Unintended Consequences

Life is funny.

When Mars and Earth first made official contact, there was much optimism and hope, but also fear and paranoia.

To ease the relationship there were many official functions. Ticker tape parades, barbecues, friendship ceremonies, etc.

Looking back at all of it, only one ceremony had lasting effect, and that was the First (and happily, the last) Interplanetary Musicians Festival.

I'm sure some of you are too young to remember this, so let me set the stage.

For the Martian musicians, who were beginning to hear about the wonders of Jazz, Blues, Gospel, Rock & Roll, Funk, and Classical music, excitement was building to a crescendo.

For the Earth musicians, the whole convocation was seen as a bit of a bore--a responsibility they did not relish. As the event grew closer, the Martians worked sweatily on their performances and seriously on the package of recordings and instruments that was to be handed over to the Earthlings.

While on the other hand, the Earthlings became increasingly irritated about the event, and a bit mean.

Rumblings of War

The result was as bad as you might expect. The Martians were in top form, wowing billions of viewers and listeners on both planets.

The Earth delegation consisted solely of a well-meaning Middle School Marching band, the director of which had the dubious job of presenting what can only be judged a prank gift, consisting of some old novelty disco records and large crates of used tuba, harmonicas, and bagpipes.

The Martians were perplexed at the obvious disdain that Earth's musical community had demonstrated, and in the towers of Martian leadership there were calls for war.

But then something interesting happened.

Within weeks, the Martian Top 40 was dominated by an exciting new form of music, which fused traditional Martian forms, novelty disco, and awkward, yet bombastic and energetic, middle school marching band, all using only a driving tuba bass line, a mournful bagpipe drone, and a soulful harmonica lead.

Weeks later a popular Earth hip-hop artist had copied the sound and a new musical form took hold that dominated the charts for two years, and still (with the addition of electric guitar and drums) is a popular form of music (second only to country).

It just goes to show you how unpredictable life and relations can be.

Hiccoughs

What do you do when you have the hiccoughs for several hours and they don't go away? Isn't there some trick to getting rid of them?

I have them now and I sound ridiculous. I can't go out in public in this state.

Artie for President?

I have humorous news for you. The Libertarian Party of the United States of America has asked me to be its candidate for President of the United States.

I did not even bother replying yes or no. I merely sent the Libertarian emissaries home and suggested they read the requirements for the position.

I am about 20 years old. That puts me a little bit shy of the age requirements. However, on Mars that is already a distinguished age for statesmen. We are sexually mature by 5, intellectually and emotionally mature by 8, and great warriors by 10. These are all Martian years. You can almost double the numbers for earth years. But this is my blog, so you should learn proper martian weights and measurements. (It may be helpful to know that we still use the English system for measuring length--metric is an abomination.)

But, also, of course, I was not born in the United States or even on Earth. In fact, my only Earth visits have been for charity golfing events.

Now, were I to qualify, I'd be a much better President than either of those jokers you've nominated. Neither of them has any ideas--they are just your reflections in the mirror. No one will tell you the truth in politics, they all just coddle and reassure you. No one will tell you the truth.

In fact, few on your planet will speak the truth about the hard decisions ahead of you.

You can trust only me.

What is Wrong With Me?

Today while my mother was at work I made her marshmallow rice krispies treats.

I couldn't help it but I ate ALL of them and had to make more. What's wrong with me? Why don't I have any self control?

You're So Rude

I'm getting emails asking about martian sex. I consider such questions rude in the extreme. Humans are willing to broadcast every detail about their sex lives into the ether. On Mars, we don't kiss and tell, but I'll give you a very clinical overview.

First off, whether you're a spider, moose, or alligator on Mars, the female is going to try to eat the male's head after intercourse. This is completely natural.

In the case of spiders, the female succeeds about 80% of the time. The other 20% occurs when a male recovers sufficiently quickly to get away. This is really an arms race. The male evolves to be faster and slipperier. The female evolves to be faster and to have a stickier grip.

In the case of moose, the female's attempts to bite off her mate's head are frustrated by the fact that her teeth are made for grazing, She rarely does any damage. Sometimes she can bite off a bit of an ear, but it's rare, as her teeth aren't even as sharp as Mike Tyson's. Mercifully, male moose are extremely stupid, and mistake the homicidal aggression for post-coital nuzzling.

As the intelligent life on the planet, we alligators have solved the problem by binding the female's mouth before sex. The female, of course, employs all kinds of subterfuge to try to free her mouth after sex (her cool down period is about 10 minutes). She may pretend she can't breathe because she has a cold, or that she has something important and startling to say. I lost a friend once because his mate had a girlfriend watching through a window. This girlfriend called just a couple minutes after the act. My friend hated to answer the phone, so he freed his mate's mouth to answer the call and WHOMP his head was gone.

Because of this fact of life, alligators have developed pretty elaborate forms of bondage, the details of which I am not willing to divulge.

Now please, stop asking. It's obnoxious. Don't you have questions about important things like martian music or literature?

"NASA Says Perchlorate Does Not Rule Out Life on Mars"

Well, Duh. Mars is swarming with spiders and moose, not to mention us alligators.

I'm kind of sick of this "no life on Mars" crap. Yeah, I know. Our gov't plays the game. Your gov't plays the game. But all the people know we're here. Do we really need to keep this pretext going? Can't someone just "out" my people so we can move forward?

Obama's really big here. He's like a superstar. We're all hoping that when he's sworn in he'll acknowledge us. Will it happen? I don't know. But there's a lot of hope.

And NASA, keep your mars lander in the desert. If that thing comes in my yard I swear I'll taser it.

Walking in Style

I saved up for five months (I do carry-out at a grocery store) to buy a pair of Italian shoes from Amazon.com. These are $550 Forzieri handcrafted dress shoes.

Let me tell you. This is class. You idiots on earth pay almost this much for horrid sneakers that make your feet look like clownish balloons and you wear them when you're not even playing sports! Meanwhile, your star athletes are wearing . . . yep, expensive Italian leather shoes.

I can't wait until that ugly, silly sneaker fad dies the horrible death it deserves. News for you: You are not Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. (Michael, if you are reading this, we should play golf again sometime. And Tiger, I'd love to play basketball with you.)

So anyhow, I order these shoes from Amazon and somewhere along the way some ass (no doubt in the martian mail system) switches them out for a pair of used bowling shoes.

If someone tries to sell these handcrafted Italian leather shoes to you cheap, do not buy them! They are hot. Stolen goods. If I see you wearing them I'll bite your head off.

Now what'll probably happen is Amazon will stop shipping to Mars. Mail theft is rampant here. I'm about half way through Agatha Christie's mysteries and I despair that I may never be able to acquire the remainder of her work. But I don't know why Amazon would keep trying--they just can't guarantee that anything will make its way through our corrupt system. God, I hate Mars.

Eat Fresh

Trying to lose weight.

Just had a Subway sandwich. You're thinking, oh that sounds good. But on Mars Subway uses mostly local martian ingredients. Pretty dismal--you can't grow anything good on Mars. The lettuce is brown, like dried leaves in the fall. The bread is grainy and sandy. There's a few slices from a pepperoni plant, and maybe ONE skinny earth tomato slice. I think you send us your absolute worst hothouse tomatoes, because pictures from earth show wonderful red tomatoes with an explosion of juicy seeds. The tomatoes you send us are pinkish and sad.

I don't have to lose much weight. I'm just getting a bit of a moose-gut. I ate like four moose heads last week out of boredom. These are Mars moose, not Earth moose, of course.

Too dry!

My skin is dry as an old woman's armpit. I need to run out to 7/11 and get some moisturizer. I have these scaley, cracked little bumps. They're all irritated and itchy and sore. Oh, you don't want to know what it looks like. Heaven forbid. Looks like I've been bitten by a bunch of giant martian spiders. God.

Can't it rain on Mars just ONCE in my lifetime? I am so sick of it.

I see the Chinese are controlling the weather for the Olympics like a bunch of old wizards conjuring up Oobleck. Damn China, send us a rain machine, would you?

Such a bad year!

Lordy, I've had such a bad year this year. It's the worst year anyone has ever had, at least on Mars. You earth people are always bitching, but you're driving around in a god damned Lexus. And that pisses me off.

It's probably why I started blogging--my bad year. Bad, bad, bad. All damned year.

I'll tell you more about my bad year later, but let me tell you what finally set me off.

OK, when I was a little alligator, like ten years ago, our whole class had to get pen pals on Earth. This is a big deal because it teaches you patience. Rockets going back and forth take forever, and that's how we had to send mail before Martians got on the Internet.

We pulled names out of a hat. We have nice hats like you had in the 50s, not ugly-ass baseball caps worn backwards like some idiot. We're all waiting around the hat, eager.

Listen to this carefully, because you're not going to believe it. Everyone else gets some little kid in Ohio or Wisconsin, maybe. Some old lady in the Ukraine. A farmer in Brazil. You know who I drew out of that hat? Bernie Mac!

I was so elated. See that's how LUCKY I was when I was a little Martian. I was hot shit. Everyone was jealous, but they treated me well because they wanted to see the letters I got from Bernie.

His letters were so funny, and he was so nice to me. I worked hard on my letters to him, trying to make them worthwhile and witty.

And now he's dead. All my martian buddies are like, "So, how's your pen pal?" Fuck.

Oh Bernie, I need you so much! Oh god.

Racists

No replies to my first post yet. Typical.

What is wrong with you people? Don't you care about us martians and our incredible boredom and our lack of interest in Olympics?

You're so smug and superior, with your damned Macintoshes. On Mars, you know, we only have PCs. No Macintoshes at all. Even our web developers don't have Macintoshes.

Fucking Steve Jobs. He won't send us Macintoshes. There's something wrong with that. Hell, Ballmer sends us all the damned PCs we want. Give us a break, for crying out loud.

Seriously. Steve Jobs, I can get you a few of my hot martian cousins. I'll tie their mouths shut so they can't eat your balding head. They are good in bed, I tell you! Come on!

Life on Mars

Man, all of us alligators on Mars are just dreadfully bored this weekend. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just that we know we're so pathetic not to have our own Olympics.

But what can we do? If we start Olympics now, we'll just be posers and fakers. Everyone would say, man China sure can put on an Olympics, but what the fuck with those lame Martians? What kind of opening ceremony was that?

And it's true. Everyone here on Mars is just lame and boring. I hate Mars. I'm going to take an Ambien and sleep away my lousy day.