Date: Sunday, 11-11-2001 20:02
From: William Gillespie
To: Scott Rettberg
Subject: Why I missed Joe's party

And then the decision was made for me. Shall I describe how, just for the sake of the number of words it will take to explain? One of my checking accounts is dead and bleeding a trickle of pennies. The other is new, it has $75. To last for food for ten days. I just got the cash card in the mail yesterday. But when I opened it today I discovered that the Personal Identification Number (PIN) was following in a separate mailing. Which I did not receive in today's mail. It is after noon on Saturday and all the branches of the credit union are closed so I cannot make a withdrawal. Perhaps there is someplace I can cash a check but I don't know where, and already the thought that I am having to resort to means of squeezing money out of my accounts that I have never resorted to before, all to drive in a car with squishy, scraping brakes to the third-largest city in America to go to a party, albeit a very cool one, is making me uncomfortable. Particularly since it will involve spending my food money on gasoline in the hopes that the money that you are taking out of your food money to give me to help pay the Unknown's server bill when I arrive there might instead serve to buy me food, after I find a place that will cash check number one from my new checking account, so I can spend my food money on gasoline to go drink and smoke in Chicago.

But what really gets me is that, in opening all the envelopes in the mountain of unpaid bills on my living room floor, in order to find the PIN for my new cash card, I learned that my car's liability insurance (unpaid) has expired on this very day, which fact puts a certain spin on my plan to spend the last of my food money on gas in order to go drive drunk in Chicago in a car with squishy brakes. Driving under the influence in an uninsured car with suspect brakes having no emergency money, in other words.

It's all just starting to take on the unmistakable signs of a bad idea.

I knew I should never have tried to pay off the Wordwork server bill and print those cards for Spineless Books in the same month.

From the bottom of literature,
William