Mosquitos! I got bit the other night. It's an indignity at this point. It's the middle of September, guys. You should be dead or . . . or hibernating, or whatever you guys do. Googling . . . ah. Mosquitos "Lower their metabolisms and suspend development until they warm up in the spring. Mosquito eggs are hardy and survive through winter."

So they're like vampires. If you find them in their dormant state you can drive a stake through their hearts. Little tiny silver stakes. I wonder if you could use common pins. They're not silver, but the skeeters aren't supernatural vampires. Probably works.

Good weekend. Muggy, utterly unSeptembery. Vikes won! And there was much rejoicing. Watched two movies that had been made in the last year, which was unusual. Made travel plans and hamburgers, albeit with different tools. Started rewatching a show because the second season is streaming and I don't remember anything about the first season. This is a wrinkle of modern life. No one tuned into season two of Hawaii 5-0 and said okay now hold on, I remember this McGarrett guy, and it takes place on an island, right, but what happened at the end of last year? All you needed to know was in the credits. ZULU AS KONO. Carry on.

Got a nice text from Astrid in England, attending an event for Michael Palin's new book. The latest compilation of his diaries. They went backstage to see him and get an autograph, and I passed along my best wishes. (Still clinging to the illusion, bolstered at the Keats Library event, that he remembers me.)

Anything else? Well . . .

		Why would I take a picture of this? The price isn’t outrageous. Well, it is, compared to the past, but not for now. I actually saw gas at $2.99 the other day, and not a big-box loss-leader. No, I took this picture to prove what I had pumped, because I’d just got a charge on my credit card for $176.

I should’ve known why. Should have been simple. But I still live, in my head, in a high-trust society, so I went inside and asked the clerk behind the counter what was going on. He seemed indifferent, and familiar with it. Yeah, it happens, you’ll have to call corporate. Sometimes they give a refund.

This . . . this was not acceptable. I’m not going to waste my time fighting a phone tree, I wanted to say, but that sounds both ridiculous and fun, as if some Ent from Lord of the Rings with a rotary dial for a mouth is throwing bells at my head. I asked for a paper receipt, and he ran one off. I went home and called Amex. (Yes, I looked for a skimmer.)

Mind you, at the grocery store a few minutes before I’d stopped to get gas, my watch had failed three times to make contact with the POS sensor, and when I put in the card, it said DECLINED. That word always fills me with shame, and an irrational sense that I am about to enter a world of financial uncertainty. I waved the clerk over, now feeling as if I was wearing a scarlet letter, and she said “yeah it does that sometimes.” I tried another card - because the people like me who are DECLINED always try another card - and it went through.

So first that, then this.

The nice lady at Amex said it was probably a provisional charge, a placeholder, and that the actual charge was $31.91. The $176 charge would go away in a day or two.

Well could it go away now? I’m all done. There’s nothing more in this transaction that could possibly happen. I was told to call if it didn’t.

I’d never seen this before at this gas station, and the reason is obvious: fraud. Loss prevention. I should’ve been alerted when the charge happened before I even finished - I got the notification about a minute into pumping. Now I’ll be used to it, but it’s still jarring. We are beginning this interchange with the presumption that don’t have enough money, and we’re going to ask your credit card company if you’re good for this.

If I wasn’t good for it, wouldn’t I get DECLINED?

More liquor from the Booze-surge of '34:

Carrying a treasure chest full of gold like that would make him easy to push over.

Not much to add to this one, except . . .

Detectives and Operatives always had numbers back then. It made them seem more mysterious.

But hey, Michael Curtiz! Powell! And female comic relief!

It starts out nice and shadowy, giving us a hint of Powell before he strikes a match and illuminates that famously keen face. I won’t get into the plot - we’re not here for that unless there’s some historical lesson to be drawn. It’s the inadvertent documentary. See, Powell’s on the lam from . . . the French, due to some bit of espionage. He ends up back in the states, where no one’s hiring. You know what that means: montage.

Times Square is easy enough to recognize, but what about this?

What does it say?

I can’t pull out anything that pins it to a location. I suppose it could be found. I suppose it doesn’t matter. Unless that’s the sole example of that sign and billing in existence.

Anyway, Powell is good; when isn’t he? Perhaps the only reason I clipped this was for the fellow who walks in at the end.

Of course he’s in the movie. He's always in the movie. The face of indifferent institutions just doing what they're doing, irritated that no one seems to realize they have to go along.

The Monday Boon: