And when on muggy days, hybridizers bask in their fifteen minutes, signing CDs, utterly disbelieving the inked-in portions, it's time to pull out the stops from five-star organs and return to that scene from Chinatown where acronyms failed and PIs welcomed small change from strangers in sinister overcoats. Plagues continue to sprint across the screen, unflappable in their synchronicity, tallying the victims on their off days, normal folk rising to the aroma of coffee beans, schoolbuses depositing their packets under the tattered cloth. Winsome, though we are, it is difficult to imagine a happy ending stocked with finger foods from the four corners, spotlighting white sand and shortbread featured on late night infomercials between station-breaks that leave viewers with a strange taste in their mouth. And when we try to sort it out, to file it under Nice Try, to back-burner it, it nonetheless returns, unopened with insufficient postage, as if it knew all along that it would never leave, that it had in fact become indispensable to the awkward construction of our beautiful life.
