Abbe Boulah’s Weblog

– Hello Vodçek; what’s going on? You look unusually worried today?
– Hi Bog-Hubert. Yes, you could say I’m a bit worried. Somebody must have snuck something weird into my coffee machine.
– What makes you say that? People complaining about it?
– No, it’s not that. It doesn’t taste any different. But listen to them! They’ve been ranting and raving about the wall and whether the president should be impeached, like they’ve been hyperstoned!
– Well, it’s a common affliction these days, isn’t it? I mean, the topics, not the state of mind you suspect. Well, on second thought…
– Bog-Hubert, go listen to them. You haven’t heard nothing like it.
– Oh, the news is full of stuff like that, every day… And you should have heard things before in here that even the news can’t even think of.. So what are they saying? About impeachment? That’ll never fly.
– Never? Why? Now you are starting to amaze me too.. I wouldn’t even want to ignore talk of such topics in here, if I had my druthers.
– Well, look at what he promised when he took the oath of office…
– You mean about protecting the Constitution and all that?
– You’re leaving out the important stuff. The crossed finger qualification.
– Huh? Have you heard something his lawyers will pull out of their hats if it comes to that? Aren’t people saying that he violated that oath?
– No, it’s right there in plain sight, It says “… to the best of my ability”, doesn’t it?
– So?
– Well, think about it. If he says, I did what I did, to the best of my ability, can you prove that he could have done better, according to his ability? If you can’t see that, does it raise questions about your ability?
– You’re getting into dangerous territory there, my friend. Better watch it all the time. But what they are talking about over there is different.
– Oh? What are they saying?
– Well, one argument I’ve heard from over here is that He’s just not letting all his tricks out of his sleeve, or his hat, yet.
– Never seen him wear a hat. Would it muss up his hair? So sleeve it is. Now: For example?
– Well, about the wall…
– Do they have suspicions about what tricks that might be?
– Yeah, they do. In fact one of the things is an idea that actually came out of this tavern a while ago, somebody put it into a ‘Zing’ in the paper, but nobody seemed to pick up on it, so they think it’s being kept secret for now.
– You’re killing me with suspense. Let me have a cup of that fortified coffee, the Café Cataluña, with Fundador, eh? To kill whatever somebody might have put in it, will you? So what’s the idea?
– Okay. It’s that they should put solar panels on top of the wall, to generate power.
– That’s actually a great idea, isn’t it? Brings that whole wall thing into the 21st century. Because just the wall won’t work, we know that. Even that big one in China from thousands of years ago didn’t work so well, even back then.
– Right. Like all the walls in history since then — where are those now? Today, a wall just doesn’t keep anybody or anything from going over, under, or around it.
– Wait, I remember now: did’t Renfroe there come up with the idea to then sell that solar power to Mexico?
– Right, I had forgotten that. Now Renfroe says — I don’t know where he gets that kind of information out here, not even Fox News is coming up with that stuff — that’s how he’s going to keep his promise to make Mexico pay for it. But that they’re waiting until the re-election campaign gets into critical territory to throw that out of the hat. But they are going off on all kinds of tangents expanding on that idea.
– I can imagine. For example, aren’t there possibilities to make it work without the actual wall underneath, if you make clever, sneaky use of some of the power.
– By Abbé Boulah’s twisted mustache, here you too are going on with that craziness! And you haven’t even had a taste of the fortified coffee yet, I just finished it; here!
– Thanks. It isn’t all that crazy, but I have been wondering why all the folks in this great innovative country have been so stuck on that antiquated, obsolete wall idea, — both sides. No ideas! No imagination!
– Well, they are at it, over there. Yes, they found out that if you just were to put a kind of advanced electrical fence out there, powered by the solar panels, — one that would just taze anybody that tried to get across, you wouldn’t need the wall itself. You’d just stun the intruders to immobilize them until the border guards could get there on their electrical ATV’s to take them in.
– Electrical ATV’s, I get it: powered by the energy produced by the solar panels overhead! And if you put charging stations on the other side, for Mexicans to buy power for their hybrids and electrical cars, that would be the way the Mexicans would pay for the non-wall-wall. Not the Mexican government, but the people using the vehicles.
– And backing off the wall idea itself, I mean the concrete or steel versions of it, will be the negotiating carrot he’d use to pull the rug out from under the wall opposition. Saving lots of the money that’s already appropriated, after spending enough on the competition-demo versions they’ve been building so far, to pacify those companies. Ol’ Renfroe, again — the others seem to be too stuck on the notion of just one side winning and the other losing to even image old-fashioned negotiating and getting ahead on the offers? You think the president will hire Renfroe?
– No, even Renfroe has heard about how everybody he’s hired gets fired before they even finished redecorating their new home in DC. He just wants a new outboard for his boat, so he can get out to Rigatopia for a fun vacation… I taught them how to make Eau D’Hole, some of the folks out there are getting better at it than the Slovenians…and Renfroe can’t wait to check it out.
– Well, over there it sounds like they have been tasting a smuggled-in sample already. There oughtabe a law…

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