I’ve decided to start a new feature (or possibly features) to fill in gaps where I don’t have time to do a Soapy strip… the working name for the first new feature is “Rogue’s Gallery,” but I may end up changing it. This should make it so there are less days here where nothing gets posted, of which there have been too many lately. Anyhow, here’s the first one.

“HONEST” SAM DINSMORE

Although known as “Honest” Sam, Sam cheats at cards, steals candy from the grocery (jelly nougats) and would claim to like the Beatles when asked even though he finds them boring and overrated, and once smashed his car stereo with a ball-peen hammer in a tequila rage as a reaction to the 26th verse of Hey Jude.

Those days of angry inebriation are behind him now, though… he’s learned to meditate. When he feels his blood begin to rise, he now pictures Abraham Lincoln’s calming visage floating benignly four inches in front of his face. He tried other presidents first… Washington, Jackson, Fillmore… Lincoln seemed too easy… but Lincoln’s mug just harmonizes alpha waves like nobody’s business.

He made the mistake of telling one of his co-workers at the bank about it… thus the inaccurate nom de plume.

He’s fine with it though… it can’t hurt, considering the embezzlement and all. Only one month to go and he’s off to South America for a new life… he imagines that Abraham will be an infrequent visitor as he relaxes on white sand beaches with an alcohol-free pina colada. In the meantime, he’s visualizing Abe levitating in front of his monitor for a minimum of three hours a day, patiently ignoring the spreadsheets, databases and powerpoint presentations that one must endure when pulling a bank job in the early 21st century.