Kid Loco, Data Analyst


My friend Jim is coming by for coffee in a few minutes. Years ago we were doing some taped comedy routines, and he had this character called Kid Loco, the psychic gunfighter. The setup was that life would be going along pretty normally, when suddenly, Loco would just shoot somebody. "Why'd you shoot the schoolteacher, Loco?" his sidekick, Gimpy, would ask.

And Loco would answer: "Never forget that I am a psychic gunfighter, Gimpy, and I knowed she was gonna go for that gun in her purse."

"But there weren't no gun in her purse, Loco."

"My gifts are not rational ones, Gimpy, but belong to a larger force, one we cannot question." He smiles with benign superiority. "What difference does it make if there was an actual gun in her purse, if her intention was to shoot me?"

"Didn't mean to quibble on the details, Loco."

"Yes you did and end of discussion."

Well, you get the idea. Every episode somebody would die because Loco fathomed their intention to try and kill him. When Jim came up with this he thought it was funny. I disagreed with him, saying that it outlines a bold and dangerous new direction in American foreign policy. He would not listen, because, like a lot of other people, he doesn't realize how easy it is for the government to steal creative ideas from the average citizen.

Once the government has the right to record telephone conversations and read emails, without any acknowledgment that they are there and snooping, an enterprising technician can pick up discussions of new and creative ideas, claim them to be her original thinking, introduce them at policy meetings, and worm her way up to the front office without having to go through the usual channels, such as "movie classics," for example.

Of course we can't prove anything. But, like Thoreau said, "Sometimes circumstantial evidence is overwhelming, as when you find a trout in the milk."

There is no denying that American foreign policy bears a suspicious resemblance to our copyrighted Kid Loco radio show. However, after discussion, we have decided not to press our case, as being paid back by these folks is the kiss of death.

I recall in one of Burrough's novels, there is an American businessman who thinks of himself as a "good guy." He writes that "this good guy, when he looks in the mirror to shave in the morning, has to admit that 'Other people are different from me, and I don't really like them very much.'"

He seems to me to be the man behind the scenes. For Whom Does the Pump Toll? For Whom Does the Jelly Roll? For Whom Does the Oil Toil? It tolls and rolls and toils for Thee.

Posted: Wed - February 4, 2004 at 04:24 PM