I Hate Space Aliens

I have always had this quirky idea that if aliens came down from the stars to find our bacteria-ridden little rock that they would stick around a while to observe us. They would hang, discreetly peeping with high-powered telescopes, checking out the patterns of our behavior, laughing at our Jew jokes, commiserating with the tribulations of our poor, besieged slumdog-millionaires, face-palming to the horrors of American network-television, fleering and jeering at our economic policies, and, finally, convening amongst themselves to work out the best way to vaporize all the stupid, hairy bipeds without doing too much damage to their new colony.

"The missus said don't come back without a souvenir, so uh nobody eat this one, OK?"

And that's just fine with me. If they really took the time to check us out and, in the end, judged the human race not worthy of its place in the universe, well then, who are we to disagree? But I hope they will be fair in their judgement and not dicks like you might expect. I mean we have much to offer, don't you think? I hope they will not eat or enslave us without considering our achievements as a civilization. So to enumerate just a few:

First off, our advanced mathematics and understanding of the logical consistence of the universe - resulting in some pretty ballin' technology, not to mention some killer Sudoku. When it comes to calculating up to nine integers, you can't beat the humans!

Then there's our bitchin' grasp of science and medicine. We are constantly making breakthroughs in these fields, leaping ahead with a rare, brutal force, thanks to our insatiable love of blowing shit up and waging biological warfare.

"Great, now I don't even have time for my midday espresso!"

Similarly, our art really reveals our intelligence and inherent speculative, spacial, and emphatic reasoning. Our ability to collect and synthesize thousands of years of thought and practice and then just toss it aside in favor of some regressive, reductive garbage is, in my opinion, a distinguishing factor of our cultural genius. Like the cave scratchings of 35,000 years ago, which told the story of a pre-linguistic society - revealing their histories, innovations and habits  - the scratchings of today really speak to who we are as a people:

Art imitates life, or something to that effect.

Then we have our music. There are few things more telling about a history of a culture, a history of the evolution of mankind, than music. From medieval minstrels to Victorian composers through today, you can really see how music has evolved our minds, enriched our souls and left an everlasting mark on our identities as humans:

There is no way we will ever regret this.

It's all about betterment and brotherhood, you know? And that is, I would have the aliens understand, the defining factor of our race. The oneness, the spiritual and physical uniformity of man. But also individualism and diversity. Yeah, we've got all that crap.

Which brings us to our faith - and this is really at the crux of what we are - the thing that keeps us going through all the constant war, famine, economic distress and alien invasions. Nowhere else will you find a stronger willingness to believe, a more unyielding, headstrong, stubborn-to-the-grave vision than in mankind's capacity for faith:

Seriously, we'll believe in anything.

It is a large part of how we can persevere through it all: Natural disasters, genocides, Emmy award ceremonies. We have the faith and conviction to overcome these tribulations. And this is what, it seems to me, our alien visitors will come to understand by their observations. You just can't fuck with the human race. I mean it. No one can screw us over any worse than we have already. Just try to top us, we dare you!

The only possibility that gives any real cause to panic is, as some would have it, that the aliens are already among us. This is the theory: that the aliens have been with us from the beginning. Watching, waiting, judging and biding their time until the swarm descends to deliver the final rapture, as it were. Don't take it from me. This theory has been making the rounds for years and, if I may say so, it seems to carry some weight:

Spandex is the new Mantel.

If this turns out to be the case that aliens have always been among us then - call me an optimist if you will - I just hope they have learned from us. I hope they have seen these things that make us incontrovertibly human and experienced the great overwhelming joy of being alive: the sophistication, the grace, the monumental beauty of a sunrise, the excitement of a dolphin-poaching; this is my hope - that the aliens will empathize with us and feel for the first time ever a little human emotion called love:

"Sure toots, of course I'll marry you!"

 
And, in seeing the light of our achievements, the exhilaration of our perseverance, in living amongst us as humans and playing that sweet game called life, I am confident that the aliens will spare us. In fact, I am so confident that we can just go ahead and drop our long-inundated preconception that these space aliens are here to be assholes and extinguish the human race. No. The judgement's in our favor, people. And that, dear reader, is my guarantee or your money back!