Welcome Back Carlos

It's looks like someone's gotten their Internet privileges back, and television privileges also, if one can call Oprah television. I like to think of it as talk radio, with couches and weeping.

Well, in any case, it's certainly good to hear from Juan Carlos Vega, even if he is still doing hard time for his Warwick Davis/Danny Devito collection escapades. (Last I heard, Devito still loses his bladder control at the words "carne de vaca en salsa marron con queso verde" though, admittedly, it's not a common phrase.) We've missed him, wretched grammar, obsessions, and all.

To help his remaining sentence pass by quickly, I'd like to offer him some tips for making life in the slammer go by quickly. Fortunately though, I've never done hard time. So, I called up Martha Stewart, explained to her Juan Carlos' peculiar situation and personality, and she was nice enough to offer some suggestions. And she didn't charge much either...she now owns the blog. (However, because the value of the blog is so low, I can by it back for practically nothing. There, I just did.)

Good Things for Doing Time in the Joint
by Martha Stewart as told to Earl Fando

• Make friends with tough people, but first convince them that you are highly unattractive or it leads to complications during those intimate quiet periods of lockdown. Always sleep curled up, with your back to the wall.
• Get your friends and family to send you lots of smokes. Smokes are the currency of prison. Marlboros are twenties, Salems are tens, Lucky Strikes are fives, Virginia Slims are ones, and Benson & Hedges are like Canadian money.
• Always go on a hunger strike when the sex offenders have kitchen duty. Unpleasant but true. Tell them you'll come off the strike for Marie Callender's, Spago's, or in your case Maria's Columbian Cafe, Minneapolis.
• Make friends with the best guards or the ones on the take, depending on your particular correctional instituion.
• Ask if you can keep the leg irons in the cell. They make excellent beverage coolers.
• Exercise time is the best time to forage for wild greens. Just don't forage too close to the weightlifting benches, as all that sweat can make the greens too tart.
• Solitary confinement is a great place to get your head straight, and work on doilies for the warden.
• Shower as little as possible. You avoid all the most uncomfortable situations and the smell makes you far less attractive to potential "boyfriends."
• Stop writing me.

Sorry, that last one was for me.

Best of luck, Juan Carlos. Only 27 more months to go!! Say hello for me to that bloke Morgan Freeman played, will you?