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First Contact so one day it happens. a giant silver flying saucer lands in washington square, knocking stuff over, and the president and the army and everything arrange themselves before the hatch and, not having any properly defined protocols for dealing with this, got Melbourne band This Is Serious Mum in to play the five notes from "Close Encounters". the hatch opens, a ramp slides down, and these two things stump down the ramp to where the red carpet's rolled out. they pause just before they step off their own ship, and the media take in the details - what? sure, i'll wait.... lah dah de-ah dah dah.. i wonder what the Cocteau Twins are doing right now? dah dah... yeah? sure, it's okay. so, where were we? first contact! yeah, the president and every TV station is there and the door opens and the aliens come out... they look like - uh - imagine a kind of toy horse made out of two human torsos - male and female, from the tops of the thighs up to the hipbones - except the horse is sitting on his rump and the two torsos are fucking noisily. in fact, it turns out that their language is encoded in queefs (or vaginal farts) of various pitch. the media circus can't quite work out where they should be pointing their cameras. hopefully not at that slime-dripping middle section... there isn't any detail anywhere else on their bodies. what a thought. their faces look like our genitals. so the President is standing at the other end of the red carpet, a carefully timed twelve second's walk from one end to the other. and he's thinking. time seems to have slowed down for him. let me think. a) this could be a media prank. b) it could be the real thing. there are several things i can do, but they all boil down to 1) i can take them seriously. i can treat them like extras from a George Lucas film and pretend civility for the sake of our planet's future, or 2) i can walk away in polite disgust and refuse to have anything to do with a joke in such poor taste. if a) and i do 1) then my career is over. it'd be worse than Clinton with Lewinsky; it'd haunt me forever. if i do 2), i'll be seen as a little severe, which is something i think is lacking in politics these days, so bring it on. jack the noise. if b) and i do 1) then we're in like Flynn. we will become the aliens' primary contact on earth and heir to all of their dispensed wisdom and technology. american culture will be seen as human culture throughout the rest of the galaxy. this will be corrected eventually, but the initial impression will remain. America will have conquered the stars. if i do 2) then at best, some other country will get their attention. at worst, we'd've started an interstellar war. proportional font, please: situation gains losses a) 1) we get alien tech i get ridiculed forever a) 2) i get the severe rap I want we don't get alien tech b) 1) we get alien tech none b) 2) none we get invaded let me look at this chart for a moment. if i don't take them seriously, the best that happens is i get a severe reputation which will aid me when i inevitably get caught by the media in some San Fransisco S&M dungeon licking the latex-clad toes of Mistress Danielle. the worst that happens is we get invaded. if i do take them seriously, the worst that happens is i get ridiculed out of office. the best is, america gets marketed to the galaxy. well, i know what i'm going to do, he thought, and smiled to himself. next question is, *how* should i do it? my name will forever be associated with this: the level at which i set the interaction with these beings. should i pitch this at the level of noble Roman Senators discussing social issues in an abstracted way, or should it have the stench of spilled cheap soft drink at the front of a small alternative comedy nightclub, where people are most likely to bleed and/or throw up? it's not even highbrow or lowbrow... it's almost a TISM-like philosophical concept: the relationship you'd like to have, and the relationship you both know you'll end up having. is it worth striving for the former, when you know that you both really don't want to exert yourselves beyond the latter? how cynical are we? how cynical are they? who is going to come out of this older and wiser but no happier? maybe we should just call the whole thing off. exchange email addresses and then go back to sleep. i think i'll go for the slightly sleazy undergraduate emphasis. i'll hold out my hand for them to shake. that should get a laugh. it'd be nice to get back to full-time stand-up comedy. i miss the subtlety.

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