Can you even imagine being the poor alien sod responsible for auditing an earthling spaceship’s spending allowance? Like:
“I see, and why do you require many tubes of white plant flavoured paste?”
“Oh well, if we don’t rub that on our teeth twice daily the bacteria living in my mouth will begin to devour me teeth.”
“…Noted.”
“I have also noticed several large shipments of specific medications, and a variety of individually packaged absorbent material – however injury records do not show sufficient numbers to justify these recurrent deliveries.”
“Ah, yeah, it’s not really an injury per say. As part of our natural reproductive cycle approximately half the population will shed the lining of one of their internal organs and expel it.”
“…that is the most horrifying thing that I have ever heard.”
“Yeah.”
“Does such a process not hurt?”
“That’l be what the medication’s for. Pain killers for the cramps, birth control to stop the process.”
“…and your reasoning behind the fully functional, high-tech entertainment system?”
“Okay, that we could probably do without. But in our defence that was actually insisted on as a standard feature of all fleet-ships expected to encounter Terrans. Admiral Plo’Kaght insisted on it. Something about bored humans and a an illegal betting ring featuring a cleaning robot with a knife strapped to it going up against a human with a mop?”
“…I believe I should speak with my superiors.”
I love how Stabby the Roomba has become such a consistent in-joke among these sorts of blogs.
Galactic hero stabby the roomba: his legend continues
David French served as squadron judge advocate for the Second Squadron,
Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, stationed at Forward Operating Base
Caldwell in Diyala Province, Iraq; he walked patrol with other soldiers,
during which he and his colleagues confronted routine armed aggression
from insurgents out of uniform, who used IEDs as well as firearms in
their fights with US soldiers.
During his entire deployment, amid hundreds of firefights, French’s unit
killed two civilians: “one to small-arms fire and one to a wayward
artillery shell.”
So French has a question: how is it that US soldiers stationed in
hostile territory – where enemy forces mingle with civilians, where the
soldiers and the civilians don’t even share a common language – are
able to avoid killing civilians, while US police officers – whose
on-the-job mortality is far lower than HVAC repairers and construction
workers – shoot unarmed civilians, especially black people, all the
goddamned time?
French is responding to “Jack Dunphy,” the pseudonym used by a retired
LAPD officer who says the cops just can’t be blamed for murdering
unarmed black people.
