The “call before you dig” public advertisements got me thinking. What if it wasn’t possible to bury a body in the back yard because there were no spots where that large of a space wasn’t crisscrossed with buried wires.
Indeed lets say that the entire yard was crisscrossed with wires every two or three feet apart. Digging in the ground at these spots would either have the shovel deliver a shock to the wielder or cut out the streetlights near the house and hydro at the house. In other words, it would be obvious who was trying to bury a body.
Alright, but what about gardens? These are spots that all homeowners like to dig up from time to time in the pursuit of horticulture. We could just build the web of murder detecting wires 3 feet deep and make the homeowner stay above this limit.
Of course there might be accidents in the gardens of suburbia, especially with rotor tillers and other heavy machinery involved. So I say the web of murder detecting under the gardens might just be the kind of wires that only turn out the streetlights and don’t shock the transgressor.
Special accommodations would also have to be made for planting shrubs and trees and hedges. First of all a line or fence of hedges had better be in the master plan of the house because there is no way that the web of murder detecting is going to be compromised that many times.
And trees develop phenomenally huge root systems. Again I think the time to add them is in the master plan of the house. If an original tree falls down or dies, a new one of the same size and type of root system could be planted at that exact spot.
Shrubs could be allowed. In this case the owner could tell the city worker where they want the shrubs. The city worker could, after looking at the web of murder detecting, spray small Xes on the grass in the closest spots to what the homeowner wanted.
Now the homeowner isn’t helpless and could easily buy wire detecting equipment. They could work much like a metal detector/stud finder hybrid.
The homeowner with murder in his heart would find that the biggest empty spot in his backyard was a 2 by 3 foot section. He could come up with the idea of burying his victim vertically instead of horizontally. This sounds like a triumphant idea until you realize that you’d have to dig at least 6 feet down. Then might come the realization that you can’t flip a normal shovel over with its payload of dirt in a 2 foot by 3 foot confined space. You would have to come up with another idea that might not prohibit you from successfully completing the hole in one night.
Not being able to bury someone in one night is a desired outcome. It’s true that any lock can be picked or otherwise broken into. The idea is to slow down the criminal enough that someone spots them and reports it to the authorities. The same could be true of our web of murder detecting.
Blinking To My Own Beat
The other day I was distracted watching a news broadcast when the interviewing reporter seemed to blink erratically. I came out of my suspension of disbelief (something a non-fiction consumer of news needs to have these days), and thought of all the great possibilities of being a reporter yet getting my own message out by blinking my eyes in Morse Code.
Now I know the power of Morse Code due to the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew who it seemed got captured every book and manage to transmit S.O.S. by some means to the rest of the world and thus get freed again. S is three short blips in a row, followed by O, or three dashes in a row, and then back to S.
But as I imagine my career as the Morse Code reporter, I realize it is hard to say one thing by mouth and a complete other thing by my blinks. As such I intend to keep my blinks to very simple things. If this means I don’t have to become fluent in all words Morse Code, so much the better.
I will start my career as a lowly roving reporter. That is where I plan to use my first Morse Code insertion. As a shout out to the pioneering Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, I will blink out S.O.S. at random times in my roving reporting. I hope enough people notice that I will be promoted (and thus helped by the S.O.S.) to an in studio broadcaster and commentator.
For the next step, I will learn the phrase, “Blah, blah, blah.” Or if I’m feeling cheeky, “Bob Loblaw” (say this out loud three times fast to hear what it means [It’s an Arrested Development joke.]). I will save blinking out this message until I find the interviewee pontificating too much. Which should be easy as long as the target of news broadcasts, the politicians, are of the usual order.
Then once I have built up my audience and they trust my commentary, I intend to learn one more word of Morse Code. That word will be, “Liar.” I intend to be as honest as I can and only use it when I truly believe the mark is lying. This will allow many, many people to be in on the truth especially during times of campaigning. Can I swing an election? I don’t know but at least I’ll have an opportunity to try.
And finally I will be able to be a truly fair reporter. I’d be calling the politicians on their BS while still keeping my likely slanted broadcaster in the dark.
Of course I could just stay away from reporting altogether and readily say whether the politicians are being truthful or not. But that usually just gets dismissed as random ranting. A long convoluted plan using lots of subterfuge just sounds better.