Time and money spent talking to Thomas Riley produced nothing better.Through the late spring and summer, it was very tedious. I had little money comin...g in and only my own time as a resource. Though the national picture was looking good for the Republican party, I was not their fair-haired girl. Their money went to more promising situations. We made jokes about trying to spin straw into video cable, but only managing an elephant's tail.As a sidelight, we played word games with my opponent's. After croissants and coffee, we jumped in her car and headed toward town. Mid-week, mid-morning the traffic had thinned out and it took no time at all for us to get to the shops lined up along the Savannah River. It’s usually a place that attracts tourists with funky little shops and boutiques … but that’s what made it fun, too. We wandered and picked up tacky souvenirs, discretely laughed at the snowbirds down from the north … but they were laughing at us as well … maybe not at us, maybe with. Even she had succumbed last night, after all these years. True, she had been forced into it but her body had made the most out of its chance even though her mind had fought it, and it had brought back the horrible memories of her brutal ravishment at the hands of other Arabs so many years ago. Yes, the body was a strange uncooperative thing and under the right circumstances would go its own way regardless of the high sounding moral principles the mind might harbor.Monique finally broke the. “I still have the receipt, you insensitive bastard.”Went out last night and got really wasted.I woke up this morning next to a fat old bird who was snoring.So, at least I got home OK.Angela Merkel arrives at Passport Control in Athens airport.“Nationality?” asks the immigration officer.“German,” she replies.“Occupation?”“No, just here for a few days.”As the coffin was being lowered into the ground at a Parking Officer’s funeral, a voice from insidescreams: “I’m not dead, I’m not dead. Let me.