Save The Floating CD Gardens of the Emperor^®!

 — or  —

Entry in the “Comments or Further Explanation” Blank

on Form 384-B

(Application for Permission to Do Business

as a Category 3 (Royalty Class) Retail Entity)

(Please Complete Your Reply in Three Sentences or Less)

It is indeed ironical that, sandwiched in between one of those innumerable shops in which rows of Breitling watches glint their dull mass-produced faces out below rows of equally undistinguished Rolexes and one of those innumerable shops which assail sense and senses with squadrons of tiny crystal camels, swans, pyramids and Taj Mahals, lies a wholly individual, fascinating and historical establishment which must not only fight for its economic life against the aforementioned enemies, but must also endure the abject indignity of having to do so under the miserable banner of a Category 2 (Ordinary or Fly-by-Night Class) Retail Entity while both of its characterless neighbors are unaccountably blessed with classification as Category 3 (Royalty Class) Retail Entities.

We refer, of course, to the Floating CD Gardens of the Emperor^®, an institution that, along with Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, Madame Tussaud’s and the British Louvre, is one of the few genuine Can’t-Miss attractions in modern Parilondon and a bona fide historical resource that operates today exactly as it did three centuries ago in the era of Emperor Archimbauldo IX, who used to browse the scenic dirt paths between floating islands of compact disks just as one can do today, the only differences being those of inventory (Archimbauldo, having no recourse to modern genres such as Mechno or Fliphop-bebop, shopped for such antediluvian favorites as Air Supply and Nana Mouskouri) and construction materials (Archimbauldo, as we know, crafted the picturesque floating islands of CD’s not from Styrofoam, but from the bones of his enemies).

This erstwhile establishment, which has, through the centuries, withstood everything from the fanatical attacks of the Lost Vinyl LP Restorationist Movement — would-be “revolutionaries” who did not hesitate to commit violence against property to achieve their reactionary aims — and the everyday affronts of legions of tourists who “innocently” pocket handfuls of dirt — handfuls of history! — in an understandable effort to recapture a bit of the lilt and grace of that Archimbauldoian era, when courtiers and commoners strolled side-by-side down separate aisles, down separate islands, in search of beauty, in search of pleasure, in search of a way to save their Eurodollars and thus to enrich every aspect of their lives, in search, in short, of bargain CD’s (then, as now, denoted by adhesive blue dots), this same enduring bulwark of tradition now must come, as it were, jewel case in hand, to beg for protection against a less visible but no less ignoble kind of erosion, to beg, to pray for reclassification as a Category 3 (Royalty Class) Retail Entity, distributing CD’s to the august members of the Commission purely as samples of its wares, and if a few UltraYuan find their way, perhaps by accident, into the caddies — just pop out the CD to see if this is so — it may be considered a mere foretaste of the savings awaiting shoppers at the Floating CD Gardens of the Emperor^®, a tribute to the perspicacious and distinguished members of the Commission by whose generous beneficence this historical bastion may be allowed to persevere, and — oh, if only we can presume so upon our illustrious forebears! — a tiny part of the legacy of the great Archimbauldo.