Aliens in New Orleans

Po-Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Ouch, That Hurts
Or
Ground Control to Major Tom
“There are five nameless people that own the entire planet and move everyone around to suit themselves and their purposes”. This statement from a female life form (not unpleasant to look at) that had placed two imitation precious metal discs on a rim surface to indicate her challenge to a contest involving fifteen striped and solid colored spheres being hit with a non colored sphere by way of a long slender rod of wood. The intent of which is to propel those spheres, intentionally, into any of six cavities evenly spaced in a three foot by six feet flat green felt covered horizontal playing surface. I reminded myself that this was just another game of pool.
A hot August evening, a quiet, non-competitive game (against myself), my local pub (Molly’s on Toulouse) and sleeping late the next day had had me lulled into a sense of psychic rest and relaxation. Obviously, this was not meant to be.
In our native vernacular, I responded “So, where y’all from?” She replied that she was from a “planet so far away that I could string toilet paper from my front yard to Uranus (was there a pun intended?), multiply that length by a qua-zillion and not even come close to imagining the distance.” Or, “so fucking far away, it would make your head spin.”
Good answer, I thought, scratched the eight and invited her to rack ‘em.
“So what”, I said, “you’re here to take the planet away from us, free us from destruction, save us from ourselves…what?”
“Nah” she said, “we gave up on y’all, you’d be more of a pain in the ass than we’d care to deal with. I’m just the mop up team; we’re outa here. “Plus,” she added, “most of you’re ugly as hammered shit, and just about as dumb.”
I invited her home. She racked. I broke. Sank nothing. She ran the table, sank the eight in a three bank shot and said: ”sure”: and we were off.
I have a nice house, a clean house, a big house, and a safe house and here I am discussing my world with a brunette who appears to have the intelligence of a spanner wrench. Or not. In either case why would I invite a nut case or an alien into my home? Perhaps the moon was full. Perhaps the planets were mis-alligned. Maybe I thought that I’d get lucky. That’s probably the answer; and while I’ve been laid by a lot of loonies, getting in the sack with an alien would be a new one. Yep, that’s what it was.
Out on the street, I asked about that three-rail bank that she did on the eight ball. She looked at me sweetly and said: “It ain’t rocket surgery, Cap”. Then she touched me behind my ear and something she did shut down my horny honey hornet system. It was like a cold shower, but more effective. I decided that I’d best be polite, that system is usually on red alert twenty four seven, ask anyone that thinks that they know me.
Seated on my porch with the air as still as a tomb and the clouds playing hide and seek with another electrical storm, I asked her what she had found out about us as a race.
“First and foremost: your collective will to exert superiority over each other. Those who find themselves on the lower stratum react with hatred, jealousy and violence while those above keep an illusionary and precarious control by placing value systems and unreachable futile goals that they paint as the pot of gold at the end of the ass kicking.
Those in power wage wars based on greed and oppression using mortality, valor and the joke of an afterlife to brainwash the ignorant into fighting for them.
The very thing that you call ‘sport’ consists, in general, either in abnormal body exertion or the ability to hit, kick, throw, capture or club little balls and then run like hell!
You take finely shredded plants, wrap them in thin paper, put them in your mouth, set fire to them, and then inhale a smoke that you know will shorten your pointless lives.
You drink fermented beverages, aware of their destructive addictive-ness and call it ‘fun’; you injure each other physically, mentally, and emotionally in your homes, your streets and in neighboring countries. Are you catching this or should I go slower for your pitiful ineptness to grasp complex concepts?”
I opened my mouth to answer but she didn’t miss a beat
“You empty your ghettos to provide fodder for rich men’s wars, the last ‘Prince of Peace’ you had got nailed to a tree over two thousand years ago and no one has since been able to muster up enough people to say ‘STOP!’ Got it so far Dummy or do I have to draw a diagram?”
“Uh” I said but as you might suspect, she was on a roll.
“You climbed down from the trees ‘Psycho Monkey’ and took over the planet; since then you have done your best to lay it to waste. You pollute your bodies, your air, and your land, which incidentally doesn’t belong to you but to your future. Are you gonna say to your grandchildren: “Whoops, sorry kids; I forgot to take care of the planet that I’m leaving you?” You have got to have the intelligence of a tree stump to think that we want any part of this. Shit, we’d have to knock all Y’all off and start from scratch and basically, Buddy, that’s not our M. O.”
I asked her where she learned to talk like that. She once again turned on the charm and said: “tapes”.
She unfolded her tightly knit form from my Barco-lounger and said: “Well, hasta la vista, baby” and I begged her to stay, give us another chance; tell us anything that would help us.
She again gave me that certain smile and said “ believe seven impossible things before breakfast”.