301. Protest

Oh lord. C.W. wants to stage a protest.

Don’t ask.

He was busy making posters when I came in this morning. In fact, he was so busy that he didn’t notice me. I could hear him muttering as he carefully lettered the words, “We won’t take it anymore. Heck no.” His shape was incongruous, somewhere between a golfer and a migrant worker.

“Power to the protesters,” he said, adding a period to a protesting sentence and looking up. “Big Dope,” he said, “just the person I wanted to see.”

 I walked to the nearest chair and sat, saying nothing.

“I need your help,” he said. “You need to help me stage a protest.”

“A protest?”

“Yeah,” he said, “a protest. Maybe we’ll seize a building somewhere.”

“So what, exactly, are you going to protest?”

“That’s where I need your help,” he said.

“My help?”

“What do you recommend we protest?”

This stunned me. “Do you mean,” I said, “that you are planning a protest and you don’t know what it is you’re going to protest?”

“I’m full of rage,” he said. “I just have to protest something.”

“Like what?”

This time he stopped to think. “What about all those terrible things they say about aliens?”

“I don’t think they are talking about aliens like you.”

“Who then?”

“You know,” I said, “the regular kind. Say, what about civil rights? That’s always good for a protest.”

“Hell no,” he said. “They turn dogs loose on your for that.”

“I don’t think they have done that for a while.”

“Well,” he said, “you never know when they might start back.” Then he brightened. “How about Husbands’ Rights? That’s something that needs attention.”

“Husbands’ Rights?”

“Yeah. We could march against Mrs. Big Dope and her friends.”

“Count me out,” I said.

“As one of your country’s founders said, ‘A right not protected is a right forfeited.’”

“Which founder said that?”

“I don’t know. One of them probably did. Anyway, we can catch the women coming out of the supermarket and surround them with our signs and posters. Then we’ll take over the fabric store. Come on,” he said, grabbing a brush and turning to a poster. “Help me.”

“You are on your own,” I said. “But I do hope you will have plenty of help.”

“God hates hags,” he said, as he began to paint the letters.

“Uh, C.W.” I said, “you have had some bad ideas in your life but this is the absolute worst.”

He ignored me and grabbed another poster. He looked away and thought for a moment, then began to paint, muttering as he did so. “Male lives matter.”

“Give me a break,” I said. “This is ridiculous.”

“Great causes call for great courage,” he said. “That’s what one of your famous statesmen said.”

Think of the money to be made
selling supplies for generic protests.
Is this a great country or what? - C.W.

“Which statesman?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe Robert E. Lee.”

“Maybe we need to have a long talk,” I said.

“Don’t bother me now,” he said. Then he grabbed another poster and began to write, “No piece. No pea…”

“C.W.,” I said, yelling it. He hadn’t heard the car arriving or the voices growing near.

“What?”

“It’s my wife and her friends,” I said as the door opened.

He glanced up. He quickly swept up the posters and thrust them into my arms. “I’ve told you a dozen times,” he said. “This is a monstrously stupid idea. I’m telling your wife.”

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And buy Big Dope's book It's really quite good.

237. Idioms

 Oh dear. I can always tell when C.W. is in what he calls his “thoughtful in character or manner mode,” i.e. his serious one. He takes on the form of a monk of the Dark Ages, complete with robe and hood. That is how I found him today. He also had what he says is his Galactic Universal Translator manual spread out before him.

Of course I couldn’t read it as it was in a form only understandable by Falloonians, but I was glad to see him at work. His GUT has been volatile of late.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Idioms, my child.”

“Idioms are up?”

“Please, Big Dope, don’t be showing a lack of common sense or judgment; absurd and foolish.”

“I’m not being silly,” I said. “Besides, I’m glad you have been listening to your GUT and helping it to digest our language.” I giggled.

“For your information, I’m adding idioms to the language base,” he said, “and the flow through my GUT is fine. There are no blockages.”

I giggled again and he frowned at me most seriously. I decided to play along. “So, can I help you?”

“These are informal terms,” he said, “that seem to be related.”

“Such as?”

He looked at a note. “Cherry picking. What does that mean?”

“That is the practice,” I said, “of selectively choosing the most beneficial items from what is easily available.”

“What about those remaining items.”

“Tough sh…,” I started, but his robe caught my eye, “too bad about them.”

“I see,” he said, making a note.

“Anymore?”

“Yes,” he said, and checked his notes again. “Low hanging fruit.”

“Hmm,” I said. “that is a thing that can be obtained with little effort, that is to say you don’t have to reach very high or strain yourself to collect it.”

“Fascinating,” he said, and I’ll swear one eyebrow raised independently. He made another note.

“Is that all?” I said. “Mrs Big Do…, uh, my wife and I are going to rake leaves and I want to beat her to the places where there isn’t any junk to sweep around.”

“Two more,” he said.

“Give me the easy one first,” I said.

“Pretty bolling.”

“Ah,” I said, “you are in luck. That is an old, rural term and might be unknown to anyone who didn’t grow up in cotton country.”

“Cotton country?”

“Areas where they grow cotton, or used to. Back in the day, they picked it by hand and it was a serious offense—a beatable one during slavery—to quickly pick the largest and easiest bolls of cotton, the pretty ones in other words. This increased your daily production but left money in the field, i.e. the bolls of poorer quality or smaller size, problem ones of one sort or another.”

“Really?” he said. “That is interesting.” He made notes for several minutes.

“You said you had another.”

Fascinating. Unlike Latin, in English the
terms "rat pack" and "pack rat" don't mean
the same thing. Hmm. I wonder about the
term "house cat." C.W.

“Yes,” he said, turning over a sheet. “Ah, here it is.” He looked up at me. “Charter schools.”

That stumped me for a second or two. Then it dawned on me. “Well sir,“ I said. “Charter schools are private schools operated with public funds but permitted to cherry pick, pretty boll, or otherwise select students that are statistically likely to succeed without much effort, in other words,  the low hanging fruit of the student population.”

“Get out of the city,” he said.

“No, really,” I said.

“What about the other students, the ones that present difficulties?”

“Xin Loi,” I said. That’s a Vietnamese term roughly meaning tough sh…”

“I know what it means,” he said. Then, believe it or not, a tear fell from his eye. “So the good kids get educated and the others get lost?” He said.

“Pretty much so.”

 

Another tear fell. “Are your people really that cruel, my son?

 

Please click an ad. I need to educate Big Dope.

And see also:

www.wattensawpress.com

www.deltadreaming.blogspot.com

- C.W.

 

135. Education.3

Can’t seem to get C.W. off this education kick. So, I think we should humor him one more week, particularly since he assumed such an adorable form today. He was busy at the kitchen table working when I came in this morning, or I should I say “she” was. There was the most adorable 13-year old girl you have ever seen, dressed in her school uniform with her blond ponytail neatly flowing down her back.  Her face was drawn up around her sky-blue eyes as she was straining over a standardized test.

 

“Uh, good morning, I think.”

“Good morning Mr. Big Dope.”

Yep, it was he. “What on earth are you doing, C.W.?”

“I have been asked to evaluate this test for possible use in the placement program for the better schools,” she said. “And quite frankly, some of the questions confuse me.”

“You have been asked …,”

“By Mrs. Rhee.”

“To evaluate what?”

“This test will determine the quality of class a child is assigned to. And the questions are dumb.”

“Dumb?”

“Yes. Listen to this one. ‘Your mother tells you that she doesn’t have enough money to make ends meet this month. You should (1) Suggest that she give up cigarettes and beer temporarily; (2) Stay at your aunt’s house for a while; (3) Offer to eat only two meals a day for the month; (4) Tell your father to put some more money into Mom’s household account.’”

“Yes,” I said. “And?”

“Well anybody would know that the correct answer is “Four” but it keeps telling me I’m wrong.”

“Really?”

“And here’s another. ‘Your friend’s mom drops you off from birthday party and your mother’s boyfriend calls you from the tool shed and says he wants to show you something. You should (1) Pretend not to hear and go lock yourself in your room; (2) Request additional information; (3) Tell him you must first change into your play clothes; (4) Ask if your mom is with him.’”

“That’s a tough one.”

“No it’s not, she said. “Of course one cannot indulge in play activities with one’s dress clothes on.” She paused and looked perplexed. “But it tells me I’m wrong.”

“Boy,” I said. “This is hard.”

“You haven’t seen anything. Listen. ‘There are two direct routes to school. Each passes through a designated gang territory. You should, (1) Find a longer route that is gang-free; (2) Join one of the gangs and use the route through its territory; (3) Remind the chauffer to lock all the windows in the car when driving to school; (4) Suggest to your parents that they home-school you.’”

“Well that sounds pretty simple to me,” I said.

“Yes, but what if the chauffer forgets?”

“Oh.”

Everyone knows that the maid does
all the cooking, so why must
a young girl learn fractions? - C.W.

“Now, here is the hardest one. Get this. ‘Pregnancy can occur when (1) One, or both, of the partners forgets to pray before having sex; (2) When a girl has sex on days not sanctioned by the church; (3) A girl has sex with someone other than her boyfriend who, he promises, can’t make babies; (4) A girl has sex without the protection of a contraceptive.’”

I thought about it. “You can answer this one, can’t you?”

“Heck no.”

“And why not?”

“Well, for one thing, what is a contraceptive?”

134. Education.2

One must admire C.W. for being tenacious. Whether it is a Falloonian characteristic or one developed while amongst us lower species, he doesn’t give up easily. Take his current interest in education.

 

He was back yesterday to admit that his highly-touted “Three H” system proved flawed. It was true that classes composed of only honor students, homogeneous cohorts, and honest, law abiding students performed better on standardized tests than others. But problems arose.

The most severe involved unscrupulous superintendents channeling 3H classrooms to preferred teachers, sometimes for sexual favors, or even worse, political ones.

So, he was back with another plan. This time he was a dead ringer for Michelle Rhee herself.

“Out with the old, and in with the new,” she said.

“Okay, lay it on me,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry. Let’s hear it—your new plan to save education.”

“It has eleven steps,” she said. “My old plan only had ten.”

“Eleven is better?”

“Oh please,” she said. “Pay attention.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“This one is called the Success Account Program.”

“SAP?”

“Exactly. It has eleven steps, but the long-range teacher award system is at its core.”
“The long-range teacher …”

“Award system. See,” she said. “After careful study we decided that the long-range success of students should be the consideration upon which teacher rewards are based.”

“Long-range?”

“Yes, didn’t you have a teacher who contributed to your success?” She stopped and thought. “Well, in your case that might be a tough question.”

“I did have one, Doris Morgan,” I said, trying to be helpful. “Hadn’t it been for her, I would probably have been a TV evangelist, or worse.”

“Worse?” she said. She considered it for a moment, shook her head, and continued. “Anyway, under the SAP program, a rewards account would be set up for each teacher. For every student that proved successful in life, a cash award would be deposited into the account.”

“Successful in life?”

“Yes, say one became a respected cinematographer. Ca-ching!”

“Oh.”

“Or, say, a Presbyterian minister. Ca-ching again.”

“Oh,” I said. Maybe one owned a successful ad firm, or editorial company, or became a police officer, a professor, a Mayor, a marketing genius, a nurse, good parent, or a teacher.”

“Ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching, ad infinitum,” she said with a huge oriental smile on her face.

“Or developed a successful blog site.” I was on a roll, thinking of my friend Lisa.

This time she didn’t look quite so please. “Perhaps,” she said. “At any rate, good teachers would become among the highest-paid professionals in the country.”

“I have only one question, though,” I said.

“What question could you possibly have?”

“Did you consider the Null Hypothesis?”

“The what?”

“The possibility that the results might not work as planned.”

“How could they not work?”

“Well,” I said, trying to be as ‘thoughty’ as possible. “Suppose a teacher produced a Bernie Maddoff, a Ken Lay, or …” I thought long and hard. “Say a Glenn Beck?”

Her smile vanished. “What are you saying?”

“Can the awards account be charged for screw-ups?”

She didn’t respond, just assumed her most inscrutable face.

There simply has to be a way to introduce
profit-motive into our educational system.
Why, Jeb Bush himself says so. - C.W.

I pressed her. “Are you willing to have SAP work both ways?”

She remained deep in thought.

“Can you see the implications?” I was enjoying this.

“But,” she said, rapidly running through all sorts of permutations and combinations involving high-level mathematical tests, I assumed.

“But, …,” she said.

“Yes?”

“My plan goes to eleven.”

133. Education

Bless his heart. You have to admire C.W. when he sets out to do something special for our species. That is, if you can quit laughing in the process.

This time it was education. He is fascinated by Michelle Rhee, the woman who has drawn much press recently over her attempts to restructure the process of teaching. (I think he secretly has a crush on her).

Anyway, he’s on the kitchen table after my wife ran us out of the living room where we were interfering with a TV show that proves, it claims, the Panspermia Theory. Don’t ask. Anyway, he has taken the form of a graduate of L’Université Paris-Sorbonne. I think it is the neat gowns and hats they wear, for he had chosen this attire, probably another reason we were evicted from the living room.

He was explaining to me how he plans to fix our country’s education system.

“It’s a simple process,” he said. "It is based on my theory of the three 'Hs' as a guide."

“Oh,” said a voice. We looked up to see my wife passing through the kitchen to refresh her drink during a commercial. “You boys learning how to give an enema?”

“An enima?” C.W. looked at her with that endearing look of confusion he adopts when our language confuses him. “And Mme. Doper Grande, may I ask what is this ‘enema’ of which you speak?”

She, who was a Registered Nurse Practitioner at one time, explained, to his evident discomfort.

“And how does it relate to our conversation?”

“The three ‘Hs’ she said. “That’s the directions you use in the hospital for giving enemas.”

“Quoi?”

“High, hot, and hell of a lot,” she said as she left the room doing her best imitation of Lauren Bacall in the last scene of “To Have and to Have Not.”

He squirmed “Your wife is, how do you say … bizarre?

We say ‘bizarre,’” I said. “But tell me about your three Hs.”

“Simple he said. We form classes that are, first, composed of high achievers. No room for mediocrity.”

“Go on.”

“Then, our classes comprise a homogeneous population cohort. Children don’t have to be distracted by adjusting to those from other backgrounds.”

“And?”

“Honor,” he said.

“Honor?”

“Yes, we restrict our classes to those with perfect behavior records. No time wasted on kids who act up.”

“Uh, C.W.,” I said. “What about the students that don’t fit within your Three-H profile? What do you do with them?”

He looked confused. “What do you do with them now?”

“Confine them to public schools.”

“Bien sûr. Problem solved. Now, here is the best part …,” he straightened his Sorbonne chapeau, and proceeded. “I now introduce a Falloonian technique we call Snorcpy++tachra. We use it to implant vast quantities of vital information into the brains of space travelers like me.”

“Like you?”

“Yes, it involves a direct transfusion of so called ‘knowledge neutrons’ into an unused portion of our mind, along with triggering mechanisms much like your memory cells.”

My French counterpart and I stand ready to
save your education system with our
three step plan. See how well it has worked
with me? - Your friend in knowledge, C.W.

“And?”

“When the trigger is activated, say the standardized test is opened, the stored knowledge pours out, the HHH students perform flawlessly, test scores soar, and the teacher receives a bonus check.”

“The knowledge flows out?”

“Like a stream.”

“Well I’ll swan,” came a voice from the next room. “It is like an enema, isn’t it?”