If you have never been to Cyprus, you will probably think I am inventing all this stuff; and I can't really blame you since I have been known to indulge in that kind of disreputable behavior in the past.

Anyway, because of its ancient Greek heritage the culture of Cyprus is so varied that it manages to span the gulf between cell phones and putting an egg in your underpants to shake off a curse.

This kind of information is probably more than you want to know, and can become a little scrambled in interpretation -- but that's another, sure to be heavily edited story, so we'll save it.

Cyprus is a small island in the eastern Mediterranean where Greek Cypriots live, and not to be confused with the Greek mainland, which is big. I mean you couldn't run the marathon on Cyprus because, halfway through, the runners would fall into the sea and it would become "the screaming, shark-infested marathon," and everyone would have a lot more than just eggs in their underpants.

Some of you will not consider it fun to hear about all the weird things that Cypriots keep in their underpants. On the other hand, those of you who are starting to get hungry again after giving thanks could be thinking that, with two more eggs, that guy could have had an omelet in his underpants. Everyone has an opinion, right?

Apparently, as a concession to their ancient culture, Cypriots believe in curses, and there is one man who claims to be the victim of a curse, which is plaguing his relationship with his wife and mother-in-law.

Well, for a start it sounds like a weird, yet strangely egalitarian marriage, but the point is that an elderly woman claimed she could remove the curse with sorcery.

"She cracked an egg in my underpants," the 37-year-old man told a district court in Nicosia, the capital. Well, I don't know about you but I'm a bit suspicious of this guy's story. It sounds to me as though he's suggesting he was just strolling along with his underpants down, minding his own business, and she walked up and cracked an egg into them.

Now that might sound simple but when you crack an egg you have to thump it against something like the edge of a bowl or the baby's head, but what is there to thump it against when you are walking past a man with his underpants down? You would probably have to take the baby with you for that.

Anyway, this elderly woman wanted $12,195 for her bizarre, yet fascinating efforts to remove the curse, so the man went to the police. You see, sorcery is banned in Cyprus, although many people still indulge in card readings and palmistry and reading runes in coffee cups. Now it gets complicated, OK? Well, in Greek Cyprus they drink mostly Turkish coffee. The thing is that the island has been fought over by the Turks and Greek Cypriots for eons, (a long time) and the island of Cyprus is now divided between them. This could easily confuse their runes.

Why would you drink the coffee of your enemy? You would think that when Socrates was trying Turkish coffee and given a hemlock chaser to kill the taste, it would have stopped that practice dead. But, among the intelligencia of the day, was simply known as over compensation.

Think about it; would we import coffee from Iran or Saudi Arabia just because we couldn't get enough of it in our own country? I don't think so. I mean, next thing you know we'd be importing oil or Chinese toys.

Before we go any further I think I should explain the nature of a rune, which you'll remember is to be found in Cypriot coffee cups. Well, runes, like tea leaves, were consulted by witches before anyone had found out how much more fun it was to put eggs in other people's underpants. For your information, a rune is also what's left after an old building has crumbled, like the runes of Pompeii or pay phone boxes.

Necromancy -- or sorcery as it's called by those who can't spell necromancy -- is a private undertaking meant for the recipient alone. The spell will be diluted if it is scattered among the multitudes like private cell phone conversations. OK, yes, you think it's awful, having to listen to private cell phone conversations; but imagine if, due to the combination of cultures, they all had an egg in their underpants and were describing the sensation in graphic detail.

Well, no one said that trying to combine ancient and modern cultures would be easy but, if you want to shake off a curse that is plaguing your relationship with your wife and mother-in-law, you should give them each a cell phone.

They will then talk only to people who are somewhere else and never to you or to each other ever again; and the yoke will be on them instead of in your underpants.

Anthony Cicale is a Lemoore resident. His column appears weekly in The Sentinel. Readers can write him at The Hanford Sentinel, P.O. Box 9, Hanford, CA 93232 or e-mail anthonycicale@hotmail.com.

(Nov. 25, 2007)