Kate of Late

Open your ears to salmonchanted chit-chat

ITEM: British Columbia’s sockeye salmon stocks are so depleted that some local fish stores are turning to Russia for their salmon supply.

SCENE: In a Russian sea, IVAN and BORIS, two mature sockeye salmon, are slowly wending their way from one cave to another.

IVAN: Psst! Hey, Boris!

BORIS: Vat, Ivan, vat? Don’t vake me! I dreaming about spawning, here.

IVAN: Don’t bother vith such dreamings any more, Boris!

BORIS: Vat you mean, my friend? I looking forvard to sex my whole life! What else salmon thinking about? Spawning, eating, spawning, eating, spawning. Maybe sleeping a little. Playing hide-and-seek in seaveeds.

IVAN: No use, Boris. This vat I’m telling you. You fertilizing eggs, bringing babies to life, expecting they vill have chance you had, to growing up in dark and mighty Caspian Sea, so cold, so rough, so beautiful. Maybe vone day your sons and daughters vill live long enough to swim up glorious Russian river and make new babies. Is your dream?

BORIS: Of course, Ivan! Is every salmon’s dream!

IVAN: Correction, my friend – is every Russian salmon’s dream. Other salmon existing, you know!

BORIS: Nyet, Ivan! Only Russian salmon! The rest of the vorld – smelts. Maybe one or two sardine. A few herring, yech. In Russia, vorld’s greatest fish – salmon, like you and me, and sturgeon. Incidentally, I hating those guys. So ugly. But sturgeon girls – eggy as hell! Anyvay, you try to tell me octopus from Mediterranean, puny Atlantic codfish, pitiful flat sole – you try to tell me these losers compete vith us? ! You pulling my tail!

IVAN: Boris, cod and sole and octopus not competing vith us. Vest coast sockeye salmon competing vith us! They hiding and nobody finding them no more! So now the peoples coming over here to get us!

BORIS: Ivan, you crazy fin-ster, what vest coast you thinking about?

IVAN: Boris, I mean vest coast of Canada!

BORIS: Va-a-a-a-a-a-t?!

IVAN: Canada! You know, huge country, almost big as Russia, cold like Russia, and full of Ukrainians like Russia, but also stupid fruity vodka cocktails, not like Russia. Vestern Canada! Over Atlantic sea, then overland by train – very, very boring train ride like in Russia – all way to Pacific. That’s vere sockeye salmon all hiding! Nobody finding them!

BORIS: Ach, Ivan, vat have to do with us? I don’t believe you in first place. Ve are only salmon in vorld: Mighty Russian salmon. Canadian “salmon” probably just big, pink fish. Maybe is something to do vith Gay Pride Veek. You telling me Russian salmon svim over from Russia to Canada, maybe setting up dachas there for summertime?

IVAN: Boris, I telling you, sockeye salmon born in Canada! Not so good, maybe – you and I know truth of matter – but they think they good. They sick of being fishinged and so they hiding. And Canadian peoples vant to eat them but they not finding them. So they coming to Russia to get us!

BORIS: Ivan, this should making Vorld Var Three! Ve can’t let Canadians coming over here and stealing us because they running out of pink fish. Vat kind of vorld this is?

IVAN: Boris, do I need telling you vat kind of vorld? Russian magazine Secrets of Stars coming out last veek, all about virility and masculinity of Vladimir Putin -- ‘Virile Vampire!’

FISH both laugh uproariously, sending bubbles upward.

BORIS (shaking off hysterical tears): But, Ivan, we fight Canadians if they coming and taking us away. Da? Remember, Russian salmon are not chicken of sea!

IVAN: Da! Russian salmon lions of sea!

BORIS: Right, comrade! Reminding me, a couple friends just giving lives for Putin. Sergei? Fyodor? They getting smokinged and servinged on blini for Putin family bowling night.

IVAN: Fools!

BORIS: They vere old and impotent. No good accordioning. Bad polkaing. But funny guys. I missing them. I tell you story about Sergei ---

IVAN: Hey, Boris! Vat is huge rope thing hitting surface of vater?

BORIS: One with red and vite plastic flags hanging from it?

IVAN: Da! Should ve svimming up and see vat is going on?

BORIS: I smelling dinner coming from it, old chum.

IVAN: Mmm… me, too. Also, tempting odour of vodka from above vater, Da?

BORIS: Da! Maybe open vodka bottle bobbing on surface of sea! I hearing of this, never seeing it.

IVAN: Dare to dream, Boris!

FISH laugh heartily as they swim toward the surface. A huge net scoops them up and hauls them out of the water.

BORIS (flopping): Vat the heck?

IVAN (flopping): Ve caught in net, for Canadian hosers, Boris! You see?

BORIS (fearfully): No spawning for me! I vaste my whole life.  (He sobs.) Vat vill happen next, Ivan?

IVAN: Fishermen vill torturing us for information about vere Canadian salmon are hiding. Then, if ve do not tell vat ve know, ve vill be killinged, frozeninged, and shippinged to British Columbia.

BORIS (crying): Then vat, Ivan?

IVAN: Then ve will be cookinged and servinged to out-of-towners on Canada Day.

BORIS (curiously): How, Ivan?

IVAN: Maybe poachinged vith butter and dill, maybe grillinged vith sundried tomato vinaigrette. Maybe turninged into burgers, can you believe? Servinged vith tartar sauce. Mongolian Tartars were invading Russia in 13^th century, Boris – this “Tartar” sauce like salt in vound. Canadians, Mongolians, what is difference?

BORIS (bitterly): Is travesty, Ivan.

IVAN: Da, Boris. Vorst thing of all?

BORIS (gasping for air): Vat, Ivan, vat?

IVAN (with final few gasps): Vest Coasters pretending Russian salmon belonging in 100-mile diet.

IVAN expires. BORIS flops on top of IVAN and breathes his last.

 

Translation of Russian salmon dialogue provided by Olga Anatevka.

 

 

 

 

 

English Police Wave the Flag for Fairness

POLICE in Derbyshire, England have come up with radical ways to combat crime after the force’s chief constable refused to release the photos of two escaped murderers, claiming it might breach their human rights.

Trust the increasingly careful English -- one school in England recently banned real, knotted ties in favour of clip-ons, citing safety concerns -- to find the means to fight crime politely.

Derbyshire isn’t alone in its dedication to the rights of lawbreakers. Suffolk police recently warned local citizens against the impending discharge of three drug-addicted career criminals. All three were expected to re-offend; police nevertheless withheld their names, photographs and ages for fear of intruding on their privacy.

It is the Derbyshire force, however, that plans to lead the world in Inoffensive Policing Tactics (IPT). Yours truly was first on the scene to record what is sure to be groundbreaking news, announced during a cream tea over quiet chamber music performed by an accomplished quartet of recidivist shoplifters.

Spokesperson Jeremy Calhoun unveiled the new program. First on the Derbyshire police force agenda: recruiting blind detectives.

“There’s no reason in this day and age for crimes to be solved using visual clues, which are pejorative,” Calhoun told a small group of mostly English journalists, who nodded their approval. “How does the appearance of a suspect tell us anything about whether he was responsible for a particular transgression?”

Blind police detectives will use “hunches,” “funny feelings” and their “Spidey sense,” if any, to track down suspects in crimes, Calhoun explained. If successful, the detectives will ask the alleged criminals to drive them back to the station, as blind residents of Derbyshire cannot yet legally drive. When they arrive at the quaint stone cottage headquarters, after a nice cup of tea and a chat, the police will formally make the arrest. (Licorice strings will be used to lash wrists together in lieu of handcuffs as some English criminals are allergic to non-precious metals.)

The only thing the blind detectives will not be able to do, said Calhoun, is “throw the book” at a suspect, “because they’ll probably miss.”

Next on the list of changes is the role of police dogs on the Derbyshire force. Calhoun has his regrets about that.

“The great thing about our four-footed colleagues is they don’t even see colour,” he said. “That means they aren’t racists. Also, every situation looks like a different shade of grey to them, and those of us in the business of crime and punishment know that’s the reality.

“Unfortunately, dogs have their own prejudices, which include putting excessive emphasis on scent,” Calhoun continued. “They have a tendency to equate the smell of blood on a person’s hands and clothes, for instance, with their commission of some sort of grisly crime. We don’t feel it’s acceptable any more to jump to that kind of conclusion. Maybe the person is just inept at his job as a butcher. Maybe he was hit with a nasty nosebleed while casually hiding out there at midnight on the moors. As a result of their hair-trigger noses, our tracking dogs are being moved from crime detection into management. Luckily, they’re quite chuffed about it.”

Collecting DNA evidence is also on its way out in Derbyshire, despite its popularity elsewhere in the world.

“The way a person’s cells happen to stack up is no indication of his or her true character,” Calhoun said sternly to reporters as they washed down their scones with more Earl Grey. “The fact that a person’s DNA is splashed all over both the victim and the crime scene may be mere coincidence. A thousand years ago there was no such thing as DNA. That ought to tell you something.”

“So how will the Derbyshire police collar murderers in future?” one member of the group of journalists asked. It’s simple, said Calhoun -- they won’t.

“We feel the most respectful way to fight crime is not to fight at all,” he explained. “From now on, those who have committed a violent offense will be invited to turn themselves in -- not by an aggressive ‘warrant,’ but simply by a large ad placed weekly in local newspapers. We’ll begin with a friendly hello, then ask, for instance, ‘Did you perchance get overcome with jealous rage last Thursday and take a machete or other sharpened scythe to your ex, the footballer, and his barmaid sweetie? If so, drop by for a word. Don’t waste time and energy stewing in your bilious juices -- we have ways to help you work off your debt to society.’ When they do come in, they’ll be delighted to find out they’ve got a new six-week job as a prison spa supervisor or some such, and that’s only if the judge wants to be nasty. Otherwise, they’ll be given a mild scolding and sent on their merry way. Everybody makes mistakes, don’t they?”

Area convicts have applauded the Derbyshire force’s progressive moves. Notorious killer Jimmy “The Buzz-saw” MacLeish made the rounds at the news conference, wolfing down sandwiches and lacing his tea with “vitamins” from his personal flask. “It’s about time we wuz treated fairly, i’nt it?” he said in an affable tone. “I been doin’ stir at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for years without so much as a crumb of kindness thrown me way. It’s nice to see a little progress finally made in the world of criminal justice. ”

In recent weeks, MacLeish and several of his jailhouse cronies have been acting as advisors to the police. Among their recommendations for criminal sentences is one that MacLeish has pioneered himself.

“Saturdays, I’m a bikini inspector in Brighton,” said the deeply tanned multiple murderer. “I take the role that seriously. Every weekend I’m there makin’ sure they’ve got a proper fit, like, and that people who shouldn’t be wearing ’em, aren’t.”

“Quite right,” said Calhoun, who often tags along with MacLeish to see how it’s done. “We’re not saying that visuals aren’t important -- just that they are completely irrelevant to solving crime.”

A special invitation from Terror Times

SUBMISSION TO: Terror Times, the official Al Qaeda henchmen newsletter
FROM: Lexi Donnelly, Employee Number 6009
DATE: Fall, 2007
TOPIC: Introductory column from our new party planner

Lighten Up!
with Lexi Donnelly

Hola!

Allow me to introduce myself: I am Mr. bin Laden’s new party planner, Lexi! He has brought me in to raise Al Qaeda henchmen spirits and help you connect with each other. I’ll do that through festive gatherings I’ll organize at secret locations all over the world, announcing them in this internal newsletter. As Mr. bin Laden says, “Above all, terrorism should be fun!”

To get the partying started, Mr. bin Laden asks that, in your future correspondence with him, you dot the “i” in “bin” with a happy face. “For what is a smile but a frown turned upside down?” he sagely asked me the other week, and I’d never heard it put quite so perfectly. No wonder you all revere him and do his bidding, no matter how nefarious. Ha ha!

Anyhoo, I’m old pals with Osama, as I call him when we’re face-to-veil. We met at Jeddah University, where I first noticed him through binoculars at a frosh week sock hop, leading the all-male conga line. He was a party animal back then -- he took charge of recruitment for one of the harder-to-fill fraternities and did a fabulous job. At graduation, he was headed into his family’s construction business and I was just taking on the role of comptroller at Enron. We joked at the time, yelling from opposite ends of an enormous room, that someday our paths might cross again.

Flash forward to early 2007. I had found myself ready for a career switch after my decade of keeping Hollinger International on the straight and narrow when I saw Osama’s ad online, on Craigslist.

I thought you’d get a kick out of hearing about my first encounter with our mutual boss last week. We met poolside at the Dubai Hilton. He wore sunglasses and a baseball cap reading “Death to Whoever” over his turban to ensure that he would not be recognized. As you know, he is one of the world’s most wanted men, and not in the George Clooney way. (I wore a floor-length black sheath with my eyes showing, but you probably guessed that already! Ha!)

Osama began our conversation by saying that morale at Al Qaeda was at an all-time low. “I tell my henchmen they will receive their rewards in paradise, but this is not enough for some of them, especially the Gen-Xers,” he told me morosely over a cup of tea. “They complain of the dangers in the work and say their lunch and coffee breaks are ‘abbreviated.’”

“Osama, baby, look at yourself!” I advised him. “Seriously. Why the long face? How do you expect to lighten things up around here when everything with you is doom, gloom, and paradise later? Why no paradise now?”

“That’s not how we operate,” he said sternly.

So I pushed him in the water, and we were off to the races! He started to guffaw, the ball cap floated away, and he could barely hoist himself out of the pool with the weight of his sodden robe. “Ah! Zany hijinks! I had forgotten they still existed in this world gone mad,” he said, climbing up the ladder, wheezing with laughter.

“You know, if you weren’t so uptight, you could have pulled me into the pool with you,” I told him a bit flirtatiously, though I knew he had multiple wives. For half a second, I thought he’d do it. But then he remembered the same water would have touched both of our flesh, or something like that, and politely excused himself to change robes. Half an hour and many solo cups of tea later, he reemerged with several grim-looking bodyguards who now stood between him and the pool.

“Where were we?” he asked pleasantly. “Oh, yes, how to inflame the spirits of my people so they will re-dedicate themselves to my mighty works.”

“What about a good old-fashioned hootnanny?” I asked. I never really run out of ideas.

“Men and women singing together?” he asked, his brow furrowing. One of the bodyguards began ostentatiously polishing a machete.

“No? How ’bout a rodeo?” I offered, picturing the men on one side and the women on the other side of an arena.

“Men interacting with cloven-hoofed animals?” Osama asked, his brow furrowing even deeper. I worried for him -- wrinkles were clearly in his future.

“What would you say to a Mexican fiesta, with piñatas resembling hated world leaders?” I proposed.

“Now you’re talking,” said Osama. “For party favours, automatic weapons that the guests can use to burst the piñatas!”

In my experience, weapons and morale-boosting parties don’t mix, as I remember telling Lady Barbara Amiel Black when she showed up in a dangerously pointy bustier for one Hollinger shindig. So I offered an alternative.

“I was thinking of something more cheerful and upbeat -- a little dancing, a little spicy food, sombreros, a mariachi band. Kids running around stoning chickens, cackling maniacally. Maybe we could even have a contest to see who has the best maniacal cackle!”

“I like it,” said Osama, trying out his own madman’s chuckle, which needed work.
So that’s what we’ve come up with -- the first of many prospective company parties. Keep watching this space for more!

Here are the gory -- or should I say glory? Ha ha! -- details.

You and your family (females and infidels excepted) are commanded to congregate in Cave 2060, You-Know-Where, on Sunday, April 1, 2008 at 11:30 a.m. for a Mexican fiesta, Al Qaeda style. Expect fiery tacos, soothing guacamole and displays of machismo such as eating the tequila worm without, of course, touching any tequila. Bring a change of robe as we’ll be importing a small ocean and you could get wet.

No need to reply. We know you’ll show. Of course I will not be there, but rest assured, a good time will be had by Al … Qaeda! Ha!