325. Campaigns

It had been nearly two weeks since I saw C.W. and I was beginning, as I drifted between concern and relief, to wonder what happened to him. It was late afternoon and the rest of the family was away, so I mixed a drink and sat in the backyard of the farm watching the woodland creatures, actually cows, dogs, and Canadian geese. I heard a noise from the front yard and turned around. There, coming around the house, to great commotion, were the conjoined twins, Lucky and Lefty, one of C.W.’s favorite shapes.

“Turdface,” Lucky was saying, “he’s nothing but a damned sociopath.”

“Asswipe,” Lefty said, thrusting a finger toward the other head, “at least he’s no damned communist.”

“Bite me,” you right-wing idiot.”

“Up yours,”

“Boys, boys,” I said. “What seems to be the matter?”

They looked at me in unison. Lefty spoke first. “What makes you think something’s the matter?”

“Yeah,” Lucky said. “Butt out, watermelon-head.”

I sighed. “Where have you been?”

Lucky looked at Lefty, who looked back. After a few seconds, Lefty said, “Tell him, jerkoff.”

“You tell him,” Lucky said. “It was your fault.”

“It was entrapment, pure and simple,” Lefty said.

After a few minutes of this, I obtained the full story. They, he, whatever, had just completed, by correspondence it seems, the Falloonian version of sensitivity training due to a visit by a representative from the home planet, an individual sent to record progress.”

“He just had to comment that one of her heads made him want to Flurshmithikut.” After some prodding I determined that translated roughly, very roughly, into ‘dancing the Watusi in the nude while emitting mating sounds.’ Anyway …

“We’re free now,” Lucky said. “And guess what?”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, go ahead,” Lefty said.

“Just tell me.”

“We,” Lucky said with a verbal fanfare, “are going to participate in the upcoming presidential race. I’m with the winner, and he’s supporting ‘douchebag.’”

“Don’t you dare call President-to-be Cruz that,” Lefty said. He looked at me. “This from a person who supports, ‘Pencil-di…’”

“The honorable Bernie Sanders, if you please,” Lucky said.

“Honorable my ass,” Lefty said. “My candidate is the honorable one. Just wait until he settles with those scum,”

“What scum?” I asked.

“Immigrants and their illegal offspring, coming our country and claiming to be citizens. Wham, bam, and right back into the jungle with them,”

“Uh, …”

Lucky interrupted. “Bernie’s going to let everyone go to college for free,”

“Yeah,” Lefty said, “even stupid assholes like you.”

“Uh, fellows …” I said.

Lucky blurted out, “We won’t have any more illegal wars with Bernie.”

“Just wait until he takes away your guns,” Lefty said, looking at me.

“I don’t have any guns,” I said.

“What about that one you use to shoot snakes?”

“It’s a pellet gun,” I said.

“Bernie the socialist will get that too,” Lefty said.

“You won’t need guns after Ted, the Bat-shit Crazy, Cruz nukes the entire Middle East,” Lucky said.

“Oh man,” can’t you just see it?” Lefty said. The entire area glowing in the dark on Google Earth.”

“Moron,” Lucky said.

“Hippie weeny.”

“Uh fellows, …”

“What?” Lefty said. “It won’t affect you. “Ted The Man says he’ll exempt the Baby Boomers from all his cuts.”

“It’s not that,” I said.

“Then what is your problem?” Lucky said.

“Have you not heard?”

We always find it odd that so many of your species
 doesn't take the right to make this choice any more
seriously than it does. - C.W.

Lefty looked at Lucky. Lucky looked back, and said, “Heard what? We’ve been gone awhile, or can’t you hear?”

“It’s all settled,” I said. “The nominees are chosen.”

“That’s why we’re gearing up, Dummkopf,” Lefty said. “Now which one of us do you plan to side with, Cruz or Sanders?”

“I hate to tell you this” I said, “but the candidates are going to be Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.”

“Cut the crap,” Lucky said. “We’re being serious.”

“Afraid so,” I said.

“But … but … but…,” Lefty said. “You’re talking about someone who is despised, ridiculed, and blasted by everyone in the press—a person who reportedly disgusts people and who started to wear thin years ago. Someone who will polarize the country. Someone who has had a troubled marriage in the past.”

“Two, actually,” Lucky said, looking at Lefty, “and you have to take him.”


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322. Humor

“You know what I find odd about your species?”

“You find a lot of things odd about our species.”

“I mean really odd.”

I played along. I was taking C.W. for a ride in my new truck to let things cool down a bit back home. Since we were in the country, he was in the shape of a farmer, or rancher, or how he assumed one would appear: khaki shirt and pants, and a “stockman’s hat” perched over a sunburnt face. He was trying to develop a proper wave, since rural men each have a unique wave that identifies them, even if their face isn’t clearly visible while driving. He had about decided on the “two-finger flip," modified to make it slightly different from that of a neighbor. Then he worked on a “turkey tail,” as he called it but couldn’t decide whether to unfurl it as part of the wave or simply flash it full blown.

Did I mention that he was getting on my nerves?

“So,” he said, flashing his “unfolding turkey-tail” wave at a woman mowing her yard. She looked at him as though he might have been, well, an alien or something. He turned back to me. “Want to know what I really find odd?” He flashed a motorist who shot back a one-finger wave, and it was not a friendly one. "Would you?"

“I think I’m fixing to,” I say in a mocking rural tone.

“You Americans have no sense of humor.”

“We what?”

“Not a smudging bit.”

“That’s a smidgen bit,” I said, “and most of us do.”

“Not around your house.”

“Are you referring to my wife?”

“I report. You decide,” he said, mocking a fake news channel he turns on when my wife isn’t looking.

“You don’t think my wife has a sense of humor?”

“Reports are,” he said, “the last time she showed one was the night she married you.

“You’re blaming her for the little dust-up this morning.”

“She certainly wasn’t exhibiting the quality of being filled with cheerfulness or merriment.”

“She normally doesn’t exhibit much jollity when someone uses her best and most expensive sewing scissors to cut tin cans for making their artwork.”

“I was making a mobile, and I told her it would be hilarious.”

“She didn’t think so.”

“It would have been. It was little figures of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Popeye and Olive, Charlie Brown and Lucy, and others. Their little arms and legs would be coiled pieces of tin can and when the wind blew them into one another the springs would pop free, and their limbs would wrap around one another. It would look like they were …”

“I know what it would look like,” I said, stopping him. “And she didn’t think it was funny.”

“Case closed … you have no sense of humor.”

“Americans have a great sense of humor,” I said. “I can prove it to you.”

“How?” he said, flipping his fingers to a passing farmer who returned the “modified salute” greeting.

“Ted Cruz.”

“The one John McCain called a ‘wacko bird?” he said, suppressing a smile.

“Rand Paul.”

The smile broke through. “That toupee. The horror. The horror.”

“Michele Bachmann.”

He giggled. “Oh please, not Michele ‘Carbon dioxide is harmless’ Bachmann.”

“Sheriff Joe Arpaio.”

He guffawed, “Prisoners in pink. You can stop now.”

“Sarah Palin.”

“Oh please,” he said. I looked over and saw tears forming.

If he had said, "Joel Osteen" I really
would have had an accident. - C.W.

“And Bristol,” I said. “Don’t let’s forget the Czarina of Abstinence.”

He was convulsing. “Oh stop,” he said. “I can’t stand it anymore.” Snot was coming from his nose.

“Donald Trump.”

“Oh stop. Stop,” he said. “You’ve got to stop.”

“I have more.”

“No,” he said. “I mean really stop. Stop the truck.”

I braked and pulled over. He shot from the truck toward a stand of trees. I could see a dark stain forming in the seat of his farmer’s khakis.

He flashed the Turkey Tail at a passing pickup and disappeared into the woods.

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319. Monsters

Have I told you that C.W. has taken up reading? Oh yes. He’ll fold into the shape of an Oxford Don and read for hours these days. It’s a welcome relief from some of his shenanigans. He says it’s a sort of punishment meted out to him by the Falloonian Elders for that movie theater incident.

Don’t ask.

Anyway, he seemed to be taking a break for I found him on my wife’s computer this morning pecking away like a student finishing an overdue paper.

“You know you’re going to die,” I said. “Don’t you?”

“Wait one,” he said, and finished a thought. Then he looked at me. “What’s your problem?”

“Not my problem,” I said. “Yours. When she wakes up and catches you on her computer, you’ll be a dead ma…, uh thi.., uh alien.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “She told me I could.”

“Could what?”

“Write a book.”

“A book about what?”

“Husbands.”

“Husbands?”

“Yes, perfect husbands.”

“What did you tell her you would call it?”

“I Married A Monster.”

I sat down. “Does it have a plot?”

“Of course.”

“Are you at liberty to share it?”

He thought for a moment. “Why not?” He looked away and started to speak.

“Just a moment,” I said. I rose and walked to the coffee pot and poured myself a healthy portion. I returned and sat. I sipped and savored the taste. “This had better be good,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “So there is this woman who wants to create the perfect man, see?”

“I can’t imagine where this might be going,” I said, “but proceed.”

“So she takes the raw material and first decides that he needs no education or understanding of any body of knowledge, other than blind obedience to commands … her commands.”

I said nothing.

“So,” he continued, “she educates him by force-feeding a 24-hour barrage of meaningless input from a TV monitor, designed to make him hate and fear the outside world and distrust any authority but that of his handler.”

“I can’t see,” I said, “how any woman would want that. But it’s your story.”

“Then,” he said, “she subjects him to an intense behavior modification program.”

“Designed to do what?”

“Despise any other living species other than his immediate handler. The slogan is: ‘Inside good. Outside bad,’ and this produces a rabid person marked by the general hatred, distrust or contempt of the human species or human nature.”

I interrupted. “A what?”

“What I just said.”

“Did you mean misanthrope?”

“Of course,” he said. “That’s why I said it.” He sighed his sigh of exasperation contempt. “Now may I continue?”

“Sure,” I said. “What is next?”

“Religion.”

“As in?”

“As in there is a paradise filled with pizza and ice cream reserved for those who obey.”

“So this is it?”

“No, there is one more step,” he said.

“And it is?”

“Role modeling.”

“And?”

“She has people who appeal to his developing instincts counsel him.”

“About what?”

“About how successful and happy he will be when he is like them, and rich … how filthy rich he will be.”

“This is how they became rich?”

“Oh no,” he said. “They were born rich, but he is so baffled by now that he forgets things.”

“I must leave soon,” I said. “Want to hit me with the ending?”

“Well of course,” he said. “She thinks she has created the perfect husband: obedient, unthinking, unquestioning, fiercely loyal, protective, distrusting of strangers, and disciplined.”

“But?”

I can't see why Mrs. Big Dope is so mad.
It looks like a perfect husband to me. - C.W.

“Can’t you imagine what occurs?”

“The law of unintended consequences?”

“In a hard external covering in which the kernel of a nut is enclosed,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “In a nutshell. And the ending?”

“She is gazing out over a dead, cratered, and smoldering landscape where her house once stood.”

“And the final line?”

“What shall be done? What can we do? My monster is on the loose.”

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316. Confusion

C.W. walked in to where I was writing and plopped into a chair. I looked up and saw what appeared to be one of those pundits they bring on television news to explain the inexplicable. He was dressed as a Lt. Colonel of the Army, so I guessed he was supposed to be “our military affairs” expert. Yes, they often forget that a Lt. Colonel (Ret.) is someone who never made it “to the Boardroom” as they say. Anyway …

“What do people mean,” he said, “when they refer to “Bible-humping?”

“Say what?”

“Bible-humping,” he said. “Are they referring to the antics of King David, or maybe those randy Corinthians?”

“Say what?”

“I read your Bible,” he said. “Maybe they were talking about King Solomon. Now there was a dude that liked women.” He thought. “Or maybe pomegranates, or breasts, or both. Whichever way, he had a real case of it.”

“Bible-humping?”

His head snapped with a slight motion as if he hated to leave an image. “That’s what I said.”

I hit “Control-S” on my computer and leaned back. A mental door opened and a thought emerged. “Do you,” I said, “by any chance mean “Bible-thumping?’”

He had been on the verge of saying something, but this stopped him cold. He thought. "It’s her again,” he said, his eyes reverting to a cold gleam.

“You’ve been listening to your Galactic Universal Translator, haven’t you?”

“My GUT is fine,” he said, “but someone has been hacking into the updates they forward from my home planet.”

“Oh,” I said, knowing it came out sounding a little weak.

“How do you stay married to her?” he said.

“Well,” I said, “for one thing I don’t come to the door, when she’s alone, in the shape of one of her old boyfriends.”

“She shouldn’t have kept his picture and showed it to me,” he said.

“She showed you the picture of one of her old boyfriends?”

He shrugged. “Sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of?”

“I, uh, more or less came across it.”

“Were you going through her stuff again?”

“Collecting valuable data," he said. “That’s all I was doing … research.”

“You weren’t wearing her things, were you? We’ve talked about that.”

“Know what she said?” he asked, ignoring me.

I persevered. “Were you?”

“She said, ‘Now you can see what I could have had and compare it to what I got,’ and she took it away from me and held it to her, pomegranates, I mean her breasts.”

Have I ever mentioned the fact that sometimes C.W. lies when it suits his purpose?

“I doubt that,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “Now about this ‘Bible-thumping’ thing. What do they mean?”

“It’s a saying,” I said, “that refers to the act of using Biblical references to justify questionable actions or beliefs.”

“Like it’s okay for a king to send his best friend to be killed in battle so he can get the friend’s wife alone and …”

“It can refer to any number of things, such as slavery, that people use their interpretation of the Bible to justify.” I said, interrupting him.

“Like electing scoundrels to public office?”

“That too,” I said.

He stood and assumed a look of panic.

“I’ve got to go,” he said.

“I … will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the

 boughs  thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters

 of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples ..."

If this refers to, “the glorious and splendid clothing

 worn  by the saintly,” then I’m confused, - C.W.

“Where?”

“To check my GUT.”

“It does make one a little nauseated to think about it, doesn’t it?”

“Not that,” he said. “It’s my translator.”

“What about it?”

“I don’t think she was finished,”

“What makes you say that?”

His eyes rolled upward as if he may have been mentally scrolling a list. Then he looked straight at me and said, “There’s no such thing, is there,” he said, “as a holy-stroller?”

312. Professions

“Let’s see. Cost of equipment per client. Rental fees. Personnel costs. Training. What else?”

Oh no. I could tell by the dialogue that C.W. was onto another of his get rich schemes. Don’t ask me why. I don’t even think they use money on Falloonia. I turned and tried to slip away, but he heard me. Unfortunately,

“Hey Big Dope. Come here. You will want in on this. Don’t you have a good friend who is a cinematographer?”

I contemplated running away, but I get a kick out of his schemes sometimes, so I walked into the next room to fine a perfectly formed shape of what Cecil B. DeMille must have looked like in his prime. He was pouring over sheets of paper and scribbling with a furious intensity that reminded me of a schoolboy running out of time on a test.

“What the …?”

He looked up and flashed a smile. “How much do those little gadgets cost that you can hook up to a cell phone and make credit card charges?”

I ignored him. “What are you doing?”

“Working on a plan to make us rich.” He drew a line under a column of figures with a flourish and smiled again. “To an extreme and often disgustingly extent rich.”

“So how are we going to become filthy rich this time?”

“Prostitution.”

That stunned me. “Prostitution?”

“Actually prostitution plus.”

“Prostitution is illegal almost everywhere in this country,” I said. “You are going to get us all arrested.”

“Oh no,” he said, “and besides, they can’t imprison me. I’ll just change to an insect and fly out.”

“Some folks around here already think of you as an insect, so don’t press your luck in a house with so many fly swatters.” Then I thought. “But what about me? I couldn’t fly out of jail so what would happen to me?”

“I’ll change into a priest and bring you reading material,” he said. “But anyway, nobody is going to get arrested.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Prostitution Plus,” he said. “That’s what we’ll call it.”

“And how does that make a difference? Prostitution by any other name is still illegal.”

“Ah yes,” he said. “But art films depicting intimate behavior among consenting adults is not.”

“You mean porn films?”

“We prefer the term ‘results of vintage adult situations,’ as more sophisticated,” he said. “Now, here’s the deal. How does a prostitute normally approach a john?” He laughed. “That’s what we call them in the business: ‘Johns.’ Is that cute or what? I would prefer ‘chumps,’ and Mrs. Big Dope agrees.”

“You mentioned his to her?”

“Yes. I had to ask someone how working women or men approached their chumps, …  uh, … Johns, … uh prospects.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said to ask you.”

“Let’s just stop this right now,” I said. “We’re still talking about accosting someone with a proposal for participating in an illegal act.”

“Isn't it odd among your species," he said, that politicians can sell their souls for money but people can't rent their bodies for pleasure? Anyway, so a person says to a stranger, 'Hey mister. Want to make an art film?' That’s an illegal proposal?”

That stopped me. “Well,” I said, “what about the sex?”

“Incidental,” he said. “Just part of the plot line.”

“But the, uh, John will pay?”

“Of course, but only for the studio, equipment rental, actor’s fee, and the cost of the complimentary copy of the DVD.”

I let that one pass since my mind was whirling.

“So?” he said. “You considering it?”

“No,” I said. “I’m having a ‘John Agar Moment’ and I have to think.”

If she is a senator offering to sell her vote,
then it's a perfectly legal act. How odd. - C.W.

“You mean that actor that played in the science fiction movies years ago with all the monsters and such?”

“Yes.”

“So what moment do you refer to?”

“The moment at which his girlfriend comes up with a way to destroy the monster.”

C.W. thought. “And what does he say?”

“It just might work.”


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310. Qualifications

“You just never listen to a word I say.”

“Sure I want you to stay,” I said, attempting to perform a complicated maneuver in Photoshop.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” he said.

“I’m not being mean,” I said, grasping the pen on my Wacom tablet and making a line.

“I give up,’ he said. Actually, I suppose I should say ‘she said,’ for C.W. was in one of his rare shapes as a female: a shapely, attractive lady of her late forties dressed in casual clothes, sneakers, and a baseball hat with a long ponytail hanging through the back. “What cup?” I said.

A pad of papers came flying through the air, almost hitting me. “What the …?” I yelled.

“I’m serious here,” he, she, yelled.

I finally looked up. “I would have never guessed. “What about?”

“Qualifications for president.”

“Whose president?”

“Your country’s.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well you have to be a natural-born citizen. That leaves you out, I’m afraid.”

“No,” silly,” she pouted. “I mean what they were talking about on TV the other night, the part about ‘hands-on’ and all that.”

“Oh,” I said. “You mean knowledge of foreign policy.”

“No, they didn’t mention that.”

“What then?”

“The part about the size of things.”

“Oh, you mean the fiscal deficit.”

“The what?”

“The trade inbalance?”

“Never heard of that.”

“The size of our military?”

“Is that an issue? They didn’t discuss it.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“Not me … them.”

“Them who?”

“The people or things regarded as suitable for, or likely to receive, a particular fate, treatment, or position.”

“The candidates?”

“That’s what I said. They spent most of their time talking about who had the biggest.” Then she, waited.

“The biggest what?” I said, and immediately regretted it.

“Hands.”

Realization burst, as Kipling might say, ‘like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay,’ and I was stunned. She crossed two shapely legs and waited.

“Uh, C.W. … , “ I began.

“Carolyn Wilhemina, if you please. And don’t tell me that the size of their hands referred to their capacity for empathy. They don’t fondle that emotion at all, it appeared to me.”

“I won’t,” I said, suppressing a laugh.

“Or intellect. They didn’t seem to want to insert that into the discussion.”

“Right.”

“Or their religious convictions. They certainly didn’t want to wave that at us.”

At that point, I had no other option but to explain it to her.

“You must be joking,” was the response.

“Sadly,” I said. “I’m not.”

“And you call yourself civilized?” Then she stopped, obviously remembering something. “Is this what Mrs. Big Dope meant when she referred to them as ‘bank-strutter wannabees?”

“I think the expression is,” I said, “bank-walker .. . bank-walker wannabees is what she said."

“Never heard of that.” There followed a pause, and I could tell his Galactic Universal Translator was churning. “What on earth does it mean?”

If this is the party's method of determining who
is most qualified to be president, isn't there a
simple way to find out? - C.W.

“It’s an old country expression,” I said, “referring to the days when young boys would assemble on a pond bank, take off all their clothes, run as fast as they could, and jump in the water.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“There was always one, you see, “I said, “who wouldn’t run for the water straight away.”

“What would he do …?” she began, Then, she understood, “He would …”

“The bank-walker,” I said.

“Oh my god,” she said. There was a long pause, and then she added, “Are they really that willing to stick it to the American people?”

“It appears so.”

“Is there a chance that such tactics could prove limp before the election?”

It was only then that I realized he was pulling out one of his frequent jokes and trying to impress me with it.

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306. Confusion

"So explain something to me," C.W. said, as we enjoyed ourselves at a local Little Rock beer joint. I it was pleasant, with his taking, for once, the sensible shape of a good friend. I was having a beer and he a soda, his usual since the incident with the female police officer. Don't ask.

"Explain what?"

"This concept your species has called a 'love-hate' relationship."

"What do you mean?"

"It doesn't make sense," he said."Is it what you call a combination of contradictory word such as a 'definite maybe,' like Mrs. Big Dope says all the time?"

"You mean an oxymoron?"

"That's what I said. Your repeating of everything I say is becoming a periodic constancy."

It took a moment for that to register. "She doesn't say that all the time," I said. It's just a falsehood she uses to express the truth."

"You are confusing me with elucidation," he said.

"So what was it you want to know? Forgetting what you say is, for me, a cruel kindness."

He scowled at me from across the table. “Would you rather play our beer-drinking game?”

Oh no. We have this game we play called “Songs and songwriters I enjoy disliking.” The image of Tony Orlando popped into my head. I quickly changed the subject.

“So what was your question again? I’m drearily attentive.”

“What does it mean to have a ‘love-hate’ relationship with something or someone?”

“Well,” I said, “it sort of means you love something— or maybe the concept of something— at one moment but then hate it at another. You know … possessing simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and hate.”

“Like in marriage,” he said, “when …”

I interrupted him. “It doesn’t have anything to do with sex,” I said.

“Hmm,” he said, and he took a small notebook and pen from his pocket and began to write.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh nothing,” he said, “just making a note to get a second opinion on something.”

“You leave her out of this,” I said. “Or I’ll catch you sleeping and play, ‘American Pie,’ as loud as I can.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” he said. “I have ten Tom Waits discs just waiting for you.”

“Okay,” I said. “Truce.”

“Truce,” he said. “Peace through war.”

“You got it,” I said. “But why are you off on this love-hate kick?”

“Your species seems to live by it,” he said.

“Confound me with clarity,” I said.

“Look at your religions,” he said. “Between those urging love, and those urging hate, which are the fastest growing?”

I took a drink of beer and signaled the waitress for another, not from desire, but from a need for a second or two to think. She came and I stalled some more, asking about her family.

“Oh my granddaddy said the nicest thing to me the other day,” she said.

“Really?”

“Yes, he told me that he was so proud that I had five kids and that I knew who the daddy of each one was.” She took the empty bottle and wandered away.

C.W. stared at her. “How old do you think she is?”

“Nearly 30, I imagine.”

“What her grandfather said, isn’t that what you would call ‘praise damnation’ or something like that?”

“No,” I said. “I think that’s what we call redneck sophistication in the South. But back to your question …”

Something tells me that his man
is not reciting the Beatitudes. - C.W.

“Yes,” he said. “Now take a look at your current crop of political candidates.”

“What about them?”

“The ones who get all the attention, what are they whispering most loudly?”

“Uh,” I said, once more stalling for time.”

Let me answer with a hint,” he said. “It isn’t love.”

I nodded. “Just what are you trying to say?”

“Just that,” he said, “you species never seems to feel more correct than when they are wrong.”

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304: Truth

“It seems to me a person with an imagination could make a lot of money.”

“So,” I said, “you have an imagination?”

“Quite so.” C.W. was walking with me in the snow that had fallen overnight. He resembled the late actor and comedian Robin Williams as he stepped gingerly in the five-inch layer of white. “I can think things up with the best of them.”

“What sort of things?” We exited a wooded area and turned onto a country lane offering a pleasant vista of snow-covered branches arching over a straight path that seemed to lead somewhere peaceful.

“Things for the news to report.”

“Made up things?”

“Sure. That’s what sells,” he said, stepping over a fallen limb.

“Made up things sell?”

“Your media doesn’t seem that obsessed wth accuracy these days.”

“So you make things up, they report, and the people abide.”

“Pretty much so.”

“You will invent ‘facts’ and sell them to the press?”

“Ya got that right, Pilgrim,” he said, trying to mimic John Wayne.”

“Give me an example.”

“Let’s see,” he said. “Something really ridiculous. Hmmm. We could sell them a proven fact that every time taxes have been cut in your country, tax revenues have increased.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“What?”

“That’s been done. In fact, that fantasy news channel runs that almost every day.”

“Drats.”

We walked in silence for a while, enjoying the solitude. Then he broke in. “How’s this? I read where the taxes in your country rank 26^th out of the 30 countries in the world-wide Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Let’s sell the fantasy that your taxes are the highest in the world.”

“You haven’t been paying attention, have you?”

“Been done already?”

“Every night on fantasy news.”

“Drats.” He brightened. “Iraq bombed the World Trade towers.”

“Done.”

“I know,” he said. “We’ll pick out a decorated war veteran and say he was a coward.”

“Have you ever heard of John Kerry?”

“Who?”

“Let’s just say that has been done already as well.”

“Drats.”

“Look,” I said. “I’m not sure this is a good idea. I don’t think you could get rich making things up for the news.”

“Bill O’Reilly has.”

He had me stumped there. I suggested we walk back to the farmhouse and that he let me offer him some proof. We chatted about other things. He was curious about the vast differences in the price of vodka in the U.S., given the fact that import standards require that it be pure, odorless, and tasteless. We were still discussing the field of marketing when we arrived home. “You mean,” he said, “that a chemical compound like bleach, that only exists in one form—a single, specific chemical compound—can be marketed for different prices?”

Words are like some of your politicians
and professionals I could name. For enough
money, they'll do anything you want. - C.W.

“Welcome to America,” I said.

“But if you alter the composition by one atom, it’s no longer bleach,” he said. “Everyone knows that.”

“Apparently we don’t” I said. “Check next time we go to the supermarket.”

“What do you have to show me?” he said, slumping in a chair.

I retrieved a stack on news clippings I had been saving and began showing them to him. I began with one claiming that residents of Colorado were buying marijuana with food stamps. Then one asserting that a U.S. Senator lost his family’s health insurance because of the Affordable Health Care Act. He read them carefully. Once, he looked up at me. “But the President of the United States was born in Hawaii,” he said. “Isn’t that one of your states?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “But who cares?” Then he saw a claim by a woman whose son had beat his wife and threatened her with a rifle.

“No,” he said. “She’s not claiming that the President made him do it?”

I said nothing. He handed the clipping back with a downcast look.

“You may be right,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t make up stuff like this.”

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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.

 

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245. Campaigns

What could be worse than an alien who doesn’t understand our politics? Try an alien who doesn’t understand our politics, or our language, but decides to get involved in a campaign.

Yep. It is C.W. I came in from taking care of some family matters and found that he had assumed the exact form of Norman Rockwell and was furiously painting away at an easel.

“What the …?”

“Hey, Big Dope,” he said. “You’ve been wanting me to get a job so I have a good one. Take a look.” He pointed a t what was evidently to be a campaign poster, for Hillary Clinton of all people. “I’m going to be making ads for Hillary.” He pointed at his work. “What do you think?”

Across the top of the ad was the word “Hillary!” Under it was her face. Under that was the message he had blocked out and was finishing. It read, “Because men should not always come first.”

I blinked. Then I blinked again. “Uh, C.W.,” I said.

“What?”

It took me a while to explain, as his face drooped in disappointment. Finally, he removed the poster and threw it into a corner. Picking up a finished one from a pile, he placed it on the easel. “Well,” he said, “what do you think of his one?”

It also had “Hillary” across the top in bold lettering. Under the name this time were portraits of Bill and Chelsea. Under them, the message, “Comes with a couple of nice ones,”

I stifled a laugh. This time he didn’t take the news so well. “Do you want to see more? If you do, quit laughing.”

“Oh,” I said. “More. Please, more.”

He sullenly removed the poster and replaced it with another. It had the faces of Hillary and President Obama in the middle. Above them were the words, “Choose Hillary.” Underneath the faces he had painted, “For a great climax.”

This time my knees grew weak and I had to sit as I explained. He sailed the poster across the room and glared at me. “You are being inclined to find fault or to judge with severity, often too readily,” he said.

“I’m not being critical,” I said. “I’m just being honest.” I tried to sooth him. “Let’s see your last one,” I said. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

I only chose her to work for because I
thought her possible opponents were limp. - C.W.

“You won’t laugh?”

“I won’t laugh.”

He reached over, picked up the final poster and placed it on the easel. It had a nice picture of Hillary saluting the American flag that fluttered atop a huge flagpole. The words above read, “Choose Hillary.” The ones below read, “And keep America erect.”

When I finally managed to quit rolling on the floor and managed to stand, C.W. was gone, as was his easel.

 

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- C.W.

 

 

Excerpt:

Nelson watched the woman screaming and looked puzzled. Most in the courtroom believed that the prosecution had proven the man guilty. The jurors themselves had all agreed on it. Nelson had brought up a point during the deliberations that he didn’t see a strong motive for such a crime. The others told him that he just had a lot to learn about Southern men. And, there hadn’t been much of a defense presented. What could the man’s attorney say—that his client had threatened to kill a man and then did, but that didn’t make a boy all bad?

206. Tools

Sometimes I worry about C.W. He’s on this kick to get a new computer (I gave him my old one but he is offended). So he comes up with some new money-making scheme almost every day. This one is a doozy.

When he announced it to me, I first thought he had appeared in the shape of Joe McCarthy, the infamous senator from Wisconsin. But, on closer inspection, he was in the shape of a freshman senator from Texas who wants to be the modern reincarnation of "Tail-Gunner Joe" and bears a striking resemblance.

Anyway, the new business idea grew from a speech the Senator’s father made in which he stated that our country needed to quit being “politically correct” and start being “biblically correct.”

“So,” C.W. announced proudly, “my new business—and this is the best yet—will be called, “Scriptural Heavenly Inspirational Tools’ and it will make me a fortune. I’ll have all the computers I want.”

“Uh, C.W.,” I said, “I don’t know what you will be selling, but you may want to reconsider the name of your business.”

“Why?”

I had to explain it three times before he understood. He then said, “We’ll just call it ‘Scriptural Tools’ for short.”

“And you will sell what?”

“Compliance things made or adapted for a particular purpose.”

“And what will these ‘compliance devices’ do?”

“Help make you biblical.” He smiled, and as I was considering this, he reached into a sample case he had with him. He produced a folding stick much like those canes used by the visually impaired. Only this one had a leather-bound handle, was thick at the bottom and tapered to a flexible metal end. He waved it through air menacingly. “Here’s one,” he said proudly. “I call it the ‘Spare Not Obedience Tool’ and it will be a hard currency bovine—cheap to make, easy to sell, and popular with the masses.”

This time I didn’t tell him.

“Here,” he said, producing a box stating that it contained ‘wife organizing software’ and guaranteeing the owner that he would never lose track of any of his wives again. “Have as many wives as you want and never misplace any of them.”

“Thanks. One has proven plenty,” I said. “But then I’ve never been that religious.”

He immediately placed it in the case and pulled another software box out for review. “This one,” he said, “will be sold by special order only … to military men.”

When we make women in America wear veils, it will
become increasingly difficult to keep them organized. - C.W.

I looked. The package showed a provocative photo of a girl of about thirteen posed seductively in a bed of pillows. Its title was Midianite Maidens—The Reason We Fight. “Why the military alone will buy these by the hundreds of thousands,” he said brightly.

“C.W.,” I said. “I must admit. Of all the crazy schemes you have had, this one just might work.”

“So,” he said lifting his chin, “no comments about it being hirsutely-cranial?”

“Not hair-brained at all. Just very biblical.”

“Oh,” he said. “You have made my day. Now let me show you my plans for a back-yard execution post for rebellious children.”

 

I need that new computer so click on some ads. - C.W.

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