ATTENTION: Due to a vast amount of screaming from some of my friends who seem to think that I can sit up all night, write twenty pages and post it straight away, i have decided to take my own sweet time writing the third chapter to The Story (anything that takes up this much of my life deserves to be refered to in capital letters). So in its place, I am posting some.... unusual thoughts I had one day at the cinema that escalated far beyond sanity and well into the depths of ... well... insanity for lack of better word.

THE CRACKER MANIFESTO

If aliens were to take over the Earth and decide that all the crackers needed to be evaporated, what about those pour unfortunate beings who are unlucky enough to have the word cracker in their names like animal crackers. Everyone here on Earth knows that they look like cookies, they taste like cookies, and in all actuality they are cookies, but they’re branded “crackers”. Would the aliens take the time to get to know our culture enough to discern that animal crackers are not what their name denounces them to be? Or if they did find that out right off, would they, in a fit of rage over false advertising, evaporate the poor cookies anyway?

Cracker jacks. You know it’s popcorn, I know it’s popcorn., but what about the aliens? They might think that we were trying to save our precious crackers by disguising them as popped corn, and then they would evaporate all the popcorn, too. And then where would movie cinemas be? All they would have to sell is tubs of artificial buttery- flavored oil and spray on cheese. I use the term buttery- flavored lightly, because all of you out there know that it doesn’t really taste like butter, they’d just like us to think it does, and we as the blind public, for some reason, don’t unite and stand up against this lunacy and demand more realistic tasting toppings. But then, maybe you’re like me and enjoy the taste better than real butter. But I digress.

On a more serious note, we could live without crackers, animal or otherwise, but isn’t a racial slang for a white person ‘cracker’? Would the confused aliens then try to evaporate all Caucasians? If they did, the entire human race, could be endangered, for who knows what food related phobia they will develop next. But we as humans wouldn’t stand for this. We would assemble armies to drive the aliens out, but the aliens, having better technology and being just plain smarter, would evaporate us all, and chipmunks would rule the Earth.

They’re so cute and fuzzy, no alien in his right mind would evaporate a chipmunk, so they just go ‘Ohhhh!’ and decide to leave the planet to the rulers of the Chipmunkian race.

They’d rename North America, that’s where the majority of them are found, as Chipmunkia and their capital would be Prairie Dog City. Chipmunks aren’t prairie dogs, but they are closely related, and the chipmunks would take pity on their rodent relatives. All humans who had escaped evaporation will be branded outlaws, and their lives are forfeit. And I shall be the leader of the underground resistance.

But how do we know that the chipmunks weren’t planning this from the start. They may just well have been the ones who contacted the aliens and soured their ears against the human race. Chipmunks have hated us for centuries, for we are the ones who made them live in hollowed out trees and eat from the crumbs we throw at them. Although, a friend of mine told me that the chipmunks never really eat the food you throw at them, they store it in their cheeks for disposal later. Usually in our beds, if you aren’t careful like I am and have a chipmunk proof moat around you house. If you do, they deposit it on the windscreen of your car, and it looks deceptively like ‘harmless’ bird droppings. But bird droppings are just a very ingenious way of planting a homing device on our vehicles. If you look very close, their is always a bird dropping somewhere on you car. Despite this, the birds are trustworthy. They like bread products too much to betray us to the aliens. Or to the chipmunks for that matter. Those two have kindled a deep hatred for each other for years, always fighting over nesting space. You see the birds need to be up in the trees so they can receive the radar transmissions from the homing beacons. When they are on the ground it is much harder to get a good signal on somebody.

In the end though, I thing the birds would join the chipmunks in their reign of terror because animals are more likely to bond with other animals than with humans, endangered or not. It’s the law of the jungle. And the chipmunks would then have access to the technology of the birds and would combine it with their vast underground system of communication arrays. (How else would they contact the aliens? The telephone?) They would know where everything on the planet is at all times. And we were worried about Big Brother, when all along if we had been spied on at all times we would have known what the chipmunks were up to and been able to prevent it.

However; government could not use that type of information wisely, and if they were able to see into people’s homes, alien sympathizers, to save their own paltry lives, would point out which people were the most worthless and annoying to be evaporated first. These would include lawyers and newspaper columnists.

Ann Landers and Dear Abby would be spared because their motherly advise does hold merit in the long sighted scheme of things, and they could be important government advisors about intimate issues like divorce and in-laws.

Yes, aliens have in-laws too, and they are just as, if not more, irritating. In fact, alien mother in-laws are among the most dreaded beasts of the universe because of their horrible gaping mouths and their beady eyes. Top all this off with blue hair and baggy cheeks, and you have one scary monster who is ready and willing to, at any moment, drop in unannounced and criticize how you run your life. Jaws meets the Predator meets Pumpkinhead meets Freddy meets Jason meets Norman. You can throw the clown from It in there somewhere, I’m quite sure.

No, I didn’t forget Alien, but that would have produced an unauthorized, and not to mention bad, pun, and people who make bad puns should be shot. We should have specialized weapons to deal with these menaces:

From the creators of INSTAshoes (I’ll explain later or not, depends on how I feel) comes the PunGun!!!

And we would use these PunGuns to evaporate bad punners on sight. Potentially, this could create a problem, especially in the work place, when the privilege of using the PunGun might be tempted to evaporate someone simply because they are annoying.

him: Hey, have I told you about the time my grandkids -

another him: Please make the hurting stop. (draws out PunGun)

pungun: ZZZAAAPPP!!! (body falls)

yet another him: Hey! You evaporated Ernie! (draws out PunGun)

pungun: ZZZAAAPPP!!! (body falls)

(all three hims are found dead the next morning--third death, unexplainable)

So potentially, the PunGun could become a dangerous weapon in the hands of an irate banker or the like, so maybe it needs to have a Pun-O-Meter so it can rate the puns and power itself up if the pun is bad enough to bother with evaporation. And yes, this evaporation is similar to the alien’s technology but without the side effect of hair loss. Hey- have you ever seen an alien with hair? Didn’t think so, so stop laughing.

Although, some of the aliens on Star Trek had hair, and Worf, if I do say so myself, towards the last season, had hair any woman would kill for-- thick and wavy and dark, despite the fact that it started growing half way back his head.

Does anyone know what a balding Klingon looks like? How can you tell? Does the head smooth out after the hair line, and if they have smooth spots showing then you know they’re balding? Or does it turn pink and stand out really bad, so instead of spray on hair, they have spray on scalps? Actually, my vote is that they take the scalp of a vanquished foe and glue it onto their head like a primitive toupee. Then they tangle it a little, and no one is the wiser.

And who do guys with toupees think they are fooling? If I put a piece of rug on my head that wasn’t quite the same colour/texture/length as the rest of my organic hair, I would be laughed at everywhere I went. People would unmercifully tease me and I would feel so bad about myself, I would want to die, but day after day, thousands of men, business or otherwise, slap road kill on their heads and expect us to believe that it is their real hair! You know, from my view point, balding isn’t that bad. It can even be a little distinguishing. Don't even take me on the “I comb my hair over the bald spot so no one can see it” road or I’ll ramble and rave for the rest of the paper.

Speaking of hair, what would happen if a fuzzy race of aliens, say perchance.... cat people.... decided to take over the world? Would we just go “Ohhh, you’re so fuzzy and warm, I’ll be your slave if you let me pet you behind the ears.” At least, I would. But I think they would not be so kind to us. We have been enslaving their brethren for thousands of years and many of them are endangered. I believe the cat people would see this and decide we were a cruel race that needed to be vaporized, but at least, they aren’t vaporizing us for some food related fear, just plain hatred.

I feel better, do you?

Dogs would then become slaves, and those dog loving freaks, like my next door neighbour, would have to work for the cat-people version of the IRS only, they would have to audit themselves!MWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. This is much like Dante’s lesser know sixteenth circle of hell. It was left out of Inferno because the publisher didn’t think it had the same flare as the rest of the circles. And to top that it was just way to frightening for their little 14th century minds.

Would the cat-people have shirts that says things like:

Je m'embrasse ma personne sur la bouche!

and

In human years, I’d still be alive.
(oh wait, this would be for the dog people)

Either way, dog or cat people, humans would now become the pets. We would be feed from little bowls on little tables. Not the floor, the Cat People would consider it an honour to eat from the floor and would banish us to the heights of table- land. But the Cat People would disgrace us by walking on our tables, especially while we were trying to eat. We would, however, have to drink out of their toilets. Only, they don’t use the toilets, they still use litter boxes, and we would have to change them. Think of a litter box big enough for a person sized cat! Suddenly changing my cat’s litter box doesn’t seem like such a big chore.

But being natural predators of small.... chipmunk..... like animals, the aforementioned chipmunks would soon realise their mistake and turn against their cat people tyrants. The leader of the chipmunk underground and I (I'm the leader of the underground Human resistance, remember?)shall meet in secret labyrinths deep in the bowels of France to discuss the impending war.

After much debate, I will finallly convince him that hiding in trees and chattering at the cat people will not be enough. We must utilise our greatest ally (dun dun dun!) WATER!

With pistols large enough to blast a target at a hundred paces, and sling shots with barrels of water balloons, we shall begin the treacherous and life threatening journey to throw off the shackles of cat oppression!!

EITHER YOU'RE WITH ME OR AGAINST ME!! THIS SHALL NOT BE A WATERLOO FOR THE HUMAN RACE BUT A RUBICON!! WITH CAESAR ON OUR SIDE WE CANNOT LOSE!! GATHER YOUR HORSES, WATER PISTOLS AND MEN, WE HAVE A WAR TO FIGHT!!!