A Message from Mao

You gotta hand it to the universe. Just when you're an inch away from opening fire with a semiautomatic on your unsuspecting neighbors because you've been stuck all month in the longest April Fools Day of your entire life, the universe will send its unlikeliest messenger to tighten the screw even more. An errand to Shoppersville supermarket to get a harmless dory fillet, orange juice and a few articles of junk food. But first a short trip to the second floor to browse for a trinket or two; palliatives for the blues. I see a nice-looking purse that might have possibilities. Turn it from side to side, wondering whether anyone in his right mind would buy a bag from the second floor of a supermarket for two grand. Walk away, becks, walk away, yelled a tiny voice inside my head, the very same one that sings disco tunes whenever I make a deposit at the bank. Tsk.

So I wandered around the shelves of office supplies. Staplers...erasers...ooh,a battery-operated pencil sharpener...aha, stationery! I've always had a thing for paper. So I flip through a box of letter sets made in Korea. They're cute, in spite of being peppered with english captions that make absolutely no sense at all, even if each word manages to be spelled correctly. Flip flip flip. Here's one with a picture of a log cabin in the snow. Here's one with a cartoon character holding a giant lighted mosquito coil, yelling in Korean at a mosquito at the bottom of the page. Flip flip. Here's one with...what the f...Mao Zedong? But so it is. Chairman Mao's stingy smile and generous forehead on a 100-renminbi bill is the design on the envelope, and it's duplicated on the matching paper, with something extra: these two lines from a very familiar song appears on the upper left hand corner, rendered in a cursive black font just under Mao's chin -

All by myself, don't wanna be all by myself.
All by myself, don't want to live all by myself.


Well, get in line, mister Mao, get in line. You know you're beyond salvation when a dead revolutionary leader sings the anthem.