Just had the idea of a cop show where they follow every single rule to the letter. Even the maverick rogue cop.
Lieutenant : Now I’m going to introduce you to your new partner. But I have to warn you…. he’s gone through three partners in the last six months because he’s a bit of a tight cannon. He plays by ALL the rules.
New Guy : Well, I’ve worked with some pretty..,. wait, what?
Maverick Rogue Cop (MRC) : All right, tough guy, let me get one thing straight. Around here, we follow every rule and regulation in excruciating detail. You got a problem with that, tough guy?
New guy : I guess not, but….
Lieutenant : Oh, you GUESS NOT? You GUESS… NOT? Well that’s just not going to cut it around here. Around here, guessing is for birthday gifts and carnival games!
MRC : Around here, if you have something you say, you say it clearly and precisely, with proper diction, grammar, and usage as defined in the Chicago Style Guide! Then document it in triplicate, making sure to CC all the relevant departments as well as a BCC to Records for archival purposes and for back up. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?
New Guy : I think….
New Guy gets hard glares from both the Lieutenant and MRC.
New Guy : I mean…. YES SIR!
Fade to black, beat, fade back in to denote the passage of time.
Lieutenant and MRC are circling New Guy, who is sitting on a folding chair in the middle of a bare-bulb interrogation room.
MRC : OK, hot shot… seeing as you seem to think you know it all…. answer me this… it’s 3 am…. a junkie just stabbed his girlfriend with a putty knife…. the ambulance is on its way and you have the junkie in cuffs spread-eagle on the floor…. and you just opened a fresh Word document on your laptop because it’s time to fill out the paperwork…
New Guy : OK, right….
MRC : Well then I have just one question for you, hot shot….
MRC is suddenly all up in New Guy’s face, screaming.
MRC : What font do you use, hotshot? Answer me. WHAT FUCKING FONT DO YOU USE, MOTHERFUCKER? ANSWER ME!
New Guy : (whatever Felicity tells me it should be)
MRC stays close and angry for a second, then relaxes.
MRC : That’s right. That is exactly right.
Then back and angry again.
MRC : AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT!
When I first had this idea, I didn’t know where to go from there. And I still don’t have an ending, but I know that the next bit will show that New Guy has now become the actual rogue cop of this precinct….. but only relative to the total tightasses around him.
So the idea would be to do the whole “you’re a loose cannon!” scene from vigilante cop movies but the things New Guy went maverick on are tiny procedural details.
I am too tired to actually write that right now.
Guess I would end it with the scene where the Lieutenant begrudgingly concedes that New Guy’s maverick ways turned out for the best…. THIS TIME.
And then MRC is like, “You know what? I had my doubts about you at first, but now… you’re all right with me. GET IT? ‘All right’?
Laughter, freeze frame, credits.
God damn I am funny.
Lazy, but funny.
More after the break.
The War On Climate Change
Yeah, you read that right. War.
I call it a war because that is the only word we silly shaved chimps have for the kind of massive, coordinated, focused effort it is going to take to save our collective asses from decades of not being able or willing to stand up to the rich.
It’s a war because that’s something we humans intuitively understand. Talk science to people and their eyes glaze over.
But tell them we are going to war and that, they recognize.
It’s a war because that’s the only word that can summon up the kind of will and focus it will take to overcome the entrenched interests that would rather see the whole world burn than lose a single penny of profits…. even though they will lose far more profit from climate change than they would have to spend to stop it.
It’s a war because people inherently understand that with war comes sacrifice. Right now. even with the alarming events in Australia, people are unwilling to make much of a personal sacrifice in order to stop the world from burning. They keep thinking that they can put it off for now, or that somehow we can change the world’s entire climate without it costing us so much as an afternoon nap.
That is going to have to change.
It’s a war because wars unite people. The word war automatically activates our collectivist instincts to stop fucking around and start working together because the collective is threatened and we need to defend it.
We can go right back to being assholes to each other once the threat has past.
It’s a war because part of that collectivist urge is the implicit understanding that to get in the way of the war effort is basically treason and that it’s in the best interests of even the most craven and sociopathic of cowards to pitch in and quit bitching, if for no other reason than to avoid the harsh judgment of their peers.
And finally, it’s a war because it’s not impossible that a very literal war will be what it takes to get some parties to meet the necessary emissions goals. I fervently hope it never comes to this, but we have to contemplate the scenario where a major nation flat out refuses to reduce emissions and the only thing that will stop them is if we actually use air strikes to blow up their coal fired power plants and oil refineries.
It’s going to take a war of one sort or another to save modern civilization.
And the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can change.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.