Go, Go Power Ponchos, Ancient Alien Meme-tasticness and Doodly Fun

I keep seeing the above image on Facebook, in an ad for an online fashion site. And each time I do, my brain automatically comments: "Mighty Morphin Power Ponchos."

Clearly, someone needs to get a group together to wear these garments-- one color of each-- and strike ninja poses in the various open spaces around Pittsburgh. Y'know, to liven things up between Furries Conventions.

"Go, go, Power Ponchos!"

(And um, no, I am not volunteering. I'm the Ideas Person. Implementation is free for someone else. :) )

Speaking of ideas, there's this meme going around where you go to Google Images, you type in your first name and the word "meme" and see what images pop up related to it. I decided to try it for my lead alien character Rollie.

This is what came up for that.

For folks here who are familiar with my books, I am open to any and all suggestions of what exactly Rollie did to the Ancient Aliens guy. Go ahead! Be creative. Because with Rollie, it really could be pretty much anything.

Speaking of Rollie, I've been doing a few little doodly illustrations in the evenings from the books-- just for my own entertainment. Below is Bertram and Rollie at the Lunch-n-Launch Diner from The Purloined Number.

Bertram does enjoy digging into the alien chow!

Below is Rollie on Altair-5, from the perspective of an Altairan Carnivorous Daisy. Yup, them's some big angry posies!

And the last drawing is also from The Purloined Number-- my character Meena showing her sculpture at the art gallery on the planet Gwash. Meena's art is done in backspace materials, like paper mache, architectural salvage and despair. Oh, and she'd want me to tell you, she accepts commissioned work! :)

Anyway, that's it from me. I've got various holiday tasks to do this weekend, including trying to find gifts for people who don't want anything, and clumsily taping pretty colored paper onto non-conforming objects.

I swear, if anyone at this time of year ever asked me what superpower I would like, I'd say: to make wrapping paper bow to my will and not cause every present to look like some kindergartener hepped up on sugar plums wrapped the gifts.

---Jenn

Aliens Among Us: Celeb and Blogger Extra-Terrestrial Candidates

A new poll suggests that one in five people believe aliens currently walk among us. Now, I normally would have sniffed at that-- citing issues with technology, red tape with astrophysics, and the fact we really don't see British Police Public Call Boxes around much these days.

But then I saw a celeb I hadn't seen for a while on a TV commercial. And it gave me pause. Perhaps there really is some merit to this theory. In fact, the more I consider it, the more I see the possibilities. How could I have been so blind?!

Here are my suggestions for just a few of the potential aliens out there, putting the "extra" into Extra Terrestrial.

• Joan Rivers. She was the one I laid eyes on and just knew, deep in my heart, that she was either an alien all along or had been supplanted and her disguise was slipping. I think the latter. Her immobile mask-like features and the new poofy, fluffed-couch cushion lips, seem to indicate the aliens used her as a suit but weren't quite sure what went where. They touched her up by crossing her visage with what they feel represents the standard for beauty these days on Earth-- a Bratz doll.
  

• Nicole Kidman. Just around the Stepford Wives production, Nicole changed. Her eyebrows no longer rest where they once did. The alien inside is clearly stretching her out. She was undoubtedly chosen for this because, given her typically non-passionate acting, they felt no one would notice.

• Renee Zellweger. This may be what the true face of the aliens looks like. She then uses a special mind-control ray so critics and reporters describe her as a "beautiful starlet," and "stunning." Note, "stunning" here may very well be a verb instead of an adjective.

• Phil Spector. 'Nuff said.

• Nicholas Cage. The solar rays are causing him to show his real age-- which is 345. This is just over middle-age for a person from his particular planet, but leaves him looking, on earth, a bit like a retiree who works out a lot, when he isn't sitting on park benches feeding pigeons.

• Andrew McCarthy. He goes from teen heart throb to Weekend at Bernies sidekick to barely recognizable cameo guest star on Monk. The aliens have gotten the voice right, but the grinning, wisecracking man inside is gone behind a soulless, small-eyed facade. This would also explain his recent unusual choices to appear in Lifetime-style dramatic pictures.

I also think there may be some blogger friends we need to take a closer look at. My suggestions are:

• Unfinished Ramber/Person/Whateverhe'scallinghimselftoday. Over the years, my buddy the Unfinished Dude has had about 12 different blogs, all sharing fractions of his vast multiple personalities. Lately, these selves even talk amongst each other sometimes for humor value-- or do they? Perhaps his body is simply host to multiple alien inhabitants. It would explain a lot. As I'm also friends with his wife and sister, they might be in a better position than I am to say whether he's really from another planet or not. But I'm just putting it out there.

• Daisy the Curly Cat. This is the only cat I know that not only blogs, but she's demonstrated intelligence and grammatical abilities far surpassing your standard LOLCat. She is also the only cat I know who openly frowns...

Something is up with the universe.

So, friends-- I'd like to hear your suggestions for the aliens who walk among us. And no fair suggesting Tom Cruise. He already admits he's a descendant from a giant alien squid named Xenu. That one's like shooting Martian fish in a liquid-bearing wooden cyllindrial apparatus.

Bumpits? Bump Its? Bum Pits?

"I've always wanted my head to look like an egg a chicken had trouble laying," said my friend Josette, thoughtfully, "but I'm just not sure how to get the look."

"I've always wanted to have the kind of hair that a 60s blue alien female would wear in a Star Trek episode, so I'll be swept off for four minutes of phaser-love with that hottie, Captain James T. Kirk," said my friend Scoobie.

"I want nothing more in life than to look like Sarah Palin," I announced.

Scoobie and Josette turned to me, faces drained of color.

"What?" I asked. "What?!"

Well, now there's Bumpits, the plastic doo-dad to turn your tresses into topography!

"Go from flat to fabulous, no matter what style you're bumpin'!"

Yes, now don't just bump that style-- turn it into a full-fledged collision with Easter Island archaeology!

Naturally, Josette, Scoobie and I were very excited about the prospects! But then the trepidation set in.

"I don't think I can wear a product called 'Bum Pits,'" murmured Josette, frowning. "It sounds kinda... lewd... for a plastic hair accessory, don't you think?"

"And how are Vince or Billy Mays going to hawk this?" considered Scoobie, turning the product over in her hands. "I wonder if Vince's prostitute problems and subsequent arrest resulted from a misunderstanding of the word 'Bumpits'?"

Josette and I agreed that that could possibly have been the case.

In fact, the very thought took some of the glamor away from the chance to have our hair look like a lead character in Aliens that wasn't actually Sigourney Weaver...


I mean, every gal likes to be treated like a queen, but having to confess that the smoldering E.T. looks we were sportin' were a result of something called 'Bum Pits,' well, we weren't sure we could do it.

So, alas... Scoobie's dreams of romantic interludes with Mr. Shatner, while he sings Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, have blasted off.

And Josette may never get that Chick-or-the-Egg look she'd been clucking about.

And for now, Sarah Palin can rest easy-- there will be no competition from Yours Truly in the style department.

But we'll survive. Anyway, I hear next season hair Plateaus will be In...

Let's just hope they don't name them "'TeauJamz."

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Questions I Have About the Movie Aliens That I Didn't Have the First Time Around

Did you ever watch a program or film and think, "Yowza! That was great!"...

(Or perhaps without the "yowza"-- your choice, really)...

And then years later, you see that same film or program again and you think, "Was I suffering from the after-effects of some some sort of head impact at the time? Was this when I had my wisdom teeth out and I was on serious meds? What was wrong with me?"

I had this kind of experience in re-watching "Aliens," with Sigourney Weaver last week.

Now, don't get me wrong-- it's still exciting. It's still tense. It's still funny in the right spots. And yes, it does involve more Bill Paxton in whiny toddler mode than I needed-- but that's not so much the issue.

It's just, there are some critical questions I wonder why I never asked the first time around. It'd be like meeting RuPaul at a party, not knowing who RuPaul was, and thinking, "Wow, that lady really knows how to apply make-up," and then moving on to the spinach dip.

(Not that RuPaul doesn't really know how to apply make-up-- well, I mean, maybe RuPaul has a make-up artist now, I don't know. But that's not the point and...)

Where was I? Oh right. Here:

Questions I Now Have About Aliens That I Didn't Have the First Time Around:

• Why do the Aliens have a lifecycle even more complex than the path through your average IKEA store?
  

Indulge me on this-- The queen lays eggs. So the eggs can become face-hugging lobsters. So the face-hugging lobsters can make themselves comfy in the upper GI tracts of the entire army. So the army can gestate small alien lizard-things which, if they eat their spinach-- or, you know, Paul Reiser-- they grow up to become well-adjusted adult aliens.

See, the problem I have with this is, any part of this chain of events is destined to fail. Especially in space. On starships. With limited People Num-nums for when they get the munchies.

I mean, if the eggs become face-hugging lobsters and there's no army to nest in-- Well, where are ya? Or, say, the army bursts open with lizard-things and there's no Paul Reiser to nosh on? Again-- there goes the race.

It's too convoluted. I've seen people get health insurance reimbursements that take fewer steps than this. We're talking a race of beings that have supposedly survived hundreds of thousands of years. How'd they ever make it to Alien Resurrection, is what I want to know? Luck! Pure luck.

• How can acidic blood-- which eats through metal floors and armor-- not at least give the Aliens a serious case of acid reflux?

Alien blood is so acidic, it can eat through steel floors, metal doors, space suits and even the food at Old Country Buffet. But this apparently does nothing to the Aliens themselves. Wouldn't they belch fire occasionally? Wouldn't they be carrying around some family size Malox? And, you know, dentists are all about tooth erosion these days. How are those double-set of jaws not eroded down to little stubs?

Okay, so we allow the idea that the Aliens' bodies shield them somehow from the effects of their own acid. Well, then why aren't we taking the exoskeletons of every dead Alien we can find and making them into protective gear? Why aren't we sewing ourselves some nifty new Alien duds? Ripley, take some tips here. Exoskeleton ponchos are all the rage in intergalactic fashion. You need one.

• How can an entire space colony be out of contact for 20 years and no one get worried about their Aunt Alice?

The government doesn't seem to be overly worried that a space colony hasn't been heard from for, like, 20 years. Ripley mentions this, and everyone pooh-poohs her concerns. Then, Ripley walks around in her Hanes Her Way some more for a scene or so, and suddenly, it's of ultimate importance she and a Rag-Tag Team of Properly Gender- and Racially-Balanced Troops go check on these folks. So my question is-- where was the concern 20 years ago? No one thought, "Hey, you know, I haven't heard from Aunt Alice on the colony in a while. Maybe I should call and ask how she's doing with those orchids from Betlegeuse I'd sent her."

Just sayin'.

• What do the Aliens do in-between eating the various army troops and colonies? Do they have any hobbies?
  

It's been 20 years between the colony of humans getting wiped out, and the new batch of Soldier Munchies arrives. So what have the Aliens been doing all this time to occupy themselves? Snacking is, apparently, out. How do Aliens entertain themselves? Do they have all-night discos? Do the face-huggers just work out a lot, trying to keep limber with push-ups and tail curls? Do they put on plays, like "Little Ship of Horrors" or "Ripley Get Your Gun"? Do they tell stories around the steam grates? I'd like to know.

Otherwise it's got to be a case of, "In space, no one can hear you snore."


Well, folks, those are my big questions about the film Aliens. As always, I'd be happy to hear any of your wisdom, theories, questions, and general chit-chat. Was there a movie YOU saw once, enjoyed immensely and then questioned the second time around? Do tell!

Otherwise, until next time-- in the wise words of Mr. Paxton: "Game over, man."

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