Our philosophy here at Placebo Meadows has always been as follows. No matter how old you are, you can always expand your life with learning. With that thought in mind, here is a list of this year’s lectures. Dates will be announced in the near future.

1. Blackmail Your Friends for Fun and Profit. Someone once said, “You can’t put a price on a good friendship.” Actually you can. Has a friend or family member confided in you some incident from their past they would not want the world to know about? Entrepreneur Arnold Q. Scramit NPC will show you a simple way you can turn your knowledge of your friend’s secret into ready cash. Topics will include: (1) Writing a threat letter with punch. (2) Tax status of blackmail payoffs. And (3) Restoring lost friendships.

2. The Privies of Hogsborough County. Local historian Lillian B. Quester API will present this in-depth study of our local privies. As she points out, “A privy is just as much an historic structure as a house. Some of them have been around longer than the houses they serve.” Yet, thousands of them have been callously destroyed. Without a thought of their historic significance, they have been replaced by invisible underground septic systems. Lillian will take us on a visual tour of Priviesland, her personal collection of over two hundred actual operating privies and job jonnies. Then Lillian will share with us views from her collection of photographs of hundreds of other privies and tell their stories, some humorous, some fartbreaking.

3. Channeling Your Guilt. All of us live with guilt, but we rarely see it as the powerful motivational force it could be for self-improvement. Professor Simon P. Frammerwart NAD will show us how plain ordinary guilt can be channeled into long-term productive behavior. To quote from Frammerwart’s best-selling book, Cash in on Your Mental Anguish: “Remember George Washington, who channeled his guilt over chopping down a cherry tree in his youth into a lifetime of public service.” Our Staff Psychologist, Lesley K. Sooth CLD, will be available after the lecture to assist those who wish to channel their guilt but feel they don’t have enough of it to make it work.

4. Tax Evasion 101. Former tax consultant Edmund K. Gettimore BFC will discuss the thin line between questionable tax practices and blatantly illegal ones. Gettimore is an expert on the subject having just been released from a six year sentence at the Federal Tax-Crimes Correctional Facility. Thus he brings with him not only his own experiences but those of other former tax consultants he encountered during his incarceration. Topics to be covered include. (1) Hedging on paying taxes on hedge fund profits. (2) The myth of the honest taxpayer and (3) disorganizing your tax records to make auditing almost impossible.

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Glossary: For those of you not familiar with the acronyms used by those in the succoring professions, this short glossary may be of help.

NPC: No Professional Credentials

API: Authorized Privy Inspector

NAD: No Advanced Degree

CLD: College Level Dropout

BFC: Banned From Consulting

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Stan Dryer is the pen name for a writer who lives in the continental United States. He has been writing fiction and other humor for over sixty years with publication in Playboy, Cosmopolitan, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mystery Magazine, and a number of online magazines such as Write Launch and Fabula Argentea. He is an active member of the Mystery Writers of America. To read more of his humor and other short stories, visit his blog at www.standryer.com.