Last night we endured Smashburger. Why their trendy organization has decided to double down with a special burger that piles fake brick cheese on top of kerosene-oil based American cheese to hide a thin reed of real beef somewhere in a charred bun and charge a dollar more than their regular burgers is perplexing. Fail.

Try Five Guys instead. Think savory White Castles without the shots.

Yesterday, you see, I had a problem with my landlord in the office building. She was not going to let me look at the furniture in our old office because my lazy former business partner had simply forgotten about it. She would have none of me. That is until I melted her cool exterior with a gold flaked, strawberry encrusted french tart this matin’.

She is now my friend. And I will no longer be worry for the 9 1/2 weeks till we move to our new space about our old furniture.

I later boasted of this exploit to a co-worker who exclaimed, “well aren’t you the man with the darts!” While she may have been talking about my cakes, it sounded better this way. After all, how else is a man to hit the bullseye?

Which brings us to this post. In the British West Indies a tonic of a different kind was developed during the 1800s callled Royall Bay Rhum. This makes a great after shave, and makes your head tingle when you massage it into your hair. Hemingway (pictured) was a fan. For all we know it could be used as a shampoo. Or, if you are into derelict chic (as Will Ferrel showed us in Zoolander), an aperitif.

I was, ostensibly, the “host parent” for one of them. In this position it fell to me to become the taxi driver. Being irresponsible as I tend to be, I not only encouraged the lovely Odele to speak her mind out in the car but to entice her somewhat shy and culturally shell-shocked expatriates to do the same.

The cacophony of cursing that soon followed on those taxi rides is a mellifluous memory I shall never forget. When a young French girl swears back and forth from English to French it is a sound that can melt the hardest heart. Which reminds me that french rap is a good facsimile thereof.

Gangsta seems somehow cultivated in a romance tone.

Its so contradictory that it must be cool.

Disclaimer aside, we would like to make a observation about political belief. It can be said that the more religious a person becomes, the more religion becomes their politics. Conversely the more secular a person becomes, the more politics becomes their religion. This is a merely an observation that is perhaps worthy of a high school social studies project.

Once we are able to locate a precocious high school student to prove this empirically we will then make our second observation in the form of a parable. We are reminded of a comment made by either a Russian cleric or communist (the symbolism is appropriate) who said this:

“When I see a poor man in the street, I consider this a spiritual problem, not a political problem.”

If we learned anything in college, it is that altruism is metaphysical. For example, does a young man give up his seat for the old lady on the bus out of self-sacrifice or to placate his conscience? The answer, we believe, is that only a spiritual force outside of the physical world can compel a human being to truly sacrifice for others.

Before you think that this makes religion our politics, however, consider what motivates people to take up spiritual things in general. What is to be said of the spiritual healer a few days back who killed three people in a sweat lodge ceremony by confusing vomit with purification?

We’d rather commune with communists.

At least if the door was locked.