My own work has brought me into daily contact with international trade, freight containers and the artists formerly known as the U.S. Customs Service (now "Customs and Border Protection") from the mid-1970s forward--since your salad days at the Charles Colson Middle School in South Boston, I should judge--and I am obliged to tell you, Little Phil, that in your hilarious expostulations on the mechanics and economics of global sea transport you have actually exceeded your previous personal best of cluelessness, set earlier this year in your incisive remarks on British parliamentary procedure. Well done, old son! We'd love you less if that cuckoo didn't periodically emerge twittering from beneath your fedora for a bit of badly-needed comic relief.

cordially,