REVIEW: End of Month Reviews #33 - S...2006 [spoilers]

[Martin Phipps]

Tom Russell wrote:
> He worked odd-jobs, nothing out-and-out illegal but under-the-table
> stuff just the same.  He lived in abandoned hide-outs and led a very
> spartan existence.  I'm sure that some days, he didn't eat at all.
>
> (This was all in the ANNUAL, by the way.)

It's also what he told the FBI.

It's just that, having been away from Canada for almost ten years now I
find it odd that somebody would use the "odd job" defense.  Obviously
he can get away with living like that because he's in his home country
but if he was Martino Rodrigues from Mexico then the mere suggestion
that he had been doing "odd jobs" without paying taxes would have
gotten him deported.  Even American citizens are expected to pay taxes
when they work and hence file with the IRS.  Plus, even in the
Philippines, if I were to find myself out of work then I would have had
a hard time getting by.  It stretches the plausibility of the series
IMO to think that he went ten years on the street in a country with a
high cost of living and not only didn't starve to death but came out of
it much healthier than the average human being.  For good health you
need a good bed, some clean clothes and three square meals a day in my
opinion.

If I were an FBI agent I'd be inclined to think he'd probably been out
of the country for ten years, probably doing mercenary work given that
he was ex-military and I'd be very suspicious about what he was doing
now.  But then I ten to think from the cops' point of view. :)

> Um-- where was there male-male bondage-domination/S&M in my story?

Wait.  I'll check.

>    When he does wake, he finds that his muscles are
> sore and taut; before he opens his eyes, he tries to
> shift around and become more comfortable.  But nothing
> happens.
>     He becomes aware of his own shallow breathing, and
> it dawns on him that he must somehow be paralyzed.

Okay.  My bad.  He wasn't tied up. I was misremembering.  But I assumed
he had been beaten in his sleep.  That's not exactly the sort of
foreplay I was expecting you to segue to just then. :)

Martin