Back To Borneo, Part IV

A note to our Indonesian readers: Barangkali anda sebaiknya membeli kalium iodide (KI) yang bisa mencegah sakit kena radiasi. Karena reaktor nuklir di Jepang di bahaya, harus pikir kami karena melindungi sendiri dan keluarga-keluarga kami.

As the saying goes, March comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb.  Certainly, that's been true here in the wilds of Indonesia.  In two weeks, we have been to three countries, spoken four languages, and visited five cities.

For that reason, we have retreated to the LFS world headquarters in the jungles of Borneo for rest and rehab.

And we're already regretting it.

Wife #1 is a mean cuss.  She suspects everyone, trusts no one and hates all of Humanity.  Don't know how we landed her, but we wish we could throw her back.  We are seriously considering sending her back to her parents for additional training, which is our right under village law.  If her daddy gives her a thorough spanking, it might have more impact than if we did it.

Wife #3 has been complaining endlessly about her job as goat-tender.  She says the little buggers can get out of anything.  She's even built a bamboo dome over the goat pen, and they just dig out.  We solved the problem by slaughtering all but one ram and one ewe.  That'll teach the little snorkers.

Only wife #4 is quiet.  She is only 15 and was payment for a debt after we installed HBO on the village's only TV set in the square.  She's just happy to be out of the house, we think.  Her job is threshing the rice, and she just sits there all day picking bits of chaffe out of the pile.  One day, we have a plan to teach her how to winnow.  It might speed things up a bit.  For now, we're too tired to worry about it.

Since we have the only generator in the village, we enjoy things like A/C and a cold beer once in a while, when the tiny refrigerator actually gets one cold enough.  For some reason, though, the generator kept popping in the middle of the night, and we couldn't figure out why.  We checked all the wiring and outlets, and everything seemed fine.  Last night, however, we woke up and wanted an Aceh cigarette and a cup of coffee.  The village looked like Times Square on New Year's Eve.  We think we figured out the problem.

It's been raining like hell for a month now.  Normally, we don't mind that very much, but it does have its drawbacks.  When we go monkey hunting, our loin cloth gets all muddy, which just sets off #1 all the more, even though #2 does all the laundry.  It also washes all the poison off the tip of the arrows, so we have to spend hours tracking the little beasts through the tree tops,  Very annoying that.  We are working on a solution to chemically bond the poison to the arrows, but so far, all we've achieved only a new form of chemical preservative, for which we've already filed patents in seven countries.  So far, it's only been found to cause cancer in one out of four people.  That's a damn sight better than most of the crap in the public food chain right now!

We had a little excitement when a 23-foot Kymoto dragon wandered into the village and ate seven dogs and three children before being subdued.  That was a serious impact to the village food supply and we are worried about what will happen when the Dry season starts.

We did discover that Kymoto dragon is pretty darned delicious, especially bar-b-qued in the classic Texas style, slow-cooked in the ground for 24 hours.  We whipped up some baked beans and potato salad, and the entire village was quietly satiated and happy, except for #1, of course.

Not being satisfied with living in an idyllic location, close to Nature and blissfully uncaring about the outside world, we have created a Public Works department, so that we can engineer the jungle to our satisfaction and start sending bills to all the locals for the service.

The first project is a sewer system.  Seems for generations, folks have been taking care of business upstream from the bathing area.  We designed a sluice box to carry the waste down the banks of the river and deposit it just upstream from the next village.

Someone had the gall to ask why we didn't just move the toilets down the river a bit.  We, naturally, pointed out that if it were that easy, why didn't anyone do it 125 years ago?  So now, the village must pay us one kilo of rice per person two times a year for our thinking ability.

This, of course, leads to project number two: building a silo to store all our new-found wealth.

At this rate, we figure we can recreate the US government in roughly 55 years.  We're already making plans for a vastly expensive space program using hollowed-out trees, so we can place warung in every conceivable place in orbit.  We figure this will give the astronauts from all the other countries little stores where they can pick up coffee and cigarettes between supply runs.

We're testing various designs right now using old plastic cups and used soda straws to create pressure suits.  We're not too concerned about radiation, since most folks around here already have plenty of genetic damage from in-breeding.  In fact, our first astronaut-in-training has seven fingers and six toes on each appendage.

And here comes the rain again.  We were dreading that, since all the wives get randy when it rains.  Looks like there'll be four more mouths to feed come December.  Guess we'll have to raise taxes again.

It ain't easy bringing civilization to Paradise.  People resist paying for things they never needed before, and frankly they were pretty happy without.  But, they need to learn that complex systems are the only way to live.  After all, they could never have watched the Super Bowl if it weren't for us pirating satellite feeds off of G-2.  Not that anyone watched, but it's the idea that we COULD have seen the spectacle of over-paid entertainers in bone-crunching competition trying to move a ball from here to there.

The heathens around here like Australian football, because they don't wear pads and all the entertainers are bleeding and toothless at the end of the game.  How uncivilized!

So, nothing for us to do now but wait for the next Bird to pass over so we can upload our musings to the waiting world.  The wives won't leave me alone.  Even #1 is almost being nice to us just now.  That makes us very nervous,  It means she wants extra today.

We just want to lay here quietly in the A/C and plot our next major civilization project, so we can turn this jungle paradise into the Las Vegas of Borneo and make huge piles of filthy lucre so we can fund our aspirations.  Perhaps a giant ice maker down by the river, so we can bring all the glories of modern life to these savages.

Here's hoping you have a lawn to mow, bills to pay and only one wife.  Happy Sunday at the Temple of Plasma Entertainment.  If, during the commercial breaks, you offer a quick prayer to the gods for us poor, suffering conquistadors out here in the jungles of the world, we'd be more appreciative.  We're still hoping for that new Harley-Davidson, so we have an excuse to build super-highways here in deepest, darkest Borneo.

Sampai jumpa!