Sunday, March 18, 2007

I Come Before You To Protest A Great Injustice

I, for one, do not generally support the use of blogs to promote, report, or relieve personal animosities. However, I simply have no other choice.

A certain Harvard economics graduate student, let's call him "J N Friedman," no wait, that's too obvious..."John Norton F," was kindly invited, by me, to watch NCAA basketball at my apartment. During a break in the action, we all went to Whole Foods to buy dinner sausages, vegetables, and, perhaps most importantly, delicious Whole Foods-branded soft, fresh, chocolate-chip cookies.

Dinner having been eaten, having paid me an appropriate sum for his portion of dinner, John Norton F took his leave of us. A few minutes later, I went into the kitchen to retrieve the cookies, only to find that they had disappeared. Naturally, our first instinct was that John Norton F had taken the cookies, so I called him:

ME: "Did you take the cookies?"

HIM (annoyed): "No"

ME: "Are you sure?"

HIM: "Yes"

And yet the cookies were nowhere to be found until, on this very day, I walk into the NBER to find the cookie bag, half-empty, on my desk. Perhaps there is some other explanation for this phenomenon. I'd like to think there is. But until it is brought to light, I must conclude that this sad little graduate student sacrificed his reputation and good-standing not only in the Harvard community, but in the economics community as a whole, simply for half a bag of superior-quality cookies.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I demand a retraction in response to my email!

Anonymous said...

You appear to be taking advantage of your bully pulpit - albeit, not very bulliesh a bully pulpit.

There is another explanation for this phenomenon:
I indeed left those cookies on JVH's desk on Saturday. They were purchased on Friday (comfirm with Prof. Holden that I went to Whole Foods with him on the day in question). Feeling sorry for JVH, I felt as though the loss of cookies might push him over the edge. Thus (after eating some) I left him cookies on Saturday, at the earliest opportunity after purchasing them on Friday night. Note that they are not "the" cookies, as JVHso insidiously assumes, but rather "some" cookies.

Furthermore, I take offense that JVH has twisted my gesture of kindness as a knife in the wound. I demand "my" cookies back, and a retraction.

John Norton Friedman
aka J N Friedman
aka John Norton F

Anonymous said...

The above comment was send to JVH yesterday, at which time I demanded a retraction. Hiding behind phony journalistic ethics, JVH declined to retract, despite facing overwhelming evidence against his trumped-up charges.

Thus, honor demands that I challenge JVH to a duel, with pistols, at dawn.

I await your response.

jvh said...

res ipsa loquitur