Cobb on a roll

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Cobb resolved he would write 100 lines today, giving special attention to correct typing, spelling, grammar, capitalization and all the other things that make life worth living.
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Much of life depends on security codes. If you do not have one, you cannot access your own financial accounts to see how much or how little you have in the bank. A favorite trick of banks is not to tell you your code when you open your account, but then to spring it on you months later. If you are lucky, you will have retained the personal phone number of the clerk who signed you up for the account. That is your only hope of ever getting through to a live human on the phone.
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Cobb found in necessary to defend his ears against the noise of the dishwasher in his kitchen area. It was loud, and went on for most of any hour. Cobb doubted if the machine really needed an hour of swishing and swirling of hot, soapy water against his plates, cups and forks to make them come clean. Many modern machines did only a half-ass job, others - like his dishwasher - were super-efficient. Cobb tried to recall when he first met a dishwasher. Suddenly it came to him - the earliest dishwashers - in his experience - were called children. They were Cobb, his older brother and (later, as she matured into a 10-year-old able to refrain from cutting her fingers off ) his younger sister. They would wash the supper dishes each night, thus giving their mother a break. She died at age 62 of heart trouble, in no way related to washing dishes, as far as Cobb could remember. 16.
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In the New York Times this morning appears a story that says the USA should take a lesson from Japan in the 1990s. That venerable, inscrutable nation underwent an economic slump quite similar to the one we're experiencing. The government responded with a bailout, and then another one, until they finally got it right. The Japanese economy limped back, but the lesson to be learned is that it is better to risking over-doing a bailout than to under-do. Under-doing only prolongs the misery.
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Cobb awoke this morning with visions of social unrest to come, of starving families throughout the land, of children standing in bread lines, of thieves and hoodlums roaming the streets, robbing, breaking into homes, vandalizing. Because municipal budgets had been cut by the depression, there were not nearly enough cops to go around. As the government printed huge reams of thousand-dollar bills to bail out everyone, money lost most of its value and the Weimar Republic of 1920s Germany suddenly came alive, with people taking wheelbarrows filled with paper currency to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread. Of course, this disaster was relieved a few years later with the arrival of Adolf Hitler & Co. So that took care of that, didn't it?
Two hours later, after Cobb had arisen and washed his face, brushed his teeth, dressed and obtained not one but two newspapers from a downtown newsstand, many of his fears had either faded or had been displaced by more important worries, such as what major league baseball should do about Alex Rodriguez, a third baseman for the New York Yankees. He had recently admitted using performance enhancing substances in the early years of the decade.
This led Cobb to consider the larger question of performance enhancing stuff (PES). If athletes were to be condemned for using PES, why shouldn't the rest of humankind be subject to the same rules? The most prominent example of PES is surely Viagra and the several other pecker-stiffeners that science has come up with. What if, upon investigation, it was discovered that athletes who used Viagra - and presumably enjoyed a better sex life and a happier marriage thereafter - did better on the ballfield than other athletes who did not use Viagra? Or how about nasal spray? If I'm an outfielder with a runny nose and watery eyes, shouldn't I be allowed to squirt some liquid up my schnozz to dry things out? But if it were discovered that my nasal spray gave me a jump on other jocks who did NOT squirt stuff up their noses, would that disqualify me for the World Series or admission to the Cooperstown Hall of Fame?
Cobb's mind then went on to Preparation H and similar remedies. Could they not be considered performance enhancing? Have you ever tried to pitch a no-hit game while your poor exit ramp was on fire?
And so on. PES came in a thousand forms, both natural and manufactured. The most common, probably, was coffee. Or ordinary water. You are in the final stage of the Boston Marathon, approaching Heartbreak Hill, and your guts feel like an abandoned sawmill after a sandstorm. You would gladly kill your husband and your firstborn child in exchange for some liquid, any kind of liquid. Suddenly an arm on the sideline extends you a paper cup filled with cool water. You seize it, gulp it down. "We're sorry, Ms. Kahlo-Jen, but you've just ingested a PES - water - and are therefore disqualified."
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