In dedication to Z...

In dedication to our new poster, last but not least: Z
(for those who can appreciate literary ingenuity and creativeness...)

To pragmatists, the letter Z is nothing more than a phonetically symbolic glyph, a minor sign easily learned, readily assimilated, and occasionally deployed in the course of a literate life. to cynics, Z is just an S with a stick up its butt.

Well, true enough, any word worth repeating is greater than the sum of its parts; and the particular word-part Z - angular, whereas S is curvaceous - can from a certain perspective, appear anally wired (although Z is far too sophisticated to throw up its arms like Y and act as if it had just been goosed).

On those of us neither prosaic nor jaded, however, those whom the Fates to monitor such things, Z has had an impact above and beyond its signifying function. A presence in its own right, it's the most distant and elusive of our twenty-six linguistic atoms; a mysterious, dark figure in an otherwise fairly innocuous lineup, and the sleekest little swimmer ever to take laps in a bowl of alphabet soup.

Scarcely a day of my life has gone by when I've not stirred the alphabetical ant nest, yet every time I type or pen the letter Z, I still feel a secret tingle, a tiny thrill. This is particularly due to Z's relative rarity: my dictionary devotes 99 pages to A words, 138 to P, but only 5 pages to words beginning with Z. Then there's Z's exoticness, for, though its a component of the English language, it gives the impression of having zipped out of Africa or the ancient Nebuchadnezzar. Ultimately, perhaps, whats most fascinating about Z is its dual projection of subtle menace and aesthetic grace. Z's are not verbal ants; they are bees. Stylish bees. Killer bees. They buzz; they sting.

Z is a whip crack of a letter, a striking viper of a letter, an open jacknife ever ready to cut the chords of convention or peel the peach of lust.

A Z is slick, quick (it's no accident that automakers call their fastest models Z cars), arcane, eccentric, and always faintly sinister - although its very elegance seperates it from the brutish X, that character traditionally associated with all forms of extinction. If X wields a tire iron, Z packs a laser gun. Zap! If X is Mike Hammer, Z is James Bond. (For reasons known only to the British, a Z 007 would pronounce its name "zed.") If X marks the spot, Z avoids the spot, being too fluid, too cosmopolitan, to remain in one place.

In contrast to that prim, trim, self-absorbed supermodel, I or to O, the voluptuous, orgasmic, bighearted slut, where Z a woman, she would be femme fatale, the consonant we love to fear and fear to love.

The celebrities of the alphabet are M and Z, the letters for whom famous movies have been named. Of course, V had its novel, but I can assure you from personal experience, in today's culture a novel lacks a movie's sizzle, not to mention pizzazz. Is it not testimony to Z's star power that it is invariably selected to come on last - and this despite the fact that the F word gets all the press?

Take a letter? You bet. I'll take Z. My favorite country, at least on paper, is Zanzibar; my favorite body of water, the Zuider Zee. ZZ Top is my favorite band, zymology my favorite branch of science (dealing, as it does, with the fermentation of beverages).

Had ZsaZsa Gabor married Frank Zappa, she would have had the coolest name in the world - except, maybe, if ZaSu Pitts had wed Tristan Tzara. As for me, my given name, Thomas, is a modern, anglicized version of the old prebiblical moniker Tammuz. Originally, Tammuz was a mythological hero who served the Godess simultaneously as lover, husband, brother, and son. Give me my Z back, and there's not telling where might go from there.

Before I go anywhere, however, let me lift a zarf of zinfandel to the former ruling family of Russia. To the tzar, the tzarina, and the little tzardines! And as for those who would complain that I'm taking this business too far, I say: better a zedophile than a pedophile.

- Tom Robbins
His answer to the request: "Write about one of your favorite things"
Esquire, 1996