246. Fresh Ideas

“So you want me to help you?”

“Please, I’m asking earnestly or humbly for something.”

“You are begging for my help?”

“Absolutely.”

There he stood, in his best chinos, looking much like a combo ad for Gucci, Lacoste Lopez, and  Ralph Lauren. C.W. was in one of his favorite forms, Reggie, from The Young Conservatives Club.

“What sort of help do you need?”

“I’m going to work in what your species calls a political campaign for the first time ever.”

“You are going to do what?”

“I’m going to help elect a candidate. I may get to go to Washington, they tell me.”

“I see,” I said, but I didn’t. “I thought you were permanently assigned here.”

“Oh, but if I can get a ‘behind the scenes’ posting, it will boost my career.” He paused and scratched his nose. “But first we must get through the first or highest in rank or importances.”

“You mean the primaries.”

“You are getting bad about repeating everything I say.”

“Never mind,” I said. “Which candidate are you working for?”

“Number Five.”

“Uh,” I said, “and who is that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Some campaign workers were having a hard time keeping them separate, so we just go by numbers, now.”

“I see,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I did. “So what is the major campaign issues that your Number, uh …, Five is going to focus on for the campaign?”

“That’s what you are going to help me with.”

“Oh,” I see, but I didn’t.

“Take a look.” With that, he turned took me to the kitchen table where a laptop computer was fired up and waiting. Across the screen was the beginning of a list, from One to Five, with the word “Against” behind each number.

“So let’s start filling in,” he said. “What goes by the first number?”

“C.W.,” I said.

“Reginald, please,” he said.

“Reggie, those are all negatives. What will Number Five be for?”

He looked at me as if I had just said that dry was wet. “Please,” he said, “our party has evolved beyond the advocacy paradigm.”

“The what?”

“You seem to be stuck in an era of reality and advocacy. That’s old fashioned. Get over it. Now let’s get busy. I have a deadline.”

I’d never seen him so forceful and full of hope. “Okay,” I said. “How about, uh, say, for the first number …Hillary Clinton.”

“Can’t,” he said. “Candidate Two, said early on that he would like to have her.”

I left that one alone. “President Obama?”

“Candidate Three, we call him ‘The Charmed One,’ captured him a month ago.”

“The Charmed One. So he is special?”

“Not particularly. It just means that maybe the third time is charmed, as you say.”

“I see,” I said, but I most assuredly didn’t. “War?”

“Please,” he said, “let’s be serious. We’re wasting valuable time.”

“Education?”

"Candidates One and Four are fighting over that one. Each claims he knows more about it.”

“Science?”

“Candidate Seven.” He nodded sadly. “And that’s a popular one. Wish I’d gotten it.”

“Immigrants?”

“Candidates One and Four are battling over that one as well.”

“Government?”

“Oh heck,” he said. “I wish. But Candidate Eight, you know, the one with the funny hairpiece, grabbed that one straight away, right out of Candidate Two’s hands.”

 “Children, women?”

“Nope, Candidate Nine, the fat one, is sitting on those.” He smiled. “Too bad for the women and kids.”

“C. …, Reggie, I’m running out of ideas. Why don’t you go against the grain and present your candidate as for something?”

He looked at me with a bit of sadness in his eyes. “Do you know what happens to our candidates who go against the grain, as you say, and advocate for something?”

“Not something good?”

He shook his head. “Have you ever heard of Archibald McGregor?”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t.”

“My point exactly,” he said. “Now get busy. Time is money.”

They rejected this design I did for the
campaign. I don't understand  why. - C.W.

I searched my brain. I really wanted to help the poor guy. “Taxes?”

Number Nine, the crazy one, still claims them, but they really don’t bother our folks much anymore, so it is a weak platform.

I wasn’t sure which candidate he was talking about, but I kept thinking. Then it came to me. “Obamacare,” I said. “That’s a winner for sure.”

 He shook his head. "Off-limits. It’s now Reaganaid.”

“Oh,” I said. “I see. And this time I believe I did.

 

Keep clicking those ads. Big Dope wants us to visit Costa Rico for some reason.

And heck, would you buy his book? Get it from on-line outlets, or

www.wattensawpress.com

 

 

222. Explanations

Oh no, it was “Explanation Day.” I can always tell I’m in for it when C.W. appears as a faint resemblance of Thurgood Marshall. We had decided to meet for a short walk along a downtown park. He had been in hiding for a few days while we entertained out-of-state friends and I was feeling a little blue after their departure and not wanting to talk much. I had hoped he might entertain me with another of his get-rich schemes and I could just listen.

It was not to be.

“Good morning sir,” he said.

Oh no, formality. It would be especially taxing,

“Good morning. What you been up to?”

“I greet you with much new insight,” he said. Oh boy.

“And how did you gain such insight?”

“From walking to and fro upon the earth,”

When he “goes Biblical,” on me, it is going to be a long day.

“You seem to be such an intelligent species in some ways,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Yes,” he said. “Your advancement from blue algae to a species capable of mechanically escaping the gravitational force of your home planet with manned craft in a little over four billion years is remarkable, truly remarkable.”

“I had no idea.”

He looked to see if I was kidding, Satisfied I wasn’t, he said, “It took us Falloonians almost seven billion,” he said.

“It’s good to know we can excel,” I said.

“Of course,” he said, “we weren’t doing it for domination.”

“Oh? Then why?”

He cocked his head in that funny way he does when his circuits become temporarily overloaded. “Why,” he said, “for the simple love of knowledge.”

I knew the other shoe was about to drop so we walked along in silence as the birds sang and vehicles sped above us on the Interstate. A hawk suddenly appeared and landed on a tree near us, a sight that would normally have delighted my alien friend. He scarcely noticed it. I braced myself.

Finally, he spoke. “Why then?” was all he said.

“Why then what?”

“Why do you elect mendacious ignorami to public office/”

“Hey,” I said. “You got your Galactic Universal Translator fixed.”

“My GUT is fine,” he said, “and I trust it completely.”

“Only I think,” I said, “we would simply say ignoramuses.”

“You are certainly proving all over again that you are one,” he said.

 

When he goes “snippy,” I usually back off. “Want to tell me,” I said, “what brought this all on?”

“Gonasxhitoowicitasan.”

“Pardon?”

“You call it ‘Ebola’ but that isn’t the galactic name.”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“Everyone has heard of it,” he said. “It is planted on developing planets by Castasurneans.”

“By whom?”

“They have appointed themselves as purifiers of the Galaxy, They plant a deadly, but controllable virus on developing planets.”

“Why?”

“To determine if the controlling species is worthy of existing. In their view, those that are will combine their intellectual resources in a communal effort to defeat the threat, while the galaxy is best cleansed of those who don’t.”

“Did they do that to Falloonia?”

“Some five billion of what you call years ago.”

“You seem pensive today,” I said. “Is that a bad sign?”

“We had reached the commercial corridor that we call the ‘River Market’. He stopped in front of a newspaper stand and pointed. “Look,” he said.

There was a front page article in which a congressman stated that our President was spreading the virus for political gain.”

“How did he get elected?”

“The congressman?”

“Yes, the ignoramus.”

“Someone thought they should invest in him, I suppose.”

We walked on. I was the one getting pensive now.

“So …” I began, “Can you predict our chances?”

“Look,” he said, pointing at a magazine in another stand. Its front page advertised an article stating, “Governor of Louisiana says the state won’t limit the teaching of science in state schools to fact-only curriculum.”



Isn't it a little dangerous to allow grown
men to make statements like this in front
of little children? - C.W.

I was getting worried. “Any conclusions?” I said.

“Look,” he said. There was a pickup truck waiting at an intersection. A bumper sticker read, “Got a problem? Get a gun.”

“Uh …, I said, “and?”

He stopped and turned to me, His eyes grow large and black and within them I could see a vast field of eternity in which a tiny spark growing was growing dimmer as the scene turned dark.

“You haven’t started any long novels, have you?” he said.

 

Click an ad. I have to purchase a ticket home. - C.W.

Check out www.wattensawpress.com

Government

Dear Friends and Followers: Big Dope is being a jerk again. I reported him to the ASPCA, thinking it was an organization to prevent cruelty to aliens. Turns out, it has to do with dogs and cats. Why do they need protection? They are the most pampered and protected species on your planet. Fascinating.

Anyway, he caught me watching “The History Channel” on TV. Said if I wanted to know anything about your country’s history, I needed to quit watching shows about pawn shops and read.

So I did as he ordered and it required me to think, and that makes me tired and irritable. But, I did run across an interesting quote from one of your country’s so-called “Founding Male persons whose sperm unites with an egg, resulting in the conception of a child.” (Editor’s note: he means Founding Father—translator problems again).

The quote goes like this: "What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary." One must assume he intended to include women in the observation, but one never knows about that bunch and who they intended to include when they founded your country.

Anyway, that seems to make sense to me. All men are certainly not angels. Take Big Dope for example. Case closed.

But what is puzzling to an Alien is this: here we have an architect of your constitution, none other than the future President James Madison expressing the need for an organized and regulated society. Then we have all these folks you have elected to public office lately who believe just the opposite, like the guy from Kentucky with the weird hairpiece. Their belief seems to be that we should eliminate all government and then things will work out fine.

My counterpoint who was sent to a country called Somalia tells me this isn’t true.

These fellows were no angels.
Just ask Kunta Kinte.
But they did seem to put more thought into
things than this current bunch. - C.W.

And anyway, would angels need no supervision? Can you see the confusion in the morning when they line up to get their harps if a senior angel isn’t there to keep order? Who would lead the Heavenly Choir? Can you imagine them flying around in all directions with their wings flapping with no regulation of the cloud-ways? Fascinating.

Anyway, I’m tired of thinking for today. Believe I’ll watch TV.

I’m back. I wanted to see if your senate was going to vote to invade Iran. Big Dope wants a report. Nothing in the news, though, but some guy with a strange beard who thinks that black people would be happier if you re-enslaved them.

You have a strange country.