Mark Moerman wrote:

> He introduced Joe The Georgian with a very humorous account of how he'd
> done an extensive survey of radio stations, and determined that it was
> second only to the black plague in terms of the worst possible subject
> matter for a song!! "So you won't be hearing this one on radio,"
> quipped Al. "I'm working on a whole album of songs about the black
> plague."

My mole in the Stewart organisation (he's more of a ground-squirrel, actually; moles don't carry plague) sent the following purloined lyrics from the said album by the secret courier on the night train to Lincoln yesterday. Bet you'd always wondered what the man in Morocco died of . . .

Enjoy!

Brian

P.S. The following contains graphic ickiness.

I can well recall the first time
I ever put to sea,
From Palestine to Europe, 542 A.D.,
A passenger on a brown rat,
Within a brown rat flea,
To follow in Attila's steps,
A scourge of deity.

By the time you'd first have noticed me
I'd harboured in your veins
From two to seven working days,
Forging bacillus chains.
You'd probably have dizzy spells
And sharp inguinal pains,
As I released my Pasturella
Toxins to your brain.

I'd be in your lymph nodes now,
But from your thorax comes the sound
Of gasping lungs, and I set you a-vomiting.
Great lumps the size of chicken eggs
Swell up between your stumbling legs,
All full of pus . . . no other plagues
Can make this claim!

My victim, now, becomes febrile,
Deluded and morose,
And I may send convulsions,
To warn that death is close,
And if you're 'specially lucky
Then you may go comatose . . .
A purple putrefying mass,
From head down to your toes . . .

Oh, half of Europe passed away
In the 14th century,
And I spread all the faster
With the fleeing refugees.
You might've heard of one fellow
Who claimed he could cure me,
Known as Michel de Nostredame;
'Twas a false prophecy.

I was there when London blazed,
A blight on Restoration days,
Unwelcome guest wheree'er I came,
Killing peasants . . .

Eclipsed by plagues of modern times,
I pale by genocidal crimes;
I'm half-forgot in childhood rhymes,
Oh 'All fall down . . . '
'All fall down . . . '

But W.H.O. has wiped me out,
I'm very nearly gone . . .
Oh, now and then I have a spree
In China or Iran,
But mostly I infect the critters
That dig up your lawn . . .
Old maladies that plagued the world,
Now barely linger on!

Brian L Chaffin (chaff002@maroon.tc.umn.edu)