Jen just decided to refer to me as J. Alfred Prufrock. I am not balding nor am I shy of peaches and in the thrall of yellow smoke. As such I think I shall respond by quoting Joseph Heller in Catch-22 speaking through his character ex-P.F.C Wintergreen, “T.S. Eliot” click.


The Fulcrum Monkey Players will now perform for you the passage to which the above in joke makes reference:

Lifted from X


"It takes brains not to make money," Colonel Cargill wrote in one
of the homiletic memoranda he regularly prepared for circulation over
General Peckem's signature. "Any fool can make money these days and most
of them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for
example, one poet who makes money."

"T. S. Eliot," ex-P. F. C. Wintergreen said in his mail-sorting
cubicle at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters and slammed down the
telephone without identifying himself.

Colonel Cargill, in Rome, was perplexed.

"Who was it?" asked General Peckem.

"I don't know," Colonel Cargill replied.

"What did he want?" "I don't know."

"Well, what did he say?"

" 'T. S. Eliot'," Colonel Cargill informed him.

"What's that?"

"'T. S. Eliot'," Colonel Cargill repeated.

"Just 'T. S. -"'

"Yes, sir. That's all he said. Just 'T. S. Eliot'."

"I wonder what it means," General Peckem reflected. Colonel
Cargill wondered, too. "T. S. Eliot," General Peckem mused.

"T. S. Eliot," Colonel Cargill echoed with the same funereal
puzzlement.

General Peckem roused himself after a moment with an unctuous and
benignant smile. His expression was shrewd and sophisticated. His eyes
gleamed maliciously. "Have someone get me General Dreedle," he requested
Colonel Cargill. "Don't let him know who's calling." Colonel Cargill
handed him the phone.

"T. S. Eliot," General Peckem said, and hung up.

"Who was it?" asked Colonel Moodus. General Dreedle, in Corsica,
did not reply. Colonel Moodus was General Dreedle's son-in- law, and
General Dreedle, at the insistence of his wife and against his own better
judgment, had taken him into the military business. General Dreedle gazed
at Colonel Moodus with level hatred. He detested the very sight of his
son-in-law, who was his aide and therefore in constant attendance upon
him. He had opposed his daughter's marriage to Colonel Moodus because he
disliked attending weddings. Wearing a menacing and pre-occupied scowl,

General Dreedle moved to the full-length mirror in his office and
stared at his stocky reflection. He had a grizzled, broad-browed head with
iron-grey tufts over his eyes and a blunt and belligerent jaw. He brooded
in ponderous speculation over the cryptic message he had just received.
Slowly his face softened with an idea, and he curled his lips with wicked
pleasure.

"Get Peckem," he told Colonel Moodus. "Don't let the bastard know
who's calling."

"Who was it?" asked Colonel Cargill, back in Rome.

"That same person," General Peckem replied with a definite trace
of alarm. "Now he's after me."

"What did he want?"

"I don't know."

"What did he say?"

"The same thing."

"'T.S.Eliot'?"

"Yes, 'T.S.Eliot'.? That's all he said." General Peckem had a
hopeful thought. "Perhaps it's a new code or something, like the colors of
the day. Why don't you have someone check with Communications and see if
it's a new code or something or the colors of the day?" Communications
answered that T. S. Eliot was not a new code or the colors of the day.

Colonel Cargill had the next idea. "Maybe I ought to phone
Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters and see if they know anything about
it. They have a clerk up there named Wintergreen I'm pretty close to. He's
the one who tipped me off that our prose was too prolix."

Ex-P. F. C. Wintergreen told Cargill that there was no record at
Tweny-seventh Air Force Headquarters of a T. S. Eliot.