if your suburb has features that are particularly attractive to secret lairs, like abandoned mine shafts, or volcanoes. Especially volcanoes.

We'll get to the bottom of this. The truth is down there.

Can't be too careful.

"Not here, comrade. That fellow's giving me funny looks."

Bond. Title Bond.

Looks like they have not released the name of the next James Bond movie---it seems likely that they have not yet chosen the title. Or have a script.

I haven't seen one of them in over a decade, and the one I saw starred Pierce Brosnan. He was fine, but I'm down on the whole franchise.

Everyone loves Goldfinger, but a lot of things in that movie make no sense. For a guy with a major operation in the works, Auric spends a lot of time and resources on stupid crap. Like explaining his evil plot to a bunch of people he's going to kill anyway, and turning handsome Felix Leiter from Dr. No into shoe-faced Felix Leiter two years later was sad.

Still, I want to do my bit to keep the British end up, so I thought I'd come up with a title for the next film. I looked over the Bond books and movies (refusing to get involved in Moneypenny series or short story titles or radio plays or---God have mercy---fan fiction). Bond titles, I discovered, fall into several categories, as do most modern books and films: Play on Words, Proverbs, Exoticism, Huh? (i.e. What the Hell Is That?), Ominous-Sounding Dudes, and Job-Related (that is, spy stuff germane to Jimmy B.). For book titles I've added names/initials of the non-Ian Fleming authors for reference.

Play on words
A View to a Kill
Diamonds Are Forever (a play on De Beers’s 1947 slogan “A Diamond Is Forever”)
Double or Die (Charlie Higson/Young Bond series)
From Russia, with Love 
High Time to Kill (Raymond Benson)
Live and Let Die
The Facts of Death (RB)
The Living Daylights
The Man with the Golden Gun (a play on the Nelson Algren book/movie title The Man with the Golden Arm)
The World Is Not Enough
Win, Lose or Die (John Gardner)
You Only Live Twice 

Proverbs
Death Is Forever (JG)
Die Another Day
Never Dream of Dying (RB)
Never Say Never Again
Never Send Flowers (JG)
Nobody Lives for Ever (JG)
Tomorrow Never Dies 

Exoticism
Carte Blanche (Jeffrey Deaver)
Casino Royale
Devil May Care (Sebastian Faulks)
Hurricane Gold (CH/YB) 

Huh?
Blood Fever (CH/YB)
Brokenclaw (JG)
C.O.L.D. (JG)
DoubleShot (RB)
GoldenEye
Icebreaker (JG)
Moonraker
Octopussy
Quantum of Solace
SeaFire (JG)
SilverFin (CH/YB)
Skyfall
Thunderball
Zero Minus Ten (RB)

Ominous-sounding dudes
Colonel Sun (Kingsley Amis)
Dr. No
Goldfinger
Scorpius (JG)
The Man from Barbarossa (JG)
The Man with the Red Tattoo (RB) 

Job-related
By Royal Command (CH/YB)
For Special Services (JG)
For Your Eyes Only
Licence Renewed (JG)
Licence to Kill
No Deals, Mr. Bond (JG)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Role of Honour (JG)
Solo (William Boyd)
The Spy Who Loved Me 

Here are the ideas I had for great Bond titles. Anyone with a passing familiarity with the films knows that the title doesn’t have to be germane to the plot, so Bond people, feel free to stick any old story with them As long as the title is cool, that’s all that matters.

Play on words
All Is Not Death That Glitters
A Game of Kill
One Death at a Time
Easy Does It In

Proverbs
Death Does Not Punch a Clock
Keep Your Feet on the Ground but Keep Reaching for the Stars
Blessed Is the Peacemaker
Zip Up Your Jacket

Exoticism
Palisades Park
Caviar Twinkie
Money
Rich Corinthian Leather

Huh?

Duodenosis
Kill Van Kull
Snargleglurp
#*&@#!)/{^

Ominous-sounding dudes

Trump
Mr. Homunculus
Dr. Ouchy
Crazy Guggenheim
The Man from Shreveport
The Man with One Nostril
Hungadunga, Hungadunga, Hungadunga, Hungadunga & McCormick
Madame Yes

Been there.

Job-related
Check Your 401(k), Mr. Bond
Wash-and-Wear Tuxedo
Drive Spy-y
M Said Oh and P'd, PDQ
A Shot in the Dark (of Ceftriaxone)

Just wire the royalties through my agent. See you in Monte Carlo! Mine’s a vanilla milk shake. Shaken, not stirred. Otherwise it would be a vanilla milk stir. And that’s silly.