May 23, 1991

Dear Simon,

Last week, I asked a woman if she was going to be eaten by her pig soon.

This major gaffe was brought to you by the Total Immersion Method of language instruction. It was precipitated by my desire to communicate directly with the Iban who work with Hamish rather than through others who might fuck up my intended meaning to the point of a display of ancient weaponry or through the use of emotionally-charged gesticulation, a definite cultural non-starter in these parts. The latter has doubtlessly contributed to my development of a weird variant of carpal tunnel syndrome known as "LIFLADS" - Linguistic Incompetent's Flapping Limb And Digit Syndrome.

It all began when we were "adopted" by an entire Iban longhouse community - the same longhouse which shelters Hamish's team members. Rumah Aji, as it is called, accommodates more than 700 people. So when I say longhouse, I do mean a long, by-god house. Picture a linearly-appointed condo community done in Early Asian Shack on stilts with a common verandah and you've got the picture. Except for the locks - there are none. Thus, you might be engaged in full-blown nookie and the neighbor could (and, by all accounts, does) waltz right in asking for a cup of rice. "Yeah, Mina, top shelf, third basket from the left. Don't mind us."

Each family's unit is called a "pintu", literally a "door". All the units empty out onto a giant, open verandah known as a "ruai". This is a particularly useful architectural design when you're dead-ass drunk on arak, the hooch of choice for most young Iban men. No dealing with stairs, just lurch your way down the ruai until the door that most closely resembles yours comes into view and fall through it onto the nearest available floor.

The connection to Rumah Aji was made through a fellow named Jugok who works with Hamish. Jugok is 47, illiterate and has more businesses on the side than Armand Hammer. For example, if there is a government agricultural subsidy to be had, Jugok will mount a nominal planting of the indicated crop just to qualify for his cut. And it's brilliant to watch the oh-so-superior government hacks just gape at him blankly as they hand him the dosh. The result is that he and his wife Umpit own arguably the most swank pad in Rumah Aji - upholstered furniture, television, stereo (both operated off a car battery since there is no electricity) and framed photos of the relatives on the walls instead of cheesy Carlsberg posters.

I really impressed Jugok with my rapidly advancing language skills during our first visit to the longhouse:

Jugok: Welcome to my home, Moira.

Me: Thank you, Mr. Jugok. My, isn't that a lovely dysentery you have over there.

Jugok (scratching his head, looking befuddled): Please, I invite you and Hamish to spend the night.

Me: Thank you, Mr. Jugok, but I never eat shrimp.

It is with a deep sigh of exasperation and resignation with which one observes the sheer other-worldliness, the surrealism --- often creative but sometimes cruel, the absurdity packaged as sagacity, which constitutes the Californian (one hesitates to use the word "outlook") view of social relations.

Confined to the liberal arts this exaggeration establishes a favourable comparison with the populist philistinism exhibited by Mayor Guiliani of New York over the exhibits of Damien Hirst, but applied to criminal legislation it amounts to an enshrined hysteria which the U.S. Supreme Court should have the power to overturn.

I have in mind particularly the Tyler-Jaeger Act which makes nonsense of the judicial function by establishing a mandatory 25-year sentence for any person who uses force on a child of eight "likely to cause great bodily injury". Discounting the absurdity of "likely to", the draconian inflexibility is staggering, making equal both an act systematic child torture and the miserable tantrum of a teenage babysitter.

Thus it was that the agonised, castrated, Judge Kennedy found himself with no leeway in sentencing British Sikh Manjit Basuta to 25 years for (not having been in court I have to accept the evidence regardless of the supposed grounds for an appeal) shaking a child so ferociously that it died.

Those with a news addiction, for nothing else can justify such neural commitment to trivia, will recall the tabloid cause celebreof Louise Woodward, a white British nanny who was dealt with much more humanely through the good offices of a Massachusetts legal system much further from the British than the British is from the Californian. During the Woodward trial and afterwards the British media, including, shamefully, our BBC, supposedly committed to high-minded public broadcasting, heaped abuse on the judicially most courageous entity in the world and all but concreted television cameras in the local hostelry where Woodward had been wont to sip the odd glass of inferior white wine, whilst the public set up a "Fighting Fund" for the benighted child and tied yellow ribbons round the trees as if she were a cherub basking in the unearthly light of the Angel Diana.

But, then, Baby Matthew was not white, so it wasn't quite a murder, whereas Manjit, being non-white, must have been the wickedest murderess that ever lived and surely deserves to die.

This aspersion is only indirectly cast on the comparable legislatures, there being substantial evidence that Judge Kennedy would have pronounced a much lighter sentence had he the means, but my paraphrase accurately summarises media coverage of the two cases.

Admittedly, the British have a penchant for legislated hysteria which grows apace, but even then one might have expected some outcry over Tyler-Jaeger in comparison with the Solomonic codices of old Boston; yet there has been nothing. For all the chidings of the new, self-defining progressive political establishment, a racist nation is reflected in media so ingrainedly racist that the BBC is part of the collusion.