WET WEDNESDAY
                    (C)1999 Alan M. Schwartz

My sweetie Linda allayed mid-life crisis by learning how to salt 
water sail.  This is a little tricky in Nevada or New Mexico but 
entirely facile in coastal Southern California.  I tolerate Wet 
Wednesday Regattas and thereafter minutely investigate the 
diverse bumps and bruises somatically sustained by my woman.  I 
do not know whether it comforts her, but it emphatically does me 
a world of good and pleasure.

(A gal of like accrued years, on the hot make for stud muffins to 
fill her specs when her biological clock needs winding, often 
tags along.  One sailor survivor decorated with scratches and 
love bites relates crawling from her boudoir by his fingernails 
to the inescapable siren song of "we're not done yet."  Teenage 
boys brimming with testosterone are invited to take a shower and 
then meet their most extreme fantasies head on, get them out of 
their systems, and proceed with life thereafter.  Your integument 
will heal.)

A highlight of doing 5 knots through 50 degree Fahrenheit ocean 
pollution with your peers is playing chicken.  The sailboats each 
have about 1200 lbs of lead in their keels.  (I would have gone 
for depleted uranium at 68% higher density in a hydrodynamic pod 
at the very bottom of the keel to afford maximum moment arm for 
minimal obstructive forward cross-section).  Though the boats are 
not moving very fast, they are not about to stop, either.  A bad 
chicken move is an expensive crunch as bows tend to be sharply 
curved and armored but sides are flat and vulnerable.

I instructed my life mate to have her pirates purchase industrial 
grade laser diode light pens, the kind MBAs swagger with during 
PowerPoint presentations.  My consultation was straightforward:  
"When the competition gets too close you all whip out your 
lightsabers, focus all the dots together on their sail, and make 
nasty science fiction noises while hoping for combustion" (no; 
but it makes a great rumor after the fact).

It was thus one Wednesday evening at sunset that a group of 
obnoxious sailorettes presumed to honk into my luscious lawyer's 
territory and were met by eight (overachievers - some brought 
two) laser beams.  Sails are Mylar film and Dacron fabric 
reinforced with Kevlar stitching.  It was like the Deathstar 
going after Dantooine.  About 35 mW of laser red converged on a 
small area and, given total internal reflection and the low 
ambient light, the opposing sail optically freaked - closely 
followed by its crew.  As my lady relates, the screams are the 
stuff of legend.

The Wednesday following, everyone was armed and dangerous as a 
middle manager at a quarterly performance review meeting.  My 
major regret was not opening a laser pen purchasing kiosk at the 
yacht club, or at least bringing up a website.  Things got 
interesting when an outsider did a stupid move and got his sails 
lasered by EVERYBODY.  Each pen outputs an Officially a modest 3-
5 mW output (closer to 8 mW at the onset to allow for inevitable 
decay during operating lifetime), but 92 beams converged.  600 mW 
of laser output really is the Deathstar.  The universe went 
ironic as every red thread came together on a big matte black ID 
numeral at the same tiny spot for an instant.  The crassly 
expensive sail under high tension in the wind screamed as it 
ripped down its length starting at the thermally induced defect 
(melted hole).

In my natal New York City the obvious next move would be to 
temporarily blind the targeted crew through their night-dilated 
pupils and run for home.  Californians lack real world social 
skills and never bring emergency false ID number overlays for 
their sails.  Nautical etiquette and the absurdity of walking on 
water prevented proximate fisticuffs.  Cell phones appeared and 
everybody summoned legal counsel.  The New York solution would 
have been kinder and much cheaper.

Laser pens were quashed.  These are people of high achievement, 
broad education, deep pockets, and tenacious snit.  The best was 
yet to come.

Acoustic science has awarded us an innovative non-lethal riot 
control modality, namely a resonant pulsed propane combustion 
subwoofer.  Simple as a big freon honker crossbred with a 
piezoelectric lighter, it outputs 140 dB at 15 Hz to massage 
intestines into instant incontinence.  A law enforcement manager 
quietly borrowed a Federal demo model from his employ for the 
next Wet Wednesday.

(Adventure deleted.)  Everybody returned to just sailing.  (The 
executive got a promotion.  Wear adult disposable nappies to your 
next Southern California civil insurrection lest it become a Wet 
Wednesday Regatta for you and yours.)