I'm Not Food

One of the things I'll never get used to about living on Earth is being food for other animals. Every year I remember less and less about my former life on Mars but one thing I can tell you for sure is that we Martians were never served up as dinner for the lesser species on our planet. I suppose it's because we were all vegetarians but that's beside the point. Eating animals is bad enough without being eaten by them in return.

I know, I'm lucky that I've never been chomped on by a lion or a tiger or a bear but that still doesn't make planet Earth the Land of Oz. Every summer I'm on the breakfast, lunch and dinner menu of every insect within a mile of me. Sure, I can use insect repellant but who has the time to swab or spray on that stuff every time you head outdoors? And forget about taking a nap on the porch on this bug-infested sphere. The last time I dozed off on the glider I woke up about three pounds lighter and all of it blood. If I want to donate blood, I'll visit the Bloodmobile, thank you.

And who wants to swim in the ocean? Besides being salt water that you don't want in your mouth or stomach or eyes, it's full of really creepy, wiggly things and great big toothy things that think you were put on this Earth to be their supper. Screw that. Hell, I'll gladly give up eating them if they'll stop nibbling on me. But you can't make a deal with them because they have no clue what you're saying to them when you haul ass for the beach with jelly fish stings all over you. They think you're just going to McDonald's to fatten yourself up a little more for them.

Lakes are OK, now that the lampreys are under control but there are still eels. And water dogs (mud puppies) in Pennsylvania streams and catfish as big as rowboats in the Mississippi. Still, I can't imagine what it's like to jump into a lake or stream in Florida just to be tackled and spun dry and then drowned by an alligator because you just look so damn tasty. And they're only a fraction of the size of crocodiles in Africa and Australia who would down your ass in one gulp for an appetizer and then have Water Buffalo for the entree. And I cringe every time I think about being swallowed whole by a python, wondering if I'd suffocate to death before I dissolved to death.

Here in Pennsylvania I only have to watch out for bears and coyotes and that's why I rarely go out in the woods or go hunting anymore. Oh, yeah, I always had a rifle or a shotgun when I went hunting but as I got older I worried about falling down or falling asleep or having a heart attack or a stroke and being alive and helpless as a pack of coyotes divvied me up for lunch

So, now I don't hunt anymore and I don't mountain bike or even walk wooded trails by myself, with or without the protection of a firearm. And I don't doze off on the chaise lounge on the patio anymore, either. I watch TV instead and drift right off after a nice meal or a little snack and I don't worry about being food for anyone or any thing. Besides, nothing could be a better sleep aid than a meal followed by a boring show on TV you use as company after you turn off the VCR or DVD player. That movie can wait.

The trick then is to not dream about being food or waking up with a crick in your neck or numb legs or chocolate drool on your shirt. Still, it's better than having to dress for the weather and a lot better than being on some carnivore's menu.

Little Red Man from Earth

Earthlings are always poking fun at people from Mars. The little green man from Mars has been an object of derision ever since Hollywood started excreting cheesy B-movies in the 1950s about men from Earth blasting off to Mars in rocket ships shaped like perfecto cigars with fins.

I was just a kid slugging my way through an unwanted Appalachian childhood when I saw my first "space movie" on the Late Late Show (which used to be a wee-hour movie show and not a stupid talk show). The rocket would turn around and land on its fins and then take off again after the spacemen had aggravated the Martians to the point of murder.

Being a former Martian with a dwindling memory of that previous life, I can assure you that we Martians had our own ideas of what an Earth-devil spaceman would look like. I ran across this animated image the other day and just had to post it here because this is the perfect example of a little red man from Earth. Why does he look like he's in hell? Beats me. Did any of you Earthlings ever wonder if any little green man from Mars was happy or unhappy or well-fed or if he could carry a tune?

All right, then. There you go.

Who Gives A Hoot?

My memories of a previous life on Mars are fading more and more each year. One day my Martian memories will be so faint, selective and sporadic that I'll convince myself that I never even had a previous life on Mars, that my first time around was right here on planet Earth, along with the rest of you.

But since I'm still believing that I once lived on Mars when it was a wonderful big green, red and blue marble in the blackness of interstellar space, I still benefit from the Martian sixth sense that allows me to feel and smell a lie whenever I encounter it.

Want proof? When I was seven years old I thought it was really odd that a skinny pyramid with an eyeball on top of it is on the back of a one-dollar bill. Not even grown ups thought about that back then. By 1970 most of them still weren't even aware of that ridiculous pyramid and that even more ridiculous eyeball. By 1980 some people knew but no one cared. By 1990, a few more people knew about it but even fewer people cared about why and how it got there. By 2000, nobody gave a hoot.

And all that time, while I was wondering and puzzling and thinking about that idiotic pyramid, we Americans were too preoccupied with the daily business of eating, sleeping, buying, selling and procreating to notice the little owl on the front of the one-dollar bill. That's right, a teeny-weeny little owl perched between a leaf and the number "1" at the top, right-hand corner of the front of the American one-dollar bill. Wow, just being able to describe where it's located is a successful exercising of my limited Earthling free will.

As a former Martian (yes, I still believe in me), my biggest concern is not primarily where these disturbing images came from or why they're on the one-dollar bill or who even put them there. My biggest concern is that they've been there since 1935 and millions and millions of people never even noticed or cared if they did notice them. And that's the scariest thing about my having to be an Earthling the second time around. Being so easily deceived and controlled, over and over again. And being surrounded by people who just don't give a hoot.

It's no way to treat your fellow citizens and certainly no way to run a planet.

Holiday Greetings from a Former Martian

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

20 Things About Living on Earth

Former Martians like me don't really have a propensity for sharing things about themselves, unlike Earthlings, who unburden themselves at the drop of a hat. But, as I've said before (and will probably say again as time goes by), living as an Earthling the second time around is an addictive experience. And the biggest Earthling addiction of all is giving your opinion, whether it's asked for or not. Therefore, I humbly offer up for your consideration twenty things about living on Earth. Ten things I don't like about it and ten things I do like about it. After all, no planet is or ever was or ever will be a Paradise. Not even Mars.

10 things I don't like about living on Earth

1. Having to do certain things at a certain time

2. The fact that a lot of people don't have enough food

3. Junk mail, spam and those annoying phone call surveys that pretend not to be telemarketing calls

4. Being around people who say "Ta-da!" when they enter a room

5. Receiving an unplanned laxative whenever the Emergency Broadcast System interrupts a wee-hour show with that nasty, loud buzzer that might just as well be a Klaxon horn at that ungodly hour and, 5b, The fact that someone, somewhere in history invented the Klaxon horn

6. Drive-Thrus. They hog all the service while the rest of us stand in line and wait and wait and wait...

7. Carnivorous animals that roam the planet, many of them "dogs at large" in residential areas of Appalachia

8. Watching NASA pretend to explore space

9. Waiters and waitresses who think they own you

10. Seeing way too many road signs where you don't need them and none where you do

10 things I do like about living on Earth

1. Having enough to eat whether I deserve it or not

2. Animals that sing in the morning

3. People who are quiet most of the day

4. Carnival food

5. Skyscrapers (they can't build them too high for me)

6. Hawaii, Tahiti, Bora Bora and other places resembling my idea of Paradise

7. Little kids who smile at you when you walk past them

8. Old people who need and enjoy your company

9. Nations that watch over and protect other nations

10. Seeing a Harvest Moon just when you'd forgotten all about them

It’s All in the Wrist

Living on Earth certainly has its pros and cons. One of the “thumbs up” is eating pizza. Whoever invented pizza should have gone straight to heaven. But, since there is no heaven, that person will just have to settle for another planet with better weather.

One of the “thumbs down” about living on Earth is that Earthlings have a tendency to say the stupidest things, things that are backwards from what they really mean to say. For example, a lot of people will tell you that they “could care less” about something when, in fact, they should be saying that they “couldn’t care less” about it. That means that they care so little about it that they couldn’t possibly care any less about it. Knowing that, they will still say it the wrong way.

And that brings me to another “thumbs down” about Earth. Even when they’re wrong and they know they’re wrong, Earthlings don’t care. Right or wrong means very little to them. And, even as a little boy in Appalachia, that struck me as pretty damn strange.

And yet, I can always think of more “thumbs up” reasons for liking life on Earth. One of them is drinking beer. Whoever invented beer will certainly never go to hell. Wherever that is.

In Like Lint

So, what took the celestial powers-that-be so damn long to send me to Earth? After all, Cydonia was already under several feet of red dust by the time I made my appearance in Appalachia, only to have my butt slapped by an obstetrician as soon as he saw my ugly face. I hated Earth right off the bat but I also knew I was here for the duration.

Years later, when I saw a rerun of a really stupid spy-spoof movie in the 1960s called “In Like Flint”, I realized that I had entered Earth almost as comically as the James Coburn character entered whatever is was that he was supposed to infiltrate but much, much slower. My own mission would not include espionage, assassination and the blowing up of evil people and places. My own “Mission to Earth” would be much more subtle and covert. I would be a living witness to the real story about the third planet from the Sun. What I did with what I saw and learned would take an entire lifetime and how and when I chose to apply the resulting wisdom would be entirely up to me. I would enter Earth culture as slowly as the accumulation of cotton fuzz on the average belly button.

In like lint.

But this isn't the autobiography of a misplaced, hopelessly lost, little green man from Mars. Recounting the days of my roller-coaster life here on Earth would be like reading to you from the dictionary. Yeah, that dry. As dry as Cydonia dust.

So, this blog will be a random selection of my thoughts about Earth, the solar system, the Milky Way Galaxy and the entire universe as I randomly recall them. And that’s about the best any little green man can do when surrounded by the waste products of several millennia of Earthling civilizations as they built up and decayed.

So, let’s just make the best of it, then.