This one is for…

Sam and Salvador, at my favourite "watering hole," Darfon's. And for all their lovely "beer-slingers," Stephanie, Rachel, Charlsi, Dezerae, Boo, Courtney and "Skank"-none of whom are waiting on a record deal on Music Row, if that's possible in Nashville!

Thanks for all the bottles of "Loudmouth Lite," and may none of you ever experience a personal life as tumultuous as that of that rogue Alan Lewrie.

"All pity chok'd with custom of fell deeds;

And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,

With Ate by his side come hot from Hell,

Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice

Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war…"

Julius Caesar, Act III, Sc. 1 269-273

William Shakespeare

Gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum;

exsilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant

atque alio patrium quaerunt sub sole iacentem

Gleefully they steep themselves in their brothers' blood;

for exile they change their sweet homes and hearths

and seek a country that lies beneath an alien sun.

– Georgics, Book II, 510-512

Publius Vergilius Maro

Clerk Etienne de Gougne heaved a fretful sigh after surveying the large salon, just off the equally seedy entrance hall of the commandeered mansion. With grips still in hand, and rolled up charts still crammed under his arm-pits, he squinted his eyes in dread of the tirade to come once Le Capitaine saw the place. He wished that just once he had had the tiniest dash of courage; else, his master's transfer to Guadeloupe, and this foetid clime, could have been his excuse to enter the service of some other official, perhaps even in his own beloved and exhilarating Paris, instead of letting himself be meekly dragged, ever demeaned and terrified, from one arse-end of the world to another.