"A hallmark of what?", Zeppo asked himself.

Zeppo owned an ice cream shop and wondered: if there were 31 flavors of ice cream, how could the wholesalers make a profit? With such plurality, it seemed to him, surely a lose would be felt somewhere. How did they know, how could they know, that all 31 flavors would be popular? And if they didn't know, which surely they didn't, what would they do with the other 26 flavors after Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, Chocolate Chip Mint, Mint Chocolate Chip, Pistachio, and Cherry-Vanilla?

Zeppo couldn't count well. He had his intuitions though, and his intuitions told him that next time `round there'd be a surplus. What would they do with the ice cream? His lower lip snapped back elastically. His eyeballs jumped from the upper right corners of their encasings to dead center position. He squinted, patted his index finger and thumb dry on the left leg of his slacks. Having completely thought through his question, Zeppo came up with the first in a series of answers: send the surplus to starving folks in Bangladesh or Ethiopia.

It didn't last, the thought nor the ice cream in an airplane ride and destined desert, and the series evolved. Zeppo, glossing over the faint bark of a dog, read another fold-out poem to himself. The dimwitted joke tipped him off: obsolescence! The answer was clear enough. The wholesalers would surely turn a profit this way. If they made the Mocha, or the Peanut-butter Crunch, for instance such that after some period of time in the freezer the ice cream melted, regardless of the temperature, the demand would go up and...

The excitement trailed off along with the bark. Zeppo had painted himself into a corner: he'd then, a retailer, be on the demand side, he'd loose money, and to disposes himself of all that former ice cream would be more than an unpleasantry.

This brought to mind Zeppo's old college classmate. When they were sophomores William had married. Shortly thereafter he became quite depressed and one morning dipped into the ice box, as food often supplanted his depression. It is this aspect, the ice box, that corresponded to Zeppo's present thoughts and so forged his reminiscence.

Having consumed the entire contents of the large Tupperware container, William became, as many depressed persons do in such times, wracked with guilt and enacted the following note:

My sweet,
This is just to say I have eaten all the plums that were in the ice box and which you were probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me -- They were delicious. So sweet and so cold. Yet I am now wracked with guilt.

Oh what have I done!? It is a meager budget that we live on, and I have squandered it, leaving your stomach destitute. I cannot go on in such a state anymore. I realize now that I have ruined our marriage with my various charades and shenanigans.

Now that I have squandered your breakfast crying over what would appear to a lighter heart mere spilled milk, I realize I must do what I must.

Yours,
William

Zeppo, coated in thought, aimlessly thumbed through the section marked, "Sympathy", recalling that later that day his classmate had pondered committing suicide and was stopped from such a preponderancy only by the awkwardly fateful mistake of having left his Writing 204 essays on the breakfast table for his husbandly apology., "On the War Against Rising Crime Rates in the New York Times" and "The Conversion of the Battle Ship Nimitz to a U.S Airforce Museum", along with an empty ice box, now awaited the scrutiny of the female half of William's legal contract.

As William Carlos Williams entered the class he concocted the particulars of the grace with which he would make his final leap; as he left the class he sighed a smile, imagining the string of digits he'd receive next year with the publication of what he now knew, with all the confidence of destitution, to be a sure-fire, bonafide poem. The note was short and to the point and so easy enough for William's writing professor, who also happened to edit the Norton Anthology of Modern Poets that year along with several equally astute colleagues, to read as the students critiqued one another's short stories in silence. And in no large, sweated amount of time the note had been reduced through the employment of trails and strokes of red to read

This is just to say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the ice box

and which you
were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
So sweet
and So cold

Zeppo had come across the poem a few years later when he purchased the Norton Anthology from a graduating senior who somehow didn't see why she would need it anymore. She was going to law school next fall and figured on needing the cash more than the poems. Zeppo asked if she would sell the CD she had been listening to last week while he had waited for his turn on the Stair Master in the campus fitness center. She said no, and Zeppo left her dorm room five dollars debited and with no plums left in the ice box for breakfast.

He slipped out of the memory. Zeppo hadn't meant to go off on such a tangent and now wanted to return to the possibility, still lurking in his sensibility, of answering his earlier ponderance. How could wholesalers make a profit without Zeppo-the-retailer losing money? He found this question quite difficult to answer, but he knew there must be an answer. He couldn't count well. Figuring profit was no easy task for him. He hadn't done well in math, even as a child had suffered something of what some anonymous but apparently influential "they" had termed a learning disorder, and the fact that he knew little about the finer points of the market confounded his difficulties. Still, he was going to find an answer to his question.

Within this haze of thought that inched him with oblivion toward the blank greeting cards, Zeppo was whapped by a sudden emergence of historical data: drug stores used to sell ice cream. The drug store he was now in had converted its egg cream and soda fountain to a pharmacy center long ago. Perplexed, Zeppo swore he recognized the distant smell of Gilamonsters.

"Can I help you with anything sir?," asked a woman shelving cans of salaries into neat rows of four-can length.

"No. Thank you, uh...Kathy..."

Awkward smiles were exchanged as Zeppo read the name tag. Zeppo didn't know Kathy. He had known Ellie and Sam and Jules though when he, and, he supposed they, were younger. The drug store, recollected Zeppo with vividness, used to sell ice cream, all sorts of flavors, right over there by the egg cream counter -- when it was an egg cream counter. He had come there many times as a child, and now, 34 years later, with the guilt of aging he was able to deduce that drugs are more profitable.

That's why they stopped selling ice cream! Zeppo, egged on by this revelation, continued: the drugs had yielded the greater profit. As ice cream was an elicitor of fun the owners and drug companies had deduced that the drugs they sold also elicited fun, as they competed so well with ice cream sales. Thus were they marketed.

Zeppo had been reasoning it all wrong. Here was the answer to his profit quandary. The ice cream wholesalers and himself, he extrapolated with determination, could make a profit. 31 flavors were enlisted to sell only 7. These were all sidelines, the real profit was in the drugs. Drugs could be planned into obsolescence: their effects would ware off. Aspirin at some point must have stopped working since now Ibuprofin sold like hot cakes; lithium must have overcome its own effects, since Prosac now sold like Gulf War trading stamps. Side effects -- these must all be part of the planned obsolescence: unlike that one, this drug has no side effects, and then one day, hmm...that might be of interest to the public, and it hits the news. "How could we have known?" A few law suits ensue, and the whole matter's forgotten: "Here, we got rid of the glitches, this new drug hasn't any side effects." And then the whole thing over again. The same wasn't so in ice cream consumption. Cherry-vanilla was always cherry-vanilla, and it always tasted good to the lover of cherry-vanilla. If chocolate was good too this simply meant the cherry-vanilla lover might find a second seduction in chocolate. Perhaps this would result in an innovation, a cherry-vanilla/chocolate doubledecker sundae.

"Hey, that's a good idea!," said Zeppo beneath his breath.

He jotted it down on the back of his book of receipts and continued in thought. Perhaps, he recounted, this would result in a cherry-vanilla/chocolate doubledecker sundae, yes, but never in the elimination of cherry-vanilla from the repertoire. Ice cream sales were based on the multiplication factor. Mint and chocolate chip became chocolate chip mint and mint chocolate chip and double chocolate chip mint and mint double chocolate chip and chocolate chip double mint and chocolate double mint chip and chocolate chocolate chip double mint chocolate double chip mint. Zeppo jotted these flavors down and continued. Of course, there was the case of cherry-vanilla, a staggering brick of evidence , as, Zeppo pointed out with the pride of analysis, noting that vanilla nor cherry saw obsolescence in consequence of their combination. The more flavors the merrier. 31 flavors was something to be proud of. Could you imagine 31 different medicines for depression? The thought was an aberration to Zeppo's profit-siezing psyche.

Continuing in extrapolation, Zeppo now figured the ice cream wholesalers must also be the drug companies.

There were problems with his analysis. Eventually, even if in a couple of thousand years, people would catch on. Ice cream couldn't be planned into obsolescence, drugs could, and now, piecing it all together, Zeppo figured his problem could be solved. Drug companies must have, then, realized that people too could become obsolete. Still, the problem existed that many people were in fine condition upon exiting the womb. This proved no problem whatsoever thanks to the old adage, "Nothing lasts forever."

Both ice cream and drugs were marketed for fun, but fun had its downside too. Aspirin, even Ibuprofin, even Valium, wares off. Yet, the drug companies, knowing that most people didn't keep plums in their ice box for these times, also knew that, when their headache returned, the masses would eat ice cream; that when their depression returned the masses would eat ice cream; that after a hard day at the office, when the last Tylenol had been swallowed, the masses would eat ice cream.

Lured by the sound of 31 flavors, the masses would enjoy the taste of their favorite 7. The older drugs had become obsolete. Aspirin nor Valium longer did the trick. Now new drugs were enlisted. The cycle of obsolescence had gone unnoticed. And wherever obsolescence had gone unnoticed, reasoned Zeppo, the people who would have noticed must also have been planned into obsolescence. For a moment Zeppo's mind once more wandered: What about his lawn mower? Of no matter. Here was Zeppo's profit returning! Ice cream vendors would continue selling ice cream. Both wholesalers and retailers would make a profit. He thought about soda cans and news papers, and, following, with some regret, about recycling.

Then the ceiling fell in. Submerged beneath piles of jigsaw glass, Zeppo's and other customers' torsos arose into the midst of a herd of Guinea Pigs, a gander of pythons, a purified master race of mice, and the occasional passing iguana. The cackle of parrots sang in staggered unisons and imitative counterpoints. "Waaaack..Honey are you alright...Waaaack...Honey are you alright....Sqwaaaaaack...What the hell...Sqwaaaaaack...Help me Waaaack please Help me Waaaack Help Me Waaaack please help me". Wings flapped in the confusion of the frustration fermenting beneath minutes of attempts at muted flight. One month before this fatal demise the pet store above had purchased the installation of a glass floor as part of a security agreement reached between it and the drug store below.

A bonsai Komodo Dragon scurried across Zeppo's chest. Shards of glass reminded the ice cream retailer of the question of recycling. He shook off the discrepancy, figured he'd work out the glitches later. Attempting to stand, Zeppo instead succeeded in falling. As his fall, face down, met the floor, impressing all expectation towards a halt, an elision was formed by means of the corner of Zeppo's eye through the appearance of the perfect anniversary card. At last. He opened it and began, astounded, reading

This is just to say