Grumbles from a Visiting Alien
We come here to absorb your culture – maybe spend a year or two here and then return home. Home? To you, a long long way. To me, a rather tedious uncomfortable transition similar to flying from London to Las Vegas. I do sympathise by the way. Your flying machines, aircraft, jets, are awful. Not to say the processing at either end.
I say we; to infiltrate your western cultures is as confusing for us as if you yourselves fly for the first time to China. You have no idea if you have upset anyone. At first, no idea of the language, behavioural norms, concepts; then later, dawning realisation of the similarities between visually divergent but same species. We have our own version of “Lonely Planet”. We don’t come here totally unprepared. Until we get here, then find we are; totally so.
For example, you all have rudeness. This the first thing we are warned of. Your dogs growl and bark snarled warnings, your cats spit and hiss and strike their matches. Certain snakes rattle their tails in disapprobation; but humans! You seem to want to attack the very psyche, existence and self esteem with sharply honed weapon-words!
I was in New York and asked a policeman how to get to Manhattan.
'Yeah Buddy! No problem. Buy a frikkin' map!'
To summarise the so called human race is to flag up in huge sky signs facing outwards, into what you call the void, around your planet –
“ Do not come here! You will be confused, drowned, electrocuted, raped, murdered, killed accidentally, wounded, starve, die of disease, get eaten by huge wild animals or micro bacteria. If you survive these things worse awaits you; poverty, class division, poor education, insults, paranoia, depression and grinding disappointment! Or…”
The “Or” is the reason we persist.
...I give you examples. Chosen at random from my online blog diary after several months here. Nobody took any notice; this is an easy world to infiltrate.
Within lie some answers to questions you may have. Some of it sounds naïve but those were my impressions, my mindset at the time. I will expand later.
Monday, 14 February 2011
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Grumbles from an alien ...12
It’s not as if I wasn’t trained to do this. I came all the way here – I had to, things were getting boring and pointless back home and I saw the announcement flash up in my inner screen.
Required – planetary research assistant – empathise interest on the symbol here -
This one of your Wingding things – the nearest symbol I can find on one of your PCMACLinux boxes. (Why don’t you just mind mail each other?). I’ve been here so long now I twitch when I see a filing cabinet.[ ]
Inner screen? A bit like one of you Earth folk’s imagination or daydream – like you imagine you are on a holiday island with someone you fancy or driving a Formula 1 car or something like that. We use that to communicate – like an inside-your-head Google.
Assistant? My supervisor will be on hand, nearby, should you need him, they said. Pah! She was on Alpha Centauri somewhere. Well not on Alpha Centauri itself but on some planet nearby. What do you mean there are no habitable planets there! How the F&** do you know Mr and Mrs Clever Dickey?
Anyway it all means I get a visit to a strange planet – believe me, you are, and have access to money, a spaceship I can shuttle about your Solar System with, even escape to Alpha Centauri if I freeze myself into the same awful cylinder I came in.
I’ve picked up a few things now, enough to know you are so weird you speak in clichés and live in the past. Your cliché for me is of a spy, parachuted in behind enemy lines but with no local support resistance activists on hand. Thrown onto my own resources of cunning; trained adaptation with a few tech tricks and innate abilities thrown in for good measure.
Do I go around killing people? No, why should I? I can defend myself quite adequately. You people dread humiliation far more than death.
Is it easy to burrow one’s way into the fabric of 21st Century society? (21C from now on if you don’t mind.)
Yes. You are such a self obsessed bunch of cretins I could dress up as a mad wizard with flaming hair and I would just be laughed at as eccentric. I hear that trick works better in the 500 years ago shift but that anal twatt Zedthing would never do it. Hes not really Zed thing but it’ll do. This is UK 21C and show me a Brit with the slightest interest in learning even a European language. Even the Yanks would sooner learn Klingon.
Anyway, I’m a bit bored now. I’ve found a medium of communication, safe enough to say I am not changing history; interfering with your natural progress and so on. I doubt any of you will read it. Well nobody with any credibility that they want to retain… Omi
It’s not as if I wasn’t trained to do this. I came all the way here – I had to, things were getting boring and pointless back home and I saw the announcement flash up in my inner screen.
Required – planetary research assistant – empathise interest on the symbol here -
This one of your Wingding things – the nearest symbol I can find on one of your PCMACLinux boxes. (Why don’t you just mind mail each other?). I’ve been here so long now I twitch when I see a filing cabinet.[ ]
Inner screen? A bit like one of you Earth folk’s imagination or daydream – like you imagine you are on a holiday island with someone you fancy or driving a Formula 1 car or something like that. We use that to communicate – like an inside-your-head Google.
Assistant? My supervisor will be on hand, nearby, should you need him, they said. Pah! She was on Alpha Centauri somewhere. Well not on Alpha Centauri itself but on some planet nearby. What do you mean there are no habitable planets there! How the F&** do you know Mr and Mrs Clever Dickey?
Anyway it all means I get a visit to a strange planet – believe me, you are, and have access to money, a spaceship I can shuttle about your Solar System with, even escape to Alpha Centauri if I freeze myself into the same awful cylinder I came in.
I’ve picked up a few things now, enough to know you are so weird you speak in clichés and live in the past. Your cliché for me is of a spy, parachuted in behind enemy lines but with no local support resistance activists on hand. Thrown onto my own resources of cunning; trained adaptation with a few tech tricks and innate abilities thrown in for good measure.
Do I go around killing people? No, why should I? I can defend myself quite adequately. You people dread humiliation far more than death.
Is it easy to burrow one’s way into the fabric of 21st Century society? (21C from now on if you don’t mind.)
Yes. You are such a self obsessed bunch of cretins I could dress up as a mad wizard with flaming hair and I would just be laughed at as eccentric. I hear that trick works better in the 500 years ago shift but that anal twatt Zedthing would never do it. Hes not really Zed thing but it’ll do. This is UK 21C and show me a Brit with the slightest interest in learning even a European language. Even the Yanks would sooner learn Klingon.
Anyway, I’m a bit bored now. I’ve found a medium of communication, safe enough to say I am not changing history; interfering with your natural progress and so on. I doubt any of you will read it. Well nobody with any credibility that they want to retain… Omi
Grumbles from an alien ...43
It’s a real pain having your own spaceship.
It must be the same as having your own aeroplane. You must have somewhere to keep it; at a place where it can take off and land. Such places are rarely convenient for those places you want, or need, to go.
I considered getting a small aircraft to get about - saves a lot of questions, UFOs, that sort of thing. I watched the Earth people. They:
Land away at a small airfield. On arrival, give money to someone for the privilege. Get a taxi into town (for there are no sensible rural bus services or trains). Do what they need to do then reverse the process. Meanwhile fog or high wind has appeared making it difficult or dangerous to return home. Spend a night away from home, seething. If the trip has crossed water, consider getting home via ferry or Cheapojet. Then, reverse this trip to recover personal plane.
In general, Earth people, out of jealousy, do not sympathise with aeroplane owners and like to regulate them.
People don’t consider this. Nor do they consider the sheer amount of regulation surrounding their means of transport. Personal medicals, current proficiency, licences to fly in bad visibility, night…it goes on.
Similarly, these problems arise with your own spaceship. I don't need a medical, don't need a licence; I don't give a UFO about your regulations.
However, one can’t just go buzzing around causing a fuss everywhere. There are procedures to attend to. I should not be seen by a large proportion of your population.
"That? Nah! Just that UFO. Pops by regular as clockwork; bit bored with it now, yawn."
Yeah, right. That'll work, as they say in USA.
My personal circumstances therefore dictate that I live out and away in the countryside, far away from the hub of activity in the main cities. More of that later.
As you may have decided, I’m not from round here. We aliens usually land in USA. Not because they are a techno-superior nation, just that USA has the size and remoteness I have mentioned. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful country, and the people are much nicer than the people in the east would have you believe, but, especially since they had their 9/11, their Air Force! Cheese! – I hear them say that – or Cheesus or something like it.
Last time, before I left, I was flying there when I was suddenly flanked by two fighter jets. Well, no surprise; the ship knew they were coming but was adopting a relaxed attitude toward informing me I may be in danger.
I could hear their Sidewinder missiles growling in the pilots’ intercoms. This meant I might have to fly away at some fantastic gee acceleration to escape the missiles when I can’t be bothered to kit up in all the anti gee clothing just for a jolly round the sky. There's a certain amount of anti G built in for me but not enough for the out-acceleration of those missile rocket motors.
So I just let them stay with me for a while until I simply stopped – I can slow down and pull alongside too quickly for them – or even come to a complete halt and hover while they overshoot and spend ten of your Earth minutes regrouping and coming back to find me. I’m normally well gone, outa there, by the time they do.
This time I hovered and waited. You would call this mischief. I listened to their radio calls back to base. I had to admire their cool procedural style. Inside, surely they were excited, well alight with speculation? Aliens have the last laugh though; we know they can’t go public.
Yes, there they were, two F-16s, National Air Guard. They’d switched off their missiles. I overheard them saying they had no acquisition. They wouldn’t, I mean, with my technology on board, hah! I’d be gone, vertical, up or down, before they even squeezed a trigger. Trigger? Of course I know what a trigger is. I’m humanoid with opposing thumbs etc. What do I look like? Well, like you most of the time. We were you; once, apparently. Or you are like us, would be more accurate…
I listened to the radio. They’d decided to try and talk to me.
“Unidentified aircraft, this is Mike Juliet 478. State your airfield origin and destination..!”
I’m not supposed to make contact yet. Is Earth ready for the Deep Space Federation? Hah! Deep Space…
I love your sci fi movies. Earth people, especially Americans, always transpose their own ideas onto the unknown. Still, what else do you have to go on?
They were circling around me. About a two kilometre radius circle. Quite tight to maintain. Fun over, I wondered which was the best option. Everyone’s heard of the fantastic acceleration of UFOs.
Boring, so I touched a pad, and simply disappeared.
What did they say?
“WTF!”
Well you would.
Omi
It’s a real pain having your own spaceship.
It must be the same as having your own aeroplane. You must have somewhere to keep it; at a place where it can take off and land. Such places are rarely convenient for those places you want, or need, to go.
I considered getting a small aircraft to get about - saves a lot of questions, UFOs, that sort of thing. I watched the Earth people. They:
Land away at a small airfield. On arrival, give money to someone for the privilege. Get a taxi into town (for there are no sensible rural bus services or trains). Do what they need to do then reverse the process. Meanwhile fog or high wind has appeared making it difficult or dangerous to return home. Spend a night away from home, seething. If the trip has crossed water, consider getting home via ferry or Cheapojet. Then, reverse this trip to recover personal plane.
In general, Earth people, out of jealousy, do not sympathise with aeroplane owners and like to regulate them.
People don’t consider this. Nor do they consider the sheer amount of regulation surrounding their means of transport. Personal medicals, current proficiency, licences to fly in bad visibility, night…it goes on.
Similarly, these problems arise with your own spaceship. I don't need a medical, don't need a licence; I don't give a UFO about your regulations.
However, one can’t just go buzzing around causing a fuss everywhere. There are procedures to attend to. I should not be seen by a large proportion of your population.
"That? Nah! Just that UFO. Pops by regular as clockwork; bit bored with it now, yawn."
Yeah, right. That'll work, as they say in USA.
My personal circumstances therefore dictate that I live out and away in the countryside, far away from the hub of activity in the main cities. More of that later.
As you may have decided, I’m not from round here. We aliens usually land in USA. Not because they are a techno-superior nation, just that USA has the size and remoteness I have mentioned. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful country, and the people are much nicer than the people in the east would have you believe, but, especially since they had their 9/11, their Air Force! Cheese! – I hear them say that – or Cheesus or something like it.
Last time, before I left, I was flying there when I was suddenly flanked by two fighter jets. Well, no surprise; the ship knew they were coming but was adopting a relaxed attitude toward informing me I may be in danger.
I could hear their Sidewinder missiles growling in the pilots’ intercoms. This meant I might have to fly away at some fantastic gee acceleration to escape the missiles when I can’t be bothered to kit up in all the anti gee clothing just for a jolly round the sky. There's a certain amount of anti G built in for me but not enough for the out-acceleration of those missile rocket motors.
So I just let them stay with me for a while until I simply stopped – I can slow down and pull alongside too quickly for them – or even come to a complete halt and hover while they overshoot and spend ten of your Earth minutes regrouping and coming back to find me. I’m normally well gone, outa there, by the time they do.
This time I hovered and waited. You would call this mischief. I listened to their radio calls back to base. I had to admire their cool procedural style. Inside, surely they were excited, well alight with speculation? Aliens have the last laugh though; we know they can’t go public.
Yes, there they were, two F-16s, National Air Guard. They’d switched off their missiles. I overheard them saying they had no acquisition. They wouldn’t, I mean, with my technology on board, hah! I’d be gone, vertical, up or down, before they even squeezed a trigger. Trigger? Of course I know what a trigger is. I’m humanoid with opposing thumbs etc. What do I look like? Well, like you most of the time. We were you; once, apparently. Or you are like us, would be more accurate…
I listened to the radio. They’d decided to try and talk to me.
“Unidentified aircraft, this is Mike Juliet 478. State your airfield origin and destination..!”
I’m not supposed to make contact yet. Is Earth ready for the Deep Space Federation? Hah! Deep Space…
I love your sci fi movies. Earth people, especially Americans, always transpose their own ideas onto the unknown. Still, what else do you have to go on?
They were circling around me. About a two kilometre radius circle. Quite tight to maintain. Fun over, I wondered which was the best option. Everyone’s heard of the fantastic acceleration of UFOs.
Boring, so I touched a pad, and simply disappeared.
What did they say?
“WTF!”
Well you would.
Omi
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