My Favorite Alien

About a week ago I posted images of political candidates as seen through the "Truth of Vision" goggles that one of my best friends, Gimplethorp, lent me on his last visit.

So, naturally, many of you wanted to know more about Gimplethorp himself. He graciously agreed to sit for the portait here.

Gimplethorp Kartor is, as I mentioned before, an alien from the planet Zygor. Zygor orbits Alpha Centuri and is a mere 4 lightyears away, so Earth is a favorite place to "go slumming" as they say, for a weekend lark.

Zygorians are an ancient and technologically advanced race. Their planet is so computerized and automated that they can spend virtually all their time goofing off. They regard slapstick comedy as the Highest Form of Art and are addicted to watching reruns of I Love Lucy and Gilligans Island. The Marx Brothers are held in the highest esteem.

They absolutely abhor reality TV and want it banned from the Galactic Space channels. Right now they are jamming the transmission frequencies of shows like Survivors and Wife Swap. And if you really want to get an earful from them just say "Dr. Phil" They censored that show. In fact they were about to declare war on earth over it until I explained that the opinions expressed therein were not necessarily those of the sponsoring planet.

It took me a while to convince Gimplethorp that the political campaigning process was not actually intentional humor, per se, and that the candidates were not scripted actors. (At least not scripted by comedy writers.) He kept running mathematical formulas on his cyber-calculator to prove to me that it was statistically impossible for so much wackiness to happen spontaneously in such a small, select group of humanoids. I had to explain to him that politicians are not representative of the best of our society, and in fact are most often quite the reverse. None of this seemed to dampen his enthusiasm for watching the speeches and debates, which often left him rolling on the floor laughing. Aliens are like that. Yeah, they are.

I first met Gimplethorp when he came to pick up a vintage unopened case of Billy Beer that I found in my uncle's garage and put up for sale on Craigslist. He offered me 10,000 zygotes (their form of currency) for the Billy Beer, which I almost accepted until I found out what they were. It seems that they are big-time into hybridizing species, mostly just for laughs. I finally accepted payment in those World War II era steel pennies, which they collect because "they're really cool". Now my garage is half full of penny rolls.(Watch for me to sell them off on eBay.)

A lot of Zygorians are monitoring the election campaigning here with intense interest because they have high-stakes betting going on over the winners. Gimplethorp predicts that a candidate they call the "Energizer Chipmunk" or "ChipMunCain" will take the top spot simply because his party is the party of the rich, and rich people have plenty of leisure time to vote while everyone else has to work. (I think he might be right because I saw the probability calculations) In fact most bets are placed on the exact number of votes cast rather than who wins the election. That hanging-chad thing a few years back nearly drove them berserk, and they had plans to eradicate the electoral college, but they couldn't pinpoint the location to blast it with gamma rays.

Well, I have to go now and try to get this beer spill mopped up. (Aliens are not all that tidy, though generally well mannered). Salutations on behalf of Zygor; signing off...