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space ship on the creek bank
Thursday, July 28 2005
A local radio station, not one in a nearby New England state, was the scene of most of my activity today. I got hungry at one point and ventured into the nearby village for pizza, a commodity for which this particular village is not especially well known. In cases like this where I'm spending all day onsite and taking little breaks either for food or a change of scene, I sometimes imagine that I'm actually a intergalactic space ship disguised to look like a human earthling and that inside me at the flight deck is a hyperintelligent alien worm. Good day sir. Top of the afternoon to you. That's a fine looking young hippie chick, but what does it matter anyway, I'm an alien worm 200,000 light years from home.
I ventured out along a stony creek at one point to look for fossils of this planet's long-extinct fauna. I found none, but I did manage to find some fist-sized pebbles subsumed within the matrices of rocks the size of golden retrievers. That's two erosional cycles, one preserved within another. If my faith in this planet's monotheist orthodoxy was stronger I'd have to assume that this planet's creator had put those smaller pebbles within the larger ones as a test of its inhabitant's faith that their planet is only six thousand years old.
The ship that is my body had one or two bundled accumulations of garbage which it needed to toss overboard, so this was done behind a rock on the banks of the creek. With the exception of those in the northern part of its largest continent, the inhabitants of this planet have a long list of taboos concerning this act, so I had to be careful to avoid being seen (and thus recognized as the alien I am). Use of local vegetation as an expedient method for cleaning the ship's lower air lock proved ineffective, so the ship was relocated to the nearby source of abundant flowing water for a more thorough cleansing. While in a somewhat compromised position, I happened to look out across the creek and see an earthling, a representative of the only technologically-resourceful species. This individual had resided on the planet for perhaps fifty circuits of the nearby star and probably, based on other features, lacked the male sperm tentacle. "She" (that's the pronoun used for such individuals) was seated silently, systematically scanning a printed document. It's possible that she never saw me as I yanked up my trousers and beat a hasty, embarrassed retreat.
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