Black: Your Last Name and Your Future You hear that, Conrad? The sound of your impending incarceration? The final stroke in a long and painfully awkward fall from overstuffed grace?

Does it sound like a ticking clock? Or maybe the incessant sound of footsteps getting closer? Or maybe just the sound of a door slamming as your atavistic, social climbing wife leaves for greener pastures?

If it sounds like I'm taking perverse pleasure in your troubles, you're damn right. The thing is, Conrad, you made it so easy to hate you. Your smugness, your arrogance, your ridiculous biography of FDR, your 'unique' style of corporate management...all of it adds up to make you the personification of pride going before a fall. I am vaguely comforted that the universe still sees it fit to punish hubris. You remind me a bit of Oedipus, except you didn't marry your mother and haven't yet gouged out your eyes. Still, even with his parental indiscretions, I find the ol'King of Thebes a much more sympathetic character than your blustering, pompous self.

To quote a favorite movie gladiator of mine, the time for honoring yourself will soon be at an end. And since that was all you were good at, I wonder what you'll do next. Perhaps your wife will let you hock one of her $10,000 handbags...that should be enough to open a laundromat or something.

I'll come by periodically to wash my socks and laugh.  ¶ 9:55 a.m.