How to Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays by Umberto Eco Read Free Book Online Page B

paper with full-color pages, and I wonder whether they are bought only by readers who leaf through them as though they were volumes of fairy tales, or whether the publications are addressed to a public of serious purchasers, as I sometimes suspect. This would mean that the more the mechanical watch, miracle of centuries of experience, becomes useless, the stronger and more widespread is the desire to display, to regard fondly, to cherish as an investment, these wondrous and perfect time machines.
    It is obvious that these machines are not designed to communicate the fleeting hour. The abundance of functions and their elegant distribution over numerous and symmetrical dials mean that, to learn that it is twenty past three on Friday, May 24, you have to shift your eyes at some length, following the movement of numerous hands, as, in sequence, you record the information in a notebook. For that matter, the envious Japanese electronics experts, now ashamed of their former practicality, have come out with promises of microscopic dials that will display barometric pressure, altitude, ocean depth, countdown timing, and temperature, not to mention, of course, data bank, telemetric time indicator, eight alarms, money-changing calculator, and hour signal.
    All these clocks, like the whole information industry today, run the risk of no longer communicating anything because they tell too much. But they also possess another characteristic of the information industry: they no longer speak of anything except themselves and their internal functioning. The zenith is reached in some ladies' watches with imperceptible hands, just a marble face without hours or minutes, shaped in such a way that, at most, you could say we are somewhere between noon and midnight, and perhaps it's the day before yesterday. Anyway (as the designer hints), what else do the ladies for whom the watch is meant have to do, except look at a device that narrates its own vanity?
    1988

Stars and Stripes
ASTROGRAM
FROM: GHQ, GALACTIC CORPS, SOL III
TO: ARMY COMMAND ZONE IV, URANUS
    PER INFORMATION RECEIVED FLAGRANT EPISODES HOMOSEXUALITY OBSERVED BOOS FIRST ASSAULT FORCE STOP ALL RESPONSIBLE MUST BE IMMEDIATELY ELIMINATED STOP STRICT REPRESSION URGENTEST STOP
    (SIGNED) GENERAL PERCUOCO, CIC, CASINO, MONACO
    ***
    ASTROGRAM
FROM: ARMY COMMAND ZONE IV, URANUS
TO: GHQ, GALACTIC CORPS, SOL III
CASINO, MONACO
    RESPECTFULLY INFORM GHQ THAT BOOS, NATIVES OF URANUS, ARE HERMAPHRODITE RACE (NO. 30015, INTERGALACTIC ETHNIC REGISTRY) STOP PRESUMED INSTANCES HOMOSEXUALITY AS PER DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED HEREWITH ARE HENCE NORMAL ESTABLISHED SEXUAL PRACTICE CONTEMPLATED IN URANUS LEGAL CODE AND INTERGALACTIC CONSTITUTION STOP
    (SIGNED) COLONEL ZBZZ TSG, ACTING COMMANDER DURING ABSENCE GENERAL AGWRSS ON MATERNITY LEAVE
    ***
    ASTROGRAM
FROM: GHQ, GALACTIC CORPS, SOL III
TO: ARMY HQ, ZONE V, PLUTO
    THIS GHQ RELIABLY INFORMED OF FLAGRANT EPISODES PUBLIC MASTURBATION AMONG DIGGERS AND DRILLERS CORPS PLUTO STOP INSIST ON IMMEDIATE EXEMPLARY PUNISHMENT OF THOSE DIRECTLY INVOLVED INCLUDING OFFICERS RESPONSIBLE FOR INEXCUSABLE LAXITY OF DISCIPLINE
    (SIGNED) GENERAL PERCUOCO, CIC, CASINO
    ***
    ASTROGRAM
FROM: ARMY HQ, ZONE V, PLUTO
TO: GHQ, GALACTIC CORPS, SOL III
CASINO, MONACO
    CLARIFICATION NECESSARY STOP PLUTO DRILLERS MEMBERS VERMIFORM RACE (HENCE BORING SKILLS AND EXCEPTIONAL PRODUCTIVITY GEOLOGICAL PROSPECTING PLUTO ZONE) REPRODUCE VIA PARTHENOGENESIS STOP IN CHARACTERISTIC DRILLER POSITION ANTERIOR EXTREMITY SUCKS POSTERIOR EXTREMITY PRODUCING SYMPTOMATIC ORGASM AND SUBSEQUENT SCISSION STOP NORMAL PROCEDURE CONTEMPLATED IN LOCAL ARMY REGULATIONS OTHERWISE FURTHER RECRUITMENT IMPOSSIBLE
    (SIGNED) GENERAL BOOSAMMETH AND GENERAL BOOSAMETH
(REQUEST CONFIRMATION COMMANDER IDENTITY AFTER RECENT TOP LEVEL SCISSION)
    ***
    ASTROGRAM
FROM: GHQ, GALACTIC CORPS, SOL III
TO: ARMY HQ, ZONE IV, URANUS
AND ARMY HQ, ZONE V, PLUTO
    SPECIOUS EXCUSES UNACCEPTABLE STOP EXCESSIVE LAXITY UNDERMINING GALACTIC FORCES