Alienation

 

 

World events have been happening so quickly in the past week that, midway through my consumption of a sweet potato and marshmallow casserole, I seriously considered blowing off  the Post-Thanksgiving-Held-on-Actual-Thanksgiving Midnight Madness at the local Walmart in order to track events as they were unfolding.

We shall begin with a discovery beneath the icy surface of a buried Antarctic lake, in super-salty water devoid of light and oxygen. In this not-for-life setting, researchers have now discovered that a diverse community of bacteria has survived for millennia. The findings shed light on the extreme limits at which life can live not just on Earth, but in the halls of Congress.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit concerned that when the scientists return home and have their wives toss their research outfits in the washing machine, the bacteria, already pissed off at having their environment disturbed, will begin to wreak havoc.  They will multiply even faster than Tom Cruise can stop them, and soon, we will all be consumed by tiny brine-loving-but-human-hating beings.

In another disturbing discovery, a Texas veterinarian-researcher claims to have shown that the elusive creature known as Bigfoot Sasquatch is a human hybrid, descended from human females who mated with males of “an unknown hominid species.”  In a statement released on Saturday, Melba S. Ketchum (her actual name) said that her conclusions emerged after she sequenced samples of purported Sasquatch DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA in the samples, which offspring inherit from their mothers, was identical to modern human mitochondrial DNA, she said. But the nuclear DNA samples — the genetic blueprint that mixes genetic material from both parents — appeared to be a mix between human nuclear DNA and “novel non-human sequence.”

While the discovery created a furor in the scientific community, the announcement was no surprise to millions of women across the globe who regularly frequent over-35 singles dances.

And finally, in the general category of alien news, Tom Ricks, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, appeared on Fox News to promote his new book “The Generals.” The interview was cut short, lasting only 90 seconds, after Ricks said that Fox News “hyped” the story about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and was “operating as a wing of the Republican Party.”

 Fox officials immediately consulted with John Boehner in order to come up with a snappy retort.  The result was their assertion that Ricks had blamed his behavior on having been fatigued from his book tour.  Ricks quickly countered with a compound word describing equine feces.

Since a poll taken during the presidential race found that two thirds of both Democrats and Republicans say that Barack Obama would be better suited than Mitt Romney to handle an alien invasion, whether on the ground, under the ocean, from the sky, or in the studios of Fox News, it appears that we are safe for the moment.  

Whew.