398. Issues

It is one of C.W.’s most contemplative shapes, sort of the face of a famer and the grooming of a fop. He exhibits a cross between hard-earned understanding and devil-may-care insouciance wearing a John Deere hat and stockbroker suspenders. Weird.

“Come in” he said. That was a strange thing for him to say for I was already in and partway through a cup of coffee, sitting across from him. It was his way of telling me that he had only just noticed me.

“What’s up? You look pensive this morning.”

“The Falloonian Elders are concerned. Very concerned.”

I looked at him. Sometimes, usually when he has been preparing reports to transmit back to his home planet, he assumes an annoying but alarming air of flippancy. Not today.

“Concerned, you say?”

“I think I said ‘very concerned’ if you happen to have been listening.”

“Okay. Very concerned about what?”

“The continued drift of your species toward a loss of its grip on reality.”

“Oh?”

“They are very concerned.”

“Elucidate.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Where shall I begin?” he said. He rubbed his chin and moved the bill of his cap an inch or two up upwards. “We know,” he said, “that intellectual progress does not occur in a straight line.” He waited for this to settle. “Remember the abyss that sucked the daylight from Europe following the introduction of your favorite religion? It was known as the ‘approaching black in shade era’ if I remember correctly.”

“The Dark Ages, I think you mean.”

“Whatever,” he said. “At its lowest point, your panspermian sponsors revisited and made some minor genetic adjustments and ‘viola,’ the light emerged.”

“I think you mean ‘voila’ if you don’t mind.”

“What you now call the Renaissance,” he said, ignoring me.

“Yes. I think that’s what happens. Our progress is up and down, hills, valleys, and plateaus.”

Like a roller-vehicle that moves easily without using power.”

“That’s roller-coaster and you need to have you Galactic Universal Translator worked on.”

“All GUT repair is postponed until after this unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty.”

“And this crisis is what, exactly?”

“First, let’s kill all the reporters. I think one of your famous writers said that.”

“I think he said ‘lawyers,’ and what has that to do with us?”

“Scientists are next, don’t you see?”

“Uh, …,”

“Then teachers, to be replaced by preachers.”

Uh, …,”

“Reason must go, to be replaced by political opportunism. Have you read about the long period of darkness between 1914 and 1946?”

“Many times,” I said. “I actually have known people who lived through it.”

“Would they have wanted you present leaders to have guided you through it?”

The thought of that stunned me. “You really are concerned,” I said. “Why? You can go back to the safety of your own planet at any time.”

“Scheduling,” he said.

“Scheduling?”

“We had your planet scheduled for shutdown in accordance with current trends and now we must re-slide the cards over each other quickly and set a new schedule. We’re thinking of swapping you with Cedsuphucadhair. It has worse leadership than yours, but it is less prone to destruction.”

“So we are in real trouble, you think? That’s ‘re-shuffle’ by the way.”

“You’re not taking this seriously.”

“Oh, I am,” I said. “But we are a resilient species. We overcome things, even weird and strange things. Have you ever heard of Joseph McCarthy?”

He leaned back and exhaled. “He was sent as a test,” he said, “and things just got out of hand.”

“Will you help us?”

 

Your species accomplishes mighty things
 for the worst of reasons. Illogical. - C.W.

“We’ll try,” he said. “But we have to hurry. There are other issues awaiting you.”

“Oh? What issues?”

“I’ve been reading one of your books,” he said, shifting the conversation.

“What issues?”

One by James Baldwin.”

“What issues?”

“Something about someone’s room.”

“Would you tell me what issues?”

“Want to hear my favorite quote so far?”

Please, please … the issues.”

“I think it is either ‘The world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare,’ or another, ‘Nobody can stay in the Garden of Eden.’ Aren’t those great?”

“And what is our next crisis after we attend to the problem of our politics?”

“There is the matter of an unexplained and unpredictable asteroid that has entered your galaxy from somewhere and seems to be headed in your general direction. But first things first.”

See also:

Delta Dreaming

All Hat No Cattle

Enjoy theses at all? If so, order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers. It will make him so happy.

397: Scary Things

“Have you picked out your Halloween shape yet?”

Why did I have to ask that? I assumed I knew the answer. C.W. always takes the same shape: his beloved three-headed monster, but I just had to bring it up. There he sat, looking a lot like some character I’ve seen on television a lot lately, but I can’t remember his name. He’s always standing behind the president in news clips, looking so sincere that chocolate candy wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

Anyway, I thought He would say “me” as his shape again. He says going as himself is the only way most people can see the “real” C.W. It makes sense, and draws a lot of attention. But no.

“I’m going as a real person this year.”

“Oh.” I nodded toward him with a question look.

“Oh no,” he said. “Not this one. I field-tested it and it scares the kids too bad.”

“Who then?”

“I’ll give you a hint,” he said. “It’ll be the greatest Halloween costume the world has ever seen.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“It’ll be such a great costume that it will make Hillary Clinton turn herself into the FBI.”

“No, C.W., no.”

“I’ve received over five million letters asking me to.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You’re a poot-headed goose if you don't believe me.”

“Come on, get serious.”

“I’ll have ten thousand of my brothers marching outside, protecting our blood and soil, if you don’t let me.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“What isn’t?”

“How you’re threatening to appear on Halloween.”

“Is that what we were talking about?”

“I believe so.”

“I forgot. And, oh, I have to go.”

“So you were just kidding about all this?”

“About all what?”

 

The best "incumbency insurance"
any president ever had. - C.W.

“Halloween.”

“What about it?”

“How you are going to appear.”

“Oh, I don’t know yet how I’ll appear.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Now I have to go.

“Where to?”

“I have to purchase a large pumpkin to use as my head.”

See also:
Delta Dreaming
All Hat No Cattle

Order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers.

396. Truth

  “Want to go for a walk?” C.W. came into where I was reading. He had assumed what is rapidly becoming his favorite shape, the Galilean.

“Not with you looking like that,” I said, “you know how much road-rage you cause in the South.”

“We’ll stay off the main roads,” he said. “Besides, I have a problem.”

“You have a problem? How can the savior of humankind have problems? Did your last batch of wine go sour?”

“Up yours,” he said. I knew that he was serious.

“Let me get a walking stick.”

“It’s the Falloonian Elders again,” he said once we were out of earshot from our farmhouse.

“I thought you had soothed things over with them.”

“Oh, this isn’t about that speech I gave at the old-folks home.”

“The one where you told them they were exceeding expenses and were going to become expendable?”

He ignored me. “Each day has problems of its own. This is a new one,” he said. “Well, verily I say unto you that it is a recurring one, but much more serious. The rain falls on all of us, you know.”

“Yes,” I said, “the just and the unjust.”

“Everyone,” he said, “The tellers of truth and the ones who know not truth.” He paused, “Although,” he said, “that last bunch has been getting away with a lot of crap lately.”

“Are we talking politics here?”

He had perseverated on his last thought and ignored me. “The sun riseth on their evil daily.”

“Is that the problem?”

“No,” he said. “The Elders think I seek to exalt myself. You know as well as I that I only seek to be humbled.”

I stopped and thought for a few seconds. “Let’s get back to that,” I said. “Tell me what’s bugging you.”

“I am being persecuted for my righteousness.”

“What righteousness?” I said before I thought. “You know I catch a lot of grief on account of some of your stunts.”

He turned and glared at me. “Were I not blessed in being a peacemaker, I would terminate our friendship.” He paused and I could feel him relaxing, “But,” he said, “I suppose you are also blessed when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”

I suppressed a groan. “Why don’t you just tell me your problem?”

“You know I am the truth and reality for you Americans,” he said. “No one comes to the Elders except through me.”

“So what is the problem?”

“I am being falsely accused of ahmekencheatep.

“Of what?”

“Don’t you remember when I told you that, back on Falloonia I had wanted to become what we call a “chronicler of imaginary cosmic pathways?”

“Yes,” I said, “our equivalent of a writer of fiction.”

“Close enough,” he said, “someone who binds himself not to the truth, but to forgetfulness of reality.”

“A writer of fiction.”

The trick of being a good liar
is to have an honest face. - C.W.

“But not harmful fiction, unlike those who write for that imitation news channel named after a small furry animal.”

“Okay,” I said. “So why is that a problem? People read real fiction all the time most would agree that it is good for them.”

He stopped and pulled a small dead branch from a tree. He thrust it toward me like an attorney producing evidence. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor,” he said, “but the sick.”

“Elucidate.”

“I’m not sending fiction to the Elders I’m sending truth. The reason I was created and came into this world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“And well they should.”

“The Elders don’t believe me. The say I lie. They say that an honest alien does no deceive but a false witness—me, they say—pours out lies.”

“What are they saying you lie about?”

“Only that you American band of homo sapiens has elected a man as ruler who would start wars causing millions of deaths, would allow the unhealthy to die, bears false witness hourly, loves riches beyond all things, covets his neighbor’s wife, rules according to the color of one’s skin, thrives on intemperate speech, promotes the wicked to violence, mocks the differently abled, enters into divorce—and you how that gets under my skin—ignores those who mourn, mocks the righteous, and hates those who are poor in both spirit and riches.”

“I see.”

“Oh,” he said, “and they can’t believe that he hates aliens. They think we are lovable and have come here to testify to the truth.”

I turned to him. “My friend, I’m afraid that in these frightening times, that is a dangerous thing to do.”

See also:
Delta Dreaming
All Hat No Cattle

Order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers.

395. Shopping

It’s always interesting to take C.W. shopping. First of all, he picks his shape carefully. Once, he came to Walmart as a 300-pound woman in shorts that weren’t much more than red thong underwear with a tattoo on one leg that said. “God knows what,” and one on the other leg that said “you’re thinking.”

I usually make him walk ten feet behind me. Today, though, he seemed fairly normal … for Walmart. He looked as though he might have been a farmer once. He wore a “Make America Great Again” baseball hat and faded overalls. Where they had worn through, he had red patches shaped like valentines sewn over the holes. A pair of scuffed black loafers completed the ensemble.

Not bad for Walmart, as I say. We walked along together, that is until I stopped to examine a freezer of ribs. When I had decided they were too expensive, I turned and he was gone. Did I dare hope that some sort of “Alien Rapture” had occurred?

No such luck. I heard him call me. “Hey Big Dope,” he yelled from two aisles down. “Come listen to this.” When I tried to ignore him, he yelled it again. I had no choice but to ease my cart toward him.

I found him standing close to a heavy-set woman with stringy red hair talking on a cell phone. She wore shorts, the legs of which seemed to cut off any blood that might make an attempt to complete a complete circulation. A tank top allowed a large portion of her stomach to cascade over the top of her shorts.

She would have looked like a standard Arkansas bar-haunter except for a bright rose tattooed on her neck, the stem extending beneath her tank top. This made her look more like a standard Arkansas bar-haunter with an ill-conceived tattoo. Walmart stores are full of them.

Anyway, C.W. was leaning in listening to her conversation. As I approached, she yelled into it, “So I told him he could jist ferget about gettin’ any more off me until he come around and faced the music, and by god I meant it.”

C.W. pointed at her and said to me, “She’s missing something called ‘her monthly.’ Is that a check or something?”

I said nothing. The woman lowered her phone and pressed it against one meaty thigh. “Do you mind?” she said, “I’m talking here.”

“I don’t mind,” he said.

She started to say something. Then she looked at me and smiled. Two of her front teeth were missing and two were capped in gold. She looked at C.W. and nodded toward me. “He a friend of yours?” she said.

I left then, fast. C.W. followed along behind. As we walked away, I could hear the woman yelling into her phone again. “He can jist go waller around with one of them whores at ‘The Dance and Duck’ as far as I’m concerned."

We approached the baking goods section. As usual, there were a couple of elderly ladies parked there, examining the various cake mixes. As we passed them, C.W. said, “What does it mean when a woman says she missed her monthly?” Two heads snapped toward us.

I hurried on. When we reached the end of the aisle, C.W. pointed toward the personal care area and said, “I need to go over there. I’ll be right back.”

“No,” I said. “You’re not about to pull that one on me. You do remember that’s why you don’t get to come here with my wife anymore, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

 “You don’t remember yelling across the store to her that you had found the feminine products section?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Why indeed? I don’t suppose you remember stopping an assistant manager and suggesting that he display the Ramen Noodles over by the condom section either, do you? That store over in the college town? Ring a bell?”

“That couldn’t have been me.”

Big Dope is such a good husband, always
offering to go shopping for his wife. - C.W.

“Then who was it that suggested that same day that they move the Mountain Dew drinks over to the firearms section?”

“You must have me mixed up with someone else,” he said.

“Like the unknown person that slipped the ‘Day of the Week’ panties into my cart last time we came here?”

“Someone did that?”

I started answer, but he had stopped beside another woman yelling into a cell phone.

“This time,” she said to an unknown listener, “I let them keep him in there until he dried out. I told them I didn’t care if he was a deacon. If First Baptist wanted him, they could go get him.”

See also:
Delta Dreaming

All Hat No Cattle

Order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers.

394. Writing

“Hey, come here and read this.”

Groan. Even in the next room, the scene was clear. C.W. has taken lately to “shaping up,” as he calls it, like the president. It’s not only unnerving, it scares my wife’s cats. Nonetheless, I walked in to where he sat in front of a pile of papers, all printed with neat margins. He flipped through them and handed me one. I read:

“As he gently bit her nose, one hand began to scratch the toes on her right foot. She moaned, ‘Oh darling, you do that so quickly. Don’t slow down.’”

“What the …?”

“You like it, right?”

“What the …?”

He looked directly at me. “Go ahead, be honest. I can take it. That’s one of my strong points. What do you think?”

“First of all, what is it?”

“Oh,” he said. “I’m writing a novel. I have this friend, a well-known cinematographer, who likes steamy scenes, so I wanted to include a little of the type of literature or art intended to arouse sexual desire.”

“You mean erotica?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“If so, I think you missed the boat.”

“What boat? Are we going on a cruise? I haven’t even packed.”

“It is a figure of speech.”

He thought. “Wait one,” he said. He took a pencil and pad that lay on the coffee table and began to write. “Your figure is like a fine speech delivered in a soft husky voice in a candle-lit room.” Then he looked back at me. “So, what about part I read to you?”

“I … uh … is it supposed to be a sex scene?”

“Of course. Bet it got your old heart pumping, eh?”

“It was awful.”

“You jerk, nasty man, bad friend. You’re jealous, that’s all.”

“I thought you took criticism well.”

“Screw you. What was wrong with it, if I may ask?”

“For one thing, biting noses and scratching toes do not spark sexual desires in someone.”

“They do where I come from.”

“But your audience is here in America.”

“It is a great thing to bring some enlightenment into a dark world, and I am so good at it,” he said. “Wait one.” He turned back to his writing pad, wrote and said aloud, “He slipped a hand under her bra, hooked his fingers, then ripped it upwards from her body and over her head. It made a sound like a long length of duct tape that was being pulled from a cardboard box, and she moaned again. ‘Not so gently,’ she said. ‘Be strong and harsh.’ She head-butted him, making him see stars. This time, it was he who moaned.”

He stopped and smiled. “Writing is fun,” he said. “You should try it sometime.”

“Don’t leave that stuff lying around where my wife can see it.”

“Oh, Mrs. Big Dope loves my work,” he said. “She thinks I ought to send it to all the local publishers.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, she even suggested that I send it in under your name to avoid legal entanglements when the royalties start rolling in, me being an alien and all. She said you would do the right thing about splitting the money.”

The problem with your species seems to be
that there are more people writing than
there are people reading. - C. W.

“I see,” I said, and I was actually beginning to. “She really liked it?”

“Oh,” he said, “she was absolutely evasive, no … wait … effusive, that’s it. She was effusive in her praise.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes,” she even helped me send excerpts to some of your Facebook friends and former clients.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really. Want to hear her favorite?”

“Why not?”

He shuffled through the sheets. “Ah,” he said, “here it is.” He read:

“As he moaned his pleasures and continued to follow his intentions, she succumbed to the rush of her desires and smashed the plate of fish entrails into his waiting face. His eyes rolled upward in pleasure. With her other hand, she attacked his left rib cage, causing him to erupt in uncontrolled sexual giggling, sputtering and making a sound much like that of a pig breaking wind under water. They both trembled with joy.”

“Honey,” I screamed. “Get in here. You got some ‘splainin’ to do.” I rose and heard the sound of running footsteps and the back door slamming.

“Wait,” he said. “I’m not finished. I’m just getting to the super-glue part.”
           
See also:

Delta Dreaming

All Hat No Cattle

Order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers.