Smoothing out things: AN ALIEN CONSPIRACY.

Some efforts to smooth out things have been around for a while, like filling in POT HOLES, which is a spring rite, and filling in facial WRINKLES, which has become a rite of passage. There’s also AUTO-TUNE to smooth out the voices of pop singers, manipulating their pitch and nudging them toward the desired note.  Yeah, yeah, you say, we know all that. But do you know the larger context? These smoothing efforts are part of an ALIEN CONSPIRACY! Some outer space nation wants to norm us so that we will no longer be able to tell the difference between humans and robot body snatchers when the invasion starts!

Cher looks invaded already, as does Liza Minelli. Mick Jagger’s cratered face, on the other hand, has so far defied alien efforts to smooth out his wrinkles and make him look normal.  Ditto with Clint Eastwood of empty chair fame. He is past norming. His telomeres are way too short. Telomeres, in case you haven’t heard, are the shields that keep your cells from aging.

You see this is the latest trend (or the latest tool of ALIEN CONSPIRATORS): equal telomeres for everyone! Check out the NY Times of 21 April. They’ve started measuring them, and pretty soon your local hair salon will peddle telomere extensions. It could be the end of dying, meaning you’ll never inherit your parents’ nest egg.

On the positive side, you’ll never have to suffer through another election campaign, because what’s the use of voting after all politicians have been normed. The ALIEN CONSPIRATORS will standardize them to telegenic men and women spouting platitudes in the language of your choice. They’ve got Justin Trudeau in the bag already: dazzling white teeth, pablum in French and English. Harper is still struggling with the alien forces, withholding smiles except of the most tight-lipped kind. The aliens almost got him last Christmas (remember when he sat at the piano and sang nicey-nicey Beatle songs?), but he escaped in the nick of time and reverted to his old dour accountant self.

Speaking of Justin Trudeau and nice. Looking for the root causes of the Boston bombing, he came up with a cogent reason. It happened because SOMEONE FELT EXCLUDED (Globe & Mail, 18 April).  The ALIEN CONSPIRATORS will take care of that. They’ll make everyone feel included and connected at all times. Why do you think they created Facebook? The aliens will have you surrounded with FRIENDS. You’ll be horribly stuck in the sink hole of on-line friendship. You won’t be able to go on with your life.  You’ll be mired in a mass of cute cat and dog pics and smothered by the sweetness of babies. You won’t see the ALIENS for all your FRIENDS.

Another human quality the ALIEN CONSPIRATORS want to eliminate is the joy of bullying, although it will only work if bullies start reading books. Apparently the CONSPIRATORS have swamped the publishing world with anti-bully books. They’ve even persuaded publishers to start their own anti-bullying campaigns and gotten their full cooperation. After all, it gives the publishers a chance to look good AND promote their products. I guess the quality of hucksterism will stay put. The aliens will have to deal with that.

Another way of taking the snark out of bullies and norming us all into bland and benevolent beings are CHIPLETS, now developed in Xerox’ Palo Alto Research Center (NY Times, 21 April). They’ll provide supple, sensitive skin for our hands and make us sensitive all over.

Once the CHIPLET programme has kicked in, we’re done. We’ll all be indistinguishable nicey-nice.  And the ALIEN CONSPIRATORS will take over for good.