Across Difficult Country

" The Doldrums reasserting themselves ...The competitors about to enter the Doldrums or currently tackling them will be experiencing Doldrums..."

Thousands of plumed warriors with spears and blunderbusses hunted elephants, hippos and buffaloes in the bush to provide a fitting repast for the independence day feasting. Along Northern Rhodesia's Congo border, Bemba tribesmen blasted homemade, muzzle-loading guns into the night. In Lusaka, the capital, representatives from more than 60 nations gathered to watch the lighting of a 6-ft. freedom flame marking the rechristening of Northern Rhodesia as Zambia and its proclamation as an independent republic within the British Commonwealth. So it was in the last days of the month of October in the year 1964 in Zambia. But as millions celebrated independence, not everyone was happy : During the independence festivities only one noted Zambian failed to share in all the harmony. He is Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, a grade-school science teacher and the director of Zambia's National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy, who claimed the goings-on interfered with his space program...

A wooly man-ape some liken to a Bigfoot has escaped from Whitby and now roams Epping Forest , frightening and sodomizing strollers and campers, in some instances consensually. Asked about the Bigfootesque beast dull-witted park keeper Ian Greer explained, “ Sometimes we get deer but there are no bears around here .” Now do you understand why I warn about Whitby?

The narrower the sphere of action proper to an idea, the more disturbing will its influence be if the idea is forcibly applied to the totality of life. Fancy a frenzied vegetarian insistent upon surveying the whole world from the viewpoint of his culinary dogmas: in art, he would censure all paintings but vegetal landscapes; as for the national economy, he would be strongly agrarian; in religion, he would bow to no gods but the archaic harvest-deities; for clothing, he would tolerate only hemp, flax, or matweed; and as a philosopher, he might insist on the teaching of a transcendent botany. Yet no less absurd is the man who, like many today, stands before us proclaiming, “Above all else, I am a democrat!”  - Jose Ortega y Gasset, " Morbid Democracy ".

My ongoing research into the Unidentified Flying Haystack phenomenon has uncovered an episode of identified flying haystacks that took place 106 years ago: FLYING HAYSTACKS. Extraordinary Aerial Activity of Fodder in England. An extraordinary phenomenon was witnessed at Chester one Sunday afternoon. About 2:15 o'clock a large quantity of hay passed over the city at an altitude of about 300 feet, and traveling with great rapidity. Portions of the hay fell in various parts of the town. It is thin and short, and probably has been grown on the Welsh hills, from which direction it came. The phenomenon must have been caused by a powerful whirlwind… The alarming tendency toward aerial flights which stolid British haystocks are developing has spread to Devonshire. In this particular case, it is true, it was only half a haystack which got entangled in a miniature whirlwind...[ Cont .]

Weak drinks and manic smiles at a local party celebrating the greatest event in human history. A congressman takes the stage to announce President Obongo will “implement a green energy revolution” on his first day in office, but he doesn’t say how. Maybe the secret of Barry’s “lost” Columbia years is he was inventing cold fusion in his apartment? A party apparatchik follows. He says the election means, “All of us have to give up our cynicism,” and I think I might punch him in the face. I’ve been meticulously cultivating my cynicism for years. It’s like an exquisite bonsai tree, and I’m not throwing it away now, when it’s needed most. Now stop. Barry time! Everyone turns to the flat screens and no one says a word while BO speechifies - except for your correspondent, who desperately needs another drink. “Can we get a proper pour this time?” One sip reveals that no, no we can’t.