text: We dabble at this book, and some months ago I came upon this little story, which I reproduce here because I have stored it against some future use, and haven’t been able to find one.
  So. This is a Ngombe story. I know next to nothing about Africa, and so that is absolutely all I know about it.
  “The sky is supported by two creatures, Libanja and Songo. Libanja holds up the sky in the east by an enormous pole, and Songo in the west. When they grow tired the sky will fall down and men will turn into lizards.”
  
  In 1977 that black cloud famously gathered over Memphis when the world was scandalized to discovered the king of rock and roll as a corpse, collapsed in his vomit. America had not wanted to see the collapse for so long, what the devotees found traumatic should not have been so shocking. I believe the same applies for Michael Jackson. Many of us must have been lying to ourselves pretty hard over the course of his tortured life–which we were painfully implicated in–to be as shocked as we were. Just 5 years after Elvis’s death–I can’t tell whether that’s a long time or a short time–Eddie Murphy lampooned the older and overweight Elvis in his huge special DELIRIOUS.