RICKSTER IS THE COLUMNIST FOR THE WEEKLY PUBLICATION, "THE SOMERS RECORD"

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Monday, August 18, 2014

A DRONE LOOKED AT MY WIFE

She was at work, and she opened her shade, and a drone was hovering outside the window looking at her. My wife was not actually happy to see the drone, and said it was frightening and creepy, like the guy from the EHarmony commercials. If the drone was out looking for people with a surprised look on their face going "WHAT THE F***," I bet it found plenty.

There are only three reasons for drones to exist: 1.) to identify enemy targets. 2.) to remotely attack enemy targets. 3.) to try and look under women's skirts.

Really, nothing has ever been invented in America that doesn't either make money or try to look up women's skirts. But there is a fourth reason for drones to exist, besides identifying targets and bombing targets, and that's delivering things from Target. I read that the CEO of Amazon wants to deliver things to my house using drones.

But in addition to delivering my package, I just KNOW that damn drone is going to be snooping around, trying to find out things about me so that it can put them into an algorithm and recommend more things that I might want to buy. It's going to casually fly into my house before I get a chance to close the door, and it's going to peek around my house at my stuff. It's going to engage me in small talk while it checks out what's in the fridge. And before I know it it's going to be saying things like, "people who like chicken ALSO like throw pillows, weeping willows, armadillos, minks, skinks, franks, skanks, socket wrenches, park benches, pirate wenches and golden retrievers.

Actually it might be kind of convenient, if the drone can hover over my house while I make sure the damn thing I ordered works first, since it just dropped onto my driveway from 100 feet in the air. And then the drone is going to report back to Amazon, and they are going to try to sell my information. Good luck with that- no one wants my information because I'm too cheap to buy anything! They will end up with an ad on Craig's List:

"FOR SALE: RICKSTER'S INFORMATION" slightly used. Included: 3 tendencies and one proclivity. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL! Act now, and we'll DOUBLE IT! That's right, WE'LL DOUBLE THE INFORMATION! (Just pay for shipping and handling.)

If you look up the word "drone" in the dictionary, you can see a picture of my 10th grade geometry teacher. He weighed about 310 pounds, and spoke in such a monotone that you couldn't distinguish the vowels from the consonants without a DNA test. He would have caught me sleeping every single day if he wasn't asleep himself. He was a great geometry teacher because even his weight was educational; he looked like a cross between a circle and an isosceles triangle. If I had to use what I learned in class to calculate his circumference I would guess that he looked like an R squared that ate too much pi.

I asked her what the drone was doing at the time, and she said it was just hovering there, looking at her. I asked what was the expression on its face? Was it looking at her funny? Cause I will kick its droney little ass. Which side of a drone is its ass?

At least it didn't see her naked (I don't think). She told me that Jill Clayburgh once saw her naked, and I asked, "Why was Jill Clayburgh naked?" Turns out they both belonged to the same health club, but Jill Clayburgh wasn't the one that was naked, and in Jill Clayburgh's defense, it was in the women's locker room.

It's possible that it was a small alien space ship- who says they have to be big? It was unidentified, it was flying and my wife objected to it, so there you have it. What if it shot her with a ray gun, miniaturized her and sucked her into the spaceship so that spacemen could bring her back to their planet and perform experiments on her? And what if instead of a scientist in a lab it was a 12 year-old idiot like me with a chemistry set? My chemistry set came with 64 bottles of different reagents, compounds and catalysts. But really, if it wasn't highly flammable, I was not interested in it. How much Bunsen could a Bunsen burner burn? I could have answered that question if only my parents had not taken the chemistry set away. Anyway, I did not want my wife to be lit on fire by a 12 year-old alien dipshit with a chemistry set.

Worse yet, it could have cloned her appearance and sent back an alien that looked exactly like her, but talked like an electronic phone prompt. Would I notice that it wasn't really my wife when it called me to dinner saying, "Please remain there, because our menus have CHANGED." I would know that my wife was an alien the very first time she answered the phone and no one was on the other line. My REAL wife is trained to keep holding the phone to her ear, even though the line is dead, and say, "You don't say!" over and over, then hang up and wait until I ask, "Who was it?" so that she can reply, "I don't know, they didn't say!"

What if my wife was secretly a foreign agent whose whereabouts were being monitored by the government? I decided to give her a pop quiz.
"Quick: what's the capital of North Dakota?" I shot.
"Who cares?" She answered.
"CORRECT. Are you a foreign agent?" I further queried.
"If I was, I would certainly tell you, so I would have a good reason to kill you."
"Also correct."
But there were still many unanswered questions, not the least of which was: where the hell did I put my glasses?



Incidentally, the FAA describes an "unmanned aircraft" as any aircraft "without a flight crew on board." Which essentially means good luck getting drinks. If you are flying an unmanned aircraft for recreational purposes, your flight will be governed by the voluntary rules of the Academy of Model Aeronautics, which administrates the flights of models. If you are flying a supermodel, you are definitely going to need those drinks.