Do clothes really maketh the Man?

Well, it seems that not everyone is enamoured of my sartorial splendour, such as it is.

In fact, one individual went so far as to recently complain to the insurance company I was working on behalf of in regards to my dress sense.

Personally, I just don't get it.

How does what I choose to wear affect my ability to do my job?

Roger Ebert's Guide to the Film Noir Genre

Credit where credit is due, this was just brought to my attention and I thought worthy of a mention.

So back in 1995, renowned film critic Roger Ebert mused over the Film Noir genre and wrote a short guide.

Personally, I kind of like point 6 (emphasis added), but then again I probably would.

For women: low necklines, floppy hats, mascara, lipstick, dressing rooms, boudoirs, calling the doorman by his first name, high heels, red dresses, elbowlength gloves, mixing drinks, having gangsters as boyfriends, having soft spots for alcoholic private eyes, wanting a lot of someone else's women, sprawling dead on the floor with every limb meticulously arranged and every hair in place.

Yep.

Sounds about right.

Thoughts on an Exposé

Recently there has been a prominent blogger* disclosing some 'revelations' regarding several political figures' dirty laundry. This blogger, clearly to the far right of the political spectrum, seems to be less interested in even-handedness, and more concerned with deliberately targeting the wrongdoings of those on the political left.

I guess everyone needs a hobby, even one that serves an agenda.

Raymond Chandler's guide to blondes

This quote from Chandler's The Long Goodbye was sent to me a few days ago. I swear I know a couple of these women but, sadly, not as many as I would like.

“There are blonde and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blonde as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-blue glare. There is the blonde who gives you the up-from-under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very, very tired when you take her home. She makes that helpless gesture and has that goddamned headache and you would like to slug her except that you found about the headache before you invested too much time and money and hope in her. Because the headache will always be there, a weapon that never wears out and is as deadly as the bravo’s rapier or Lucrezia’s poison vial.

There is the soft and willing alcoholic blonde who doesn’t care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Roof and there is plenty of dry champagne. There is the small perky blonde who is a little pale and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of the editorial in the Saturday Review. There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can’t lay a finger on her because in the first place you don’t want to and in the second place she is reading the Wasteland or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Kierkegaard or studying Provencal. She adores music and when the New York Philharmonic is playing Hindesmith she can tell you which one of the six bass viols came in a quarter of a beat too late. I hear Toscanini can also. That makes two of them.

And lastly there is the gorgeous show piece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap d’Antibes, and Alfa Romeo town car complete with pilot and co-pilot, and a stable of shopworn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absentmindedness of an elderly duke saying good night to his butler.”

A Work in Progress

Like pretty much every other Private Investigator in existence, I entertain the notion of writing a novel.

Yep, sorry.

Actually, the desire to practice writing actually led me to start this blog, so in some ways you have only yourselves to blame.

Be that as it may, I actually have written a number of 'scenes' or vignettes, if you prefer, with the idea of (eventually) stringing them together in some coherent manner that tells a meaningful story.

I even have most of the meta-plot figured out, which surely has to count for something? Shame I haven't done much actual writing in a while.

But that is about to change. Time to get back on the horse and finish what I have started.

Anyway, in lieu of something more investigatory-related, here is one of said vignettes for your appraisal and critique.

PS: it's about a down-and-out PI.

Fiction, I tell you.

Bullshit Files: 'Psychic' didn't see guilty verdict coming

It always gladdens my heart to see the truly deserving get what's coming to them and, in this case, Sylvia Mitchell (her real name) has been found guilty of defrauding two women out of $138,000.

You can read the full article here. 

Oh, Sylvia, did you not see this dark cloud looming over your own future?

Guess not.

Nothing to see here

Girls, Whiskey, and Cigars

Three things I'm pitifully short of.

Truth be told, I'm not really all that fond of whiskey anyway so no loss there.

However, these are supposedly the staple of the lone gumshoe - according to decades of propaganda - and I'm left wondering where it all went wrong?

You had me at "betray your country", Anna

Seems former Russian spy, Anna Chapman, had recently made the news after her July 03 tweet "Snowden, will you marry me?!" to which there has been no response.

Chapman refused to be drawn into an explanation with NBC reporter Michael Engel and promptly terminated the interview.

You're a lucky man, Engel, she might just have terminated you instead.

However, if the position is still open, I would just like to state that I would willingly betray any national secrets I may, or may not, possess. 

Surely that has to count for something?

Just sayin'.