A Badger and a Blowfish have the warning of appearance in common;

After supper, Sam and Ursula sat down in their respective rockers to discuss the day's events. Same went first.

"Well Bear, I've got other things on my mind than your teddy. Travis has got me working out how easy it would be to send you straight to Lifelock to get your credit back."

"How is that?" she inquired brightly. The wonderful thing about Ursula was that when she wasn't a master of a concept, she instantly became a master student. Her Daddy's endearment had been "Mop."

"Well, I was thinking back to when Travis got in a fight with Morton Alphonse Mortimer over his safety deposit box. He made SOooo much trouble for that poor banker that Ebeneezer _Scrooge_ would have felt sorry for him! First thing he did was get his email address and sign him up for every subscription list he could get his hands on. Then he used the 'reply too:' feature on his throw-away spam email account to write ALL the personal email addresses in his spam folder, and have the replies routed direct to his adversary. He saved spam for days, just so he could do it. These individuals are typically on botnets, and don't know how to reformat or _anything_. So the long and short of it was that MAM (as Travis called him when he was in a Charitable mood,) had to move his internet avatar to new domains the world over." Ursula grinned. "What did Travis call him when he _wasn't_ charitably inclined?" she asked. Sam chuckled for a moment. "Well, I believe his code name was "Boss of Satan, Obstetrician of all Hell," he began. "As the story developed, the Bank's Charter was conceived in Hell too, and Satan and Ethel were responsible for all the damned procreating that was going on, and the ass-holes so conceived were monopolized by MAM's recruitment efforts for tellers." Ursula was already giggling without moderation. "Spare me any more Sam," she requested sensibly. "What else did Travis do to give him _trouble_?" "I'll just abbreviate in closing that the Code-name abbreviated to 'Satan's Orifice.'"

Sam went on instructively. "Travis looked up Mortal's phone number on Google, and found out more dirt for a businessman than Googling his NAME! His home address was first down the chute. Travis watched the weather report for rain, and rolled his house right before a downpour. As I recall, it inconvenienced Travis so much as having to do it at night for cover of darkness, but you catch my drift. For his car, Travis employed eggs. When Mortal got his paint job straightened out, Travis escalated to shaving cream, and after that to yellow latex racing stripes. I call them racing stripes charitably, but that was how Travis meant it to look. Mortal just cussed and swore - didn't even take the trouble to make up new cuss words, just kept recycling the old ones like a Military man. Travis bought a portable drill for a screwdriver, a hasp and a Masterlock combination lock. When Mortal took his lady to the movies, Travis arranged for the door to be secured against ALL intruders upon his return. He was thoughtful that way. Travis looked up everywhere Mortal had a password, and went and entered bull shit answers until the three-try rule locked him out. Mortal couldn't even withdraw cash from his own ATM for a while. Travis called all the Charities in Mortal's local yellow pages, and promised each a reasonable sum, if only they would make some concession or the other. When they wouldn't take his word for it, he'd make appointments for him, and then he'd call back later to make apologies. He'd give them his address and ask them to send him literature too. He dug up surveys that asked for declared income ranges, and told them Mortal had 80 grand a year. Travis reasoned that the junk mail this generated ought to make even a banker drool. He'd email Mortal, and use the reply to get his IP address and then he'd use his router to clone THAT IP until DHCP recycled it. If Mortal knew it was from him, he'd waste server space online registering dummy email accounts, and change the name to "noreply." He'd take the trouble to tell his Outlook Express to _Check_ these accounts (he kept a whole spam profile for this purpose,) and send Mortal return receipt requested emails. He's note the time-date stamp of the receipts, and tell Mortal's wife's friends he'd seen him at fancy restaurants at that time of day with female Corporate Executives. You can just imagine how that dance devolved. Travis occasionally invested in a banana or potato to jam the exhaust pipe of Mortal's car, and when it was due to break down, Travis would call in a false fire report nearby to occupy police and fire personnel. Then he'd go by for himself, just to make sure Mortal was still too proud and stuck up to accept his help. He never committed a criminal act, but he did bribe a mechanic to jack up Mortal's car odometer so it would have to be replaced; the cable cut like butter to good wire cutters. Travis' main inconvenience throughout was the poor quality of pay phones. Travis even invested $30 dollars one time, actually contributing to a charity, just to get Mortal on their list as a soft touch. The other notable dis-incentive to these actions was that Travis' own junk mail supply got out of hand, and he let his lease lapse and moved as soon as he was done. He even investigated registering a Sole Proprietorship or an LLC in Mortal's name to get him in trouble for TAX evasion, just like Elliot Ness, but the fine was actual imprisonment, and he didn't think he could afford it. The fallout at the Bank was that he was persona non-grata, and his last act, about a month before it ran out was to put a good sized trout in the box, as he removed his own materiel. The briefcase was OK too!" Sam was kind of impressed he even remembered all that.

"So is THIS why Travis couldn't get a date?" Ursula inquired. Sam revisited the old discussion in his mind. "I honestly don't think so, but just as there is no accounting for taste in looks and company, some of Mortal's friends believed his original complaints about Travis. After all that, it looked like he had cause."

Ursula could see that Sam was making a point, and asked the obvious question. "How do I choose better passwords?" she queried.