Friday, June 21, 1996
Dead Poets and Iomega
by ValSyl

They met at a sidewalk cafe on the Third Street Promenade, in Santa Monica. Blake lived near there, in Venice; Keats hung out with Dudley Moore and the rest of the showbiz expats in the hills and the canyons; Melville was in town from Massachusetts, promoting his latest whale of a book. The fourth invitee was of course unpredictable: he might show up any minute, or he might have just gone to bed, on a sidewalk in some other part of town.

"I have been half in love with easeful death," said John Keats, "but that was then. Since I was born again into this century, I just swallow a few pills a day and my TB germs are like, we're outta here."

"Truly this is the new Jerusalem," Bill Blake lifted a trembling hand, without spilling a single drop of the Santa Ynez chardonnay in his glass, "and we the blessed spirits who frolic in the glory of, you know, whatever. In the dark satanic mills of Wall Street there lurk those who would frame our blessed stock upon the fearful symmetry of their, we're talking, totally bogus logic. Wise are the wicked, as the Bible has instructed us: they shall inherit only their shorts and that which resideth encrusted within them. But Iomega has provided. Provided for a better life for me, that's for damn sure." He emptied his glass. "The wife and I have our eye on a winery, you know. Near the Neverland Ranch? Talk about your green and pleasant lands. 'With what joy we praise thee, Kim/Hosannas now we sing to him.'"

"Spare me the spurious religiosity," growled the writer from New England, "it's money that I love. Call me Richmael. Every once in a while I get bored with being old and dead, and I come back to earth to wander the seas, or the prairies, or Route 66, or -- in this miserable era which stinks like the rotting blubber of a whale dead eighteen days -- the Internet. When I was Herman Melville, I hated being poor, ignored, laughed at, and forced to work a day job. The pain! The pain! The most potent of elixirs could not dissipate or lessen Monday's doom, and a deep, deep cloud of self-pity, thick as the fogs or the fleece of Patagonia, enveloped me from eight to five. Now, away from my desk at last, I care only for the wealth I never had. Face it, men -- that's why we're here."

"I'll drink to that. Garcon, another beaker full of the warm South. We three," said Keats, his eyes on a passing roller-blader in pink spandex, "have lived in literary history because our greatness -- I see no need for false modesty here -- is always, always measured, to the point of tedium, against our grinding poverty, obscurity, early death, and all that other bad stuff. Yet from the mists has come this mellow fruitfulness -- because now we have a place to store that stuff, and all our other stuff, and we shall never be poor, or without decent health care, again. Gentlemen -- to Iomega."

"Iomega."

"Iomega."

From the general direction of O'Casey's Bar next door, a tall skinny figure in a light straw hat began to tilt and sway and grotesquely ambulate toward the trio at the sidewalk cafe. California sunlight glinted off his rimless pince-nez, and he sang a bawdy song in a high tenor. James Joyce -- for it was he -- reached into his pockets, took out handfuls of crisp new fifty-dollar bills, and began tossing them at passers-by, tucking them under windshields, slipping them into the back waistbands of two incurious cops pedaling by on bicycles.

"My God!" cried Melville. "He sold! Traitor!"

Keats knocked over his glass, in a coughing fit. Blake mumbled prayers, and talked to somebody who was clearly not there. The tall man wondered what on earth was going on --

>>because the main thing is to make money isn't it, when I was a flower of the mountain I had no bank account to speak of, and when I kissed her beneath the Moorish wall she said yes I will yes if you invest in Iomega so I did and now the rivrivriver of the Liffaloffaluffaloof carries me past poor Paddy Dignam's coffin, he would invest with the Wise wouldn't he, and now he's dead, and Stephen Dedalus exited that hedge fund just in time, stately plump Buck Mulligan he was a Fool and I did not sell, just took some off the ablesablelabeltable to pay my bar tab and Nora's Nordstrom card, will I buy more Iomega yes I will yes I will yes<<

the end

Transmitted: 6/21/96