February 1992
It was my agent, Hubert Bogart (no relation), calling from Winnipeg. "Six
rings, Spim. You're working on that damn ashtray again, aren't you?!" he
growled.
"Yeah. You're wife's birthday is coming up, and I kind of owe her something," I
shot back.
"I doubt it, Spim. If you had paid attention in our Canadian history classes,
you would have learned that, despite the worldwide infidelity rate of 45%, only
4% of Canadian women are unfaithful to their husbands, and it's usually because
some American got her drunk."
He was right. Fisty (a nickname he had earned in university for reasons that he
denies to this day) was always right.
"I got a hot scoop," he continued. "The annual frog jumping contest/Star Trek
Convention starts tomorrow here in Winnipeg and I want you to cover it. They're
holding it indoors this year, because all their butts stuck to the ice last year
-- the frogs, not the trekkies. Anyway, the Canadian Radical Activist Party
(CRAP) is threatening a boycott or possibly some terrorist activity because some
damn American is entering one of those Goliath frogs -- they even suspect
bionics. Grab your camera, your metal detector, your lucky pen and your derby
and get on the next flight to Winnipeg. And, hey, have you had a shower this
week? Get one!"
I was out the door in five minutes and hopped on to the next Burma Airways nonstop flight from Yellowknife to Winnipeg. The plane wouldn't turn over so the stewardesses got out and pushed, The captain popped it into second and the trusty Tupolev 134 was airborn in hours flat. No sooner had we reached our cruising altitude of 93 meters than the hairy Armenian in the seat behind me jumped up and yelled, "Take this plane to Tokyo, or, so help me, I'm going to eat this salami!" and with that he opened his single piece of carry-on suggage and produced the finest specimen of Basterma salami I had ever seen.
Naturally, the captain did as he said, and nine days later we touched down at
Narita Airport, my fellow passengers wishing that I had heeded my agent's shower
advice. The guy at customs asked me if I had anything to declare, and I said,
"Yeah. I once had two womyn at the same time!"
"I hear you, Buddy!" he chimed in reflectively.
Since we were on a hijacked flight, the security officers sent us through the metal detectors. When my turn came I said, "No thanks. I've already got one." I had kicked myself on the flight for not thinking of that line back in Yellowknife, but it probably would have been lost on those rednecks anyway. It didn't go over too well in Narita either.
I didn't have enough money to buy a return ticket to Canada, so I called Fisty who promised to have a telethon as soon as possible to raise the money. I checked into the capsule hotel next door to the Emperor's Palace and was trying to sleep, when I heard a bunch of hooplah outside. Apparently Bush was in Japan to buy a VCR or something and he was stopping in at the Emperor's pad for a bite. I'd heard the American economy was in a little trouble, so I tried to stop his limo to give him some advice. The bastard ran right over me, so I grabbed on to the underchassis and sneaked onto the palace grounds. When the Secret Service guy opened Bush's door, I saw at least a dozen Snickers wrappers and half of a chicken salad sandwich pour out of the car -- The guy doesn't even like brocoli, you expect him to eat raw fish?
As soon as the coast was clear, I went inside. I missed the press conference and arrived just in time to see all of the reporters filing out of the dining hall, so I dived under the head table to try to get a story. Apparently the mixture of Basterma salami and my own personal musk in concert wth a stomachful of Snickers and chicken salad was more than Bush could take, and withing minutes he was blowing chow. I grabbed my lucky pen and quickly sketched an artist's rendering on a napkin and darted out of the room to find a fax machine. Within minutes, the Pulitzer Prize winner was in Fisty's hands.
I ran to the nearest department store to find a TV and see how many stations were carrying my rendering. Imagine my chagrin when I saw that my picture had been pre-empted in favor of some illegal NHK tape. I hadn't been this mad since the '84 family reunion when Uncle Larry, whose only souvenir form the 'Nam was a steel plate in his head, naively revealed a little problem of his. It seems that whenever someone turns on a microwave, he wets himself. My cousins and grandmother spent the rest of the day giggleing and turning the Radarange on and off. Right in the middle of listening to his LaTrang story, I saw Uncle Larry's torment running down his leg like the Yalou River. But I digress.
I rushed back to the Emperor's Palace to flip off those NHK fairies, when I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of deja vu. I froze dead in my tracks as I realized that the palace was an exact scale model of the ashtray I had left on my potter's wheel back in Yellowknife -- and vice versa! I had shaped my own future like that guy in "Close Encounters," and it became so clear to me that this mystical thread that had somehow linked the Emperor's Palace to my ashtray is the self-same thread that can bind together all of humanity -- except for those damn televangelists. So oscillate with me, Dear Reader, at an average speed of 1205 kilometers per hour on this great potter's wheel of ours that circles the sun 365 days and 6 hours a year, and let us shape for ourseves a future that's as shiny and new as my ashtray. I'm Spim Ramsley, and these are my thoughts.