Our Man in Panama
Dear Magellan:
How is it that there's no reference to King Of The Hill in your publication, seeing as how
it's published not far from Arlin, other than the the indirect one of the
Vienamese-American castration/circumcision joke in the Freeway Therapist article? Which
penultimate word reminds me of a computerized hyphenization program at a major
metropolitan daily newspaper of more than a million daily circulation (no, I'm not at
liberty to divulge which one, for legal reasons that should be obvious to someone in the
publications game, such as yourself) that rendered the noun in question as: the-
rapist. Surely that bit of information deserves a prominent place in your fine
publication.
In any case, I would like to take out a one-year prescription as a gift for my unmarried
niece in Abilene, who herself is also a
fellow-admirer of Glenn Ghoul, but has no one to discuss it with there because of the
influence of all those Church of Christ folks that populate the Abilene Christian U.
campus wearing "I (image of heart) Ken Starr" patches embroidered on their
lime-green golf shirts. Of course they take care to walk on the paths and not on the
grass. And by grass, they do mean grass, not "grass".
Do you deliver to Abilene, don't you? And please send it in a plain unmarked opaque
envelope, for her personal safety and piece of mind, OK? It would also be better if it did
not carry a Houston postmark, which may arouse suspicion, since her mailman is also a C of
C. adherent and has a violent temper. You really don't know the meaning of "going
postal" until you've seen him confront her about letters that are a penny short on
postage, or are misaddressed to Sally-Jane Braunfeld instead of Sally-Jane Braunfels. Good
thing that she works at the local Git-N-Zip store during most postal delivery hours,
otherwise it would be much worse. By the way, are you married? You could do worse than
spend some quality time with a gal that adores Glenn Ghoul.
Well it was sure nice visiting with y'all. I use the plural because of the many pseudonyms
that you seem to use around your magazine (which also means a place to store ammunition --
are you a closet militarist, perchance?). I wish you every success in your quest to become
the largest media corporation in the history of the world.
Sincerely,
Ginkgo Balboa
Canal Zone,
Panama
P.S. Why oh why did Pres. Reagan have to turn us over to the Panamanians? It must have
been one of his unfortunate memory lapses.
Dear Ginkgo (We may call you Ginkgo?),
Thanks for the nice words from the Zone, oops, from Panama. Alas, we don't deliver. We're
100% pure pixellated cyber around here.
Anyway, your niece, I'm afraid, needs a lot more than Magellan's Log has to
offer. During the Civil War, draft dodgers took to fleeing west (as you may know), leaving
behind only a note with the letters "G.T.T." Gone to Texas. Maybe it's time to
start a new fad for people in Abilene. "G.T.A.E."? Gone to Anywhere Else.
I would have appended only your initials to your letter above but we certainly don't want
to mislead people into thinking that our own G.B. (actually, G.W.B.) has the cultural smarts apparent in your e-mail.
Especially since as far as I can make out G.W.B. has zero smarts of any kind, even karmic
ones (imagine the pre-birth planning session in heaven, with G.W.B. saying, "Yep,
think I'd love to grow up in Midland with George and Barbara and about twenty million
bucks.").
As in baseball, truth in publishing exists mainly in the tangents (if anywhere), so I hope
you'll excuse that little digression.
Please keep us informed about how the world looks from down there. I hear Gehry just
received his 847th commission since Bilbao to do
the new Panama City Museum for Enlightened Colonial Exploitation. Apparently it'll be a
large-scale riff on the Santa Monica house, but with a thatched roof and a patio wall of
faux aluminum-foil-wrapped bricks of cocaine. What some metropolises won't do to get
endless color spreads in The New York Times. Not to mention ten-fold increases in
tourism.
The Editors
Dear Magellan,
I forgot to ask you about the meaning of Magellan's Log.
Does it refer to the size of his private parts, or is it some kind of lumber-industry
term?
Thanks,
Ginkgo Balboa
Dear Gink,
We thought every boy who grew up south of the Rio Grande learned early the story about
Magellan and Enrique, his alleged cabinboy. As the story has it, the "log" in
question "belonged" to Magellan only in the sense that Enqrique
"belonged" to him, if you get our drift.
The Editors
Dear Magellan,
It is preturnaturally interesting that you should mention Frank Gehry and Bilbao and
Panama all in the same letter. This is true synchronicity of the most serendipitous sort
for the following reasons:
A: Mr. Gehry's wife is Panamanian.
B: Often people misspell my name as Ginkgo Biloba, rather than Ginkgo Balboa.
Bilbao is an anagram of Biloba.
C: The name of the High School in the Canal Zone is Balboa.
D: Rocky's fake surname is Balboa. His real one is Stallone.
E: Mr. Gehry's nickname is not Rocky.
I do wish you would show a little bit more respect for Abilene.
After all, Dwight David Eisenhower was born there when it was in Kansas. When he found out
it had been partially moved to Texas under the Spoils and Plunder of War Act of 1845-1945,
he uttered the immortal words: "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, in toto."
In any case, it's hard enough for my spinster niece to live there happily without you
making things worse by poking fun at it. If it was good enough for the esteemed Dean of
the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin to get his undergraduate
degree there at ACU, then it should be good enough for
any non-tenured academic or lesser person. It doesn't
matter that the Dean expunged his 4 years in Abilene from his resume, it's enough that we
know and cherish the thought. Another suppressed fact about the city is that Ms. Van
Buren's real name is Abilene, not Abigail, and her column should rightly be called
"Dear Abi." I think you should apologize to my niece, and also do a special
issue of Magellan's Log (I'm afraid that many right-thinking people could be excused for
feeling that the name of this publication is rather obscene and actively promotes the gay
lifestyle) on this charming and dynamic Heart-of-Texas mini-metropolis, often called the
Religioplex in the same entrepreneurial spirit that produced the Metroplex, the Petroplex,
and the Heteroplex.
Finally, a kind word about George Bush, whom you so cavalierly mock: Primogeniture.
I didn't notice you asking my permission to publish my letter in your e-magazine. But I'll
give you permission anyway, since the letter is not worth the paper you won't be printing
it on.
Your faithful reader,
Ginkgo Balboa.
Isthmus, Panama*.
*One foot in the Atlantic, and the other in the Pacific.
(And the Atlantic foot is east of the Pacific foot.)
Dear Balb,
Thank you for your continued interest in Magellan's Log. Feel free to go right on
mis-reading our carefully wrought work to your equatorial heart's content. Your finding
innuendo where innuendo dwelleth not does make one wonder about possible PoMo LitCrit
creeping even unto the lower latitudes.
Your quasi-syllogistic elucidation of just how Frank Gehry fits into the Great Chain of
Being is also much appreciated. We have never really grasped how architects generally fit
into the old G.C. of B., much less one who has wrecked the world market in titanium just
so the inhabitants of a forgotten little northwestern Spanish burg will all now have to
wear sunglasses as they direct the latest contingent from the Upper West Side to their
very own Guggenheim franchise outlet.
As for Abilene, again your historical exegeses are truly glimmers of light in this vast
darkness called the internet. Thank you, thank you.
Regarding our self-styled Governor Bush (talk about oxymorons), we have another couple of
words: Capitalist Posterior Osculatory Genuflection.
Finally, I'd say anyone who lives on an isthmus (sibilant "s" followed by a very
suspicious dentalized "th"???) had better be darn careful about finding hidden
meanings in Magellan's LOG (which, just for the record, is currently over 2
megabytes, and still expanding.
The Editors
Subject: Re: Your fun
internet publication.
Dear Sen~or Mag (if I may be so informal):
Regarding titanium in Bilbao: I have heard that some Russian entity, perhaps the central
government or some cadre of Siberian (not Serbian or Cyberian) gangsters, had mass
quantities of it lying around not doing anything but gathering dust, and was in desperate
need for hard currency (aren't we all?) so that it was willing to sell much at a very
reasonable price.
I am glad to be reassured that there is indeed no hidden
meaning in the title of your publication. But since there are so many hidden meanings in
so many of the words and phrases in the cleverly composed articles of your publication,
how is a poor pre-postmodern provincial Presbyterian Panamanian person such as myself to
know such a thing beforehand? But now that you have solidly established your mainstream
values, I am even more eager to encourage a meeting between yourself and my Glenn
Gould-worshipping niece in Abilene. She is working to set up a Glenn Gould Memorial
International Piano Competition in Abilene to rival the Van Cliburn extravaganza in Fort
Worth.
Vaya con Dios,
Balb
Subject: Gracias
Mr. Magellan:
I am so pleased and grateful not only to be published on the internet without having to
learn to do my own HTML coding, but also and more importantly to have live links to
Abilene and Abilene Christian University embedded in my text.
Also I was most pleased to see that the Abilene page has
sections devoted to Real Estate and Religion, so that people will know that they are in
the Texas Abilene and not the Kansas one. But how can it be that there is no Catholic
church listed for Abilene. Do the Bautistas and the Church of Christ have a monopoly on
all the religion and real-estate? Please tell me, or I will be forced to ask my niece
Sally-Jane Braunfels, who does not take kindly to such questions.
Finally, I am wondering is your publication's real name
isn't Magellan's Logos. Sometimes that HTML coding can swallow up letters.
Vaya con Dios,
Ginkgo Balboa-Constrictor
P.S. (Hyphenization of surname indicates that I was happily
wedded last Thursday to Conchita Vaso Constrictor, a
beauteous, vivacious, chaste, and very eligible local belle who was unanimously voted Miss
Isthmus of 1994. Congratulate me, por favor!
And may I ask once again if you are married? If not, you don't know what you are missing
-- this family values business that your sagacious self-made governor espouses is the best
thing since pre-sliced frozen tortillas.
I'll wager that my niece Sally-Jane could make you one very happy editor. She's even
hinted to me, in her modest way, that she may be willing to move to Houston, despite all
the profligacy
that occurs there, for the right person, especially one who likes deceased eccentric
Canadian pianists with an affinity for Bach.
Dear Billy Boa,
Please excuse the delay in our reply to your latest colorful missive. Our computer was, as
we gringos say, down, thanks to the continuing clever duplicity of the International
Microsoft Conspiracy with its layers of irresponsible, unreliable interfacial deceit
programmed layers-deep into whatever essential product one ships barrels-full of money to
Redmond, Washington, in exchange for. Things, as of 4 p.m., this afternoon were back to
hunky-dory, or at least that approximation of hunky-dory which constitutes life with
Windows & FrontPage & alia.
Now to the points you raise, in reverse order, i.e.,
proceeding from the bottom of your letters to the top.
Except for her questionable religious proclivities,
Sally-Jane sounds ever more winsome. We hold out hope that any Christian, even one who
lives in Abilene, TX, who adores Glenn Gould can't be all devil-food. Speaking of Abilene
(as you were), did you notice that the link takes you to "www.abilene.com"?
"COM"??? Sort of takes your breath away. I mean most cities maintain the
late-capitalist hypocrisy that government still matters and have a home page ending in
"gov". But not Abilene. They put their values right out there on the net for
everyone to see. What's good for Jesus is good for Abilene, and vice-versa no doubt. It's
that same old commercial-patriotic-metaphysical reciprocity which one senses lurking
behind every Wal-Mart facade, yes?
Our very best to you and Conchita. And please let us
know when G.B., Jr. arrives, as he no doubt will in the next week or two. (Just joshing,
Gink; but we know how hot-blooded you Panamanians are.)
Re the world titanium
supply: We have it on excellent authority (actually from the architecture critic of the Abilene
Christian Herald and Eschatology Review) that the way it worked was this. When Gehry
got the commission for the museum in Spain, he approached the International Titanium
Consortium and offered to cloak the building in their favorite metal if, in return, they
agreed to back him big-time when he runs for mayor of Huntington Beach next year. Such are
the vagaries of architecture when practiced at the highest levels (forgive us, here we are
wandering off, in our typical po-mo way, into territory which you of course know a lot
less about than you do about pre-determination and other such Presbyterial matters).
--The Editors
Dear Magellan:
I am honored to see my very distinguished name listed on
the masthead of M.L. But saddened that you are unaware that I drive a very reliable
automobile, a Toyota Camry, imported from the US.
And I should tell you that this innocent auto was hit by
another vehicle yesterday while minding its business parked in front of our nice little
typical all-Panamanian house, where mom bakes her apple pies.
It seems that a Ford ambulance decided to speed up a narrow
residential street, and hit an Isuzu Trooper SUV that was also going too fast on an
intersecting residential street in our normally tranquil middle-class Canal Zone
neighborhood, with the result that the Isuzu flipped over and skidded into my Toyota.
Alas, none of the very guilty parties were even injured. So much for any misguided belief
in a just old-testament God. And I think that your US Congresspersons who are pledging to
post copies of the Ten Commandants in their offices should instead procure updated versons
that include an Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not collide with thy neighbor’s car.
In any case, I’m sure that your filthy-rich automobile
editor would be extremely interested in this story.
And to continue an older topic in our correspondence, check
out Frank Gehry in Salon magazine on-line. His involvement with the redevelopment of our
modest little Canal Zone is growing, as you will quickly see.
Speaking of editors, my maternal grandfather Westheimer
Fannin has just retired and would like to keep intellectually active. He is interested in
the fact-checker’s position, and also in the PoMo/DeCon Post-Structural LitCrit slot.
He feels that he could actually do both at the same time, and is willing to work for
half-wages, since he is fairly comforably fixed. Lest you dismiss him out of hand, I must
tell you that he is an alimnus of Abilene Christian U., and did some post-grad work in the
business school at UT Austin before heading down to the Canal Zone to help the ships run
on time.
Finally, allow me to announce my great-granddaughter
Montrose Weslayan’s new business venture. Next week she is opening up her charming
little canal-side pseudo-kosher bakery and deli, which she calls Bagels and Locks. She
catches her own salmon right in the canal, and imports her cream cheese from Philadelphia,
and her bagel-dough flour direct from Minneapolis. You are all invited to the Grand
Opening on Oct 21.
Your faithful correspondent,
Ginkgo Balboa
Ginkgo, Ginkgo,
After weeks of inscrutable Third World silence, suddenly you write us ONE day before the
opening of your sister’s deli and you (again, in all your Third World innocence)
apparently expect us to put your missive through our elaborate editing/fact-checking
process and then get it translated into HTML and posted on-line in time for readers to hop
a plane to your isthmus. We have to remind you that we First Worlders lead a life
involving more than watching errant Isuzu Troopers smash up our Camrys.
As for your maternal grandfather’s interest in a
staff position with Magellan’s Log, please have him e-mail us his resumé and also
fax us a copy of the title to whatever car he drives. I should tell you up front that
anyone who drives a De Soto of any vintage will have a considerable advantage in the
competition for a position with us.
We heartily support your suggestion for the expansion
of the Decalogue. In addition to your entry, we have one of our own. We feel the new
Dodecalogue should end thus:
12. Thou shalt not rain on thy neighbor’s parade,
and neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor’s astrolabe nor his Astroturf.
We have forwarded your constructive, compassionate
suggestion to the Shrub Campaign Headquarters, as we are certain the good Governor, the
$60-million future president himself, being the pro-Hispanic person that he is, will
welcome such a sound religious idea from you, since each of your names ends in a vowel.
We’re sure word has filtered down to the Zone that
ol’d Dubya spends a good part of every month in the Valley, hanging with the
‘manos, jabbering away in his best, inimitable Tex-Mex, determined to convince the
inhabitants of the poorest counties in America that what’s good for George W. is good
for them. We can just imagine his delight at the idea of passing on your suggested 11th
Commandment to them, since few of them can afford gas—not to mention
insurance—for the 1972 Ford Crown Victorias with the 460 cubic-inch engines, which
are the only cars they can afford to buy. What a receptive constituency they will be to
the idea of Deity-driven safe-driving, so to speak.
The Editors.
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