Without question I have been disobliging in my life and have said things that violate the idea of "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." And there is no question that some of my actions might have caused heartburn to others, and it is without doubt that some of the people at whom I've looked with more than passing interest would cause a frown of disapproval from the otherwise unruffled (at least by thought) brow of Oral Roberts, a man who boils his eggs in widows' tears--that is of course until I fixed it with a hefty contribution to the faith healer's medical school.

But nothing in my history, or in what I am likely to do, even if my brain is eaten by a tumor and I vote for our Empress Hillary, has been bad enough to warrant me having to deal with Counterclockwise Home Loans.

In the course of my job these people come in a rota and the otherwise placid days of my existence are blighted by cringing every time the phone rings. The IRS? I snap my fingers at it; my taxes are paid. Other governmental agencies? Nothing to fear. Bill collectors? I have none. But it is possible that a mortgage broker, a particularly low form of life, although I did once meet one I didn't want to gut-shoot and she's probably looking for better work now, say, cleaning Texaco rest rooms, will take a loan to Counterclockwise Home Loans. Which means that the entire office will be engulfed in a fug of idiocy, bureaucratic obstructionism, finger pointing, and staring stupidity. Did you know that you can feel someone stare, mouth open, drool puddling onto her lap, into the middle distance when she's in Richardson? Which she hasn't figured out is in Texas. The papers clips on my desk were laughing at my distress.

I shall not try your patience by detailing the idiocy of these people, but shall only say that they go from stupidity to stupidity. I had not thought it possible to get anyone stupider than Robin in Austin, until Della in Richardson. Who for some reason thinks it a problem that I'm in Texas when I'm working with Texas property, and--surprise!--she's in Texas too! Mirabile Dictu.

Her supervisor Rhetta thinks that she is stupid, like setting the precedence between a flea and a louse, and when the mortgage broker gets in on the act, it sets up a bozon flux in which time flows backward and neutrons orbit electrons and the position and momentum of a particle can be known at the same time.

The only thing that could be worse than the gob-smacking, slack-jawed idiocy of the entire corpus of Counterclockwise Home Loans would be if some city were foolish enough to want them in that city, and thereby lower the IQ of the rocks. And while doing so, give Counterclockwise Home Loans a tax break, paid for by businesses it is competing against, and thereby permitting this Legion of Idiots to poach the trained help of lenders which actually have IQs which are real and not imaginary numbers. And the people, so poached, would instantly have their IQs lowered to single digits.

I'm going home now, to take out the half-dead batteries in much-used remote controls and comfort them, saying, "There, there. You may be a half-dead AA cell, but compared to the president of Counterclockwise Home Loans, you're Einstein."