Hello… Hello… Hello… Is There Anybody Out There?

Scientists say they’ve found water on Mars? Well, not water per se. More like a briny liquid. Now I know why aliens are described as little green men.  
#pickle people

You might think that’s totally ridiculous, but I’ve been studying UFO flight patterns. There’ve been dozens of sightings around Imlay City, Michigan. What’s in Imlay City besides Parks Show Cattle Online Steer & Heifer Sale, Lucky’s Steak House and 3,589 bored Imalayins? Ah, my ET lovin’ amigos, that would be the Vlasic Pickle factory.  No, I’m not gherkin your chain.

  
I’ve always been a bit suspicious of any food that needs to be preserved in a vinegary substance. Perhaps they’re hiding something. Could life actually exist out there in space, and aside from being friendly, also be quite tasty?

I’ve seen pictures of Mars. Totally barren. Have we, like some super-race of Peter Pipers, been pickin’ more than a peck of pickled Martian peppers? Are we now on a quest to find new worlds to enslave, jar and serve next to a pastrami on rye with a smear of deli Dijon?

According to the guy with the weird hair on Ancient Aliens, space beings have been visiting us pretty much forever.  After a bit of archaeological Internet digging I have uncovered the truth. This pickling process goes back as far as 2400 B.C. Coincidence? Maybe the little green guys have good reason to avoid us.

So the next time you’re tempted to top your salad off with a few artichoke hearts (ever wonder why they call them hearts?), stop and consider the possibility you might be cannibalizing some inferior, though delectable race of beings who want nothing more than to share in the American dream. This more than likely doesn’t involve becoming a garnish for your Dodger dog.

Relish their friendship.  

K.G

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

Raise your hand if you enjoy television reality programs. Don’t be embarrassed. What’s not to love? Where else can you find such a corn-ball-ucopia of butter-eatin’, toothless, moonshine swillin’, tantrum-throwing misfits that look and act more like sideshow carnies than TV stars? Well, besides the bus station or nearest freeway off-ramp.

I’ll admit that this particular reality genre is not my cup of tea. No offense, but since when did we need closed captioning to understand simple English? Okay, Sofía Vergara is a bit challenging at times, but she’s so darn cute. If I offended anyone I apologize.  I’m not here to spit on your gator wrestlin’ parade.

I confessed a few posts ago that I actually watch a few reality programs myself. Most are of the “I’m going to make you waste an hour of your time while I search for something I’ll never find because it doesn’t exist” variety. It’s a genre bandwagon that P.T Barnum would have jumped on without hesitation and beat within an inch of its life. I’m sure the producers are snickering all the way to the bank.

But is this type of program really that popular? Does Bigfoot poop in the woods?

The answer to the first question is youbetcha. As for the second question, I am of the opinion that he does not. Surely someone would have stepped in it by now or at least noticed their shovel missing.

I’ve once again been wood-shedding some new reality concepts of my own, because I’m pretty sure I can search for nothing just as well as the next guy. After all, I am 100% convinced that my car keys exist but I can rarely find them, so looking for imaginary beings, ghosts, lost treasure, aliens and giants shouldn't be a stretch.

The first is “Finding Elvis” where I would follow clues like cities where the most peanut butter, bacon and black hair dye is purchased, and allow the viewing audience to text in sightings a la “America’s Most Wanted.” Every week I would question 7-11 employees and jumpsuit manufacturers far and wide (no fat Elvis pun intended) until I found the King of Rock-n-Roll, no matter how many seasons it took.

Or perhaps “SNIPE: An American Legend.” Armed with infrared, heat sensitive cameras and a truck full of Nacho Cheese Doritos for bait, you could watch spellbound as I spend weeks searching the darkness for the elusive Snipe, who we all know is stealthier than Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster combined; a larger-than-life creature that has been hunted by thousands of Boy Scouts but has yet to be seen by anyone. This would be reality TV at its finest.

I was at first torn between the Snipe and the infamous Jack-a-lope, but the former is a true legend while it was brought to my attention the latter can be found (why am I always the last to know) in every tourist gift shop east of the Rockies.Author’s Note:

The last is “Switched at Birth: Search for the Lost Kardashian.” It’s pretty obvious to just about anyone who watches television that something went horribly wrong at the hospital 27 years ago. Rob K. (hereto referred to as the “Shemp” of reality TV) cannot possibly be a Kardashian. Number one, he’s not photogenic. Two, he has no business sense (Socks? Really? Someone should fill one with nickels and whack him a few times), and number three, he’s male and not even cool. If Kardashian girls were spiders, they would have eaten him a long time ago.

So, with a camera crew in tow, we (I’m thinking Bruce Jenner in drag as my female sidekick) would interview nurses, search hospital records and doggedly track down every lead until we got to the bottom (no Kim jokes, please) of this mystery. My money is on Zac Efron. Same age, born in the same area, good looking, talented. What??? I guess you’ll have to watch the program to see if I’m right.

K.G.

Let’s Get Physical

Greetings cyber-space cowboys, it is I, Hot Grandpa back with more thought-provoking tidbits guaranteed to make you wonder just who is out there and do they really think we might taste like chicken.

Funny Fitness Anecdote:

Last week I purchased a tank top at a secondhand store with the name of a well-known swimsuit company printed on the front. At the grocery store today, the checkout clerk asked me if I was a “Speedo” model. My wife will miss work for the next few days. I believe she broke something while rolling around on the floor.

As one gets older, it becomes crystal clear that years and years of eating food distributed by happy clowns and little red-headed girls can begin to reshape the human body into something resembling a sumo wrestler. I wanted to say Fat Albert but I was afraid that would be misconstrued, so I will pick on the aliens instead.

I do some form of exercise every day:  walk, run or lift a few weights; anything to keep my waistline (and other manly parts) from turning into a wasteland of lumps, humps and jiggly bumps. Am I successful? Well, the jury is still out, but judging by my ability to run downhill without a sports bra and not get pummeled in the face, I’d say I’m making progress.

Anyway, all this working out got me thinking. If there is life on other planets, do they have the same problem? Do the little green men have little round beer bellies and sagging butts from sitting in their saucers for millions of miles? I realize they probably don’t have beer, but I’m sure they've found something to overindulge in, like an extra-large order of radioactive grubs from the planet Xazzabba, or perhaps a super-grande, Venusian tar-crab smoothie. I for one would not be surprised in the least.  Any intelligent civilization will have stumbled on dessert. I mean, without Twinkies we’d be nothing more than savages.

My point is, if they've been around a lot longer than us, then they have no doubt discovered the joy of stuffing the ‘ol pie hole with high-calorie krapolla, and are more than likely sporting some serious zero gravity moobs and alien love handles. So just maybe, if we were invaded, they would be at least as out of shape as we are and all we would have to do is out run them. Besides, we’re already used to the gravity here, so I think we would have a slight edge.

I am going for a walk now. I want to be ready. I for one am not going to get probed by a chubby alien.

K.G.

Klaatu Barada Nikto

Live long and prosper my lonely cyber- cadets. I applaud you as you search the outer reaches of cyber-space and beyond in an attempt to find truth, justice and good Chinese take-out.

Been pondering this whole alien thing (outer space ones, not illegal ones; though the “illegal” case could be made for both, I suppose). In a HuffPost/YouGov survey, one fourth of Americans said that they think aliens have visited us, while a third said “Yeah, when pigs fly.” The rest of the respondents were trying to get their medical marijuana cards and really just wanted to find the nearest Jack in the Box. Among those who were convinced that life exists on other planets, 45 percent said that aliens visit Earth often and possibly own one of the local Quicky-Marts.

Even noted Physicist Stephen Hawking (when not hitting on women) took time to respond. Mr. Hawking, in that weird, robot-like, digitally-voice, said that intelligent life on other planets probably exists, but that if little green men had visited Earth it would have been a "much more unpleasant" experience than any UFO sightings. So I guess being “tied down and probed” could be filed under “not that unpleasant”, especially if they bought you a Proud Whopper and dropped you off at the front door after.

College grads that were surveyed were more willing than non-college graduates to believe that life exists in some form elsewhere in the universe, although no more eager to admit that aliens have actually visited. Their reasoning, “Hot chicks just don’t go for crazy guys.”

Older respondents were much more likely than younger ones to state firmly that Earth has played Motel 6 to alien visitors, but this could be due to easier access to prescription medication.

I think this whole alien craze is just another way to keep our spirits up when we fail at dating sites like eHarmony and Tinder. We are so desperate to believe that there is someone out there for us, our “willing to travel for love” distance has expanded to include the rest of the universe. As for me, well, I have a hard time driving twenty minutes to get a Mocha Frappuccino, and I never really cared for girls with tentacles.

My hypothesis:
Aliens have been visiting the earth not to poke and prod us (though this sounds like good clean fun), but to dump their garbage here. It’s their radioactive trash in the atmosphere that is making us lose all common sense an accuse each other of being racist, homophobic, and overenthusiastic about World Cup soccer (Stephen King; you may use this for your next novel for a nominal fee).

K.G.