I've been thinking about getting abducted by aliens. After much deliberation, I was forced to conclude that I am not personally in favor of it. On the one hand, it's a presumably rare experience, one that not many people get to have, statistically speaking. On the other hand, most of the retellings make it sound like a trip to a stainless steel doctor's office, and there aren't even boring magazines to read. There are only steel clamps, so you can't even pass the time with hand shadows or anything. Plus they wipe your mind at the end of it, so you don't even get the experience -- although given how boring it seems to be, maybe that's a courtesy. They could at least leave the getting beamed up part, or something.

Clearly, the aliens aren't as good at this as they think they are, or people's memories wouldn't come back to them. You have to wonder what else the aliens are screwing up. I figure there has to have been at least one time where they beamed up a guy who got loose on the ship. Maybe they accidentally brought up an escape artist, or a guy with no thumb who could slip his arm through the manacles. Maybe they just forgot to lock the things one time. I mean, NASA's full of very smart folks, and they accidentally smashed a satellite one time because they forgot to put in the screws attaching it to its base before trying to turn it on its side. A little thing like forgetting to engage the arm clamps is a minor mistake by comparison.

I'm tentatively in favor of being abducted if I get to get loose on the ship. However, I'm not at all sure that movies have adequately prepared me for such an event. Will the doors really whoosh open when I near them, like in a supermarket? Will the walls have convenient ribs providing shadows in which I can flatten myself when the aliens come by? How hard should you hit an alien over the head if you just want to knock him out, but not kill him? Movies have told me all of these things, but they could well be wrong. Running for your freedom inside an alien vessel is no time to discover that you're operating on a badly flawed set of assumptions.

Of course, if I've learned anything from cinema and science fiction, it's that aliens build their technology based on Earth broadcasts, so I suppose there's a very good chance that the movies will be entirely right -- at least, the older movies, as they'd've gotten to the aliens first. I've been watching too much X-Files and Stargate recently, though; I could be thrown off by these new-fangled designs, when really what I need to be studying are the classics.

Let no one every accuse me of not being prepared! Go ahead and scoff if you like, but when we find ourselves huddled in a storeroom on an alien ship, I'll be the one you turn to for leadership. And I, magnanimous, will tell you where the escape pods are -- only to trick you into the Dangerous Crossbreeds laboratory. Because I will remember that you scoffed, and I will laugh heartily as I hurtle back towards Earth, alone.

Mood of the Moment: chipper
Auditory Hallucination: The Gaskets -- Best Thing