COUNTING

 The Alien C.W. was bent over my desk this morning looking much like a harried accountant. He looked up, raised his green visor, and stared at me. “Ah,” he said. “Just the person I wanted to see.” He stopped, took a pencil, and drew a line under a line of figures and returned to staring. “Did you find out?”

“About what?” I sipped my coffee with a great deal of deliberation. I like to mess with his three minds.

“About the census that your people take ever few weeks.”

“Ten years,” I said.

“Earth years,” he said. “When are you going to switch to Galaxy Time?”

“In ten seconds,” I said. He didn’t laugh.

“Well, was it accurate? Did you ask her?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“She’s been retired for some time,” I said. “In Earth years. She said it was a bit different this time. Said the census was a good as the people and institutions that undertake it.”

“And it is important?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“To orient government aid.”

“Your government does that?”

It used to. Now the main purpose of the census, according to the news, is to determine legislative power.”

He stared.

“Oh,” I said, “And bragging rights.”

He leaned back and put his fingers over his eyes in the universal gesture of exasperation. I could tell he missed his other two sets of eyes and hands. He took a deep breath and spoke. “You Earthlings,” he said. “Bragging rights?”

“Yes.”

“Elucidate.”

“It’s like this: If your community, city, or state is growing in population, it is a good place.”

“And if it doesn’t?

I made a gesture of a knife being drawn across my throat.

“Do your people understand the principle of Skroodeep++,” he stopped. Thought and stared at the ceiling. I could tell his Galactic Universal Translator was speaking to him. He nodded and said, “The principle of ‘cause and effect’ at all?”

“A few do.”

“When they do, how do they assign a cause to population growth?”

“Most often they attribute it to what they call a ‘quality school system’ and leave it at that.”

“A quality school system?”

“Bingo.”

“What?”

“That means you are correct.”

He stopped. A frown of thought contorted his face. Then he relaxed. “Wait one,” he said, turning to a note pad on his far side. He scribbled something and turned back. “Okay,” he said. “Where were we?”

Before I could speak, he said, “Just a second. I forgot something I was supposed to do for Mrs. Big Dope. I’ll be right back.” With that, he arose and left the room. He no longer takes promises to that individual lightly.

I couldn’t resist. Checking to make sure the wasn’t watching, I walked over and checked his note pad. On it he had written a brief note, which puzzled me.

“Falloonian Elders' Report,” it started. Then, “Dog whistles.”

435: Business

 It was obvious that something was troubling C.W. He had been moping around all day in the shape of one of his more troublesome characters. I call him “Carl the confused.” He prefers “Charlie the Wonderer.”

Whatever. He finally asked me to take a walk around the pond on our farm. I didn’t really want to do it because of all the goose poop on the bank, but he insisted, and reminded me that when I had taken on the job of being his host, that I had agreed to explain our ways as well as I could. So we took a walk.

He had filled a pocket with rocks from one of my wife’s dozens of piles that she has picked up over the years. There are no natural rocks on the farm, so they have all been collected by her.

He sailed a rock over the surface of the pond. It skipped once and sank. “She’s going to whip your ass,” I said, “for stealing her rocks.”

“She won’t miss a few from all the thousands she has stacked around.” He sailed another. It failed to skip even once.

“Are you kidding? She knows every one in every pile, where it came from, and when she collected it. Besides, you’re not doing it right. You have to bend low and get it closer to the surface.”

“Show me,” he said, handing me a rock.

“You won’t tell?”

“Heavens no.”

I bent low and sailed the rock. It skipped three times and sank.

“Tell me,” he said as he pulled another rock from his pocket. “Can you really run government like a business?”

The question surprised me. “Why do you ask me that?”

“Writing a report. The Elders sent me a communication saying this orange-faced guy has them all confused.”

“What orange-faced g…, oh.”

“They aren’t sure that he is for real. They think it’s just another Earthling television show. I must explain it all to them. So can you? Run government like a business?”

“No.” I said.

“Why not?”

“Several reasons. First, business can operate anyway it wishes as long as it doesn’t break the law.”

“But what about …?” He began.

“As long as it doesn’t get caught breaking a law.” I corrected myself.

“Oh.”

“Government,” I said, “on the other hand can only operate under specific laws that allow it to protect the public health, safety, welfare, and morals of the people, laws that have been validated by the courts.”

“Then there is an actual law somewhere that allows the president of your country knowingly to lie to the public in order to carry out his aims?”

I thought. “Not exactly.”

“So he can just do it anyway, without punishment?”

“That’s what elections were designed to do.”

“Back in the old days?”

I didn’t answer. After a moment, I said. “There are other differences between business and government.”

“Such as?”

“The business model is that for my company to win, your company must lose. Government, on the other hand should enact policies or take actions that benefit or protect us all.”

“How’s that working for you?” he said, bending over and throwing a stone. It bounced twice.

I veered away. “Business operates under the so-called ‘Law of Supply and Demand’ in providing goods and services. Generally, low supply and high demand increase price. In contrast, the greater the supply and the lower the demand, the price tends to fall. Businesses flourish when high demand justifies an increase in supply.”

He stopped. “But,” he said. “Didn’t your late president Ronald Reagan say that supply creates its own demand?”

Sometimes there
 is the smell of sulfur
 in the halls of
 government. - C.W.

"Reagan received a lot of bad advice,” I said. “Have you ever heard of Oliver North?”

“So, the idea is that if we keep building things, producing products, and providing services that nobody wants, we’ll get rich?”

“No,” I said. “We’ll eventually go bankrupt, time and time again. Soon, nobody will lend us money anymore, nobody who is operating solely on sound business practices.”

“That sounds reasonable,” he said. “Nobody supports a loser?”

“Uh,” I said, foreign interests might, if the rewards outweighed the risks. It seems to be done for political ends at times, and that blurs the proper demarcation between government and business.”

“And the ‘government the people, by the people, and for the people,’ as you great man put it, would allow that?”

“If it has enough backing.”

He bent low and sailed a rock. It bounced four times and sank slowly. He stood up with a bright look on his face.

“I’m beginning to see,” he said. “It’s all just a matter of how far you're willing to bend over.”

See also:

Delta Dreaming

All Hat No Cattle

Enjoy these at all? If so, order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers. It will make him so happy. Also, click on an ad. It earns him a little and costs the advertiser, sort of a win-win.

424: Science

Oh my, I hadn’t seen anyone smoke a pipe in years. Didn’t know they still made them. But there was C.W. puffing away on one, sitting at a patio table. His shape was a lot like the late playwright Arthur Millar. He had books and papers scattered in front of him.

He motioned for me to join him and I did.

He waved a hand across the pile of material before him like he was giving it his blessing. “I think,” he said, “that I’ve about figured it out.”

“How to look anachronistic?”

He ignored me. “Why your species is so unwilling to move into the future,” he said.

“Elucidate.” I could tell he was in one of his serious moments, and I enjoy those.

“Do you ever think about the monumental and complex problems facing your planet?” he said.

“All the time.”

“Ever thing of what it will take to solve those problems?”

“Probably things that we haven’t thought of yet.”

“Precisely,” he said.

That made me feel good. He rarely acknowledges that I know anything.

“Continue, please,” I said.

“Ever wonder,” he said, continuing in a questioning mode, “why one of the world’s richest families, emanating by the way,” he said, “from your own state, has joined hands with major religious institutions and a dominant political party in a plan to abrogate your current system of educating your children? Ever say, to yourself, what do they have to gain by denouncing reason, science, and the ability to address problems in a cognitive way?”

“You are right. It doesn’t make sense.”

He smiled, nodded, and picked up a large book from the table. “Ever read this?” he asked. It was a worn copy of The Golden Bough, by Sir James George Frazer, a Scottish social anthropologist, influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion. He is often considered one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology.

I nodded and smiled myself. “Yes, but it was a long time ago in a different lifetime.” A flood of memories washed over me. “I credit Frazer with freeing me from the shackles of mythology forged on me as a child.” I was sort of screwing with him by resorting to flowery language.

He ignored me. “Then you know how he recorded humankind’s cognitive process, beginning first with magic as a method of controlling the environment.”

“I seem to remember.”

“Then,” he continued, as it gradually dawned on your species that dances and incantations weren’t really able to change things, and that people didn’t suffer because you made a doll-like image of them suffer.”

“Go on.”

“So,” he said, “the thinkers of that time decided that external forces must guide their world. They chose religion, assuming there are personal agents, superior to man, controlling nature.  It has been said that this is a far more complex notion than that of magic, and requires a much higher degree of intelligence.”

“This is getting a bit deep,” I said.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “Hang with me.”

What else could I do?

“We are now at the point in the evolution of your people at which they thought that reliance on a divine source might be the best technology to be used in controlling the environment.”

“And some still do,” I said.

“Oddly enough,” he said. “This troubles the Falloonian Elders to no end.”

“I can see. What happened next?”

“In simple terms?”

“In simple terms, please.”

“In simple terms, religious contemplation led to complex thinking, and complex thinking led to science.”

“Science?”

“Science,” he said. “And as science emerged, your species hardened in its belief that the world had to be controlled, and, to a thoughtless few, that control had to be carried out on their terms, and for their ends.”

“And?”

 

Oddly, someone once suggested that
alchemy led to the scientific method. - C.W.

“Well hell,” he said, “can’t you see?”

“See what?”

“How science got their way.”

“I think maybe I do.”

“Let me help move you along,” he said. “I haven’t got all day.” He puffed on his pipe until he started the smoke flowing in bullous clouds. It was aromatic and not unpleasant. “Humankind can conceive all sorts of weird ideas and proposals. The problem, then, is that science can test those ideas and proposals.”

“And?”

“And how do you exert control over people with ideas that science can prove wrong?” He puffed again. “Let me give you an example. Let’s say you want to make people satisfied with their state of poverty. So, you tell them you’re going to cut their source of revenue and that will increase their income.”

“That sounds a bit familiar.”

“Doesn’t it though? Now, the problem is, as you well know, a second-year college student majoring in mathematics—some call that science—can prove that proposition false in a few moments. How do you maintain your control? You can’t kill all the college students.”

“No,” I said, “but how do you exert control over people with ideas that science can prove wrong?”

“Simple,” he said. He blew a huge cloud of smoke my way and I inhaled a bit of it. “You kill science.”

“But how?”

“First,” he said, “you kill all the teachers.”

I rose and walked away, staggering just a bit.

See also:

Delta Dreaming

All Hat No Cattle

Enjoy these at all? If so, order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers. It will make him so happy. Also, click on an ad. It earns him a little and costs the advertiser, sort of a win-win.

233. Facts

“We could be champs,” he said. “Champs, or at least contenders.”

Now I’m not saying that the Alien C.W. looked like Marlon Brando, mind you but … well, actually he did. He looked just like Marlon Brando. What can I say? I mean the young sexy one too, not the old fat crazy one.

“Champs,” he said again, nodding his head.

“I’ll bite,” I said.

“Facts,” he said. He took on that familiar pained expression that we know so well. “Facts will …,” his face took on that ‘about to cry’ look, “facts will make us champs.”

“Reporting them?”

His face changed from pain to disgust in less time than it takes to imagine it. “Are you crazy? Nobody gets famous or rich by reporting facts anymore.” He stopped, raised his head in thought, looked at me, and said, “Our prediction, that is to say the prediction of the Falloonian Council of Elders, is that the day will come when your congress outlaws the unauthorized use of facts entirely.”

I considered this, decided he was probably right, and waded in. “So how,” I said, “will facts make us champs?”

“By making them fit,” he said. “We’ll call our company ‘Fit the Facts’ and make a fortune.”

“How so?”

“Look what happened last week,” he said.

“What was that?”

“You had a political party take control of your national senate and that party had just spent six years trying to wreck your economy in order to make the black guy look bad.”

“It didn’t work, though. The economy rebounded over that time, at least for many of us.”

“We’ll cover that another day,” he said. “Right now let’s look at the facts. The economy gained strength and this party was elected to power. Those are facts. Right?”

“Right, but …”

“Shut up and listen. Those are facts, nothing more. Now for the fitting—.”

“The fitting?”

“The fitting. Under our approach, facts are of no use until one fits them to a pre-arranged set of claims, beliefs, myths, viewpoints, or religious dogma.”

“What about the truth?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention? What the hell does the truth have to do with anything?” He actually pointed a finger at me before continuing. “The profitable truth, and the one we report, is that the economy saw this election coming for six years and was just getting ready for it. The party performed patriotic actions through sabotage by keeping that economy from, shall we say, overheating before this election got here. It was an, let me remember the name I dreamed up for it.” He knitted his brows and thought. “Oh yes, it was an ‘anticipatory recovery’ and the colored guy had nothing to do with it. It was all our party’s work.”

“C.W.,” I said, “I think I’ve already heard their senate leader expressing that idea.”

“Hell yes,” he said. “Who do you think sold it to him?”



Just the sort of non-profitable approach to
facts that we want shed ourselves of, right? - C.W.

 

 



Fortunately, we have bright young folks who
understand the utility of facts.

 

 

Fact is ... we need money. Click an ad. - C.W.
Also see: www.wattensawpress.com
http://www.deltadreaming.blogspot.com

Capitalism

Dear Friends and Followers:

Big Dope made me sit through a political speech recently in which a candidate hinted that, if elected, he would work to eliminate any regulation of the environment. Today I ran across this photo of the public drinking water in Charleston, West Virginia—a result of what you call “unfettered capitalism,” in which those of the libertarian faith so strongly believe.

 

I was confused.

So, I sought out the advice of some of your great thinkers (and some not so great, perhaps). Anyway, a sampling:

“I certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes.” – Clarence Thomas

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” – James Madison

“To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.” ―Theodore Roosevelt

"… if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." – Albert Einstein

“Capitalism actually encourages morality because capitalism can't function well if people can't trust each other and people aren't honest, if a deal isn't a deal.” - Rick Santorum

“This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.” – Al Capone

I am more confused than ever. Can someone help?

Your friend,

C.W.

Don't forget to check out Big Dope's book, The Charmed Time.

181. Illusions

“Okay, put your card back in the deck.”

I did. He made a big show of shuffling several times, then cutting the deck twice before spreading it on the table in front of us. He waved a hand over the cards in a mysterious fashion and then suddenly plucked one from the deck. He held it up to me.

“Is this your card?”

“Uh, no,” I said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I’ll be a Kodamflabbugast,” he said, employing a word for the Falloonian units with slow intellects.

“C.W.,” I said. “Why the sudden interest in magic?” I had to admit, he was dressed for the part, tuxedo, top hat, and all.

“Money to be made in illusions,” he said. “Trouble is—I need an assistant.” He slumped and looked toward the kitchen. “Think Mrs. Big Dope might change her mind?”

I said, “I doubt it.”

“Even if I drop the part about the sexy outfit?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

He thought for a moment and apparently abandoned the idea. I thought it was a good decision.

“So what makes you think there is money to be made in magic?”

He leaned back in his chair and took off his top hat. A pigeon flew from within it and flew to the back of chair. “Your species seems to thrive on illusions,” he said. “I simply thought I would take advantage of it.” He unbuttoned his tuxedo jacket. A small rabbit peeked from inside. “Everyone else does it.” The rabbit nodded in agreement.

“Does what?”

“Takes advantage of your trait of being easily fooled or cheated.”

“Are you trying to say our gullibility?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

I said, “Forget it. Tell me why you think my species is gullible.”

He thought. “For one thing,” he said, “you think reality TV is real.”

I had to agree somewhat. “I don’t,” I said. “But there are some who do.”

“They are the ones who spend money,” he said.

“Maybe so,” I said. “Any other examples?”

“Professional wrestling?”

“That appeal is limited,” I said. “Most folks view it as entertainment. Only a few take it seriously.”

“But they are allowed to mingle, drive, and vote.”

He had me there. My confidence was waning. “Anything else?”

“You used to think you had to sacrifice folks to make the crops grow.”

“Ah,” I said, sensing an opportunity. “But we don’t believe that anymore.”

“But now you believe you have to sacrifice some folks to make the economy grow.”

“But we have our share of educated units,” I said, using his terminology. “They see through things.”

Any species that truly believes making
rich people richer will make poor people
rich someday needs to re-examine
its cognitive capabilities. - C.W.

“Like your supreme public officials appointed to decide cases in a court of law? The ones who believe a corporation is a human being?”

Ouch.

“And I’m not even going to get into the areas of talking snakes and boats full of lions and tigers.” The rabbit shuddered.

“Look,” I said. “Let’s change the subject.” I decided to confess. “That really was my card you picked. I was just fooling with you because I was tired of the magic show.”

“You deceived me for your own ends?”

I sighed and slumped in my chair. “Yes,” I said. “Yes I did. Yes.”

“Well I’ll be a Kodamflabbugast,” he said.

 

The rabbit shook his head in disapproval, then ducked back inside the coat.

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.