The Alternate Reality wall

The wall of my kitchen/dinette is covered with headlines clipped from the _Weekly Word News_, a unique gem among checkout-lane tabloids. Most of the other shit-sheets are full of scandal and gossip about celebs—sexual affairs (straight and gay), weddings and divorces, terminal illnesses, domestic abuse and other crimes, that sort of thing—about which I care much less than I do about the geology of the moons of Jupiter. But WWN is devoted to such bizarre, surrealistic absurdity that I consider it my window on an alternate reality—and as a sci-fi fan, I not only firmly believe in alternate realities and parallel universes, I also believe most of them to be far preferable to the one we’re stuck in. I’m particularly impressed by WWN’s coverage of news stories about space aliens, and over the 15 or more years I’ve been collecting these, space alien news predominates (although their coverage of this seems to have declined lately). Following are some of the better headlines, with notes and comments by me.

FIRST-EVER INTERVIEW WITH A SPACE ALIEN! Wish I’d saved what he said.

“I KILLED THREE SPACE ALIENS FOR THE *CIA*!”

IS SATAN A SPACE ALIEN? See Arthur C. Clarke’s _Childhood’s end_, in which members of a benevolent and superior alien civilization subjugate Earth (for our own good, to save us from our own stupidity) and actually do turn out to look like devils.

NEVADA HUNTER SHOOTS SPACE ALIEN! What was a space alien doing in Nevada?

SPACE ALIEN REMAINS FOUND IN DINOSAUR’S BELLY!

SPACE ALIENS ARE STEALING OUR FROGS!

SPACE ALIEN ESCAPES! From jail, presumably. I forget what he was arrested for. Perhaps for stealing frogs.

WASHINGTON THINK TANKS ARE RIDDLED WITH SPACE ALIENS! That would explain some of the ideas that come out of them.

YOUR DOCTOR COULD BE AN ALIEN! That might not be such a bad thing, particularly if his fees were reasonable. An alien couldn’t be much worse than a lot of human doctors, and would probably be considerably better than some. Remember, E.T. could heal with a touch of his glowing LED fingertip. And human anatomy and physiology would be a snap for them because they’re depicted as being about 95 percent humanoid themselves, except for weird eyes and skulls.

ALIENS THINK EARTH IS A BAD NEIGHBORHOOD! Well, no surprise there; so do a lot of humans. But this one, which is at least 10 years old (I’ve neglected to date any of them), is particularly interesting when compared with one only a few weeks ago that says “REDNECK ALIENS TAKE OVER TRAILER PARK! ‘There goes the neighborhood!’” Notice that at first, aliens think the neighborhood is bad before they get here, and then it’s the aliens coming that ruins the neighborhood. Notice also that the neighborhood is a trailer park, which is often considered so bad to begin with that there’s not much that could ruin it. Notice also the clever and subtle way WWN exploits the current paranoia and xenophobia about illegal “alien” immigration: space aliens equal illegal immigrants equal trailer trash. And of course there’s the fact that probably a lot of readers of WWN are rednecks and/or “trailer trash” themselves. (I can afford to be insulting because _I’m_ “trailer trash” myself.) And a common idea in sci-fi literature is that of alien civilizations sending their criminals and misfits to Earth precisely _because_ they think it’s a bad neighborhood to begin with. Remarkably sophisticated, multi-level writing for a rag that’s supposed to appeal to nitwits.

And several good headlines have nothing to do with space aliens:

A PTERODACTYL BIT MY ARM OFF!

ADAM & EVE’S SKELETONS FOUND—IN COLORADO! Well, of course—where else? Probably in Colorado Springs. I found out later that the picture WWN printed with this, showing two skeletons lying in a primitive burial site, was ripped off from a _National Geographic_ article about an archaeological dig somewhere in the Middle East or Africa. Or maybe Mt Vesuvius; I forget.

GAY CHIMP FALLS IN LOVE WITH CIRCUS DWARF! I guess it’s a toss-up as to who would be more insulted by this, the chimpanzee or the dwarf.

“Glowing image of Virgin Mary appears on radiator hose!” Well, she’s been seen on taco shells and toasted cheese sandwiches, why not a radiator hose?

“It’s a well-known fact that General George Washington lived on hamburgers while he was fighting the British.” Picture of the standard dollar-bill Gilbert Stuart portrait (painted about 15 years after George fought in the Revolution), on which is superimposed a picture of a lady’s hand holding a hamburger with a bite taken out of it. One source says the “modern” hamburger as we know it (and as depicted) was invented around 1916. (You mean Yorktown didn’t have a McDonald’s in 1781?)

“Was my husband reincarnated as a tarantula?” This was probably a question asked of the staff psychic, who is called something like Serena. I forget what it was about the tarantula that reminded the questioner of her husband; maybe they both had hairy legs. In terms of the Hindu doctrine of the transmigration of souls, the guy must have had some pretty bad karma.

“FACE ON MARS IS TRYING TO TALK! The lips are moving! say stunned scientists.” Get HAL to read it. Of course it’s talking in English. My note on this says Mars is saying “Get these dinosaurs off me!”, so there must have been a headline that I failed to save, about dinosaurs being found on Mars.

ZOOKEEPER SUFFOCATES IN 200 POUNDS OF ELEPHANT POOP! Picture shows an elephant squatting over a 3-foot-high pile of what we’re supposed to believe is shit, with human arms and legs sticking out from underneath. I’ve recently been interpreting this metaphorically as referring to the GOP suffocating the nation under six years of their shit, but WWN published this years before the Christo-fascist Republicans came into power, and the paper has a decidedly rightwing slant anyway.

However, my favorite one, which raises so many issues that I’m saving it for a separate rant: in 2-inch-high letters on a double-page spread: “Captured space alien’s grim prophecy: GOD WILL DESTROY EARTH IN THE YEAR 2000!” (This is not the same alien who escaped after being arrested for stealing frogs.) Well, the most obvious question in 2006 is: what happened? What does this say about the journalistic integrity of WWN? Stand by for breaking news analysis and commentary.

Although I’ve spent several days writing this, it’s being published on Thanksgiving (or, as I fondly call it, Emu Day), even though it has absolutely nothing to do with Thanksgiving or emus. I could say a lot about Emu Day (like the Pilgrims telling the Wampanoags, “Gosh, thanks for saving our miserable, stupid asses from starvation; now I think we’ll return the favor by stealing your land from you and genocidally murdering most of you.”), but I may save that for later, too. And I’m not going to wish you, dear reader, a happy Emu Day. You can just be thankful that I’m finally signing off.