The following missive arrived in yesterday's evening post at the Calzone offices. Having made the journey by tramp steamer from the new capital city on the Steppes, this letter may be safely said to represent an individual opinion from the Russian peasantry. However, its contents, even if only half-true, suggest that Tzar and Patriarch alike have forgotten the Savior's edict that man does not live by bread alone. Such is its import for the welfare of the East, for the "Great Game" that Britain and Imperial Russia are playing for the Hindoo subcontinent (over the objections of this publication), and indeed for our own interests in the Northwest Territories, that our editor immediately recalled the printer's devil in order to dispatch an Extra bulletin. The commonweal of our nation depends upon the informed decision-making of the great mass of fair-minded people.

"Fine," you say, "but what does that have to do with me?" Well, when Russia's financial markets collapsed last autumn, they took much of the drug market with them. Heroin is now often too expensive in dollar terms for dealers to handle (while many others have adopted a single-minded antipathy to this drug owing to "accidents" that have befallen acquaintances). Crystal meth is still deemed too much of a low-rent trailer-park drug to attract Russia's class-conscious buyers. Which leaves overpriced cocaine for fat idiots who ought to be drinking flavored seltzer and Polish or Estonian ecstasy clones that act more like they're called "misery." Fuck that. We need heroin (just a little bit), we need speed (lots of it), and we need it now. Please won't you help us?

How about a set of hand-painted nesting Matryoshka dolls bearing the likenesses of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Ken Starr, Paula Jones, and the stained blue dress (on the last, smallest doll, of course)? Or how about a similar set of dolls depicting the principals in the OJ Simpson murder case (with the bloody glove appearing on the smallest doll)? Monica Lewinsky candy bars and postage stamps from the breakaway Caucasus republic of Abkhazia? Or how about a handmade adjustable spice/coffee mill that broke the very first time I tried to use it (a $40 value!)? A Soviet-made mandolin that cannot ever be tuned? A Soviet-made b/w television that is absolutely guaranteed to explode some day if you keep it long enough, although you can never be sure of when? A T-shirt reading "NBA -- I Love This Game!" but where the A in NBA is the final letter of the cyrillic alphabet, i.e., one of those backwards Rs? All this and more could be yours if you would only see fit to provide us with the drugs that we need. In the meantime, I implore you once again to peruse our editorial and see if the tale does not bring tears to your eyes.

March 10, 1999: Reader Mail
Volume 30: Misdirected mail, misdirected cards,
Nietszche's misdirected poop, and general misdirection
March 9, 1999: Shoreline Gay Butt-Naked News
Measuring the Garden State's news dynamos
March 8, 1999: Return of the Answer Man
We advise the misfits
March 4, 1999: Scared quotes
The complete awfulness of the Bafflermission statement
March 3, 1999: Reader Mail
Volume 29: Writing in the toilet, Germans on booze, Pratt on Abby,
a poem, a TV commercial, and several classic simpletons.
March 1, 1999: Prezzy beat
An Australian care package

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