by HAL MOUNTSAUERKRAUTEN, Alternate Reality News Service Crime/Court Writer
Harcourt Baffley fatally shot and killed his 12 year-old son Merkin last night. When asked why, he claimed that, "I just wanted to watch Friends. Ha ha - I love that Phoebe - isn't she great?"
According to Sheriff Izzy Matthew Waddlin, Baffley had a television remote created in the shape of his favourite weapon, the Winchester Model 70 bolt-action rifle. "It really is the BMW of American personal weapons," Sheriff Waddlin stated admiringly.
How did Baffley, who kept the remote on a table in front of the couch and his actual Winchester Model 70 bolt-action rifle on a table to the side and slightly away from the couch, get the two confused? "Al-co-hol may...have been involved..." Baffley, grinning in his jail cell, admitted. "Maybe a little." Baffley held out his thumb and forefinger in a gesture that had been utterly endearing when Nicolas Cage used it in The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
"Harc was drunk as a skunk." Sheriff Waddlin confirmed. "Fortunately, killing a child while under the influence is only a misdemeanour in this state, especially with a firearm accidentally mistaken for a communications technology accessory, so I'll probably let him go once we've finished the paperwork. I mean, jeez, it's not like we found any marijuana in his home - now that would have gotten Harc in real trouble!"
"It...it...it's horrible!" sobbed Millicent Baffley, nee Millicent Regimen-Practicum-Smith-Wesson-Harcourt-Brace-Jovovich-Melancholia-Brunswick-Seaton-Tablecloth-Singh-Singhasong-Singhittlowde-Singhittstrachan. "Harcourt really loved that remote!"
The television converter had been created for Baffley by Chances are Remote, a company that specializes in creating exact duplicates of weapons to be used as household technology accessories. According to their catalogue, they make car door openers in the shape of Glock pistols and microwave oven controls in the form of AK47 submachine guns, as well as more traditional cigarette lighters in the shape of Walther PPKs.
Although based in Oslo for health reasons, it should come as no surprise to anybody that 95.34876 per cent of the company's orders originate in the United States.
"The death of a child is, to be sure, always a tragedy," said Chances are Remote President Alejandro Goekarte by telegramme, "but it is our position, backed by a century of corporate sponsored legal precedent, that television remotes don't kill people - dummies who can't tell the difference between television remotes and their weapons kill people."
Goekarte added in a separate telegramme that he wasn't in the least surprised that somebody would confuse his replica for the real thing. "We take the utmost care to preserve every detail of the original weapons in our devices," he stated. "If you ignore the Made in China sticker on the butt of our converters, you would be hard-pressed to find a difference!"
Critics (mostly TV writers, but some book reviewers as well) have suggested that this is the latest tragic outcome of America's love affair with guns. Only, when you think about it, America's love affair with guns is more of a love triangle: guns, America and sanity. And, the law. Guns, Americans, sanity and the law - America's love affair with guns is more a love quadrilateral. And, of course, the National Rifle Association. Guns, Americans, sanity, the law and the NRA: America's love affair with guns is messy, as love affairs tend to be.
The NRA - the most promiscuous member of our metaphorical multilateral geometric representation of love - was quick to come to Baffley's defence. Within hours of his arrest, the NRA had distributed bumper stickers with the slogan: If governments outlaw remotes, only outlaws will have remotes.
"We may have to work on the text a little," allowed NRA regional Kommandante Biff Bratwurst, making the thumb and forefinger gesture much more smoothly than Baffley, but nowhere near as fetchingly as Cage. "But, have no doubt that we will. As we say in the company's executive colouring book: Extremism in the pursuit of violent vices is no liberty."
Child Services caseworker Diego-Ann Mousch said that while she would like to do something about the tragedy, her organization's hands were tied. "We could try and go after Mister Baffley for unsafe storage of firearms," she stated by smoke signal, "but that would probably be struck down by the Roberts Supreme court. If he had hacked his son to death with a machete, then we might have gotten somewhere, but with a gun...?"
Giving us a come hither shrug, Mousch saucily added: "It's America. What are you gonna do?"
Has he learned anything from brutally murdering his only child? Baffley sighed. "At least I've still got my Luger P08 (Parabellum) garage door opener! They'll get my garage door opener when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers!"