19 Comments
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Vicki mannweiler's avatar

Ok, I guffawed a couple of times!! 🤣😄

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Rita Jane Gabbett's avatar

Oddly Enough really was the perfect combination of your talents and interests. Another great piece. Those commodities traders couldn't get enough of those stories. It got the point where they had to read them in the morning or they would be out of conversation and the riffs that day.

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Robert  Basler's avatar

you know those mental movies that drift in and our if your mind, Janie? I have one of us sitting around the pool at the Aberdeen Marina Club, soon after I became news editor, and you trying to teach me about commodities. By the time you got to the "softs," we both knew it was a lost cause... Thanks for trying...

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Danny Cameron's avatar

my favorite by far. give us more brights please.

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Robert  Basler's avatar

Thank you for the feedback, Danny...

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Genuine GA Peach's avatar

You do well at what you know best.

So...you know ODD best?

And many (lovely) odd people, I bet!

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Robert  Basler's avatar

well, yes. nearly everyone I know, possibly even yourself...

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Kristen Aliotti's avatar

All news to me! And never enough time to find good gag Christmas gifts!

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Jonathan Close's avatar

The places you'll go! You'll be on your way up! You'll be seeing great sights! Who soar to high heights. You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed........ But they didn't warn you, 'bout those nutjobs who read, all those brights in your feed--no, no warning indeed! But you kept at it my son, those stories were fun! Oh, so very much fun! And then one day, some day, they gave you the job

They gave you... THE BLOG!

Little did you know, some five years down the road, strange wackjobs unload

With rhymes and with puns, riffs of Cole Porter and mondegrons

Lo, fellow what a crime, that last line hath no rhyme!

And as a Shakespeare would say, thereby hangs a tale...

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Patricia Coonan's avatar

And some tails hanging by a thread!

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Susan Applegate's avatar

I've already sold my copy of OE for twice what I paid for it.

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Maggie Fox's avatar

Think where Reuters would be today had it only stayed weird.

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Johanna Gabbett Klesh's avatar

I did not know the terms “odds and brights”, but I always read them when found online from whatever source. I thought I was one of the few attracted to them. Thanks for the insight in this story

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Kelli Garza's avatar

On a sunny day, in D.C., I briefly met a man in cargo shorts who handed me autographed copies of both books… Good times.

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Robert  Basler's avatar

I suppose I made your baby cry, too?

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Kelli Garza's avatar

It took years of therapy to overcome the trauma… He still mutters in his sleep about the weird dude who said, “Hi” to him….

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Chris Malone's avatar

And so my morning begins. Off I shall go looking for drowning chickens to save. The Reuters bureau chief would have put me to sleep. Long live the OE Blog Guy! 🙂

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John C Abell's avatar

My proudest achievement remains creating the first internet news service so you could go too far.

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Robert  Basler's avatar

Always remember, John, we can do less...

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