Your Bond is No Good

[Burnaby49]

You never felt that Moore could beat two blindfolded octogenarian grandmothers in unarmed combat. At least Daniel Craig was credible at that. I thought Connery the perfect balance between thug and English gentleman.

I'm a Flashman fanatic. I have the entire 12 book series in hardcover. I started buying them in the mid 70's until McDonald died. Sadly he never got around to the story he hinted at throughout the series, Flashman's American civil war memoir where he was going to relate how he was responsible for Lee losing at Gettysburg.

[jcolvin2]

Sadly he never got around to the story he hinted at throughout the series, Flashman's American civil war memoir where he was going to relate how he was responsible for Lee losing at Gettysburg.

While he mentions that Flashman fought on both sides of the Civil War, Fraser apparently had no intention of ever describing Flashman's role in the American Civil War. In a 2002 interview, Frasier stated,

(T)o me, the American Civil War is a colossal bore. It was a rotten war, it's been done to death and I'm not terribly interested. An American wrote to me urging me to write it, saying it had to be the high point of Flashman's career. I wrote back saying: 'Son, it's a foreign sideshow. The Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, these were the important things in Flashman's life. Your civil war? He was so disinterested that he fought on both sides.'

- Mueller, Andrew (6 July 2002). Crusty Old Codger. The Weekend Australian. Surry Hills, NSW. p. R10.

[bmxninja357]

who would have thought my comments would cause such a fuhrer in the ss card thread?

ninj

[grixit]

Now you're just reaching.

[grixit]

I read in one article that in the original novels Bond is more thuggish than suave. Also that, despite Fleming's real life experience, the stories were less action thriller and more consumer porn. That is to say, they were full of lavish descriptions of food, clothes, cars, etc, because Britain was still on wartime rationing. I haven't read them myself, so i don't know. My to read pile is big enough as it is.

[notorial dissent]

I have read them, or at least some of them, and that pretty well sums it up. I found Casino Royale to be sadistic porn, and my opinion of the rest of them isn't much higher. I never cared much for the movies, and only watched the few I have under duress. There were a couple of the Moore ones that I found amusing, but I have no idea if they were bond or not. The current ones I just find offensive and gratuitously violent. I am told by those who are aficionados that the current ones are closer to what Fleming wrote, which is probably why I dislike them as much as I do.

[Burnaby49]

I have read them, or at least some of them, and that pretty well sums it up. I found Casino Royale to be sadistic porn, and my opinion of the rest of them isn't much higher. I never cared much for the movies, and only watched the few I have under duress. There were a couple of the Moore ones that I found amusing, but I have no idea if they were bond or not. The current ones I just find offensive and gratuitously violent. I am told by those who are aficionados that the current ones are closer to what Fleming wrote, which is probably why I dislike them as much as I do.

Daniel Craig portrayed Bond as a semi-psychopathic thug which is a pretty accurate reflection of what I recall of the books, keeping in mind I read them over half a century ago. Sean Connery's Bond is similar, particularly in Dr. No.

[notorial dissent]

So I've been told.

[The Observer]

I found Casino Royale to be sadistic porn, and my opinion of the rest of them isn't much higher.

Yeah, just wait till you read Fleming's Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, you will be horrified.

[TheNewSaint]

That would peg the beginning of "serial numbers" on SS cards to somewhere between '74 and '85. Good estimate, Famspear.

Perhaps others here have cards issued between '74 and '85 that might nail the date of the potential beginning of the scam down further.

The SSA website offers this thorough history of SS card designs: https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/ssnversions.html

From this, I determined that my card was issued between 1980 and 1983, not 1985 as I said earlier. (It has the post-1980 logo, but not the post-1983 security features.)

I have put together a theory about the serial numbers, based on these two entries:

1974
Eighteenth version of replacement SSN card. This was the last version of the replacement SSN card. Thereafter, original and replacement cards looked the same.

1983
Twenty-fourth version of SSN card (10/83 revision). SSA begins issuing counterfeit resistant SSN card (on blue banknote paper with randomly placed colored planchettes on the back).

So from 1974 to 1983, replacement cards were no longer identified as such, but counterfeit-resistant cards had not been introduced yet. If a card's appearance is not consistent with what we know about its owner, (for example, an older person has a very new-looking card), how is the government to know if it's a legitimate replacement card?

My theory is that the serial numbers are assigned to blank cards, to track them before they are printed. The SSA would know which offices each set of blank card numbers was sent to, and when. From this information, a trained agent could interpret the back numbers of a card, and see if they are consistent with the user's story as to how they acquired their card. It would also be possible to identify invalid serial numbers, cards printed on stolen blanks, and the like.

Further supporting this theory is the general appearance of my card. The numbers on the front and back of my card are printed very differently. My name and number on the front are very crude, placed there by an ancient ink-ribbon computer printer. The secret code on the back is much more professional-looking. It appears to have been printed as part of the same process in which "this number reserved for the use of" and other boilerplate text was added to the paper. This would fit a scheme in which a card serial number is printed first as part of the general printing process, and then mailed to the local Social Security office as blanks, ready for personal details to be sloppily tacked on later.

Furthermore, I have a miniature birth certificate card from the same era, and it has a similar mysterious code on the back.

When counterfeit-resistant cards became available in 1983, this tracking process to identify counterfeits became unnecessary, and the numbers were phased out.

[jcolvin2]

I found Casino Royale to be sadistic porn, and my opinion of the rest of them isn't much higher.

Yeah, just wait till you read Fleming's Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, you will be horrified.

The Fleming estate has recently begun allowing well-respected novelists to write additional Bond novels. I read William Boyd's Solo a couple of years ago, and was quite impressed.

[notorial dissent]

I can well imagine, in fact I suspect that some/many of them couldn't help but be better than what Fleming wrotescribbled, since I hardly call what he did writing. The character just left a VERY sour taste in my mouth and I doubt I could get past that.

[fortinbras]

The Bond novels portrayed James Bond as a professional assassin with ice water in his veins. To that extent, Timothy Dalton most convincingly resembled the character in the books. Fleming was also very particular about describing gourmet dinner menus.

As for the Lisa Goff case that started this thread: She went through the motions of sending the IRS a so-called "bonded promissory note" claiming this paid her tax liabilities. But a promissory note only acknowledges the existence of a debt and promises to pay it at some future date; essentially another IOU. It doesn't actually pay anything. Nobody is required to accept it as a form of payment because it doesn't pay even a fraction; it is accepted only by consent of the creditor - and the creditor is unlikely to consent when he was already expecting a cash payment in full.

Calling a promissory note "bonded" doesn't add any sparkle to it. The question recurs, Who bonded it? Calling it bonded implies that some financial institution like a bank or insurance company effectively insures the promissory note, guaranteeing that it will be paid in cash on the due date. But who is bonding Goff's note?? You hardly find a real guaranteed or insured promissory note because, frankly, if someone can persuade a financial institution to insure it, why not simply get the financial institution to front the cash to pay off the IRS right now and then be in debt directly to the financial institution?

So, no, the IRS doesn't accept promissory notes - with or without additional adjectives.

[.]

Who bonded it?

Why, 007, of course. That's where she went terribly wrong.

That argument was 10,000 times more likely to succeed. Unfortunately, 10,000 times 0 is still zero, but it would have given the judge some room to have a little fun with the deluded.

Kinda like this board. There are so few doofus TPs to discuss that we're reduced to chatting about SS serial numbers on the back of the cards and Bond films.

Where did all of the TP idiots go? I miss their stupidity.

[Burnaby49]

Who bonded it?

Why, 007, of course. That's where she went terribly wrong.

That argument was 10,000 times more likely to succeed. Unfortunately, 10,000 times 0 is still zero, but it would have given the judge some room to have a little fun with the deluded.

Kinda like this board. There are so few doofus TPs to discuss that we're reduced to chatting about SS serial numbers on the back of the cards and Bond films.

Where did all of the TP idiots go? I miss their stupidity.

Move to Canada. British Columbia and Alberta are filled with them.

[Famspear]

.....Where did all of the TP idiots go? I miss their stupidity.

sigh...... I second that.

The pickins' are slim these days......

[Gregg]

We holders of SS cards with no serial numbers will not be denied!

Uh...the fact that you don't have a serial number on your card is because that is how membership in the Illuminati is denoted, your bond automatically redeemed; thus the reason why you own a home or two, several autos, take nice vacations, have sufficient wealth, and eat steak whenever you want to. For all I know, you have probably made a killing in the financial market as well. Being in the Illuminati means that the sky is the limit.

If you had a serial number, then you would have been tossed in the with the hoi polloi and probably already had filed a number of vexatious lawsuits trying to recover your bond.

I can no longer eat steak whenever I want to. My Cardiologists has scared me out of them except on very special occasions, and I am reduced to nightly going to the break room and staring longingly at the items in "the wheel of death" at things I can no longer eat before setting down to my lunch of a salad and a bowl of oatmeal (if I''m good I get to put a spoonful of raisins in the oatmeal).

And this is a tragedy of monumental proportions, as those who know me will attest I truly love a good steak.

[operabuff]

The Fleming estate has recently begun allowing well-respected novelists to write additional Bond novels. I read William Boyd's Solo a couple of years ago, and was quite impressed.

Not really a recent development. The first one was written in 1968 by Kingsley Amis. There have been more than 20 authorized James Bond novels since Fleming's death.

I'm not sure why notorial dissent views Fleming's novels with such disdain. They are competently written popular fiction. There were and are far more poorly written books on the best seller lists. And for the genre they're in, they're relatively mild. For comparison from roughly the same era, check out Mickey Spillane.

I also think you have to give Fleming some credit for creating a character that has endured in popular culture for almost 70 years and shows no sign of vanishing from the zeitgeist. I'd imagine most people have heard of James Bond. I doubt that one in a hundred have heard of Harry Flashman. Probably only 1 in 100,000 have seen the Flashman movie. (I'm not really trying to pick on Flashman - the books are excellent and the movie is enjoyable, although a commercial failure.)

[Famspear]

.....I also think you have to give Fleming some credit for creating a character that has endured in popular culture for almost 70 years and shows no sign of vanishing from the zeitgeist. I'd imagine most people have heard of James Bond. I doubt that one in a hundred have heard of Harry Flashman......

I confess I have never heard of Harry Flashman.

I also remember that Kingsley Amis had written some Bond books, although I have never read those.

In junior high and high school, I really liked the Fleming books. After I did book reports in school for two or three of them in a row, one of my high school English teachers (who awarded me good grades on the reports) wrote me a note -- something to the effect of "These are good books, but you should read more of a variety...." or something like that.

[The Observer]

...[O]ne of my high school English teachers (who awarded me good grades on the reports) wrote me a note -- something to the effect of "These are good books, but you should read more of a variety...." or something like that.

And then the very next day Famspear checked out a book on limericks, and the future took a turn that no one expected.