The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: July 29, 2007

Official News - page 4


WHAT A FILTHY HABIT!

by Hazed

There's a new fad amongst the lower classes which you will see if you frequent some of the more squalid dives in Sol, particularly on Venus. It's called cud-chewing.

Cud is made from a plant - the manufacturers won't give details of exactly which planet or where it comes from. A wad of cud is made up of strands of tough plant fibre. You stick it in your mouth, and chew. Unlike the chewing tobacco that used to be popular around the dawn of the space age, cud is non-toxic and won't cause any nasty diseases. It tastes nice and doesn't give you bad breath. Cud-chewers get a mild buzz from it, and if combined with alcohol it tends to enhance the intoxication while damping down the aggression. There are no unpleasant side-effects and no long term health issues. It's quite highly taxed so provides a good revenue stream for the Galactic Administration. It sounds lovely, doesn't it? What could possibly be the problem?

Well, it's the spitting thing. Like chewing gum, you don't swallow the cud when you've chewed all of the goodness out of it, you spit it out. But the resulting gob is a lot messier than chewing gum - it's soggy and unpleasant and not the kind of thing you want to step in. Since the fad is mostly used by rough, tough spacemen, stevedores, thugs and other low-lives who wouldn't be seen dead spitting into a hanky or a plastic bag, for a while the slidewalks on Venus became quite hazardous.

Visitors to the planet started slipping in the discarded cud and after a few who were injured threatened to sue, the authorities realized they had to do something, so they banned the spitting of cud on the streets. Anyone caught hawking their discards onto the slidewalks is now forced to clean it up, and pay a hefty fine. So those who indulge mostly confine themselves to private homes, or bars that have taken steps to cater for spitters.

Such a place is the Urban Spaceman's bar, where a brand new spittoon sits in the corner to collect the remnants of the cud-chewers habit. Go and take a look. You can even try it out by typing 'SPIT'.


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