November 1st, 2006

Salvete dear readers,

The air is growing colder by the minute and the blankets of the alabaster white snow approach. What better time to present the latest and, unarguably the most exquisite, issue of Roderick Popplestone's Arbitrary Collection: Roderick Popplestone's Triangular Ballroom for the Socially Inept! This month your graceful and most benevolent master, that is I, has chosen to grace you with a literary buffet that will surely be to your satisfaction. Each row of prose, indeed each word, just as each stanza of poetry, shall undoubtedly shine upon your loathsome existences like a beacon of divine light coming from my mansion through the thick, black smoke of social despair and intellectual wanting. In fact, I recommend you pick up this latest issue and use it as a household remedy for any ailment that you may at this point in time be suffering from. Anything from the common cold to leprecy, which my trusty manservant Tacito informed me - by means of sign language of course - is rather a common problem among you folk.

Oh these biological damages take me back to the days when I was just a little schoolboy and my uncle, E. M. Popplestone, from my father's side of course, sat me on his lap and told me stories of war veterans, amputees and the horrid cries of soldiers lying strewn on the battlefield, the sweet nectar of life slowly dripping out of their gaping wounds. Oh, how I miss old E.M. He went missing some years ago and nobody has heard from him since then...

Anyway, onward and forward, my brave little pumpkins, for in this last paragraph, I want to leave you with some words of wisdom, from a man who has seen the world a handful of times, and who is, evidently, a lot wiser than the rest of you.

For remember, if you ever permit your significant other leave the house unattended, then she will most likely want to make it a habit. Be careful!

Yours superiorly,

Roderick Popplestone