"I want these rumors cleared up Right Now!" The guy was Kruschev, banging his hand on the table like a black Russian shoe. The air was wringing tension and recruits squirmed recklessly, eager to disappear. "Anyone of you who is caught bringing this supposed truth to light will be court-marshaled, in the worst possible way!" "That's bad...real bad," one whispered to another. "I've seen that place they send you end of the fucking earth land mines ten meters off the track, malaria nothing stops, worms that bite, snakes..." The listener shuddered. "It'll be a lot worse than getting AIDS, believe me!" Dis-missed! He never said it, but nobody missed its cue. The N.U. Italian sector lingered at the place warm soft drinks were served, standing out with neatly manicured hair where many thought Coke-a-Cola an unheard-of luxury. "Mistr, I need..." "Yea kid, who doesn't." He was going to ask the lad if he had a sister, then thought better of it. Instead, he handed the inch of brown, sticky liquid to eyes pleading love. No comment. Greedily, the boy sicked his tongue to the bottle's hole, sucking it dry. "We've got to watch out." One said to another. "They're onto us in a very big way." "Look, these people have no disposable income, their country's been torn by war, families have been split up, disease is rampant, what do you expect? The grace of god doesn't fill bellies these days; in older times maybe, but now the fish have all been pulled from that sea." The older man spat for emphasis, not knowing how his act disfigured his message. "They will be fed, and we will clothe them. It's the illness that's the problem." "Fed? HA! Those trucks are getting as far as the pirates who steal them, bribing the drivers or hauling out those too noble to stoop before a big-bored machine gun. Clothes? You're joking of course." "Clothes? What makes you so high and mighty? Mr. African know-it-all we should call you. We've collected tons of clothing overseas for shipments all over Africa." "Oh, I know all about your programs, pumping dollars into shirt pockets thieves ruffle through...do you know why? Customs demands an excise tax nobody has the money to pay, so your precious container cargoes sit collecting dock fees until they're confiscated. You know what happens then don't you?" "No, you're making this up. Our missions deploy lots of those clothes all around the countryside!" His fettle was up. "Sure they do. And my grandmother pushes up pink daisies instead of red ones. They take your bloody clothes, remove all their precious literature and money, then sell them on the open market. What your people get they've either bought, or been given to clear the runway for more. Your own churches sell the viable stuff, just to pay the extorted fees." "I don't believe you." "Then believe this..." That German was as angry as anyone you'd ever want to meet. Thirty five years he's been in Africa's darkest states, and still uses "Boon" as a word extolling devil, as a vermin needing extermination. He's run out of pot... he's always the worst when his pot's gone. "You fuckin' Americans...who do you think you are coming here, calling us all colonials? Your aid agencies keep these people alive when there's too many of them already. Let 'em die, I say. They got nothing to do." "They're killing all the animals, pushin' their lousy animal-mud huts into the last great wilderness, slaying their friggin' peers for a few lousy bucks to buy a walkman... let em die. You're making this place a shithole, you and all your holy money." "He sent your precious aid worker back home. Oh, you didn't know that, did you? What else don't you know Mr. director? I shudder to think." Tad had to rip into somebody. Everything had gotten him down that day. The phone broke, the Land Rover didn't start, Buicks and Mercedes passed him by the jillion all burning government gas... who paid those desk jockies? Aid agencies greasing palms; government snafus paying the payees nobody seems to remember; books lost; people starving; schools desperate for books; no doctors? Who's fault is that? Fucking government red tapes' six miles long just to wipe your national ass when it's in everyone's best interest. He got like this when his Land Rover was stuck. "Your German angel hates everyone who isn't a native resident, and I mean native. He considers all humans inferior, and not worth saving. You don't know anything, because he directs what you get to see." "Drive me out there. I want to speak with him." "You think I'm your chauffeur? Take one of your own-damned trucks." "Where are they?" "Didn't you know that either? They're all broken, smashed, neglected, or missing." he was downright vindictive now. "I'm sorry Mr. director if nobody's told you. You see, bad news is never very popular with you superiors, so here in Africa nobody bothers to relay it." The man was speechless. He hadn't come into contact with much of anything but requisitions for more materials. As far as he was concerned... At the boarder cars lined up for few spaces, waiting their turn to vie for a limited number of chances to escape a black tide the elections wanted to be. The less courageous would do their voting from official outcountry booths the white contingency feared would send their pride's way elsewhere. With them, Rand, Dollars and Marks poised... for liberation... While upstyle homes sported boards unseen pounded into window frames protecting against? Their black servants watched the houses, laughing inwardly. "A vacation? Yes boss." Nice how school went out to facilitate you. Who chose the dates? (The election, I meant.) Some brought guns concealed in tire wells, broken down, hidden to eyes... Can you hear the snap of their recoil? Mothers used to pull their children from swimming pools when a black child entered. Mirth in eyes of those who knew those same hands gave the child to suckle black breasts. (Oh, but their milk was white!) Their hands are white too. What does that mean? Everyone has wondered. (Like ribs from Adam, they are.) Breasts unsuckled, don't sag so much. (That never stopped no one from looking at National Geographics in those old, non-Playboy days.) Where to go? The worst is upon us. Armageddon, Religion of the world calls card, leads its disciples into the forty-day desert, makes it look West, then East... the promised land... Eyes spill contents on lands still fought for. Cheap. Available. This is the promise: Your dollars rule; there is no currency that doesn't hold a whip. (Double negative.) "This country's a god-forsaken disaster," the German man spoke. People used to call him German, just to piss him off. "The Nazi thinks he's half human, half tiger." "That's right! I don't have to get my hard one on blasting your fucking game with a .303" "As if you're not a hunter. Fucking hypocrite." They loved to blow each other out of the water. What else is there to do in the bush? "Drink tea and whine." Someone else would say. "Do you know how much I had to pay for a bleedin' wiper rubber the other day?" "How much?" Tad would inevitably ask. "Ninety bucks." "You're joking!" What followed was sherry with raspberry cordial and a small run production lecture from Mr. Expat Kiwi, who constantly bragged about antique cars plying New Zealand's roads because need married wisdom, where lack and ingenuity prevailed. "That's what it used to be like here." but it never was, in his life. "They uset'a eat the stuff!" he pleaded. "No you twit, they never ate yellow meal, they ate white!" The deputy in charge of the Northeast station grimaced. "It's food, I don't see what the problem is." "Famine relief doesn't mean throwing sushi at people who've never eaten rice before. Just because the U.S. had a surplus of a certain kind of grain doesn't mean it will work out here." The naked truth was the sorghum and millet, the yellow meal and red grains, they didn't make good beer. Protocol had it the old men got their native brew, then and only then, did the kids get fed. "I don't see what the problem is. Corn is corn!" No, yellow corn is animal feed. 'Boss, you can't use that! It's dog food!' "That's what he said. I even gave him a piece of cornbread afterwards, and he liked it." "That's not the half of it. They did studies on the regular South African Sorghum." "The red stuff?" "Yah. It produced five times the yield of the local crop. Grew like the blazes up here. So what do you think became of it?" "Lemme guess. The Africans only wanted white bread." "Close. They banned it, 'cause seed came from South Africa." "Makes sense. So the Yanks send in their yellow maize..." "And it sits around." "Now you've got it! You know what my boy said about that hot corn bread? He thought I was joking him. He said, 'Nah boss, this too good for yellow sack. You make with white, and butter, right boss?'" "Africans. They'd starve quite happily, eating that tasteless white fluff going for bakery bread." The whites were sure the blacks were crazy. People always see things reflexively. A white woman relief worker used to dress in native garb, go barefoot, and feed her stomach-strapped son with a hanging white breast. If that wasn't enough, she carried water-top her head like any self-respecting African shiela knows to do. The villagers finally called her German high commission. "Get her out'a ere. She's crazy." They know the whites. Whites don't do those things. "We gave them $2,500 to start a bakery, all the machines and instructions, turned 'em loose, an two months later nothin's happenin'. Seems tay-got to-fightin' 'bout whose turn it was to bake, then when they did bake it, ta-stuff burnt. Nobody wanted black'd bread, so tay raised chickens-n-der instead." "How'd that go?" "Yu can imagin. Tay'd git to fightin-bout whose turn it was ta-tend dem. 'It's your turn yesterday!' 'No, it's yours!' And tay-all died from da-lack o-water. T' chief took the generator for his U.N. fridge to keep his Coka-Cola cold." "Who'd that come from?" "Who knows? It was one-o-dem vaccine jobs for t'-hospital." Funniest fucking thing, that spankin' new fridge in a crude mud hut. "They got der prioritees straight. Got the Reel Thing now, 'steada-nasty-old shots." "Look, I don't think that was brilliant idea." "Who asked ya? We got the pussy, didn't we?" "Yea, but, what if people start asking questions..." "So? How're they gonna I.D. us? Whitie all looks the same." "We're not white." "Close enough, dumbo. You think they discriminate? You're only tanner. two-thre A man who'd once commanded troops in old-time Rhodesia reminisced. If you look up reminiscing in the dictionary, it tells you something about indulging. It's an interesting way to put painful memories in their place. "I was in Japan right after they dropped the bomb. So crazy, I was, crying my eyes out for missing all the blood. Nuts. They put me in charge of a whole air base and cut out. Can you imagine? Seventeen years old, oodles of cash, bossing people around... I had more Geisha girls to rub my back an' tease my cock... I'll tell you, those were some kind'a days." His audience, ten years younger, ate his words as unbleached grain. "I was playing with my first train sets as you blasted Gooks. They were older ones of course. You know the black plastic bake-o-lite steam engines that smoked? I remember putting in those little smoke tablets and breathing it in. I closed my eyes and imagined." "Imagined you were somewhere else?" He used to do that when his father beat him. Drunk. No reasons a child understood. He barely knew he did it, smelling vapors and all. The most interesting thing he remembered, was picking up the wrong uniform in a whorehouse locker. "There 'as this clipping in the pocket, an ad from the newspaper. I thought: How'd this get here? Without even considerin' I might be wearin' the wrong-damm stripes. Well I got home and laughed, promoted an' all, then called that number." It was circled. "Made it reel easy." Changed his fucking life. "Never did give that uniform back. Just saved it, with that scrap tucked in the pocket. Reminiscin', ya- know?" Rye wouldn't thank him one day. Saving things can be dangerous. They told the school children not to save live shells. (But they did, anyway.) There's no difference in tears a mother sheds for a child no aid worker got to save to the aid worker who couldn't save the child. "The radio just said the government is outraged." Did they shed tears? "Are you kidding? They're pissed outright." They lost face. Without face, where are tears to go? "Doctors, aid workers, mine sweepers and food all lies in wait for a governmental dictate that helping its own citizens is kosher." Crazy. Can you believe it? "I'll tell you their problem. They've lost control of everything. They need the first world to change their nappies cause everything smells like shit." They don't like that much. "Sure don't, but they need it. The only power they exert is holding up the very lifeblood of their people's need." Then getting angry, when they're accused of demolishing the system that sold them the problem and wants to come in with the fix. Persons drained southwards, a giant plug was pulled, sucking academics to apartheid's demise. Diamonds, gold and chromium dreams... Landlocked slaves quaked, felt their countries roll drought... caves Freudian came Demonic; people died diseases abolished as if all men were created equal. Heads rocked disapproval of infanticide food rotting in trucks, while portless economies sagged and disappeared into abyss. Whites pouring in to do-good wring their hands as first-second world economies slagged hard-crust crack-n-break. Medcare personnel watch helpless as needy children pause one breath from death, and expire for lack of a document. "We can't have you taking jobs from our people." There are no qualified people left. Exerting power, farting into windstorms. Stalemating. Rhino poachers stalk their prey. Horns, bones, aphrodisiac qualities had scared the tigers home. "One dude killed ten rhinos. Can you believe that?" They throw him in garlands, steel cufflinks clinking necessities with four children's wide-open mouths and middlemen's pay of pennies on hundreds of dollars. It's a conveyer belt. Six gone, one caught. One space open, six to fill it. Is a nurse's tears any different than the mother's? Any different than the poacher's? And what of theirs: the game wardens'? Theirs is disappointment of job not done. Life is quitting what you love. The collective guilt of having so much drives people over their edge. They push front-line lemmings ov'r the first world boundary, shuffling forwards to have their looks. Some go to service Putting notions in people's heads. Black to white, back again... They fired up the engine to run its projector, no muffler, wrap it in palm leaves, blast reality on a cut-glass screen. Natives gawk at Little Red Riding Hood's great big adventure... The wolf! The wolf! Screams of warning, "Take the mechanism seriously; forget it's there." Learning too well six natives rush the screen Hacking it to bits. Brand-spanking new. "Why'd you do it?" They tried to save Miss Riding hood from the wolf's Big Bad. * Step one: Indoctrination of an 800 BC. culture in one Bell and Howell moment. * Step two: Failure of step one. * Backup plan: Medicine to Religion, tools-food, and water. Progressing normally. * Generator: Modern culture. Last reported stolen. Rye Richtor fingered his newspaper scrap gently, passing it back and forth, thumb and fore licking its meaning as Scrooge's original-earned copper (boath faceless and green from gloating.) "I could tell him now. I wonder what the old boy would think?" He was clearly unsure of himself. It wore his facade poorly. Smiles of servants bashed his eyes, uniformed, with hate lingering on their lips... "He won't like it. Not one little bit." Rhino poacher gunned down in Mozambique territory. He had this clipping in a tattered shirt. The shirt was donated, we believe, from a newspaper man's estate, from the Church of Christ Cleanup Crew deathbed default, "Where's your will, Si?" "Take it all, Sean, for your church, you know?" God is pleased at the last-minute offering. Those starving Africans will wear your history well. They moved in quickly, those agencies. The Africans hardly knew what hit them. Wine-n-dine parties promised everything three months running and church spires rang wishes' goodwill for all might be heard as supposition your piece of the apple pie might be largest, bribing the right people, at the right beleaguered time. The war for the territories raged when the war for independence slackened. Thirty churches fought for redemption no other land could offer. Where else, such heathens? Sean had been there. He'd seen the international relief funds pour alcohol into high explosive. There'd never been such mayhem of toasters, Unimogs, and cash flowing from unknown sources. It'd happened before. Beads and whiskey opened the Wild West, preventing as many wars as they started. Two-for-three, yessir. That's where Sean Pfen met the junior officer he'd met ten years backwards, counseling lineage he'd yet to explain his way out of. "Tell me, Richard, why do you want to kill yourself?" "I've been evil. I've killed other men. The bible knows you shouldn't kill your fellow men. " "All men are created equally, aren't they reverend? Why do we kill men here...?" In the name of glory, Sean? He didn't know. He still didn't know. Look at all the corpses rotting to skin and bone. Why was this ordained? (He didn't understand why they still had to walk and smile God's jurisdiction for their death.) "Hey, didn't I know you in Nam?" Ah Richard, it's the end of a happy acquaintance, ma' boy. The hunter pulled his trigger for fun only after bellies were fed. He'd been obsessed with guns since the never ending war watching people die with little lead chunks and grisly screams of pain. He was master now of giant bemoth beasts skinning their accouterments as the rains fell, washing blood to grass. To Chimanimani they tracked him, did same. Three-Four "Knew him? Sure did. I know him in fact. More than once I've seen the inside of his house, upside down on native beer." "Shoul'a ask'd him if iter corn, or that sweet-stringent fruit tay'll bury ta' make-ya blind." Leaf Lindercorf wanted nothing more to do with this unsavory character. He didn't care if this bloke was a highway to eternal truth. He'd write his report and send it in. Case closed. Si Schlindler died on the cross of his own making. A down-home Arkansas man gone awry, he levied one version of reading truth upon an unsuspecting public. Except once. Si had a couple of lives and one lived in Africa. A thick, white, pantomime clouded their vision. How did they know screen from actors? Cats eat when they're hungry, flee their fears, not tomorrow, but their day of happening. Some face problems, others hack them to bits. Whites did it slowly. Blacks acted. They watched the cats. Actors are shot when they breech party line. How do you compromise poison? Water it down. Then, you just may live to see the problem kill you. Nthatl, life member of Queer Nation, signed his name in toothpaste on the grimy mirror. "9:00 - suck U here" It was sort of a joke, but he'd be there anyway. Black cock was the best. He liked its contrast, spitting white goo. Reflection. He never quite got it, looking through those words all ultra-brite white. From the park he walked slowly on South African sidewalks, gutting color from banana's plastic plates teeming with red carpets of three-by-three tomatoes, yams and yellow-green grapes. Ripe flesh walked everywhere. Party slogans hung ominously HOUSING'S A RIGHT, NOT A PRIVILEGE! Contra-poising arguments for seven years slammed boofing out of color. (His last, MaSimba, had left too early.) Bulletproof portholes sprouted M-16s in mechanized megaliths, girlie magazines punched your face with huge mazimbas, and white-right wannabees pursued racks of soldier-fortune large-barreled mayhem. It was home. Crazy as it was. "Elections. What are they voting for?" "Nobody's quite sure." "Revenge." "Perhaps." "Gun sales are up, they say." "Who's buying?" "And what's on second." "They want education. Is that so much to ask?" "What's 'education'? Who defines it?" "Those unhappy receivers of its blessings." "Task:" "What?" "Define definition." "You're way too philosophical today." Please ask me something else. "Thank you kindly." Armored 4WD vehicles compete with double decker busses for road space. People honk horns without knowing why. White, thick-mortared films of paint, sprayed from rollers dripping on passer-bys... The ceilings' dingy paint had to be repainted lest it blacken with age. He'd write: Thick white paint on dingy cement ceilings drips on passerbys. and look through his ego at it, dripping on passerbys. How much to call South Africa? Hair ironed straight Phone box stuck with psychic ads' Ultra-Hip stained glass Harleys on Rocky Street, where straws have curly-Q streamers, the waitress has a bee-hive, and cat eye glasses, the pepper's in designer shakers, sex drips from every look... Nothing's changed in twenty years. Nothing's changed in forty. Headlines read: LIBERATED WHITES STILL SERVED BY BLACKS And suddenly, it's the nineties. Shaved-head women rant and rave ideological gibberish, assuming the world snoops their backyards, while irradiated males listen apologetically, trying to incest their need to fuck their problems, imagining hair, permissiveness, mom. Coffee pours short in jittery morning nerves, ears are ringing violently from acid-head music screamed the night before. It's a giant, unregulated mess of ego... Nineteen year olds think they have the answers older people's wisdom led them to conclude didn't exist. He'd never bothered to look at Africa when he wasn't there. Except... That once. He'd written it under a ghost name one he was sure nobody would remember. Tad didn't; Rye did. ARTICLE : GENOCIDE or EUGENICISTS? On pill number four thousand six hundred and eighty, Nthatl remembered a dream he'd had seven years earlier. For a moment he lost track of himself, and the Paracetamol threatened his engulfment. 500 milligrams of placebo cureall pain rounded down to handcounted doses of twenty, bagged and flipped in the corner of their room, ziplocked for your protection, each expiration date bumped up two years from the two-year bump the wholesaler repackaged them for. Batches of 1000. Endless five-at-a-time clinks from that plastic counting tray - broken of course - mesmerizing... click, click. click. Time rolled round and round the clock, piles of individuals became collectives of seven, eight and nine. Counting stopped at size, mass, indifference... "I'd been counting eternity in little pills people had to take." The dream opened its floodgates and collected him. It happened so fast, the man didn't even know what hit him. He'd squeezed off a few rounds at the edge of Mozambique's border when Whump! It was definitely overkill. The boarder guard heard a shot and arrested the game warden sobbing over his half-brother's body. Leaf Lindercorf was called in to arraign the man. Puzzled, he met the enigma martial law was powerless to prosecute. "Why am I here?" "We need a foreigner to make this situation disappear." "How much will it cost?" "How much will the government pay?" Leaf was well-placed with the heads of Zimbabwe, or old White Rhodesia as some would say. A man wandered up to me with a deep gash above his forehead. What did you do? He was staggering; he held one shoe and a soda bottle. What did you think? I thought: I wish I had a cigarette to give him. Blood washed his face in its dry, crusty morsels. He'd been like that? Maybe forever. Were you afraid? Of what? Life. They were much more than brothers. Rye admired Tad right from the beginning, doting on his life as few older brothers do, expecting nothing for his allegiance. Rye couldn't seem to understand people looked to him for support. He was the front-runner, the first born...what did that have to do with anything? His parents were amateurs still, incapable of governing their own lives, let alone his own. Momma dying had been a blessing for Tad. He was jealous, in a way. Tad was fucked-up in his own kind of way. He was an impotent follower of rules, who only bucked systems with words. He was perceptive, and quick to right a wrong, but only in cases where self interest saw no serious threat. Rye was a doer. He was a cantankerous English Bobby who never joined the force. Routine for him vacillated between biting off his own nose, or the innocent noses of others, and creating positive environments no one else had the balls to undertake. There was one thing that scared him. His sexuality. Funny, an old salt being scared by sex. MaSimba changed that for good. Black boy good for something. "Mothers without sons are worse than nothing." That's what they're told, all over the world. "Kill the women offspring." What does that say about the woman herself? They're vehicles to destinations. Slam the door and throw the keys away. Rye's second mother died a silent death: One son was missing, the other one dead; rumor had it, Tokoloshe called "What?" Shona language. Someone knocked at her hut door. "Missus, we humbly need you to vote." "Vote?" The red-earth brick knew nothing of it. FEAR BEING "BEWITCHED" at polling booths By Anton Ferreira _____________________________ APART from 21 million registered voters, a host of weirder characters could play a role in South Africa's election this month from witches and spirits to evil, sex-mad dwarfs. "There's definitely a belief that the other side will bewitch polling booths." said Anthony Minaar, a researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council. Many of South Africa's Blacks, who will be voting for the first time in the elections from April 26 to 28, believe their lives are guided by the spirits of their ancestors. They believe witches can create and control zombies, and fear a malicious spirit known as the tokoloshe reputed to be sexually insatiable and often taking the form of a hairy dwarf. Raise beds Millions raise their beds on bricks so the tokoloshes can't get to them at night. Minaar said in an interview he had tried to complete a survey on how Black South African superstitions would affect the polls but had made little headway because of secrecy surrounding the issue. "I couldn't quantify it because people didn't want to talk about it," he said. "But some inyangas (traditional healers) said they had been approached for muti (medicine) for protection during the election." Minaar said some Blacks believed spirits could watch where they put their cross, leading to repercussions later, or could take control of their minds and make them vote for a party they did not support. The shape of polling booths could also be significant for Black voters tokoloshes lurk in corners so would not be able to hide in round booths. 'Cleansing' He said the major parties contesting Namibia's first free elections in 1990 had agreed to call in neutral inyangas from outside the country to hold public "cleansing" ceremonies of polling stations. "These inyangas were paid big money. The idea was that they would free the polling stations of any spells put on them and that it would be safe for everyone to vote," he said. But University of the Witwatersrand anthropologist Sakkie Niehaus said it would be a mistake to have traditional healers or sangomas spirit mediums at South Africa's polling stations. "I would be very skeptical because many Blacks are Christians and refuse to have anything to do with sangomas," he said. "Sangomas certainly do not enjoy the confidence of everyone. People might go to them when they're sick, but they wouldn't trust them at polling booths," he said. The head of the university's anthropology department, Professor Robert Thornton, said that in recent months witchcraft had reached epidemic proportions in parts of rural Transvaal. "People are getting killed, witches are being burned," he said. People whispered of vampire-like blood- suckers turning people into zombies or changing their blood into cash, he added. Brain muti As election fever mounts, there have been widespread reports from refugees in trouble areas of victims of political killing having their skulls cut open. "The brain is the strongest kind of muti," Minaar said. Increase There had been an increase in "muti" killings where the victims have parts of their bodies removed in 1993, he added. Many participants in the violence, in which 15,000 people have been killed in the last four years, used muti which they believed would deflect bullets, Minaar said. The perpetrators of last year's notorious Boipatong massacre, in which 45 people were slain, were said in court to have smeared themselves with muti to make themselves invincible before going on the rampage. "It's all tied up in the political violence. The elections are just another part of it," Minaar said. The Independent Electoral Commission, charged with ensuring the elections are free and fair, said it had received no reports of witchcraft being used to swing the results. --Sapa-Reuter Nthatly dropped the paper and shook his head. Break time was over. Today he would count Digoxin (once the buffered aspirin was finished). One doctor had a penchant for digitalis, having died of an overdose three centuries ago. He prescribed it regularly though no semblance of disorder ever called its name in plea. What doctor X needed was a witch doctor to scare the past's spirit from his body. No use. He's as blind as all the rest of them. Look-see. "Sure nuf, they caught up with me 'ventually. Had my uniform after all and the girls all knew me..." "What'd you do?" "Ah, that's another story." Trying to find the truth can't bring back the past. It dies each moment's death. Diaphanous skirts - thoughts of promiscuity dispelled Shadowy outlines of promise - Fantasy fulfilled only to be engendered once more. "Why would you want to dispel promiscuity?" "It's a poem, stupid, it's not supposed to make sense." "Kiwi Shakespeare has spoken! Listen everyone, his knighthood is next!" "Shaddup, Rye!" The weekly symposium of knighthood's United confederation of malt lovers didn't discriminate. Whiskey or beer, take your pick. "List'n, you know how much they wanted to tune up my Merc?" "We were talking about poetry, you German lout." "Fuck the poetry! I'll tell you - $5000." "Ooo-Wee! Five thousand zimmers for a Krautmobile!" "What'der-yu goin' to do, Hans?" "See you later!" he spat. "That guy's gonna have a heart seizure someday," Tad observed. "Leave him be. His old lady..." His old lady was a tight-pussy'd nineteen. "...said he's gotta quit the weed." "That's what he gets for marrying someone who should'a been his daughter." "Looks like that poetry's right on his mark," the Northeast debuté wailed. They all laughed at his expense, worrying underneath. Ref: #42520 Mon-to-Fri, The Times of Swaziland, Sunday, April 17th, 1994