How likely are YOU to survive the alien apocalypse?
FORM 21B: SO YOU WANT TO KNOW IF YOU’LL SURVIVE THE ALIEN APOCALYPSE.
The first thing is not to panic. Inside every cloud is a silver lining – it’s just that sometimes that silver lining turns out to be a fleet of shimmering intergalactic killing machines, bent on the total annihilation of the human race. On the bright side, some of you may well survive! It’s entirely possible, however unlikely. It’s like those news stories featuring a dog who’s learned to ride a bike: extraordinary, but possible. Everybody loves those stories! And although we are sad to report that “Cyclin’ Rex, the rolling retriever” was one of the first to go when the aliens landed, his disintegration was probably largely painless. One of the good things about alien death rays!
We understand though that many of you may be dismayed by recent events, which is why we’ve conceived this handy chart. It can even be cut out and folded up to put in your wallet for future reference. Let’s face it, it’s not like you need money anymore! What are you going to spend it on? Saucer-proof galoshes? Good luck with that!
The purpose of our chart is to help you, the concerned reader determine whether you stand any chance of survival at all, or if it might just be easier for everyone if you submitted to the inevitable and took the initiative to do something useful with the scant hours remaining to you. Maybe act as a human shield for someone who actually does stand a chance of making it through the following weeks un-disintegrated?
AWARD YOURSELF 10 (TEN) POINTS IF ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA APPLY TO YOU:
1) Cowardly. It’s probably difficult for you to read this at all, in the dark womb-like embrace of whatever bed, closet, or burrow you scurried into as soon as the first saucer descended, but congratulations! If your natural response to danger, death and dismemberment is to elbow friends and loved ones aside in a craven search for a place to quiver until the explosions stop, award yourself ten points. Just try to snivel quietly.
2) Speech-maker. Remember that time someone cut in front of you in the coffee shop, even though there was clearly a line? Sure, they made out like they were “just” reading the menu and didn’t happen to notice that there was a line. Everyone else was just going to let it fly, staring at their worthless shoes, like coffee-based INJUSTICE wasn’t happening right there in front of them. But not you. You were infuriated, emboldened, and perilously under-caffeinated. You weren’t going to have it! You made A SPEECH! People love a speech maker. You don’t have a solution to the problem, but you can talk REALLY LOUDLY about it, possibly with a staunchly clenched fist, and a single crystalline tear springing from the corner of your eye. People will throw themselves bodily in front of raygun blasts, if not to save you, then so they won’t have to hear you yak on anymore.
3) Adorable. Wide-eyed? Tow-headed? Have you ever been likened to a small woodland creature such as a fawn, squirrel, or snuffle-nosed bunny, but very much NOT a wolf, earwig, or snaggle-toothed polecat? Congratulations! You may well be too adorable for even a heartless (literally! their anatomy is a nightmarish mélange of tubes and knucklebones) alien invader to destroy. Possibly you’ll be kept as some sort of pet, or an exhibit in some hellish alien zoo or sideshow. Still, could be worse, eh?
4) Perpetually furious. You scream at store clerks when they fail to anticipate your stance on paper vs. plastic. You froth at the mouth when waiters add a discretionary gratuity to your bill as though the tithe were being demanded in blood. You spring from your car with a gleam in your eye and murder in your fists if someone neglects to accelerate away from a green traffic signal within the approved one second time-frame. You are a ball of spiky, unpredictable rage! You’ll fight until your knuckles bleed then fight some more, and if the only person you’re making life more difficult for is yourself, then so be it! This doesn’t make you a bad-ass or fighting machine in our brave new post-apocalyptic world, but there is a good chance any intergalactic invaders will choose to sidle quietly away from you, rather than dealing with any more of your shit.
5) Handy. You know the difference between a slide rule and …a regular rule. You smell faintly of sawdust and industry. You can cast your beady eye on the pile of smoking debris that was once a family home, and not only see how to fashion precious memories and asbestos into a primitive water cleansing machine, but how to give it a cappuccino frothing function as well. You will own the only underground survival bunker with a perfectly level, handmade spice rack. Bravo.
DEDUCT 10 (TEN) POINTS IF ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA APPLY TO YOU:
1) Tasty. Your supple flesh is marbled with rich veins of deliciousness. You smell faintly of pico de gallo. Complete strangers have been known to wistfully sandwich your hand between two slices of artisanal bread in the bakery aisle of Whole Foods. Awkward! Sorry, but if you are naturally delicious, you’ll be the first to go. I’m not saying our alien visitors are automatically fiends with an endless gnawing hunger for flinching human flesh just because their ways are different from our own, but I haven’t seen any of them lining up at Dunkin Donuts for a dozen old-fashioneds – even with the seasonal return of ubiquitous pumpkin™ flavored coffee products.
2) Cat Owner. Sure, you’d love to scatter to the bunker, but not without kitty! Come out from under the bed kitty! No seriously, it’s okay. Good kitty. No, not in the closet! What’s that noise? Are you throwing up in my emergency preparedness kit? Good kitty, that’s it, we’ll put you in your cat carrier, and… seriously kitty!? No, that’s okay, my arm was going to wildly clawed at some point, why not now? Kitty? Where are you? Um, I think the tripods are coming? It would be great if you could get in the carrier now. Oh, you got in the carrier of your own accord while I was crawling about commando style under my own bed, tearfully pleading with what turned out to be a pair of wadded up yoga pants. THANKS, KITTY. And if you’re tasty there was always a good chance kitty would have eaten you the first time you fell asleep regardless of invaders.
3) Noble. There is no alien word for nobility. They just don’t understand the human urge to sacrifice yourself for your fellow man, preferably while magnificently silhouetted against the setting sun. The closest word they have is “Gr0ntschluk,” which our scientists tell us most closely corresponds to the English word “sucker.” Make of that what you will.
4) Nice shoes. The post-apocalyptic doomscape of smoking debris and sinister glowing craters is no respecter of fashion. Things were bad enough when you could snap off an exquisitely engineered Italian heel in a subway grate, or brush your gleaming oxblood leather instep against a wad of repulsive gum on a park bench. Now you have to navigate around pools of acidic ichor and the charred remains of the badly dressed just to fetch your mail! Your wincing, daintily tip-toeing form will provide an easy target for alien snipers, but at least you’ll die with your !fabulous boots on.
5) Signature accessory. We need to talk, because like owning a cat, having a signature accessory makes you doomed in every scenario, not just when the little green men come knocking. Are you the guy who always wears the sweet yellow headphones? The chick with the quirky red sunglasses? That one goth who writes ostentatiously in a diary all the time? You’re just begging fate to smack you down. The visual shorthand of your accessory of choice flying poignantly through the air in cinematic slow motion to imply your off-screen death is too juicy a bone for the universe to resist. Institute a uniform of sensible khakis. No one was ever moved to tears/awarding an Oscar over the image of a pair of smoking khakis fluttering back to earth, post explosion.
How did you score?
-50 to -30: Yikes. We told you to get a dog instead.
-20 to 0: Oh well, at least you probably got some running in. Running is very good for you. Sorry, was. Running was very good for you.
10 to 30: Hmmm, not bad. Most of that radiation will scrub off in the shower, I expect. And they can do miraculous things with spiked shoulder pads in our brave new world! No one will even notice the…thing.
40 to 50: Congratulations! You’re a winner winner, irradiated chickenesque flavored survival ration dinner! I mean sure, society as we knew it has been mercilessly annihilated, but you’re still here, and that’s what counts. Cockroaches can be quite personable once you get to know them. And it’s not like you have anyone else to hang with.
Like this blog? Read my upcoming book, Untaken
The first thing is not to panic. Inside every cloud is a silver lining – it’s just that sometimes that silver lining turns out to be a fleet of shimmering intergalactic killing machines, bent on the total annihilation of the human race. On the bright side, some of you may well survive! It’s entirely possible, however unlikely. It’s like those news stories featuring a dog who’s learned to ride a bike: extraordinary, but possible. Everybody loves those stories! And although we are sad to report that “Cyclin’ Rex, the rolling retriever” was one of the first to go when the aliens landed, his disintegration was probably largely painless. One of the good things about alien death rays!
We understand though that many of you may be dismayed by recent events, which is why we’ve conceived this handy chart. It can even be cut out and folded up to put in your wallet for future reference. Let’s face it, it’s not like you need money anymore! What are you going to spend it on? Saucer-proof galoshes? Good luck with that!
The purpose of our chart is to help you, the concerned reader determine whether you stand any chance of survival at all, or if it might just be easier for everyone if you submitted to the inevitable and took the initiative to do something useful with the scant hours remaining to you. Maybe act as a human shield for someone who actually does stand a chance of making it through the following weeks un-disintegrated?
AWARD YOURSELF 10 (TEN) POINTS IF ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA APPLY TO YOU:
1) Cowardly. It’s probably difficult for you to read this at all, in the dark womb-like embrace of whatever bed, closet, or burrow you scurried into as soon as the first saucer descended, but congratulations! If your natural response to danger, death and dismemberment is to elbow friends and loved ones aside in a craven search for a place to quiver until the explosions stop, award yourself ten points. Just try to snivel quietly.
2) Speech-maker. Remember that time someone cut in front of you in the coffee shop, even though there was clearly a line? Sure, they made out like they were “just” reading the menu and didn’t happen to notice that there was a line. Everyone else was just going to let it fly, staring at their worthless shoes, like coffee-based INJUSTICE wasn’t happening right there in front of them. But not you. You were infuriated, emboldened, and perilously under-caffeinated. You weren’t going to have it! You made A SPEECH! People love a speech maker. You don’t have a solution to the problem, but you can talk REALLY LOUDLY about it, possibly with a staunchly clenched fist, and a single crystalline tear springing from the corner of your eye. People will throw themselves bodily in front of raygun blasts, if not to save you, then so they won’t have to hear you yak on anymore.
3) Adorable. Wide-eyed? Tow-headed? Have you ever been likened to a small woodland creature such as a fawn, squirrel, or snuffle-nosed bunny, but very much NOT a wolf, earwig, or snaggle-toothed polecat? Congratulations! You may well be too adorable for even a heartless (literally! their anatomy is a nightmarish mélange of tubes and knucklebones) alien invader to destroy. Possibly you’ll be kept as some sort of pet, or an exhibit in some hellish alien zoo or sideshow. Still, could be worse, eh?
4) Perpetually furious. You scream at store clerks when they fail to anticipate your stance on paper vs. plastic. You froth at the mouth when waiters add a discretionary gratuity to your bill as though the tithe were being demanded in blood. You spring from your car with a gleam in your eye and murder in your fists if someone neglects to accelerate away from a green traffic signal within the approved one second time-frame. You are a ball of spiky, unpredictable rage! You’ll fight until your knuckles bleed then fight some more, and if the only person you’re making life more difficult for is yourself, then so be it! This doesn’t make you a bad-ass or fighting machine in our brave new post-apocalyptic world, but there is a good chance any intergalactic invaders will choose to sidle quietly away from you, rather than dealing with any more of your shit.
5) Handy. You know the difference between a slide rule and …a regular rule. You smell faintly of sawdust and industry. You can cast your beady eye on the pile of smoking debris that was once a family home, and not only see how to fashion precious memories and asbestos into a primitive water cleansing machine, but how to give it a cappuccino frothing function as well. You will own the only underground survival bunker with a perfectly level, handmade spice rack. Bravo.
DEDUCT 10 (TEN) POINTS IF ANY OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA APPLY TO YOU:
1) Tasty. Your supple flesh is marbled with rich veins of deliciousness. You smell faintly of pico de gallo. Complete strangers have been known to wistfully sandwich your hand between two slices of artisanal bread in the bakery aisle of Whole Foods. Awkward! Sorry, but if you are naturally delicious, you’ll be the first to go. I’m not saying our alien visitors are automatically fiends with an endless gnawing hunger for flinching human flesh just because their ways are different from our own, but I haven’t seen any of them lining up at Dunkin Donuts for a dozen old-fashioneds – even with the seasonal return of ubiquitous pumpkin™ flavored coffee products.
2) Cat Owner. Sure, you’d love to scatter to the bunker, but not without kitty! Come out from under the bed kitty! No seriously, it’s okay. Good kitty. No, not in the closet! What’s that noise? Are you throwing up in my emergency preparedness kit? Good kitty, that’s it, we’ll put you in your cat carrier, and… seriously kitty!? No, that’s okay, my arm was going to wildly clawed at some point, why not now? Kitty? Where are you? Um, I think the tripods are coming? It would be great if you could get in the carrier now. Oh, you got in the carrier of your own accord while I was crawling about commando style under my own bed, tearfully pleading with what turned out to be a pair of wadded up yoga pants. THANKS, KITTY. And if you’re tasty there was always a good chance kitty would have eaten you the first time you fell asleep regardless of invaders.
3) Noble. There is no alien word for nobility. They just don’t understand the human urge to sacrifice yourself for your fellow man, preferably while magnificently silhouetted against the setting sun. The closest word they have is “Gr0ntschluk,” which our scientists tell us most closely corresponds to the English word “sucker.” Make of that what you will.
4) Nice shoes. The post-apocalyptic doomscape of smoking debris and sinister glowing craters is no respecter of fashion. Things were bad enough when you could snap off an exquisitely engineered Italian heel in a subway grate, or brush your gleaming oxblood leather instep against a wad of repulsive gum on a park bench. Now you have to navigate around pools of acidic ichor and the charred remains of the badly dressed just to fetch your mail! Your wincing, daintily tip-toeing form will provide an easy target for alien snipers, but at least you’ll die with your !fabulous boots on.
5) Signature accessory. We need to talk, because like owning a cat, having a signature accessory makes you doomed in every scenario, not just when the little green men come knocking. Are you the guy who always wears the sweet yellow headphones? The chick with the quirky red sunglasses? That one goth who writes ostentatiously in a diary all the time? You’re just begging fate to smack you down. The visual shorthand of your accessory of choice flying poignantly through the air in cinematic slow motion to imply your off-screen death is too juicy a bone for the universe to resist. Institute a uniform of sensible khakis. No one was ever moved to tears/awarding an Oscar over the image of a pair of smoking khakis fluttering back to earth, post explosion.
How did you score?
-50 to -30: Yikes. We told you to get a dog instead.
-20 to 0: Oh well, at least you probably got some running in. Running is very good for you. Sorry, was. Running was very good for you.
10 to 30: Hmmm, not bad. Most of that radiation will scrub off in the shower, I expect. And they can do miraculous things with spiked shoulder pads in our brave new world! No one will even notice the…thing.
40 to 50: Congratulations! You’re a winner winner, irradiated chickenesque flavored survival ration dinner! I mean sure, society as we knew it has been mercilessly annihilated, but you’re still here, and that’s what counts. Cockroaches can be quite personable once you get to know them. And it’s not like you have anyone else to hang with.
Like this blog? Read my upcoming book, Untaken
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message 1:
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Canckorn
(new)
Sep 05, 2014 02:10AM
My downfall was being noble, i.e. a sucker!
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