Happy Saturday. The weekend is here, the bar is open and we’re in the time of winter nights and spring days. David is running late, but when he gets here, we’ll share some drinks, some laughs and work on Linda’s prompt:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “calendar.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
If we were having a beer, you’d be annoyed.
“Hi Dan, sorry I’m late.”
“Hi David. You’re only late according to my watch, not my calendar.”
“I’m not sure you or your calendar are even here. Um, hello, can you put your phone down and join the real people?”
“I know. Just let me finish this comment.”
“Okay. Curley, can we get this lost cyber-soul a cold beer to draw him back across the barrier of spacetime?”
“Sure, David. Can I set up a John Howell’s Special for you?”
“Yes, I could…wait, Dan, what did you just do?”
“Huh? What?”
“You deleted that comment. That was long, I’m not going to wait for you to type all that nonsense again.”
“Don’t worry. I copied it first. When the page reloads, I’ll paste it in and put my phone down.”
“So, you did that just to frighten me?”
“No, it’s the work-around I’ve been using to prevent WordPress from duplicating my comments. I write the comment, reload the page, and get this warning. Then WordPress seems to know I’m here.”
“Why don’t you leave WordPress and move onto another platform? ‘Platform,’ that is the word you people use, isn’t it?”
“There really isn’t one to move to that’s any better. And what do you mean, ‘you people?’ You say that like we’re aliens.”
“Sometimes you seem like you’re aliens among us, Dan.”
“Aliens among us? The book? The documentary? The discussion with William Shatner, or the movie?”
“Holy moly, looks like I got here just in time. Let me put these drinks down before Dan starts down that rabbit hole.”
“Don’t worry Curley, I’m not going through all of those—just looking for clarification.”
“Whatever. I get enough weirdos from the human race at this bar. I don’t need to start worrying about whether ET is old enough to drink.”
“I heard the news from Harvard, but that was only last June, Dan. Are you saying they already made a movie out of that?”
“They made a movie in nineteen eighty-eight. It wasn’t called Aliens Among Us, but that’s the story. It was called, They Live.”
“They Live? That’s a strange title for a movie.”
“It’s from the plot summary: ‘They influence our decisions without us knowing it. They numb our senses without us feeling it. They control our lives without us realizing it. They live.’ Get it?”
“Yeah, sounds like cable news.”
“Might be. You ever take a good look at those people? They all look like they took their faces out of a box in the dressing room.”
“Well, I’ll pass on that movie. Give me an old-fashioned horror movie like we saw when we were kids. You know, sitting in the theater, munching on candy and popcorn while watching The Thing.”
“The Thing from Another World. Now there’s a classic. The only showdown Matt Dillon lost.”
“Matt Dillon? What are you talking about, Dan?”
“Matt Dillon, you know, James Arness. He played the part of The Thing in that movie.”
“I didn’t know that. That’s cool. But my point is, I think those were better stories.”
“What about Independence Day?”
“That was a good flick. I’m sure you liked that one because the nerd saved the world.”
“I did, but I also liked War of the Worlds, the adaptation of H.G. Wells’ story.”
“The one with Tom Cruise? Or the original?”
“The original.”
“Released in nineteen fifty-three. I remember watching that in the Loews Theater on Main Street.”
“I wasn’t born yet, but I saw it ears later as part of a double-feature with The Blob.”
“Global warming might bring that guy back, Dan. I mean they just dumped him in the Arctic.”
“They deep-fried The Thing at the North Pole.”
“I prefer the way War of the Wars ended. Those guys crawl out of their space ships, take a whiff of our air, catch Covid or some other virus and keel over in the street.”
“I always wondered, what do you suppose they did with all of the dead aliens?”
“That probably depends on where they died, Dan.”
“What do you mean?”
“The ones in California were probably dropped in the ocean. The ones in the desert got buried in the sand. But I’ll bet somewhere in the middle, or down south, somebody had a barbecue.”
“You think people would roast aliens and eat them?”
“I do, and I bet they taste like chicken.”
All five of my current books are now available in audio book form thanks to Amazon KDP’s Virtual Voice process. The voice is AI generated, but I can honestly say, it’s pretty darn good. The audio books are reasonably priced (all below $7 US) and, if you already own the Kindle version and want to add an audio version, you can do that for $1.99. There is a five-minute sample on the book page for each book. If you’re interested, click on any of the Dreamer’s Alliance book links below the image or on the link below for my latest book.
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