Man. I hate Mondays. We always do our corporate takeovers on Mondays. I keep telling them: Look, the traffic is murder on Mondays, and I can never find a place to park. And yet you guys expect me to lug all this stuff around whenever we make a move on this company or that financial holding or that corporation there. Oh sure, it looks impressive as all hell. Nothing says "We're buying all your outstanding stock!" better than a hundred-and-fourteen-pound war mace. One swing of this baby and they're practically throwing the blank certificates at you, along with every copy of their quarterly returns and the three-volume, slipcased edition of their annual report. And the little hand doohickey is great -- great, I tell ya -- for putting those soon-to-be-retired execs in their place. No one messes with a man with a hand doohickey, let me tell you. The shield? A necessity, after a while. After all, you cant just stroll into the corporate boardroom anymore without some piece of personal protection. You should see my scars... But man!, what a lot of stuff to lug around, just to take over some company that you're ultimately gonna run into the ground. I keep thinking there has to be a way of streamlining all this -- you know, put the boys in accounting and legal to work for a change, let them handle this once in a while. They should be able to handle this without all the busted furniture and claims from Medical. But the execs tell me: nooooooooooooo....... we've always done it like this, all the way back to Erik the Red's time, and if it was good enough for Erik, it should be good enough for you. Elevator's here. Man, I really, really hate Mondays...