Wednesday, November 01, 2000

The Name Game

We sit in our cubicles. We face our monitors. We see no one and no one sees us, but we hear. Periodically we hear a smoke scarred voice over the intercom. It's a name. A name with no face, no history and no meaning. And so we invent meaning. These are the names and these are their stories.

Violet Swinton, midwestern American poetess circa 1980's. Noted progenitor of the "House Wife Rage" movement. Currently friend and trend analyst for the Hillary Clinton senate campaign.

Solvig Johnson, Olympic ski champion, suffered devastating injury during the 1972 pre-trials in Munich, went on to win gold, silver and three bronzes, imortalized by director Werner Herzog in his short film *Blood and Snow*, never walked again.

Linda Ciccarelli, Fifth and youngest Marx brother, Left the team in 1938 (during a bitter split) to pursue a Broadway theatrical career. Claimed the talkies were a *fad* and would ultimately degrade the act. Died, unknown, from liver faliure in 1983.

Seville Vazquez, little known surrealist juggler, Attended the Acacemy of Beauxs Arts in Paris along with contemporaries Luis Bunnel, Salvador Dali, and Garcia Lorca. Died in 1968, of smoke inhlation during a fire at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City
Nadi Hadir, failed assassin of Indira Ghandi at a 1978 political rally, was torn apart by the crowd within minutes, wrote several anti-religious polemics denouncing India's rigid caste system, subject of a small bronze sculpture in Moscow's Red Square.

Eric Dickman, 80's porn star, aka Eric Cockman, Dick Swainfold, Vlad Porkster and Heavy Juicyshlong, frequent actor in Russ Meyer features, killed when his Porche 900 roadster errupted in flames at a Las Vegas parking lot during a coke deal gone badDominic Viola, assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seji Ozawa, mimimalist composer, thrilled audiences and enraged critics during a Bartok festival in Budapest when a small pebble taken from his shoe *sang* for an uninterupted 9 hours.

Michael Roberts, highly decorated WWII naval officer, credited with planning the unexecuted Operation Shoestring, a brutal scorch and burn invasion of Greenland, suffered an anuerism on VJ Day during the formalities of the Japaneese unconditional surrender aboard the USS Missouri and was unable to afix his signature, a Universal bio pic, starring Tom Hanks is slated for December release, 2006

Ahmed Gh'rael, Born Richard Smith, obscure jazz drummer and small time drug dealer, In 1957 he converted to Islam while doing time in Joliet. Was tragically murdered in the prison laundry three weeks prior to his release.

Su Yung Chen, 14th century Manchurian philosipher, first among the ancients to propose that seemingly arbitrary and brutal acts of God were, although somewhat misguided, intended as benevolent, was repeatedly struck by lightning during her decent into insanity.