Perkoff is a Gentleman of the Back Door.

This British peculiarity, this psychopathic abhorrence for open spaces in fanzines, has been remarked on by many people but until this moment nobody has explained the real reason for it. It is not meanness, nor the high cost of paper, nor any obvious cause like that. It is simply that every British faned walks in the shadow of fear, knowing himself to be a hunted man, a law-breaker, an enemy of society. He is the victim of a guilt complex that compels him to shun the free wide spaces beloved of US faneds and to crowd his materiel into a confined space as if huddling together for protection.

Or for some of the unlucky things, like Enron et al that went nuts stealing on his watch, or Vietraq that lacks enough troops according to three out of four multi-starred generals but not Rumsfeld, or the falling dollar that hasn't created sales, or the collapse of US respect which might see some recovery if we ever send troops to a country that doesn't have oil.

She, I noticed, was smiling, but that baby in the treetop might well have smiled as the wind rockabyed her down.