One Hundred and Zero
Words rarely satisfy me. More often than not, I find that the words and constructs in virtually any language are simply insufficient to describe exactly what I want to, to put an emotion or idea down exactly how it is, rather than cutting it off with the crude tools that mere words can provide. Despite that, with this one, I have managed to reach the one-hundreth post on this blog (not counting the ones made on the old DamnLeet – the era before a period of about a year where I temporarily lost control of the domain and all associated posts were lost). As such, I think it time for a little story.
Meow.
Meow.
Meow.
It was the sound that Robertus awaked to every morning.
Meow.
It could go on for ages before he actually woke up. It was a rather dull and soft sound, after all.
Meow.
But not today. Robertus had been clearly awake ever since the first moment the alarm clock started spewing forth its demonic rumble.
Meow.
He had lain in bed, enjoying the warmth and comfort of it, watching as the binary suns of Oomg-Zalaag slowly rose. The two small stars did a rather remarkable job at warming the little backwater planet, considering their tiny size. Suns were, after all, like any self-respecting star, supposed to be enormous you-really-cannot-imagine-how-big-they-are balls of flaming gas, hot infernoes of atoms colliding and fusing and getting so hot that they don’t really remember that they were atoms in the first place.
But not the suns of Oomg-Zalaag. No, the suns of Oomg-Zalaag were small enough to mistake for apples.
It was not the only interesting feature of the planet that Robertus had been calling his home since the day he was born. It also happened to be one of the many features that gave Oomg-Zalaag the wonderful reputation that it had proudly upheld for as long as anyone could remember: a small, filthy, dangerous, dull, poor, smelly, and just generally weird place where you really didn’t want your corpse to be found.
The matter of whether one wishes to have his or her corpse found at all is, of course, another matter. Most people, even those unfortunate enough to live on Oomg-Zalaag had generally stuck to the idea that dying is unpleasant and as such, they avoided doing so if at all possible.
Meow.
Robertus took another good long yawn before he finally convinced himself to get up. He had a lot of things planned for the day that he needed to see to, urgently. A great many of those things seemed to involve hanging around treestumps with Bozo, drinking, and falling asleep again.
The thought of it alone made Robertus reconsider his decision to get up.
However, the door that was being knocked on urged him to stick with his decision.
Robertus turned around in his bed, hoping that whoever it was would go away. The whoever it was didn’t. “Robertus McFidgydoodle?” asked a rather unhappy sounding voice on the other side of the door. “This is the police. Open up or we’ll have to force the door.”
Suddenly, Robertus jumped out of bed and quickly searched for something to put on. The idea of having to repair the door terrified him something awful. Having decided that just pants would be quite sufficient, he rushed to the door and opened it. He was greeted by a tall, red-ish alien creature that had attempted to wear police uniforms. It failed rather miserably at it; the police uniform had been designed to be worn by an approximately human-shaped individual with two arms and two legs. The alien had rather a few more of both, and appeared to have several regular uniforms stretched awkwardly around its body and taped together to cover its flesh.
Oomg-Zalaag silently proceeded to revolve slowly around its axis.
“Are you Robertus McFidgydoodle?” started the displeased looking alien. Robertus gave him a displeased look. “It says so on the door, don’t it?” Obvious questions annoyed him. They would only require energy on his part to answer. Wasted energy, as far as Robertus was concerned.
“We have a warrant to search your house. Actually, we don’t, but we just feel like it.” Robertus absently gestured with his hand that the alien was welcome to come in.
The alien slowly worked its way inside. Coordinating so many legs to move through a doorway made only for human passage proved to be somewhat of a challenge. The alien disliked it; not only were humans considered to be rather dull, inefficient, and not notably proficient at performing any task; their architecture turned out to be less than cooperating as well.
But Robertus was quite satisfied with being human. It may be rather dull, and he may have been clumsy and useless compared to most other races of the galaxy, but that had been a perfect match to his personal philosophy. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, he would always say – and if it is broke, don’t fix it unless you really need it.
He would then apply that same concept not only to fixing things, but to pretty much any activity that involved, well, doing something. Robertus was, as some would say, lazy.
At present, he was – in addition to lazy – also displeased. As most people, he didn’t take kind to being yelled at for having accidentally stored several crates of illegal weapons in his living room. Unfortunately, that was exactly what the police alien appeared to be doing. Worse, though, it was entirely possible that the alien had a point. Robertus considered this for a brief moment.
“… say can and will be used against you. You have the right to a lawyer, in the highly improbably scenario that one is willing to come to this rotten piece of rock out of his own free will, and also – ”
Oomg-Zalaag suddenly stopped revolving around its axis.
The shock of it propelled Robertus against the police alien. The creature screamed out in agony; several of its limbs were suddenly positioned in unusual angles.
Meow, went the alarm clock, while the planet shook violently. Sounds of broken glass, screams from injured people, and gasps from people who were wondering what had just happened filled the morning air. Dust came down from the ceiling. Several of the beams carrying the weight of the roof started to show cracks, under the continued stress of the ground shaking. Oomg-Zalaag certainly seemed very unpleased for suddenly losing all of its angular momentum.
Robertus figured it would be a nice time to temporarily abandon laziness in favor of survival, and run out of the door. Not any faster than strictly necessary, of course, but moving certainly seemed preferable to being crushed by his own house.
The police alien continued to scream while a roof beam broke and crashed down on the alien’s body. Quickly thereafter, he went silent.
Robertus looked back into his house, and saw the mutilated corpse of the police alien. Suddenly, he was grasped by a number of arms that pulled him forward, away from the doorway, which collapsed moments after he was clear of it. With a mighty crunch the walls of his house started on a rapid descend towards the ground. Dust went up into the air, possessions were broken under the weight of the rubble, and everything became a huge mess.
It was going to take forever to clean this up.
He gazed at his collapsing house while it, and most of the buildings around it, were slowly reduced to a pile of rubble and became progressively smaller. One of the people who had pulled him away from the door urged him to move. “You should come in now,” it said. “The airlock will be closing in a moment and we plan to break orbit in about an hour. Unless you wish to stay, of course, but then you’ll have to jump. Otherwise, you’re welcome to stay aboard the Fengor.”
Robertus suddenly realized that he was standing on the ramp of a smallish dark-green space ship heading away from the planet.
It had probably saved his life.
Gay
A short while back was the big anual Gay Pride event in Amsterdam. Lots of people, most of them straight, come outside, get on a boat sailing through Amsterdam’s canals, and celebrate how open-minded we are and how much gay people are accepted in our society.
But really, are they accepted?
‘Gay’ is still widely used as a swear word, as an insult, to indicate that something is bad in some way or to add emphasis to a negative remark. Most straight people, when asked about the subject, explain that they are totally okay with it if someone is gay, followed by very strongly emphasizing how they are not gay themselves. And there is the Gay Pride.
In my view, the Gay Pride is not so much a celebration of homosexuality being accepted, as it is an opportunity for straight people to go to the zoo and laugh at the apes. Except that the zoo is Amsterdam and the apes are the people on the boats. The whole problem is that we, as a society, are still making a clear distinction between straight people and gay people. And if you’re not in our group, you’re with the others, and that makes you more an object of curiosity (or ridicule) than anything else. Events like the Gay Pride that serve no purpose but to keep that separation intact.
And at the end of the day, what the hell are we busying ourselves with anyway? Unless you are actually romantically attracted to someone, does it really make any sort of difference to your life at all whether that person were to prefer penises, or vaginas, or both, or none, or any combination thereof?
We should just stop worrying so much about what other people do in their (generally private) bedroom (or living room, or kitchen, or bathroom, or car, or garden, or local park, or shopping mall, or…) all the time and instead worry about things that actually matter. Like what’s for dinner. Also, we should stop making any distinctions or judge people based on it. It’s great for you that you are whatever you are. You are straight, you are not. Also, I wore socks today, my car has tires, oranges that are less suitable as food than orange ones and the Earth is, by approximation, round.
But if it really adds something to your life to know this, I am straight, and like many men I have on occassion had curiosities but never enough to actually do anything with them. (Are you enlightened yet?) I know a great many people who prefer penises (as men), vaginas (as women), or both, or combinations thereof. Also, I know a great many people about whom I am not exactly sure what their sexual orientation is. Nor do I really care to. And does it have an effect on my life in any way?
Nope. Not a bit.
Deleted
MSN was displaying annoying ads lately for a dating site, telling that you should sign up. So, I clicked the ad, and sign up.
I made a profile for myself. Or well, sort of. On the site I was Albertus the Astronaut, a just-in-his-thirties male. A happy guy, friendly, atletic, nice, funny, warm, good listener, honest, good-looking, fond of children, and all those other things that people seem to consider good.
I was even about to add a picture from the Apollo moon landing.
And now they decided that the information was inaccurate, and this morning I received an e-mail that they are deleting my profile.
Apparantly, they’re never satisfied.