Limbo Rock and a Hard Place

I ask the reader's pardon for a little pawky humor, but really, there are times when one must make a stand. I am holding a post from my most recent dissatisfied interlocutor, who is steadfastly insisting that I am things which primary sources, as the scholars say, do not substantiate:

- Republican;
- Plural;
- "Elitist,"
- in cahoots with the police;
- "out to make Arlington a country club,"
- out to eliminate "liberals, affordable housing, poor people, minorities," and "social activists who refused to conform;"
- malicious (I will admit to mischievous).

Yet Ms. Puce (as we shall call him or her), who asserts all these things so repeatedly and stridently, refuses to answer a few trivia questions which would demonstrate at least some familiarity with my small pulp romps and undermine her queer claims. I fling the gauntlet down to you, Ms. Puce, I fling it. Answer my questions, or I will assume that you are some sort of cybernetic drone, a la Star Trek, programmed only to repeat a roster of peculiar accusations.


(1) What is on the floppy disk that arrives at the Spectator office, and why does Smitty wonder if it could be a motive for murder?

(2) Smitty spends Chapter 9 of Murder Across the Board in conversation with two positive, resourceful characters. What are their respective ethnic groups?

(3) The baseball stadium is considered a negative in Murder out of the Ballpark because it will destroy A. A lovely view of the monuments from a posh high rise; B. One of the last modest-priced housing co-ops in Arlington.

(4) And, for a bonus: Which Department of the Arlington Government is decried as "corrupt from the top down, or incompetent from the inside out"? (Hint: Chapter 11, page 102 of Murder Across the Board.)

Posts repeating the old accusations will be held in Limbo until the answers arrive.

Votes, Vice and Versa

I have been anticipated in a post I was composing by a visitor who mentions that yours truly did indeed receive a couple of write-ins in the recent hotly contested election. One has no illusions of political viability, but one is bounced by the bit of newspaper publicity – and the fact that one's pseudonym made it through the winnowing out of "fictional characters." Perhaps this is persuasive evidence that one is not fictional.

Alas, other posters are less amiable, and allege that I am not Miss Jane at all, but a "small group of malicious individuals with an elitist agenda. And vice versa." One must take the good and the bad together, but how does one become the vice versa of "a group with an elitist agenda"?