Lola at the Coffee House

Well will you look at this? I go off for the week end to visit my daughter in Austin, and everybody shows up at once.................

Wassau? Why didn't you call me? No, the snow is no excuse!

Wassau sits at his desk as he types. He's writing to Vera, a woman he's left in Scottsdale. She says she's depressed. He says she's sour. Clara is living with her sister, Sybil and Sybil's husband Bill. Bill drives an almost new black Lincoln SUV with a silver grill and bumper so thick it looks like the braces on the teeth of Luca Brasi.

"Wassau," Lola calls from downstairs. He pushes away from his desk and crushes his half smoked cigarette. Time to get back to work. It's a blizzard outside and the cafe is full of friends and customers.

Wassau seems like an important guy, yes? I am going to kidnap Wassau from his friends and customers and hold him ransom for ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!

ONLY one million dollars? Whatzzamatta? No ambition?

go ahead, he doesnt make a decent hot chocolate anyway, too much milk and not enuff chocolate. Cheap bastard

Go ahead and try it. Wassau will call Luca Brasi and you'll find yourself turned wrong side out before you can even write your little ransom note..........

Hot chocolate anyone?

HULK SMASH PUNY HUMAN!

Lola's not afraid of Hulk.

FINE!! HULK SMASH PUNY LUCA BRASI and have Wassau. Hulk holding Wassau's ransom for ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS!!

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall . . .

No, Boss, it don't take strong drink . . . but that reminds me, i'll have a jumbo triple/triple . . . that's three milk, three sugar for the uninitiate . . .

A simple black coffee for me this morning. It's the best antidote on these dreary wet days. Thanks.

I'll have a double absinthe Wassau old chap.

Can you smoke upstairs? The atmosphere around here is a clean and fresh as an Alpine meadow on a crisp spring morning when all the flowers are just starting to peep out and display their tempting wares to any passing insect just roused for an overnight charping session behind a bit of loose bark.

Just take a deep breath. There you are my dear fellow. Doesn't that give you that get up and go, up two three four, sensation? Ready for anything. What's an itsy-bitsy budget deficit got in its locker to hold that down or even reduce the frequency of the whine its whirring makes.

When you get to my age Wassau you will discover that taking it is easy is the best policy. I love sloths.

Wassaw, this morning I'd like a caffe macchiato, per favore. None of that fancied up stuff with, gah, caramel.

Oh, and a copy of The Guardian, please.

Some biscotti would be nice to have:

Yes I'm afraid all of you must suffer Wassau's boorish younger brother Wassaw for now until someone pays Wassau's ransom.

Still emitting your run-on flatulence eh?

It's a damn sight better than this sophicticated version of doctors and nurses that is being played in betwen my words of wisdom.

The assertion, your favourite conversational gambit, that there is any "run-on flatulence" involved, is, like all your other assertions, a circularity designed to satisfy whatever urges you need to satisfy. Other than that it is a futility and of no use to your companions in this

Not only was I referring to the beta minus interactions I am witnessing here but I am also alluding, tangentially, to the absence in the contemporary councils of state of the smoke filled rooms, the "inspiring fumes of tobacco" as Mr Fielding called them, correctly in my view, which were so much a part of the rise to world dominance of the USA, and the possibility that it, the absence, may be connected to the present malaise in both domestic and foreign affairs. But I don't know.

I have recently read The Game of Nations by Miles Copeland (for a second time) and I am no longer sure what any of the spokespersons we see on the idiot box mean.

I'll have some coffee...light...sweet.

And a bun...anything without chocolate on it.

Thank you.

Can I borrow someone's reading glasses? I always forget mine...and I just stole a newspaper from one of the tables in the front. It's the New York Post...and I want to see the pictures.

Here, try these . . . i tried them on at the drug store, and then walked out while still wearing them . . . no dishonest intent, i just forgot . . . kept wondering why everything looked so funny . . .