“What’s the matter with you?” he asked.
“I was just thinking,” I said, stirring from my concentration.
“What about?”
“Zeno’s paradoxes,” I answered. “The eight paradoxes by which he tries to discredit the belief in plurality and motion, and which have come down to us in the writings of Aristotle and Simplicius. I was recalling particularly the one about Achilles and the tortoise. You remember it. Achilles can never catch up with the tortoise for, while he traverses the distance between his starting point and that of the tortoise, the tortoise advances a certain distance, and while Achilles traverses this distance, the tortoise makes a further advance, and so on ad infinitum. Consequently, Achilles may run ad infinitum without overtaking the tortoise. Ergo there is no motion.”
“A fat hell of a lot of good this is doing us,” Bagley said.
“Oh, I know Zeno’s old hat and, as you say, fruitless from a practical point of view,” I said. “But here’s the thought I want to leave with you. It’s amazing how many of our values are still based on this classic logic, and so maybe the semanticists, under Korzybski and later Hayakawa, have been right in hammering home to us a less absolutistic approach to things.”
“Yes, well, get some of this work off your desk,” Bagley said, gesturing at a cluster of documents that had been thickening there since nine o’clock.
“Right,” I said, and he bustled off.
I FELL to with a will, and by noon was pretty well caught up. But as I sat down at my desk after lunch, my eye fell on the admonitory legend dominating the opposite wall, and I was soon again deep in a train of reflections, which, while lacking the abstruseness of my morning cogitations, were nevertheless not wholly without scope and erudition. My face must have betrayed the strain of application once more, for Bagley stopped as he had earlier.
“Now what?” he said.
I put down a paper knife I had been abstractedly bending.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said, “that the element of the fantastic in the graphic arts is, historically speaking, so voluminous that it’s presumptuous of the Surrealists to pretend that they have any more than given a contemporary label to an established vein. Take the chimerical detail in much Flemish and Renaissance painting, the dry, horrifying apparitions of Hieronymus Bosch—”
“Get your money,” Bagley said.
“But why? What am I doing but what that sign says?” I protested, pointing to it.
“That sign doesn’t mean this kind of thinking,” Bagley said.
“What kind, then? What do you want me to think about?” I asked.
“Think about your work. Think about the product. Anything.”
“All right, I’ll try that,” I said. “I’ll try thinking about the product. But which one?” I added, for the firm was a wholesale-food company that handled many kinds of foods. I was at pains to remind Bagley of this. “So shall I think of food in general, or some particular item?” I asked. “Or some phase of distribution?”
“Oh, good God, I don’t know,” Bagley said impatiently. “Think of the special we’re pushing,” he said, and made off.
The special we were pushing just then was packaged mixed nuts, unshelled. The firm had been trying to ascertain what proportions people liked in mixed nuts—what ratio of walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, and so on—as reflected in relative sales of varying assortments that the company had been simultaneously putting out in different areas. I didn’t see how any thinking on my part could help reach any conclusion about that, the more so because my work, which was checking and collating credit memoranda, offered no data along those lines. So I figured the best thing would be for me to dwell on nuts in a general way, which I did.
SHORTLY after four o’clock, I was aware of Bagley’s bulk over me, and of Bagley looking down at me. “Well?” he said.
I turned to him in my swivel chair, crossing my legs.
“Nuts, it seems to me, have a quality that makes them unique among foods,” I said. “I’m not thinking of their more obvious aspect as an autumnal symbol, their poetic association with festive periods. They have something else, a je ne sais quoi that has often haunted me while eating them but that I have never quite been able to pin down, despite that effort of imaginative physical identification that is the legitimate province of the senses.”
“You’re wearing me thin,” Bagley said.
“But now I think I’ve put my finger on the curious quality they have,” I said. “Nuts are in effect edible wood.”
“Get your money,” Bagley said.
I rose. “I don’t understand what you want,” I exclaimed. “Granted the observation is a trifle on the precious side, is that any reason for firing a man? Give me a little time.”
“You’ve got an hour till quitting time. Your money’ll be ready then,” Bagley said.
MY money was ready by quitting time. As I took it, I reflected that my wages from this firm consisted almost exclusively of severance pay. Bagley had beefed about having to fork over two weeks’ compensation, but he forked it over.
I got another job soon afterward. I still have it. It’s with an outfit that doesn’t expect you to smile or think or anything like that. Anyhow, I’ve learned my lesson as far as the second is concerned. If I’m ever again confronted with a sign telling me to think, I’ll damn well think twice before I do.
1953
WOODY ALLEN
A LOOK AT ORGANIZED CRIME
IT is no secret that organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies. Reliable sources indicate that the Cosa Nostra laid out no more than six thousand dollars last year for personalized stationery, and even less for staples. Furthermore, they have one secretary who does all the typing, and only three small rooms for headquarters, which they share with the Fred Persky Dance Studio.
Last year, organized crime was directly responsible for more than one hundred murders, and mafiosi participated indirectly in several hundred more, either by lending the killers carfare or by holding their coats. Other illicit activities engaged in by Cosa Nostra members included gambling, narcotics, prostitution, hijacking, loansharking, and the transportation of a large whitefish across a state line for immoral purposes. The tentacles of this corrupt empire even reach into the government itself. Only a few months ago, two gang lords under federal indictment spent the night at the White House, and the President slept on the sofa.
HISTORY OF ORGANIZED CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES
In 1921, Thomas (The Butcher) Covello and Ciro (The Tailor) Santucci attempted to organize disparate ethnic groups of the underworld and thus take over Chicago. This was foiled when Albert (The Logical Positivist) Corillo assassinated Kid Lipsky by locking him in a closet and sucking all the air out through a straw. Lipsky’s brother Mendy (alias Mendy Lewis, alias Mendy Larsen, alias Mendy Alias) avenged Lipsky’s murder by abducting Santucci’s brother Gaetano (also known as Little Tony, or Rabbi Henry Sharpstein) and returning him several weeks later in twenty-seven separate mason jars. This signaled the beginning of a bloodbath.
Dominick (The Herpetologist) Mione shot Lucky Lorenzo (so nicknamed when a bomb that went off in his hat failed to kill him) outside a bar in Chicago. In return, Corillo and his men traced Mione to Newark and made his head into a wind instrument. At this point, the Vitale gang, run by Giuseppe Vitale (real name Quincy Baedeker), made their move to take over all bootlegging in Harlem from Irish Larry Doyle—a racketeer so suspicious that he refused to let anybody in New York ever get behind him, and walked down the street constantly pirouetting and spinning around. Doyle was killed when the Squillante Construction Company decided to erect their new offices on the bridge of his nose. Doyle’s lieutenant, Little Petey (Big Petey) Ross, now took command; he resisted the Vitale takeover and lured Vitale to an empty midtown garage on the pretext that a costume party was being held there. Unsuspecting,
Vitale walked into the garage dressed as a giant mouse, and was instantly riddled with machine-gun bullets. Out of loyalty to their slain chief, Vitale’s men immediately defected to Ross. So did Vitale’s fiancée, Bea Moretti, a showgirl and star of the hit Broadway musical Say Kaddish, who wound up marrying Ross, although she later sued him for divorce, charging that he once spread an unpleasant ointment on her.
Fearing federal intervention, Vincent Columbraro, the Buttered Toast King, called for a truce. (Columbraro had such tight control over all buttered toast moving in and out of New Jersey that one word from him could ruin breakfast for two-thirds of the nation.) All members of the underworld were summoned to a diner in Perth Amboy, where Columbraro told them that internal warfare must stop and that from then on they had to dress decently and stop slinking around. Letters formerly signed with a black hand would in the future be signed “Best Wishes,” and all territory would be divided equally, with New Jersey going to Columbraro’s mother. Thus the Mafia, or Cosa Nostra (literally, “my underwear” or “our underwear”), was born. Two days later, Columbraro got into a nice hot tub to take a bath and has been missing for the past forty-six years.
MOB STRUCTURE
The Cosa Nostra is structured like any government or large corporation—or group of gangsters, for that matter. At the top is the capo di tutti capi, or boss of all bosses. Meetings are held at his house, and he is responsible for supplying cold cuts and ice cubes. Failure to do so means instant death. (Death, incidentally, is one of the worst things that can happen to a Cosa Nostra member, and many prefer simply to pay a fine.) Under the boss of bosses are his lieutenants, each of whom runs one section of town with his “family.” Mafia families do not consist of a wife and children who always go places like the circus or on picnics. They are actually groups of rather serious men, whose main joy in life comes from seeing how long certain people can stay under the East River before they start gurgling.
Initiation into the Mafia is quite complicated. A proposed member is blindfolded and led into a dark room. Pieces of Crenshaw melon are placed in his pockets, and he is required to hop around on one foot and cry out, “Toodles! Toodles!” Next, his lower lip is pulled out and snapped back by all the members of the board, or commissione; some may even wish to do it twice. Following this, some oats are put on his head. If he complains, he is disqualified. If, however, he says, “Good, I like oats on my head,” he is welcomed into the brotherhood. This is done by kissing him on the cheek and shaking his hand. From that moment on, he is not permitted to eat chutney, to amuse his friends by imitating a hen, or to kill anybody named Vito.
CONCLUSIONS
Organized crime is a blight on our nation. While many young Americans are lured into a career of crime by its promise of an easy life, most criminals actually must work long hours, frequently in buildings without air-conditioning. Identifying criminals is up to each of us. Usually they can be recognized by their large cufflinks and their failure to stop eating when the man sitting next to them is hit by a falling anvil. The best methods of combating organized crime are:
1. Telling the criminals you are not at home.
2. Calling the police whenever an unusual number of men from the Sicilian Laundry Company begin singing in your foyer.
3. Wiretapping.
Wiretapping cannot be employed indiscriminately, but its effectiveness is illustrated by this transcript of a conversation between two gang bosses in the New York area whose phones had been tapped by the FBI:
ANTHONY: Hello? Rico?
RICO: Hello?
ANTHONY: Rico?
RICO: Hello.
ANTHONY: Rico?
RICO: I can’t hear you.
ANTHONY: Is that you, Rico? I can’t hear you.
RICO: What?
ANTHONY: Can you hear me?
RICO: Hello?
ANTHONY: Rico?
RICO: We have a bad connection.
ANTHONY: Can you hear me?
RICO: Hello?
ANTHONY: Rico?
RICO: Hello?
ANTHONY: Operator, we have a bad connection.
OPERATOR: Hang up and dial again, sir.
RICO: Hello?
Because of this evidence, Anthony (The Fish) Rotunno and Rico Panzini were convicted and are currently serving fifteen years in Sing Sing for illegal possession of Bensonhurst.
1970
GARRISON KEILLOR
THE PEOPLE’S SHOPPER
SHOP THE CO-OP WAY AND SAVE!
THESE FINE PEOPLES ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU
THE WHOLE WHEAT FOOD CO-OP
The WWFC Coordinating Council has approved the following statement for publication. The Council voted on the statement line-by-line, and where the vote was not unanimous the minority opinion appears in brackets.
WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR
Ground on Our Own Millstone 12¢ lb.
[8¢]
ORANGES
6¢ ea.
MILK
39¢ ½ gal. 82¢ gal.
[What’s the markup for—the pleasure of your company? 7S¢]
CARROTS
15¢ lb.
[The carrots are not too crisp because the big honchos in this so-called organization don’t know how to call an electrician to fix the cooler, which has not worked for six weeks now. In fact, it’s like a steam pit in there. If the “coordinators” would come around once in a while they might find out about these things. The oranges are shriveled up, also the lettuce, and the carrots are like rubber. Organic or not, I wouldn’t feed it to apes. Diane.]
HOME MADE YOGHURT
Delicious 75¢ qt.
[Anyone who can in good conscience sell this stuff for 75¢ should be forced to eat it.]
ACORN SQUASH
30¢ ea.
[I will not accept more than 21¢ per squash and I am giving away the bread and milk free until this group shows a little more sensitivity to the women, who do about 2/3rds of the work. That’s no lie either.
I am at the store 1–4 p.m. Mondays and 5–8 Thursdays—the tall woman with reddish hair and glasses. See me for bargains. Marcia.]
SHARP CHEDDAR
80¢ lb.
[Stuff it in your ear, hippie ripoff artist! We’re busting out of this pukehole!]
SUPPORT [the boycott of]
YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD CO-OP
PEOPLE’S CANDY COLLECTIVE
Last August, five of us pulled out of the Whole Wheat Co-op to form the Collective. Hopefully this article will try to explain what we’re doing and where we go from here.
At Whole Wheat we were making sesame-seed cakes and oat balls. We enjoyed our work, but we wanted to branch out into wholesome chocolates and nut bars. This proved to be traumatic for the Co-op hierarchy, which was into macrobiotic and organic gardening, the whole elitist grocery bag. They took the position that candy is bad for the people, it ruins their teeth, spoils their appetite, etc. Finally, we split. Our purpose was to set up a candy store where the decision-making would be shared by the whole community and everyone could contribute his ideas.
First, we visited the existing candy store in the neighborhood, Yaklich’s. We assured Mr. Yaklich and his son Baron that our intention was to cooperate, not compete, and we agreed not to sell cigarettes, cigars, newspapers, magazines, or adult books, which they are very much into. They are also into point spreads, and we agreed not to do that, either.
Second, we tried to get some Indian, black, and Chicano representation (of which there was none) in the Collective, but that was a problem, since there was none in the neighborhood, either, and attendance at our meetings would’ve meant a long ride on the bus for them.
Finally, we began soliciting community input. We began at the nearby grade school, where we met a lot of people who, though unfamiliar with the theory of running a collective, were very helpful and gave us a lot of new ideas. They suggested such things as licorice whips, nougat bars, sourballs, jawbreakers, bubble gum, soda pop, frozen delights, cupcakes, and Twinkies.
These are yet to be discussed, but it appears we have several alternatives: to go back to Whole Wheat, to help the grade-school community set up its own candy collective, or to serve them and their needs in order to create a broader base of support within which we can seek to familiarize them with where we are at. We invite anyone concerned to stop by the store (upstairs from the Universal Joint).
ST. PAUL’S EPISCOPAL DROP-IN HAIR CENTER
If you’ve decided to get a haircut, that’s your decision, but why go to a straight barber and pay $3.50 for a lot of bad jokes? Come to St. Paul’s Hair Center (in the rectory basement) where Rev. Ray and Rev. Don are waiting to see you. The price is right on and the rap is easy. Ray and Don are trained barbers, but more than that they know how hard this move can be and offer warm supportive pre- and post-trim counseling. They’re people-oriented, not hair-oriented, and if you just want to come in and talk about haircuts, well, that’s cool, too.
PEOPLE’ S MEATS
Most of us accept strict vegetarianism as the best way, but many find it difficult to change their eating habits. People’s Meats is an interim solution. All of our meat comes from animals who were unable to care for themselves any longer. Hoping to phase out the operation, we do not advertise hours, prices, or location. We do not deliver.
Disquiet, Please! Page 40