Drunken Midgets

*

Big Night On The Town
drunk on the dark streets of some city,
it's night, you're lost, where's your
room?
you enter a bar to find yourself,
order scotch and water.
damned bar's sloppy wet, it soaks
part of one of your shirt
sleeves.
It's a clip joint-the scotch is weak.
you order a bottle of beer.
Madame Death walks up to you
wearing a dress.
she sits down, you buy her a
beer, she stinks of swamps, presses
a leg against you.
the bar tender sneers.
you've got him worried, he doesn't
know if you're a cop, a killer, a
madman or an
Idiot.
you ask for a vodka.
you pour the vodka into the top of
the beer bottle.
It's one a.m. In a dead cow world.
you ask her how much for head,
drink everything down, it tastes
like machine oil.

you leave Madame Death there,
you leave the sneering bartender
there.

you have remembered where
your room is.
the room with the full bottle of
wine on the dresser.
the room with the dance of the
roaches.
Perfection in the Star Turd
where love died
laughing.

Charles Bukowski

Of all the thousands of news stories he had done over the last quarter of a century, often it was the ones involving alcoholics he remembered the best. The woman with the two black eyes, crying pointlessly in the park, with the blokes hanging on. Or the time when he was sent out to do one of those summer reading features the Herald was always so fond of at the festive season. We were on the road for days. One of the projects was to follow around a circus for several days. We settled on the Ashtons, the patrician elders of the circus fraternity in Australia, their travelling show an elaborate operation. They were touring the small towns around Wagga Wagga, there in the dusty summer heat, the towns where nothing ever happened and the circus coming was a big event, where the shouts of children filled the air and families came down just to look at them setting up.

The elephants were tendered under the gum trees in the stifling heat, and rocked back and forth rhythmically in that sad obsessive behaviour of chained animals, back and forth, back and forth, there in the stifling Australian heat, thousands of miles from the lands their ancestors roamed. Nothing could look sadder than those hobbled elephants, unless it was the giant cats in the tiny cages, changing from one cage to another via the narrow channels of iron netting. We followed them, we absorbed them. And in the evenings we bought cartons of beer and sat with the workers drinking. The evil little drunken dwarf who always seemed to be there when cans were being handed out, befriended us, perhaps just as a regular source of alcohol, perhaps for conversation beyond the tiny group with which he constantly travelled, and was now permanently associated.

He was very intelligent, as alcoholics can be, and the conversations and the cans of beer went long into the night. If there was anything that could be said, anything he wanted to say, anything that would make his life easier; but that of course was not to be. He was short, that's for sure, barely more than a couple of feet tall; and had a twisted view on just about everything and everybody, from his bosses who lived in their grand caravans well away from the sides of the main tents. And there we heard every bit of bitter contempt this man held against the world, laughing at the bleak view of himself and everyone else. How would you like to be an object of ridicule and curiosity for the public to gawk at? How would you like to be me, trapped here, year after year. There is nowhere else for me.

He was always drunk, first thing in the morning, last thing at night. He was tiny and it didn't take many cans to get him going. We were from the city, a successful Sydney journalists and photograph, people with lives, careers, acclaim, fame, people with lovers to go home to. He slept in a narrow bunk with several others crammed into the sleeping quarters; dirty, dusty, smelly, cramped. This is my life, he said, and he looked out across the field at the failing light, watching the elephants rock back and forth, watching the dwarf reach for another can. If anything was to be believed, if anything was to mean anything anymore, then here in this fading scene, with the night's customers already beginning to queue, here it was.

There are always hierarchies, there are always winners and losers. He could feel the death and the smell of defeat already beginning to creep through his own bones. He went and bought another carton, keeping the receipt for expenses. Entertaining the locals. The stamps they always carried just in case: Thank you, call again. Rule one, the old soldiers had told him, never ever ever give back a single cent of your expenses. The cans popped all night. The dwarf got drunker and drunker. They ridiculed the government of the day, how little the politicians understood the lives ordinary people lived. He could hear failure and disease like other people could hear bird songs. The elephants rocked, the tigers stirred restlessly in their tiny cages, a young runaway helped with the chores, and the Ashtons themselves retired to their comfortably air conditioned caravans. He watched without comment as the dwarf stole several cans from the carton, and when he realised he had been observed just shrugged. I'm going to need them later, the drunken dwarf said. And he just shrugged; of course he would.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/20/afghanistan-voter-turnout

The classrooms serving as polling stations across the relatively secure and prosperous plains north of the Afghan capital were crammed full of people – but precious few of them were there to cast their vote.

Election workers and campaign observers milled about with little either to do or to observe. In one school in Kalakan, a solitary presidential ballot paper sat in the bottom of the translucent voting box reserved for a nearby community of Kuchi nomads.

An election observer from the Philippines, touring a patch of polling stations in full body armour, said not enough had been done to transport such people from their far-flung homes or to educate them on their rights.

If demand warranted it, officials were permitted to extend voting beyond 4pm, but at a mosque in a busy part of eastern Kabul the officer in charge was preparing to close down on time and start counting ballots. "We haven't seen anyone for an hour," he said.

Most of the usually choked routes in and out of Kabul were almost empty, but on one baking, unpaved road in Kapisa province we came across a group of 10 men halfway through their two-hour walk to their nearest polling station in a distant village surrounded by uncleared minefields.

"We wouldn't have come if it was not a holiday today," said Mohamed Rasoul, who does backbreaking work at the local gravel mines.

Although they were just a few hours' drive from the capital, rural values ruled – none of their wives or female family members would be voting, they said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/19/bolivia-cocaine-bar-route-36

Tonight we have two types of cocaine; normal for 100 Bolivianos a gram, and strong cocaine for 150 [Bolivianos] a gram." The waiter has just finished taking our drink order of two rum-and-Cokes here in La Paz, Bolivia, and as everybody in this bar knows, he is now offering the main course. The bottled water is on the house.

The waiter arrives at the table, lowers the tray and places an empty black CD case in the middle of the table. Next to the CD case are two straws and two little black packets. He is so casual he might as well be delivering a sandwich and fries. And he has seen it all. "We had some Australians; they stayed here for four days. They would take turns sleeping and the only time they left was to go to the ATM," says Roberto, who has worked at Route 36 (in its various locations) for the last six months. Behind the bar, he goes back to casually slicing straws into neat 8cm lengths.

La Paz, Bolivia, at 3,900m above sea level – an altitude where even two flights of stairs makes your heart race like a hummingbird – is home to the most celebrated bar in all of South America: Route 36, the world's first cocaine lounge. I sit back to take in the scene – table after table of chatty young backpackers, many of whom are taking a gap year, awaiting a new job or simply escaping the northern hemisphere for the delights of South America, which, for many it seems, include cocaine.

"Since they are an after-hours club and serve cocaine the neighbours tend to complain pretty fast. So they move all the time. Maybe if they are lucky they last three months in the same place, but often it is just two weeks. Route 36 is a movable feast," says a Bolivian newspaper editor who asked not to be named. "One day it is in one zone and then it pops up in another area. Certainly it is the most famous among the backpacker crowd but there are several other places that are offering cocaine as well. Because Route 36 changes addresses so much there is a lot of confusion about how many cocaine bars are out there."

This new trend of 'cocaine tourism' can be put down to a combination of Bolivia's notoriously corrupt public officials, the chaotic "anything goes" attitude of La Paz, and the national example of President Evo Morales, himself a coca grower. (Coca is the leaf, and cocaine is the highly manufactured and refined powder.) Morales has diligently fought for the rights of coca growers and tossed the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) out of Bolivia. While he has said he will crack down on cocaine production, he appears to be swimming against the current. In early July, the largest ever cocaine factory was discovered in eastern Bolivia. Capable of producing 100kg a day, the lab was run by Colombians and provided the latest evidence that Bolivia is now home to sophisticated cocaine laboratories. The lab was the fourth large facility to be found in Bolivia this year.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jh9MXUrDOqTD3P6uA4nf-Gj32kZQD9A6OFKO0

BUENA PARK, Calif. — The search for a reality TV contestant wanted for questioning in the death of his ex-wife shifted to his native Canada on Thursday as police said he apparently slipped across the border after driving and boating more than 1,000 miles from Southern California.

A car and empty boat trailer belonging to Ryan Alexander Jenkins, 32, were found at a marina in the remote northwest Washington town of Blaine, and authorities believe from there he may have simply walked into Canada. Police want to question Jenkins after the nude body of his ex-wife, a former model, was found stuffed in a suitcase and left in a trash bin in Buena Park.

Whatcom County Sheriff's deputies received a report Wednesday that a man matching Jenkins' description arrived by boat at Point Roberts, Wash., about 10 miles from Blaine at the tip of a peninsula. The point is reachable by land only from Canada.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said police agencies across Canada are on the lookout for Jenkins.

Jenkins is from Calgary, Alberta, about 600 miles east of Point Roberts. Acting Calgary Police Chief Al Redford said a fugitive apprehension unit is checking with Jenkins' connections and associates in the city.

Jenkins was a contestant on the VH1 reality TV show "Megan Wants a Millionaire." Police said he is a "person of interest" in the death of Jasmine Fiore, 28, a former model whose strangled body was found over the weekend.

After taping for the VH1 series finished, Jenkins met Fiore in Las Vegas casino in March and the two soon got married, said Fiore's mother, Lisa Lepore.

But in May, "they had a big blowout," Lepore said. "She had the marriage annulled."