We are in terrible danger. I am writing this post as a public service. I only hope it’s not too late.
The earth is about to be invaded by aliens. How did I find this out? It all started last week, when Angela, the publicist, kicked off the first phase of the PR blitz for my book with the mailing of galleys to long-lead reviewers. In typical me fashion, I was, in order of occurrence:
1) Overjoyed. Important people, like magazine editors and newspaper reviewers, were about to read my book.
2) Concerned. What if no one likes it?
3) Resigned. Better to know now and get it over with rather than live in false hope.
Now it could have ended there, and you’d be finished reading this post. But there’s more to publicizing than just galleys, so I turned my attention away from grim prognostication of certain doom and moved on to phase two of Angela’s master plan: print features and radio interviews . Again in order of occurrence, I was:
1) Thrilled. Semi-famous people would ask me questions, making me, by reflected glory, semi-semi-famous.
2) Panic-stricken. I’ll have to answer the questions. Worse yet, I’ll have to sound like I know what I’m talking about. If I knew what I was talking about, I wouldn’t be writing fiction, would I?
Panic is a useful response in situations that call for immediate action, say something along the lines of encountering a skunk in your backyard, or getting caught in the crossfire between two opposing armies. But it’s a total waste of adrenalin in interview situations. Running around my living room hyperventilating won’t make me sound any smarter, or even more self-assured.
Now, we live in the age of the internet, which, as we all know, has the answer to everything, if one digs deep enough, and avoids distractions such as YouTube videos of talking macaws and blogs written by people sailing around the world on cargo ships, which was why neither Monday nor Tuesday morning produced useful results, unless I’m asked a question about parrot vocabulary.
On Wednesday, I sat down with my coffee and forced myself to type “author interviews” into the Google search bar. And that’s when I deduced the alien invasion.
The first site I clicked to had so many ads I couldn’t find the damn interview.
The second site I tried opened four new browser windows on my laptop, one of which contained some kind of spinning optical illusion. Closing the windows annoyed me so much, I didn’t read the interview.
The third site was an instant-migraine presentation, red words on a black background.
The fourth site had enough flash to cause epileptic seizures.
The fifth site, which had all the flash ads on one side so I could slide the browser window to the edge of the screen until they disappeared (a trick I learned when I got a Gmail account), looked promising, until a recording of some guy (obviously unaware of my age) tried to convince me to invest in his retirement fund.
And so it went for the remainder of my allotted research time on Wednesday. Eventually I found some useful interview questions (and even better answers, which I plan modify enough to avoid plagiarism) and uncovered the nefarious alien invasion plot. Here’s how it works:
Even as I type, generation ships filled with octopoidal life-forms are hurtling toward earth at sub-light speed. How do I know they’re octopoidal? Well I don’t, but I’m pretty sure they’re not bi-lateral, and I like typing the word octopoidal (which isn’t really a word because I couldn’t find it any online dictionary).
You see, bi-lateral beings think in opposites, right and left, black and white, yadda-yadda. A close examination of the advance-propaganda campaign the aliens are beaming into our web servers has convinced me they are taking advantage of our bi-lateral brain structure to confuse us with what we believe is advertising, but is, in fact, an avalanche of conflicting and meaningless hype, designed to push us into a zen-like, one-hand-clapping state of mental overload, rendering us helpless to organize a defense. They, with their multi-lobed brains, are accustomed to cluster-thinking and therefore immune to the effects of their own propaganda.
The alien landing has been carefully timed to coincide with the appropriation of all eyeball real-estate on the internet by flash graphics promising one of the following:
· a flat belly
· designer knock-offs
· hot Russian babes (Which makes me wonder if the Russians already know about the octopoidals and ended the cold war as a ruse, to ensure we have more time to surf the internet.)
Based on my investigations last week, I estimate they’ll be landing any day now.
What can we do to defend ourselves against this dastardly attack on our eyeball space? Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve started blocking every website I encounter with excessive advertising or flash graphics. When the aliens land, there will be at least one woman defiantly shaking her fist at the marketing mother-ship.
Of course, this means I won’t be able to watch anymore parrot videos on YouTube. Damn.
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