I wonder what 2004 holds in store for Muffy?
Muffy pondered the question as she stared at the blank page that was designed to hold the entry in her diary for December 31st, 2013.
“Time travel, probably,” she thought.
“How else am I going to go back and fill in those missing years?”
She took another sip of Krug Clos du Menil from the flute on the armrest of her luxurious first-class plane seat.
“A little more attention to continuity wouldn’t hurt, either. And I really think it’s time for some new scenery. I’m a little bored with the regular locales for my adventures. Endlessly trekking back and forth between New York, Ottumwa and Sedona...
“Let’s hope this plane is going somewhere novel…”
Pleased with her literary wordplay, she looked around the first-class cabin, wondering who else might be aboard this flight to a New Year’s Eve party at an unknown destination, at the invitation of an anonymous but evidently very wealthy host.
It seemed to be an elite collection of notables from the world of business and finance.
There was Sir John Templeton, and his wife (the artist formerly known as Pink), and behind them was Lord Greenspan, recently notorious for finishing his last Humphrey Hawkins testimony by giving the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee an open-mouth kiss.
Everyone who was anyone in stock promotion was there, the good, the bad and - why, even little Johnny Lebed had come out of his spider hole. There were the Bartiromos, the Calendras, the Goelos, the Spitzers, and that one Canadian guy who was always short the penny stocks that went down, Muffy couldn’t quite remember his name.
Muffy glanced at her watch, which not only displayed the time around the globe, but also kept a running word count.
“Hmmm, almost 300 words already,” thought Muffy. “Must be due for a lipstick lesbian interlude soon.”
She noticed a strong smell of cocoa butter, and looked up to see two leggy, nubile stewardesses standing in front of her, wearing only –
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- agreed Muffy, as she wiped the last of the guacamole off her chin, and continued to scan the other passengers in the cabin.
A commotion arose from the direction of the front row. James J. Cramer must have been watching the news on his video-PDA, because he jumped out of his seat, turned to the rest of the cabin and shouted, “Hey, everyone! Great news! They finally caught Bin Laden, after all these years! He was the CFO at Lucent the whole time! We’re gonna see Dow 200,000 by Monday!”
Applause and whoops of joy rang out through the plane.
Cramer’s face knew only two expressions, “deep concern” or “unbridled glee,” but his visage was set firmly on “glee” as he careened down the aisle of the plane, exchanging high-fives with all those who could bring themselves to touch him. So powerful was the torrent of joy that overflowed from his cup that he offered free lifetime subscriptions to his newsletter to all on board. Sadly, there were no takers.
“Aw, c’mon, folks, this is retail value of over NINE THOUSAND renminbi I’m givin’ away here!”
“Come back here to your seat and be quiet,” said Larry Kudlow sternly from the front row. “You’re a disgrace. Did you know your fly is open?”
Crestfallen, Cramer, shuffled back to his seat. His face had changed from glee back to that other expression that he had.
Muffy was embarrassed for him, and avoided eye contact as he passed. Once he was safely back in his seat, arguing with Kudlow about Kudlow’s taste in shirts, Muffy turned and looked at the row of seats behind her.
There in row D were Microsoft(Bill), Berkshire(Warren) and SI(Bob), long famous as “the world’s richest stock message board owner.” His head was buried in a book - “Richard Petty’s Guide to Maximizing Oracle 9 Performance.”
“Ooo-ooh! Hi, Bob!” called Muffy brightly. “Got those non-clustered indexes optimized yet?”
From the look Bob gave her, Muffy suspected that things were not entirely peachy down on the server farm, and she decided not share her recommendations concerning outer joins and correlated sub-queries.
One row behind SI(Bob) sat da cheif, for years now the host of the PBS business show, “The Nightly Momentum Report.” On TV he looked remarkably young for a man of his age, but here on the plane, even in the soft glow of the discreet lighting in first class, he was looking, well, to be frank, wrinkled.
And now Muffy realized how he did it. Even as she watched, he applied a popular brand of neurotoxin to his face muscles, deftly injecting his own tissue with a long surgical needle.
This had the effect of removing his wrinkles almost instantly, but also made his speech almost incomprehensible.
He looked up and saw Muffy staring at him down the aisle.
“Whuh? Ooh duh fuh uh yuh? Wha ahh yuh lu-huh uh muh luh duh?”
“To da moon, cheify!” mouthed Muffy brightly, not understanding a word.
“Oh yuh, riyh, tuh duh munh! Snorh, wuh evuh…”
Baffled, Muffy turned to the window and pretended to scan the outside world for landmarks, even though it was nighttime.
“That’s odd,” she thought. Then a smile of realization formed on her face.
“I know where we are! At this rate, we’ll be landing in…” |
