[meyer]

Is there ever a time when we have let you down? I mean someday -- and that day may never come -- I may ask a favor of you. And if that favor were to be granted, I would be in your debt. And then, we would call each other friends.

"I know Jim Traficant. I used to live in the district next to Jim Traficant. And you, sir, are no Jim Traficant."

More godfather music

[razorback-bert]

Humor break:

Tragedy or Farce?: It may not produce anything like Trollope's "The Way We Live Now," but an investor-relations agency in Philadelphia is sponsoring a scandal-inspired writing contest. Gregory FCA, as the agency is called, asks contestants to mark the WorldCom collapse, or that of any other "infamous company," by writing a before-collapse annual report in the style of a famous writer. It offers, as an example, this "Faulkner" excerpt, which refers to WorldCom's fallen CEO: "Ebbers, like all the grizzled male Ebbers before him, had in him that certainness and had added a richness to that certainness, and then added a faith to that richness that a dime earned and then spent was still there. . . ."