The author reads the piece aloud (from the live broadcast recording of the This Is Hell radio show):
We can all agree that we need an objective view of our human situation. So, okay, here’s me as an alien from outer space:
Welcome Earthlings. Or, whatever, not welcome, because it’s us who are arriving at this interspecies conference, but – hello!
We, meaning our organization, would be interested in knowing what you might think of microscopic weapons. How useful would they be to you? Little tiny guns no naked human eye can detect, would those be of any use to you? You love guns, and seem to enjoy miniature things, but is this maybe too miniature?
As beings made up almost entirely of pure energy, with just a small amount of beef byproducts and benzoate of soda as a preservative, we at Extraterrestrials Unlimited are always looking for new gimmicks to accumulate those numbers you love. Those numbers which are apparently synonymous with “the bottom line,” whatever that is.
Yes, we’re also discussing new forms to appear in that won’t confuse you. The ostrich that speaks from its cloaca was a terrible mistake, and we have apologized many times, so please stop bringing it up. We are ashamed of having had sexual intercourse with that puppy, or however you say it: screwed that… pooch.
You’ve made us aware that our taking the form of a recently deceased loved one makes you uncomfortable. Those are easy for us because of how vividly you remember them, so it’s a shame your fragile psyches can’t be more accommodating. So many things in your memories tend to freak you out. That won’t do you any favors when the really fabulous aliens come. Find a good therapist and deal with that a soon as possible.
While we’re on the subject of terrestrial human annoyances, your economy based on the accumulation of numbers is baffling. The numbers don’t seem to represent anything. They don’t align with hours worked for the benefit of a community, nor with quality or difficulty of effort. They don’t correspond with resource depletion or creation. They more closely correlate with in-group status, particularly among the in-group in closest proximity to the institutions tasked with generating the numbers. Yet it is unclear how membership in such an in-group is attained, except by having the numbers, although there is no end of less circular theories.
Not just any institution can generate the numbers, apparently. What gives one institution the supreme privilege of generating precious numbers, whereas another institution must cajole numbers out of some more privileged institution or an aggregation of individuals who have somehow secured their own supply of numbers? Every member of your species seems in thrall to this practice, and the underlying religion or ethos or epistemology. It can be very frustrating, especially when it interferes with the procurement of a need, which it almost always does. The satisfaction of any need, no matter how trivial or dire, can be withheld or prevented simply due to a fealty to numbers that every single being of complex sentience is expected to agree upon. The numbers fetish is a real drag, dudes.
So, enough with the idolatry of numbers. You need to fix that if you don’t want to be destroyed by the really fabulous aliens who are headed here as soon as we give up trying to improve you.
Another annoyance: this is literally the noisiest place in the galaxy, did you know that? In a local sense, I mean, within a livable atmosphere. Not the screaming of the radiation winds in the void, that stuff’s insane. Not talking about Jupiter, with eternal tornadoes. Any complexly sentient being in a position to hear those would also be inundated with more salient wavelengths.
But within a gaseous oxygen-carbon exchange habitat, it’s not even close: all the horn-honking, waves crashing, volcanic eruptions, storms, construction, gunfire, animals shrieking, explosions, sirens, trees falling in forests, music amplified to punishing levels, cats making bizarre keenings in the night, and the grotesque, ubiquitous belching, popping, slurping, hissing, oinking, croaking, and clucking of human speech. How can you even think straight? Never mind, don’t answer that. I mean, clearly you don’t, right?
Okay, now here’s me as an alien from outer space who has become a human Earthling and is trying to explain what I’m up to these days:
Well, they say you gotta have a dream, or how can your dreams come true? They say you have to find a purpose and pursue it with passion. I have a project. But it’s so ambitious, and I am so not an ambitious person.
My project is so encompassing, sprawling, visionary, prophetic, that it simply can’t be accomplished. Maybe I should’ve bitten off a smaller bite.
Fortunately, we live in such a flexible reality, and my project’s essence permeates so much of everything, that other people, unbidden and perhaps unaware, have been adding to the progress of the project, surpassing even myself in contributing to its furtherance. There are those right here in this coffee shop or bar or whatever this venue is who even just as recently as yesterday have added monumental structures to the archipelago of this growing crystalline living expression. That’s how encompassing, sprawling, visionary, and prophetic it is, this ambitious endeavor of mine.
All of you people, with your hopes, your purpose, your beliefs, your fire in your bellies, your inspiring works, your inspiring children, I won’t let you bring me down. I’ll just look away and take a nap. It’s taken me this long just to become an immature old man, and I can’t, at this late stage of the game, allow the joie de vivre of others to give me a broader prospective. I really need to focus on something small and manageable, like a sandwich.
That’s what I would say if I was from outside our civilization. But I’m inside it. So all I can say is, hey, I’m not doing my best but I can guarantee you my best isn’t good enough to stop the coming collapse anyway. And neither is yours. So just be nice, okay? To each other, and especially to me.
My nicest could probably be nicer.