November 15, 2009
Chavez Bombs Sky
Clearly unhappy at all the fawning over our glamorous new President, Papa Hugo has opted to take it out on the heavens.
According to Reuters, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez says he will " . . . join a team of Cuban scientists on flights to 'bomb clouds'." There's a little more to the story than that, but I'll save it for later. There's enough to have fun with there for now.
I can already spot a few holes in Hugo's plans. First off, when did three scientists move to Cuba? Hasn't Fidel either locked them all up or scared them off? I thought the only people in Havana with PhD's were physicians, not physicists. So Hugo's gonna have to take Castro's word for it when he shows up with three rumpled guys in pony tails and lab coats, but little else in the way of scientific method.
Not that he really needs a rocket scientist to "bomb clouds," though. Strap a couple sticks of dynamite on a Gulfstream and even the budget-conscious Cubans have a strategic air comman Hugo might be a little disappointed with the results of "bombing clouds," what with the fact that clouds tend to led heavy stuff like ordinance fall clean through without so much as a token resistance. Clouds won't even get annoyed, just wink and wave as the TNT plummets to earth, where it will set off an international incident by exploding on contact with US soil. Hugo's plan is a little too cute by half.
Maybe you've guessed by now that I haven't given you all the facts. Hugo really does want to bomb clouds, and he really does want to team up with those hard-to-find Cuban scientists in doing so, but his reasons are a lot different. Let me finish the sentence for you, just as Reuters did: " . . . to create rain amid a severe drought that has aroused public anger due to water and electricity rationing." Finally the wisdom in the dictator's scheme begins to emerge.
The ever-defiant Chavez was heard to exclaim ""I'm going in a plane; any cloud that crosses me, I'll zap it so that it rains." If only Uncle Sam were so easily silenced.
Hugo's plan betray more than his usual blend of delusion, though. Surely he must recognize that it's not healthy for the people of Venezuela to have explosives raining upon them. That's the kind of thing that starts counter-revolutions. Before long, they'll be praying for drought. It didn't escape my notice, though, that Hugo has placed himself well above harm's way.
Perhaps Hugo needs our help thinking up other ways to make it rain. It's really not that hard. I'm just sitting here making this stuff up and here's what I came up with:
Fireworks - Perhaps no more effective than bombs from the heavens, but certainly a lot safer and so much more pleasing to the eye! Bombs got nothin' on fireworks. Bombs just make lots of noise with flashes of white light. Fireworks do all that and have really cool colors too! Fireworks are shock and awe for rain.
Rain Dance - First originating among the Native American set, this rhythmic cloud stimulator is starting to make its way into the popular culture. I was recently at an ethnic festival in a community outside Philadelphia where I joined people hopping for joy on a makeshift stage to the strains of Polish techno until the heavens opened up. It occurred to several of us there that the rain was God weeping at the tragedy that was "Polish techno." Techno techno is bad enough. Polish techno is a whole new category of bad. But it was fun.
