i'm currently in the midst of a re-read of Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida, not having read it in 3 or 4 years.  so there i was yesterday, reading of studiums and punctums when what should an innocent turn of the page reveal but a cartoon penis pasted to the page with a yellow post-it note.  "a cartoon penis?" you might find yourself asking rather dumbfoundedly; yes a cartoon penis.  it provided me with such a genuinely heartfelt laugh from the bottom of my belly.  you see, in the rarified world of hedge funds - from which i was cast in the dying days of 2008 - childlike, base humor was more often than not the lingua franca amongst overpaid and unhappy peons, such that we were.  the penis depicted above would most likely have found its way into the pages of my book via one of several colleagues who, working late into the night in London whilst covering the US markets, took advantage of my momentary departure from the desk and hastily left me the usual surprise for such lapses in judgement: a penis.  in fact, i can go one step further and lay claim to knowing the exact culprit's identity based on the curve of the shaft and the crudeness of the urethra.  when one has drawn hundreds if not thousands of such appendicular caricatures the artist's style becomes no less personal, and therefore incriminating, than a fingerprint.  my naming of names at this point would obviously serve no purpose so i'll leave it at that.  as a funny and related side-note, however, there was another colleague (a very polite and kind man - never one to lower himself to the point of drawing cartoon appendages) who was once upon a time shopping for a new TV with his wife at John Lewis.  when this unfortunate soul went to pay for his new TV the clerk at the cash register handed him back his credit card with an odd look on his face: "Sir, your signature doesn't appear to match that on your card."  what do you suppose had replaced his name on the signature strip of the credit card?  a cartoon penis of course.  aren't you glad the world's finances are in the hands of such accomplished practical jokesters?