The Stainless Steel Rat Shakes Your Hand!

Dear Juliet

I just had a thought.

Yes, I know that doesn't happen very often.

Anyway, there I was, looking at my lengthening line of little blog posts, feeling happy when I thought of you, wondering at the ways the world can sometimes turn out well, and I noticed the original To See My Friend and Shake Her Hand had had a few more views than the average.

You'd like me to shake your hand?

Maybe I can do something.

A couple of crazed and convoluted ideas came and went then, like a small eureka, it hit me.

Why not at least suggest we try a brief, time-limited Facebook video call?

As you know, I'm typically online between 7.30-7.50 am your time. I'll open up my Facebook Messenger page every day while I'm on the job and see what dreams may come. You'd have to send me a Facebook friend request first, but I think that's what's needed to make it work.

Do not worry. I'm okay with things as they are. I don't mind sitting out somewhere south of Needles like the Wichita Lineman or Steinbeck with Charley. There's no hurry and no worry and I'll go on writing to you anyway 'cause you're cute. However, I wouldn't be working blind and it's a bit better than boarding a plane and probably being banged up by ICE at the other end.

The things I do for love...

So what do you think?

Yes, it'd be great to see you again and metaphorically shake your hand. I miss my dear Miss Landau. But I know you're in a fragile state and not to be rushed, and that's the most important thing.

But you're probably still worrying I'll stop liking you or stop writing or something?

I could just flatly reassure you I won't stop liking you or stop writing, but that's a bit bland...

Then I remembered The Stainless Steel Rat, written by Harry Harrison in 1961.

Slippery Jim diGriz is a humorous thief in an era of dull but pleasant conformity 32,000 years from now. He gets recruited by the Special Corps on the valid basis that it's best to set a thief to catch a thief, and finds out that some psychopath and his girlfriend Angelina are building a battleship in order to wreak havoc etc.

Jim catches the psychopath, but finds out Angelina is the real monster and the brains behind the scheme. She's gorgeous, but has a distressing tendency to go around killing people and even tries to kill him, putting five bullets into him with something called a  .75 recoilless. His bulletproof underwear soaks all this up, he finds he's still getting more and more attracted to her and, after she's captured, the Corps untwists her personality and she and Jim get married.

So, once again, it's perfectly simple but perhaps perfectly hard to understand:

Even if you're a murderous sociopath and put five rounds into a guy with a .75 recoilless, if he likes you, he likes you.

That's it.

Even I thought Angelina was kind of cute.

So that's my thought for the day, and you might like The Stainless Steel Rat. There are a few cheap paperback copies around. I'd send you one but I think your PO Box closed years ago...

Love,

James

P.S. Please don't put five rounds from a .75 recoilless into me!

P.P.S. Even if you did, I'd still like you.