Ra Taliban Tam!
Wednesday 5:32 p.m.
Once a Glaswegian was in convoy with some other caravanettes, and land rovers, etc., going through the Khyber Pass. Being in convoy they were hoping to put off the bandits, but on this occasion it was to no avail. Obviously worried, the Glaswegian felt a pang of recognition when he heard one of the bandits shouting out: Pathan, ya bass!
Ya bass! is a greeting some young men in Glasgow used to use. In Maryhill, the peaceful little village where the Sensei and Reverend was born and bred, they used to shout: Maryhill Fleet, ya bass! In the Carlton area of the city, I believe they used to shout: Carlton Tongs, ya bass!
So on hearing the cry: Pathan, ya bass! our Glaswegian began to engage this Pathan in conversation. Lo! he was a Glaswegian himself, who had fallen off the hippy trail and gone native with the local Pathans, enjoying the cannabis and the robbing and plundering.
He's probably standing at unofficial roadblocks in Afghanistan to this very day, declaring: Gie's your opium, ya bass! to other unofficial entrepreneurs.
Because of this, and because the swamp fever has departed along with the bad temper, I do not now think it is such a good idea to nuke the Taliban after all.
But I have another cunning plan. Why don't we, I mean the British and American governments, buy the opium off them? Afghanistan, as I write, is supplying most of the world's illegal junk. So why don't we just offer them a better deal and buy it all off them? Up the price! Take it off the black market and give them a decent living so they don't have to make money shooty shootying each other. Only poor sad basturns are going around shouting: Jihad, ya bass! Then, we tell them we'll pay more for cannabis.
10,000 feet up a south facing slope. That's where the weed wants to be. So they end up growing cannabis instead of opium and we can sell the cannabis out of tobacconists. Cannabis doesn't give you lung cancer by the way. (It'll give you lots of other lung diseases, I'm sure, but not that one!) We could stick it outside the pubs in Scotland and give it away free to the nicotine addicts. This would cut down on the tobacco and folk would stay outside the pubs and drink far less alcohol.
Nato wants more troops in Afghanistan. Fung off! Nobody has ever won in Afghanistan! Sending ground troops to Helmand is plain dumb. If they want to run an oil pipeline through Afghanistan ... well, they're not going to, are they? Not until they start buying the opium off them and making them all bourgeois. Eric, samsaramom's man, could get sent there by the Canadian army. Don't go, Eric! You can hide out in the hut!
I sent an email to Serpent's Tail on Monday. No reply. No surprise in that. Sent another one to Robert Dudley, the literary agent from the Elizabethan age, this afternoon. No reply yet. All to no avail, of course, but if you're not on the park, no one will ever pass you the ball.
Once a Glaswegian was in convoy with some other caravanettes, and land rovers, etc., going through the Khyber Pass. Being in convoy they were hoping to put off the bandits, but on this occasion it was to no avail. Obviously worried, the Glaswegian felt a pang of recognition when he heard one of the bandits shouting out: Pathan, ya bass!
Ya bass! is a greeting some young men in Glasgow used to use. In Maryhill, the peaceful little village where the Sensei and Reverend was born and bred, they used to shout: Maryhill Fleet, ya bass! In the Carlton area of the city, I believe they used to shout: Carlton Tongs, ya bass!
So on hearing the cry: Pathan, ya bass! our Glaswegian began to engage this Pathan in conversation. Lo! he was a Glaswegian himself, who had fallen off the hippy trail and gone native with the local Pathans, enjoying the cannabis and the robbing and plundering.
He's probably standing at unofficial roadblocks in Afghanistan to this very day, declaring: Gie's your opium, ya bass! to other unofficial entrepreneurs.
Because of this, and because the swamp fever has departed along with the bad temper, I do not now think it is such a good idea to nuke the Taliban after all.
But I have another cunning plan. Why don't we, I mean the British and American governments, buy the opium off them? Afghanistan, as I write, is supplying most of the world's illegal junk. So why don't we just offer them a better deal and buy it all off them? Up the price! Take it off the black market and give them a decent living so they don't have to make money shooty shootying each other. Only poor sad basturns are going around shouting: Jihad, ya bass! Then, we tell them we'll pay more for cannabis.
10,000 feet up a south facing slope. That's where the weed wants to be. So they end up growing cannabis instead of opium and we can sell the cannabis out of tobacconists. Cannabis doesn't give you lung cancer by the way. (It'll give you lots of other lung diseases, I'm sure, but not that one!) We could stick it outside the pubs in Scotland and give it away free to the nicotine addicts. This would cut down on the tobacco and folk would stay outside the pubs and drink far less alcohol.
Nato wants more troops in Afghanistan. Fung off! Nobody has ever won in Afghanistan! Sending ground troops to Helmand is plain dumb. If they want to run an oil pipeline through Afghanistan ... well, they're not going to, are they? Not until they start buying the opium off them and making them all bourgeois. Eric, samsaramom's man, could get sent there by the Canadian army. Don't go, Eric! You can hide out in the hut!
I sent an email to Serpent's Tail on Monday. No reply. No surprise in that. Sent another one to Robert Dudley, the literary agent from the Elizabethan age, this afternoon. No reply yet. All to no avail, of course, but if you're not on the park, no one will ever pass you the ball.
posted by Hotboy at 5:37 PM
5 Comments:
I guess cannabis is better than alcohol! Right?
Not a bad idea, and cheaper than the military option.
Can anyone shed any light on the meaning of "ya bass"? From my school days in Dumbarton, I seem to recall it's not the obvious one.
Eric - I would get out too, especially as you're a provider. I'm hoping to be spared when I explain that I've got a dog to feed.
Eric: I'm not going either! I'd lose my glasses and walk into things!
Lee Ann: I wouldn't know anything about that kind of a thing!
Robert: It's got to be short for Ya basturns! We're Mental, ya bass! You can't go to fight anyone with a dentist like yours to support anyway!
"Tongs, ya bass," became Glasgow’s unofficial motto, but while many thought "bass" was short for bastard, it was, in fact, a corruption of the ancient Gaelic expression for "battle and die" - see e.g. here.
Happy to help.
I say!
I hope I am not letting the cat out of the bag by posting a snap of Mrs M, the last time she went up http://www.flickr.com/photos/55202568@N00/245699356/ the Khyber Pass.
MM III
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