Message transmitted from mysterious sources in space, picked up on cable news:
Greeting Earthlings! I come from the Planet Zog, where we do
things differently, and so much better.
Example: We get our Alzheimers and
osteoporosis and arthritis out of the way in our youth, so we can enjoy old age. Isn’t that the fair way? Have a heart attack in your teens, we say and
have it done with.
Oh, we still have a fair amount of deaths from natural and
unnatural causes. Not everyone survives childhood, but those that do have a
chance to enjoy their retirement. In
contrast, you earthlings work your butts off for 50 years, get a gold watch and
the next day, zap, the ticker quits.
We have a pretty good system of justice on Zog too. One that
follows the natural order. Our kids are
too creaky and cripped up to commit violent crimes, and don’t yet have the
savvy for the white-collar ones, so by
the time they age out of prime crime committing age (which coincidentally is the
same as your prime TV watching age, which is why you are all complaining about
nothing good on TV for anyone over forty), they’re starting to get in shape and
appreciate all that life has to offer, without the pesky emotional roller coast
ride of youth. That is taken care by the
body’s frailties in the early years.
In
youth, their minds are clear, their skin is good (one glitch, we have pimples
in our old age, but compared with all that other stuff, it’s a fair trade off).
Yes, we mature emotionally in much the same way as you do. But we can’t do a lot about it because of the
opposite way our bodies age. This has
the added benefit of keeping the population down. There’s plenty of food to go around on
Zog.
And about TV. Our shows
are mainly geared toward the over-fifty crowd, who spends a lot of time
skateboarding and such, and don’t really have time to zone out in front of the
tube, so it has to be really really compelling for us to watch. Young people are too busy trying to survive
youth to sit around watching TV.
Well, Earthlings, I just stopped in to say hello, got to jet
off to finish my galactic tour. Hope I
haven’t depressed you. You’ll soon forget
everything I told you anyway; it’s built into your flawed genes. Catch you next
millennium.
