Conflict of Interest in re: Postage;

Ursula walked into the room in tears. "My German Chocolate cake looks positively AUSTRALIAN!" she wailed. Sam looked her over in concern. "Is it the very END of the world?" he asked, trying to keep matters in perspective. "No," she admitted, her countenance lifting slightly. "But its going to be AWFUL... it's practically UPSIDE DOWN!" Sam was not oblivious to the aesthetic problems of overturned cakes, but his gustatorial experiences from youth led him to infer that all was not yet lost. He approached his preference of solutions diplomatically. "If we hide the evidence appropriately, we may be able to yet avert the total destruction of your reputation in the wedding cake community at least," he began. "Oh SAM... you're TEASING me," she smiled, "Wedding cakes are not Chocolate." Sam capitulated carefully. "I'll agree that German Chocolate cakes cannot be made in white, but wedding cakes _can_ be chocolate, as long as they are white," he argued. Ursula was feminine enough to be arbitrary, (what Sam has been known to call perverse when not in mixed company,) but the color of a German Chocolate Cake could not be said to fail her observation that he had been teasing her, and the factual nature that the end of the world was probably going to be related to the mutual assured destruction of super-powers and not cakes was disputable only in certain contexts - this context did not qualify; "I love you Sam," she said, for lack of a better comment. He was standing, and she looked earnestly up into his eyes with large emotional brown pools of affection as he took her in his arms. "How shall we dispose of this incriminating confectionery?" he asked. He had engaged her sense of humor, and she hadn't talked much about Melbourne and Andrea lately, so she opened with trumps. "Maybe we should ship it off to OZ," she suggested, "Melbourne and Andrea can eat it right side up down there in Darwin." Sam's experience surfing the IMDB website movie database for trivial information about the "no longer wild," _west_ now came into play. He countered with an enigma. "Australia is in the Far East," he rejoined. How is the Far East upside down?" Ursula pondered her geography. Galveston was on the east coast, and his stories of a Chinese souvenir vendor from Galveston had amused her in no small measure, but he had never once contradicted the ordinary assumption of all Texans that CHINA was the "Far East," before. The connection between OZ and China was also available from inference. Melbourne and he had been seeking OZ by the mechanism of going as far South as you can go, turning North and proceeding to the nearest Island when the discovery of China had been made, (yellow bricks from the Great Wall of China being the specific object of their Archeological efforts.) He had struck unequivocably upon a truth, Australia was Eastern, and it was indeed her responsibility to show how this was at all "upside down." She turned her intellect upon definition of terms. "OZ" was not actually upside down. All humans stood perpendicular to the surface of the earth wherever they maintained a homosapien presence, erection being the common denominator to how they stood. Instead, all and sundry alluded to Oz as being "down under." She was momentarily distracted by a rabbit trail leading toward the bedroom; they were standing erect already, and she was as leaf as not be down under already, if it wasn't for this now infernal cake. Melbourne and Andrea were defined as "down under," she thought, drawing her mind back to OZ and the allegedly upside down cake. "I have an idea," she ventured carefully. "Do you already have postage?" She had been squeezing him tightly, and he had been forced to stand a little straighter. The rabbit trail of his mind (leading just as surely toward the bedroom,) turned upon a postal aperture, his own chances of employment in the field, and the sealed nature of any persuasive messages of import he might ever thus deliver. The IMDB database once more made itself useful in his knowledge base. "The Aussies have four new stamps, issued just this last January," he informed upon the innocent thespians involved. "They've used the anniversary of their establishment as a prison colony as an excuse to put the world acclaimed hypocrites in the post office with the 'Ten Most Wanted's' on the posters." Ursula was pleased; he had made himself MOST entertaining. "The TEN most WANTED felons in ALL of Texas, and they want _four_ of them to be from OZ?" she asked incredulously. "The limelight makes different people behave differently," Sam shared. "The Poster is still the OFFICIAL Top Ten." "Well, who are these Famous Four?" she asked, real curiosity driving the discussion back from a commonplace precipice. "Geoffrey Rush, Nicole Kidman, Russel Crowe and Cate Blanchette. It could easily have been prevented," he continued. Ursula pondered this languidly. Standing together was not actually 100% as hard as standing on your own, and if it wasn't really _that_ much easier, it was not without its compensations. She had responded unbidden to his earlier stiffening, and they were both divided in their concentrations. She broke the stalemate by moving toward the couch, giving up on his riddle by way of compromise. "How?" she replied. He took his position on her right, his left arm engulfing her affectionately. "Oh, the Country should have made application to the relevant Hollywood Talent Agents. They would no doubt have co-operated with bureaucracy and given capitalist excuses to the actors, their managers and publicists to simply tie up the production of their copyrighted images in litigation. There really isn't even any certainty that these thespians are actually descended from the relevant prisoners." Ursula contemplated the final barrier to the completion of their discussion. "These stamps," she denoted, "are they valid for mailing cakes from here to there?" Sam thought quickly. His priorities had changed since this began, and he was sure that drawing the conversation out was NOT to his advantage. "I'll bet you a 72 second kiss that they'll take them at the Abilene Post Office," he volunteered. "If they don't we can re-open investigations into the Yellow Brick Road." She divided the distance between their lips in half, mumbling "Make sure you time it right... I'd hate to have to recalculate the favor bank deposits." The ensuing silence was more than companionable.