307. Rules

It’s been cold here and C.W. doesn’t care much for cold weather. He often annoys me by appearing as Jimmy Buffett and singing “Wasting Away in a Drink Made With Tequilaville.” Yes, his Galactic Universal Translator is on the blink again. He attributes it to sunspots. I just don’t know.

Anyway, he was full of questions today. He was in my favorite recliner going through notes he had collected during the week. He studied a page and looked up. “What do they mean by this?”

I stopped my computer mouse. “By what?”

“De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.” he said.

“Fu … uh darned if I know.”

“Wait one,” he said. I could tell he was consulting his GUT. “Oh,” he said. “It be meaning ‘Don’t be dissin’ the stiff dudes or y’all be some sorry mother ….”

I interrupted. “Wait,” I said, “I think you need to adjust your GUT.”

“My GUT is fine,” he said. “I trust it as having all necessary parts or not lacking anything.”

“You may trust it completely,” I said, “but you may want to make a slight adjustment to its coordinates.”

“Wait one,” he said. I could almost hear him mentally punching in new numbers. Then he smiled—a crooked little smile that showed some missing teeth. “Hit means ‘Don’t chall go round pissin’ on the graves of the deceased.”

“I think a couple of clicks to the north,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. Another moment passed. “Here it is,” he said. “We should attempt, giving the constraints imposed upon us by a cruel and unsympathetic societal structure, to, if we are not otherwise genetically impaired in our self-control, to only speak, utter, communicate, or otherwise articulate good about the livingly impaired.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said, “I think you landed in the middle of a college campus.”

He shook his head. “Okay,” he said. “Respect the dead, unless, of course, they are women, spics, or n…”

“Stop it,” I yelled. He looked stunned. “You’re in the headquarters of some political candidate.”

“Well darn,” he said. His eyes crossed slightly when he adjusted this time. “I think I’ve got it,” he said. “Listen … anyone killed with a firearm of any sort, it’s their own damned fault. Otherwise, we are sorry for your loss.”

“Where in the galaxy did you find that?”

“Wait one,” he said, “Oops, sorry. I accidently opened something called the NRA manual.”

“I thought so,” I said. “Anyway, I think I get the picture now. I believe that is a Latin phrase translated as ‘Of the dead, nothing unless good,’ and goes back to writings by Diogenes Laërtius around AD 300.”

He was obviously impressed, but, then, he couldn’t see my computer screen. “And it means?”

“It means,” I said. “Don’t badmouth dead people.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

He ignored me. After a moment, he said, “Is there a time limit on it?”

I answered mischievously, “It depends on what political party you belonged to.”

“Be serious,” he said, a highly uncharacteristic statement, coming from him. “I need to know about this.”

“Okay,” I said. “There isn’t a strict time limit.”

“What else should I know about this system of symbols (as letters or numbers) used to represent assigned and often secret meanings.”

Of all your species, I think this group would
want to be on the right side of history. -  C.W.

 I couldn’t help myself. “This code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules.” I tried to stifle my laughs, but they made my stomach bounce.

“You are an ass,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be serious. What’s the big deal about not unloading on a corpse?”

“I have to file my weekly report of current events to the Falloonian Elders,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Then you try to say something nice about a recently deceased person who once ruled that a corporation is a person.”

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263. Protection

I found C.W. jotting notes in furious fashion this morning in the form of a "full-bird" colonel of the American army. When I entered, he looked up. "Ahem," he said, "just the person I wanted to see."

"Uh oh," I said, turning to leave.

"Wait soldier," he said. "I need to ask you some things, so get your butt over here."

I did as I was told.

"Now," he said, "you served in the military didn't you?"

"U.S. Navy, sir," then catching myself, I said, "hell yes C.W., you know I did."

"You carried a weapon, right?"

"For eleven months and 28 days," I said, "but who was counting?"

"Assault rifle?"

"M-14, M-16, M-60, .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol, M-79 grenade launcher, and, for most of the time of the Tet Offensive, a sawed-off 12-guage shotgun." I smiled briefly thinking of the scenes. "Even the colonels showed respect for that one."

"Ahem, yes," he said, scribbling again. "Any how long did it take to insert a magazine, charge the weapon, and take aim when you thought trouble was coming?"

"Say what?"

"When danger approached, how long did it take you to prepare for it, to have your weapon loaded and at the ready?"

"Uh, C.W., ..."

"Colonel Rankhoher to you."

"You didn't get ready if you knew danger was there." I said, "You stayed ready."

"You inserted a magazine into your weapon?"

"You locked and loaded the son of  bitch, took the safety off, pointed it to where you thought the trouble was coming from, and put your finger on the trigger," I said.

"Ahem," he said, and made a note.

"My friends in the infantry even sometimes employed a "mad minute" in which, at a pre-determined time, everyone on the perimeter would fire for sixty seconds in the middle of the night in the direction from which potential danger might come."

"Did it accomplish anything?"

"Just woke everyone up."

"But in actual battles ..., let's discuss the efficacy of prepared combatants."

"In actual battles," I said, "they estimate it takes 50,000 rounds to kill a single enemy combatant."

I think this would detract from
the movie, but who knows? - C.W.

"Oh dear," he said, writing again.

"The snipers do much better," I said, "around 1.3 rounds per kill, but they are prepared and have the elements of surprise and distance. And of course the rate is much better for civilian hits, say when firing into a village."

"Ahem," he said. "So the most reliable position for protection with a firearm is to be on the ready, weapon charged and aimed, and finger on the trigger." He resumed making notes.

"If you want to meet that one in 50,000 goal," I said. Then it dawned on me. "What are you doing," I said, "preparing a safety manual?"

"Ahem," he said. "No. It's a preparedness protocol for arming citizens to protect theater audiences."


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Mid-week Musings

Dear Friends and Followers:

Big Dope is doing outside things so I have borrowed his computer (still saving for my own) and will offer a few observations of your rather odd, at times, culture.

I notice where the Attorney General of your state who, if I remember, ran on the platform that she would shoot people more readily than her opponent, offered some insight on one's right to "pack heat" openly, as Big Dope describes it. She says it is fine unless you intend, with your openly displayed weapon, to hurt someone or commit a crime. I'm confused. Why else would anyone want to strap a loaded weapon on their hip? They aren't particularly attractive. Big Dope says it is complicated and involves the size of certain organs, the level of paranoia, grandiose thinking, and a dramatic lack of understanding about one's ability to fire a weapon under pressure. He points out that a trained police office once, in a highly sensational incident on the University of Texas campus, emptied a six-shot revolver at a sniper from 50 feet away and never hit him even once. Oh well. I'll not report this to the Falloonian Elders because they wouldn't believe it anyway.

Then I read where a couple is planning to get a divorce because their country is going to recognize marriages between two consenting adults of the same sex. Seems it offends their religious sensitivity as followers of Jesus Christ. Now ... I haven't been able find in any translation where the figure of Jesus, whether one accepts him as literary or spiritual, said anything about same-sex marital situations. He was, however, from my casual reading, real clear about getting divorced as stated in your Book of Matthew: "I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery." I submit this couple has their spiritual cognizance in complete disarray.

Now I see where your military branch has lost over a trillion dollars that can't be accounted for. That's a lot of money and they still want more. I heard one of you politicians say one time that your government ought to be run like one would run a business. Not only is that belief bizarre on its surface, it seems to me igovernment ought to be run more like a family's operation. Any teenager losing a relative amount like that would probably have her or his allowance cut.

Well, I see BD coming back, so I won't have time to get into your lack of understanding of the concept of the limits of exponential growth. Maybe next time if they don't pave over the city for freeway lanes.

You seem to think somehow that
you can just keep building them forever. - C.W.

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