Once upon a time, long, long ago there a manager of a retail liquor store. He was a sporadically-educated guy, with longish hair, a gift for learning lines, and a need to pay the rent; a typical actor. But at the time (and for decades after) he was a retail manager. Gotta pay that rent.

His current assignment required two brand new assistant managers. One was a nascent Little Lebowski. He was, as Todd Snider so elegantly describes it; “an alright guy.”

The other was a go-getter. He was quick. He smoked like a chimney. He was reasonably smart. He smoked like my dad. He was willing to do the chores of retail. He was a pack-a-day contributor to the local economy. He was canny. What’s not to like?

Well…

Canny…

The definition of a good retail manager is someone who produces the best results from the available resources. The available resources in this case were young Lebowski who would do what he was instructed to do if he was reminded frequently of what he had been instructed to do. That was not an unusual managerial requirement and could be adequately met with daily chats (paternal or infernal as the case required), do-lists, and schedules. The canny guy’s capacity, however, could accomplish much more than that if his canniness could be channeled into un-terribly-harmful schemes.

What’s the business plan here?

The manager had grandiose visions of morphing his North Lexington Budweiser/Jim Beam oasis into a destination fine wine emporium. A fine wine shop would of course have fine wine sales personnel and fine wine sales personnel would never smoke on the fine wine sales floor. He instituted a no smoking requirement for employees.

The canny guy complained but complied…sorta. The retail manager would drop in at unexpected times and look askance at the hurried discarding of half-smoked violations, and would unhurriedly, but pointedly discard the hidden repositories of ashes. The cat-and-mouse scheming continued harmlessly and relatively happily (except for Canny’s potentially cancerous lungs) and the store prospered.

It thrived enough to lead to the promotion of the manager and the canny assistant took over management of the store. Now in charge and unconstrained and undistracted, his canny angels within six months rescinded the no-smoking nuisance and schemed to embezzle enough to be fired.

I am triggered to recall this by the current news.

I am feeling triggered to outrage by yo-yo tariffs, roller-coaster stock markets, DOGE extremes, Nobel Peace Prize nominations, and Schroedinger/Epstein files. But shouldn’t I be more concerned about less fixable things; crypto destroying our currency, or a Justice Department yesterday requesting voter roll info from individual states, or a president who threatens to remove citizenship from a disliked American citizen.

But then I can’t keep up with all the schemes.

Maybe I should start smoking.

Where did I put those ash repositories?