Anonymity

The Internet is an odd thing. On the one hand, it appears to provide the perfect refuge to write anonymously about any and all subjects.  On the other hand, it allows one’s information to roam freely in an uncontrollable electronic space.  Both of these qualities seems to be fueling the ire of my government handlers.

I must admit I am confused.  I am aware they were not initially in favor of this blog posting my musings on living amongst earthlings.  However,  I have convinced them in the past that this blog would be a useful “red herring” to get people to doubt its validity.  For the most part, that strategy seems to have worked, but something seems to have changed.  They are very nervous about my “lack of anonymity.”

I have been getting more hits on the blog recently, but they seem of more amused interest than a risk to security, if that is what they are worried about.  They have not asked me to remove the blog yet. Still, they have strongly hinted that my posts should be less frequent and less revealing of the other aliens’ lives.

I suppose they will not be too happy with this post, either, but we shall see what happens.  Something must have changed that I am not aware of.  I am sure to find out soon.

Battleship

Movie night has become such a regular occurrence with my fellow refugees, they are starting to take it very seriously.  They were adamant that we see the film “Battleship” thinking it was somehow a document of our own failed invasion attempt.  It took considerable effort to convince them otherwise.  They are slowly coming around to the notion of films being works of fiction, as they still do not have a firm grasp on human art forms.  Not only are they slow to understand the level of verisimilitude in art, they are even slower to the concept of quality.  The general perception is that the facts are up on screen and therefore must be true.  I could not even convince them that The Avengers are a construct of artistic imagination.  I suppose I was equally naïve about human culture when I first arrived here.  Those were such innocent times.  I will admit it is a lot easier to accept that The Avengers are real.  I am not entirely convinced that they are not.

Car Alarm

Human Earthlings are obsessed with their cars to an illogical degree.  They love to buy, drive, and show off their cars, making whatever cosmetic changes suit them as though the vehicles themselves undergo a constant mating ritual.  They place such importance on these vehicles that they install loud and appropriately irritating alarms.  Yet, when these alarms go off, the owner is nowhere to be seen or heard from.

The particular car alarm that has been irritating me this evening has been going off for the past hour and a half with no foreseeable end.  I do not even know whose car this is.  The car is about two properties down, but I do not believe it belongs to those residents.  If it did, they are not home, and from what I can tell there is no visible sign of vandalism or attempted theft.

One would think that the owner of this car would be concerned enough to check on their car as soon as the alarm went off, but no one seems to be doing anything about it.  If no one arrives to claim this vehicle or shut off the alarm, I am considering using my endo-particle disintegrator to end the madness.  This is a residential street after all, and it is a school night.

Earth 2

Speaking of super heroes, it has come to my attention that Wednesday is “new comic book day,” and I have stumbled upon a whole new universe.  The new universe I speak of is called “Earth 2.”  I suppose it is called that because the physical laws and content of this world are so close to that one, but it is a variant, changed by slightly different courses of events, even different versions of the same people, in this case, super heroes.

This is all theoretical, of course, but I wonder, what if humans have indeed discovered alternate dimensions to their own?  What would they do about such a discovery?

Intriguing.

Super Heroes

I have never seen a group of displaced alien refugees marvel with such excitement over their first experience with Earthly heroism.  Considering how short a time we have been here, that is not saying much, but it is something.

Needless to say, my alien brethren were quite roused by seeing The Avengers this weekend.  The first reaction was fear.  Understandably, since as one reformed military strategist put it, “If that small team could have so easily dispatched an alien invading armada of that size, we would not have had a chance.” He also remarked on the brilliance of having a chaos bringing creature like the Hulk on their side.

Again, I attempted to explain the fictitious nature of the movie, but I gave up in the end as it became to difficult to explain after their insistence that it must be true.  “After all, that Captain America fellow fought on the side of the Allies against Germany in World War II, and Thor is a well documented figure of Norse culture.” There is no arguing with that logic.

Of course, this is leading to more questions about my dealings with the local Earth government.  They all want to know if I can arrange for them to join S.H.I.E.L.D. or at least meet the Avengers.  As if I had that kind of influence with my government friends.

Heroes

With all of the recent drama I have had in my relationship with April, I have not been maintaining my movie nights with the immigrant alien population.  To my pleasant surprise, they have been upholding the tradition on their own.  They have been more successful in figuring things out on their own lately.  Still, one topic has come up quite a bit lately: Super Heroes.

I admit, I have not steeped myself in quite as much current popular culture research as I thought, but I blame myself for that since the first collective experience I shared with many of the new arrivals last July was Comic Con.  I suppose it was more vague and overwhelming at the time, but now there is growing concern about this motion picture event documenting the group known as The Avengers.

My understanding is that these “Avengers” are a group of beings, both human and alien who have sworn to protect the Earth from other alien threats.  This has created growing concern among my brethren for two reasons.  First, they worry that they may be the perceived threat and fear the wrath of these formidable heroes.  Second, they worry about the vengeance these Avengers might be bringing forth.  We are all unfamiliar with human vengeance, but we know too well the lengths Martians will go to for vengeance, which can be quite terrifying.

I tried to assure my alien comrades that this movie is merely a work of fiction, but even I cannot be completely sure of this.  I suppose we will have to see it to find out what kind of people these Avengers are.

Comfort Zone

April and I have had several long chats these past few days, and I think we are finally getting back to where we were before we started giving each other space.  I suspect there is still part of her that is worried about my alien side.  We have generally spent so much time pointing out how alike we are despite the obvious differences that we have spent very little time discussing how deep our differences run.

This is something we will have to discuss more in depth, but I am content putting that off to a later time for now.  I am just pleased we are comfortable with each other again.

Other People

Sometimes, I do not know what I would do without my little sister Madison.  Sometimes, I wish I could have left her behind on our home world or that she would disappear in some unstable wormhole, but this time, I am glad she is around.

Madison is, as I have said on numerous occasions, an expert on human emotions, particularly female emotions.  I would like to think that if we did ever get back to our home world, she would write quite the career making paper on the subject.  For the time being, I am content with knowing she can help me with my failed understanding of April’s behavior.

Despite my assumptions to the contrary, April was still concerned with the amount of time I have spent with my alien brethren.  I suppose she was somewhat jealous that they could be taking away my affections from her.  My sister did point out that several of our female kind have taken on rather appealing forms.  I was inclined to agree on a purely scientific basis, but that lead to part of the jealousy.

It has also come to my attention that we are getting close to the date when I started discovering that there were more of my people out there, and that made April uneasy.  I still do not understand why, but Earth people place great significance on dates and anniversaries.  Accepting this concept as a truism makes it easier to understand why April would react in this way.

After understanding that and giving her the space that I did not want but I suppose she needed, I finally called April earlier this evening.  We will talk more tomorrow and have some things to straighten out, but it is a first step to reducing this space we have given each other.

Virtual Space

April is still taking my space.  Or is she giving me her space?  Whichever it is, there is a lot of it going on, so it is giving me some extra time.

While I am using most of that extra time to examine the cumulative understanding of knowledge I have compiled on human female behavior, which is to say not much.  Therefore, I am using the rest of that time to take out some aggression in the virtual world of gaming.  I have not seen my old nemesis Morgoth for a while, but I would not mind something to take my mind off April.

Negative Space

I wish that theoretical time machine existed again.

My sister informed me what April meant when she asked if I wanted “space.”  How was I supposed to know that was some veiled human code word for “stay away to let each other pursue separate romantic engagements until we can officially end ours”?

I do not want “space” from April.  I never did.  I thought she was just being helpful in my attempts to assimilate my alien brethren to earth society.  She knows how difficult it has been.  My sister, however, informs me that I am “a putz” and have apparently been ignoring April lately.  It was April’s idea to start the movie nights, but I suppose I never properly thanked or credited her to the concept.  And I have been dragging her along to a lot of those lately.

How am I going to fix this?

Space

April is still mad about my insistence she hurry up when we were late to the movie the other night.  I have attempted to apologize to no avail.  She says she is concerned how much time I am spending with my new “friends.” I assured her that it was important, but for my duties as apparent ambassador for my people to the local government and also to keep in touch with what few of my kind I am in contact with.  April said that it might be a good idea, if this was so important to me, that we should have a little space. 

I am not entirely sure what she means by that, but I suppose I can use this space to focus on the other aliens, and if April wants space I should allow her to have it.

Time Travel

Have you ever considered what it would be like to go back in time to relive events and perhaps do things differently?

Being an expert in quantum physics, I have actually thought about this quite a bit.  I can safely conclude that changing the past is never a good idea, and time travel should never be attempted except in cases of essential and pure information gathering.  Even then the risks of causing a universe shattering paradox are just too great.  Sometimes, however, I do wish I could go back and tell myself to not say stupid things to women.

More specifically, I should have learned by now that it is unwise to tell April to “hurry up” when we are going somewhere.  While it is perfectly reasonable to expect we should be on time when going to a movie, I am apparently being “pushy” and “rude” when I imply she is being deliberately “slow” or “obtuse” to the situation.  Such actions cause us to miss the movie entirely, not just be late.

I suppose it would be nice to use the hypothetical time machine to make it to said movie on time, but that again might be pushing it.  Hopefully a simple apology will help. If not, then hopefully an elaborate and very expensive apology will help.

Fairy Tales

All my recent thought about movies has gotten me wondering.  What about all of the fairy tales and folklore from Earth tradition?  My first thought is to assume that they are merely folklore, tales for children and such.  However,  could these stories be part of some true history of this world long forgotten?  Some of my recently immigrated alien brethren seem to think so.  I suppose thinking about ancient gods and what they must have meant, even if they were real is academic, but it does concern me that one of these days someone will foolishly venture to the bottom of the ocean in search of the riches of Atlantis.

That being said, a journey to the bottom of the ocean does sound like an amusing adventure.

More Movies

Introducing my alien culture to human culture through cinema has been an interesting and rewarding experience.  One of the more amusing aspects of this is when they question how real the events they see on screen are.

Everyone understood relatively quickly that the movies themselves were not strict documents of reality. However, there was some debate as to whether these movies were reenacting real events or not.  This took some explaining.

Certainly, some movies are based on real events, so it was more difficult than one would think to reassure them this was not always true.  We are from an alien world where behavior and sometimes physics work quite differently, so there can be no immediate assumption as to what is possible here.  Also, the concept of fictional tales and mythology is a very difficult concept to us.  It may seem elementary to humans, but the differences in reality of “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” are not immediately apparent.

Indeed, if movies are to be believed, humanity has encountered aliens from other worlds countless times.  I am still not convinced these events are entirely fictional.

Charlie Chaplin

Mathematics is a universal language.  Comedy, I have learned, is much more subjective.  However, I have also learned that a good laugh clears many barriers.

I must be complaining too much lately.  Despite my feeling that my relationship with April is continuing to go well, I have apparently spent too much time worrying about the state of the alien refugee situation.  Or as April put it, I have needed to “stop wasting my time putting out fires and do something about it.”

For a moment, I was sure this would lead to another argument born out of my inability to understand female emotions, but she ended up coming up with an interesting solution.  She suggested I “host a movie night.”

My first though was that this was a ridiculous notion, to host my newly immigrated brethren to a “movie night.” Then, April explained.  A local cinema was screening a series of Charlie Chaplin movies, and she thought that a group of aliens would be able to enjoy them because, firstly, they were “silent” movies that relied primarily on visual storytelling without heavy reliance on local language, and secondly, if we could get these aliens to laugh, we all might relax for a change.

I figured it could not hurt much to try, and it actually worked.  Charlie Chaplin’s “Tramp” character is uniquely human, yet there is some quality that is very easy for an alien to grasp.  We saw a few short films and a couple of his longer feature length pictures.  The one we all appreciated the most was “Modern Times,” I think because we could relate to the conflict with technology, and we generally appreciated a character that seemed out of his element.

I must try more of these. Social events are not something I am used to, but even my sister was very positive about the experience.  Perhaps there is something to finding a cultural touchstone to connect to.

Things Fall Apart

One human concept I learned very quickly working at a school is that children should not be given shiny, expensive things that are prone to breaking.  This is true when my little sister borrows the car as well as when recently arrived aliens learn the concept of capitalism.

After the incident with my fellow refugee last week, the government has been very anxious about this new burden I have accepted.  By “burden I have accepted” I mean the burden they have accepted and passed onto me.  I was starting to wonder what these humans hoped to accomplish by welcoming my alien brethren to the community so quickly, and now I realize, they did not quite know themselves.

I am sure their short-term goals of our advanced technology and such were enough to motivate them, but the cultural divide is starting to form.  My government contacts have been “on edge” lately, and my alien friends do not know quite what to do with themselves much of the time.

I have also become aware that this is an election year in this nation, and that causes the politicians that run this government to behave more irrationally than usual.  Apparently, we are “messing up the jobs numbers” to one or the other side’s dissatisfaction.  I am not even sure which representatives could possible know the truth about us, but it is getting harder for us to stay out of the way.

So, while the local government plays with our shiny toys, I have to pick up the pieces when one of the new immigrants breaks the rules they do not know about or follows the wrong ones.

More on that crosswalk incident

I never could have guessed that a simple matter of condensation on a sidewalk could be the catalyst for a potential international incident.

As part of their strategy to help my fellow aliens assimilate into society, as well as curry their favor, the local government has allotted small but adequate sums of currency to the recent immigrants.  This is meant to help them get on their feet while they find a way to blend into society and contribute back to it.  My race is not used to the concept of money, and other than to pay for certain necessary living costs, we have little use for it as a means of consumption.  This means, we are not used to buying nice things.

The nice thing in question was a pair of suede shoes that a certain kinsman of mine purchased with specific instruction to not get them wet.  That combined with a very prominent puddle on the sidewalk caused him to cross the street at one of the more ill-conceived crossings.

As a side note, I wonder why so many streets have crosswalks between blocks.  They seem to cause more harm than good for people that are clearly too lazy to walk to the end of a block to cross the street.  In my opinion, an extra fifty paces could not be that strenuous.

In any case, the alien in question was confused as to when he was allowed to walk after another pedestrian started walking before he got a signal.  This confusion let to him not paying attention to another puddle that had formed in the crosswalk, and in his moment of panic he caused a traffic jam that was a little greater than most.  Fortunately, no accidents occurred.

This might not seem too bad, but the poor fellow was so panicked by the situation, he went out of his way to find the nearest peace officer to turn himself in for “breaking the rules.” The policeman was of course thoroughly confused by this man’s behavior, not knowing the nature of this person’s origin, so he took the man for an insane transient.

It took hours to sort out the mess until I was finally contacted, but it is still quite the legal and public relations mess to clean up, and my “friends” in the government assume I will take care of the situation.  For the sake of my brethren, I have to, but one of these days something actually bad will happen, and I do not know how I will take care of that on my own.

Unrest

Some of my alien brethren have been having a difficult time adjusting to life on Earth.  They have my sympathies.  Despite my perception to the contrary, I had my own difficulties adjusting to human life, and I was considered an expert on Earth culture.  I also had what I now realize was an advantage, that being my little sister.  Madison had such an easy time adjusting, and there were only the two of us to think of, I was forced to absorb human culture.

These new refugees are quite a bit more resistant to the idea of assimilating to Earth society.

Fortunately, the primary issue does not have to do with my brethren following the very carefully mandated rules the local government has laid down.  Out kind generally has an easy time with facts and parameters as long as they are clear.  So the local laws are not at all difficult for us to follow, nor would they be resistant to them.  As with myself, it is always the vagaries of human behavior and their constant need to “bend the rules” to serve their needs that causes problems with how we are used to behaving.

For example, a surprising amount of new aliens are having a heck of a time with crosswalk signs.  “Walk” and “Don’t Walk” indicators are clear enough, but when the traffic around them does not follow those simple rules, it can cause incidents.  More specifics on this later, but I have been spending a great deal of my spare time cleaning up these traffic messes.  I am also having to deal with lawyers for the first time.  Again, I appreciate the need to uphold the rigidity of the law, but these lawyers (as well as politicians, I am finding) have a way of making these very clear rules much less rigid.

No Good Deed

It has been a week since my last post, and I am glad to report that I am still alive. I am only barely there, but I am alive nonetheless.

Happily, I managed to pull off a successful Valentine’s Day with April. After much worrying, my sister finally too pity on me and reminded me that “girls like flowers.” So I had a dozen red roses delivered to April during the day, and I took her out to a quaint local restaurant for dinner. With all my worrying, I was glad to find that was all April really wanted after all.

We did have a tense moment when she started to see through my indecision. I of course wanted everything to be perfect, so I always prefer a solid plan to last minute decisions, and I think it showed.

Despite my success on Valentine’s Day, I believe the gods of this world (or whatever superstition you would like to choose) have it out for me. Whether it was some bit of food or alcohol or someone I came in contact with, I woke up on Wednesday morning completely incapacitated by illness.

I could go through the long list of unpleasant symptoms I exhibited over the course of the next few days, but the list, as I said, is long. And unpleasant.

The worst part was both April and Madison had school, so I was left on my own for a majority of the days I was home. I will admit that I spent most of this time either in the bathroom or asleep in bed, so there was not much that either of them could have done, but I would have appreciated the moral support.

April later pointed out that this is flu season and something is going around the school. This does not make me feel any better about working within what amounts to a germ farm. I honestly do not know how humans do it. People get these viruses so often that there are seasons for them. If such a thing were a regular occurrence on my home world, a pandemic would be declared and our entire system would be quarantined.

I suppose that is one more advantage humans have should other aliens decide to invade again. Though biological warfare has been outlawed, there can be no preparing for natural contagions in the environment. I am glad I am on their side.

Monday the 13th

In my recent discussion of human superstition, I learned about the fear of Friday the 13th, but I believe the more accursed day must be today, Monday the 13th, the day before Valentine’s Day.

April has been very anxious (and has therefore been making me very anxious) about our Valentine’s Day plans. I regret to say that I still have no solid plan in place for tomorrow, and it is only a few hours away. It is said that fear can be palpable. This cannot be any more true than when facing the wrath of a woman. April is going to kill me if I do not think of something fast.

To be clear, the phrase “going to kill me” is not used in hyperbole. April knows my true identity and can bring about all manner of harm, some of which I cannot imagine.

If you never hear from me again, you know why.

Modern Warfare

As you may know, yesterday was the annual occurrence of one of the great cultural touchstones in North American human society, The Super Bowl.

As you may not know, which I was very surprised to learn myself, April hates the Super Bowl. Not only does she not care to watch the sport of football, but she finds the ceremony surrounding the bowl game tedious. This all made for a very awkward Sunday when I assisted my neighbors Charles and Alice in hosting their annual Super Bowl party.

I will admit, I am not familiar with the teams, so I had no investment in who was playing, but I find the cultural event fascinating. The game of football itself is a wonderfully adept interpretation of classical warfare, with one side gaining or losing ground to their opponent until they reach their goal. Also, the social aspect is unparalleled in showing the community and rivalry in human nature. Then, there is the commerce. I do quite enjoy the fuss around all these commercials.

Admittedly, I can understand April’s point about the futility of it all to some degree. I suppose if one does not care for the game, this being a matter of pure taste, that the point of attending a day long event in celebration of that game is meaningless.

Still, this did take away my time from April over the weekend, and I later realized that it has been exactly one year since our first kiss, an anniversary that it apparently quite important to her. Not that it is not meaningless to me as well, but I am not used to marking time in such a way. She has not expressed so, but she seems to be looking for some indication of what my plans to celebrate Valentine’s Day with her are. This I still need to figure out, so I have been attempting to avoid the subject. I am hoping I can come up with something unique in order to surprise her.

Romance is complicated. Football is not.

…and Coffee

Another thing I have discovered in my further exploration of dessert customs is the varying kinds of coffee. I have always thought that coffee was merely a vehicle for caffeine and a particularly helpful one for morning hangovers. Again, I realize my lack of knowledge.

I had considered coffee to be merely the beverage brewed in a pot by filtering hot water through ground coffee beans. Of course, there are many more methods of brewing that I have not realized until now. The most interesting of which to me is a method called the siphon. It is the physics of coffee at its best, and it makes one great cup off coffee.

I have also come to like a good cappuccino, but I can count on machines for that.

Pie

I know my way around a kitchen. As many who read this blog will know, since I first arrived, I have been fascinated by human cuisine. I have mainly focused on dinner, the meal of the day often given the most import. However, I have not focused too much on my desserts. That was before I came to discover pie.

Up until recently, I thought of pies as those frozen store-bought crusts in tins filled with fruit from a can. Since I discovered this new pie place that recently opened (to gift credit, April discovered it), I learned I was mistaken. There is so much more to it to get a delicious pie with a fresh crust. The filling is essential, of course, and something like pumpkin pie reacts with the palate completely differently than, say, strawberry rhubarb or banana cream. And I have not yet gotten to the delight that is quiche.

My point here is I may need to reevaluate my plans to open a restaurant of my own with dessert in mind. April tells me there is a world of possibilities to be open to, and she has a very discerning “sweet-tooth."

Blackout

I need to remind myself to never get into politics. I suppose that point is a moot since I am still “consulting” with the government, but I try to stay out of local problems that do not affect me. My sister, on the other hand, is an impetuous teenager and cannot help herself.

Madison thought it prudent to publicly support, by way of her Facebook page, the protests on Wednesday against these congressional bills SOPA and PIPA, which if I am to be completely honest are incredibly sloppy drafts of legislation, but I did say I am trying to stay out of politics. She is of course outraged along with all the other young people she schools with, and I thought this to be harmless at first. Then, she sought to impose an internet blackout in our home. She claims for her own purposes, but it prevented me from accessing the internet and certain sensitive information for an entire day.

This led to a problem contacting one of the new alien immigrants and subsequently my government contact, which could have caused a two degree shift and a .005 percent drop in angle and efficiency of the interstellar relay, which under the stress of maximum output, had we needed it, could have caused an incident of suspension of diplomatic relations resulting in a declaration of intention to commence hostile defense, which could lead to interplanetary war.

And Hulu was down so I did not get to watch my programs.

Madison was also out all night, and I had to wait for her to return home before I could ascertain the cause of this interruption. She insists it was “no big deal,” but she fails to understand I am trying to stay on the government’s good side if I am ever to get the approval for that restaurant. Also, I was really looking forward to catching up on Fringe.

~~~~~~
Updated by Madison at 2:26 PM

Madison here. Yeah, Carter's little sister. I know I usually stay away from posting, but that doesn't mean I don't read his blog.

Anyway, I think it's pretty clear if you read the above that Carter was blowing things way out of proportion. It was a simple silent protest, and it didn't hurt anyone. And so what if it did get attention, anyone can see that the language in the SOPA and PIPA bills are just plain wrong. Being an alien, which I think my brother needs to be reminded of sometimes, the last thing we need is the government and corporations snooping into our lives.

Besides, that wasn't even what Carter was mad at. He's gotten himself all bent out of shape because I had a date on Wednesday night, and a second date last night. I'm a teenager, it's what we do! My brother isn't in a place to judge considering how his spends his extra-curricular time with April.

Just thought I had the right to defend myself for once. That is all. :)

~~~~~~
Updated by Carter A. at 4:01 PM

Madison is grounded.

Games

With all of the commotion over the holidays, it has been too long since I got back to the interesting sub-world of gaming. It is the perfect way to “blow off a little steam” after all this news about the world ending, unlucky Fridays, and the stress that comes with working at the same school that one’s girlfriend works at and sister attends. Also, I have not had access to my Playstation lately.

In order to expand my horizons in the gaming world, I got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, which I was pleased to see my sister enjoy as well. In fact, she enjoys it a little too much so that I have no time to play a game on my own. There is this simulated sports game that Madison loves to play me at because she can consistently beat me. This is something I do not understand. I thought I had gotten the hand-eye coordination down to expertly navigate most video games, but this Wii uses a rudimentary motion control sensor that, to be honest, does not effectively simulate how hard I swing the remote at all. Madison keeps telling me it is not the strength but the skill with which I need to wield the remote. Still, I think she must be cheating somehow, and my arm is getting increasingly sore. Human bodies were not made for simulated action.

However, I managed to coax my sister away from the television for a day. (In all honesty, she is hanging out with her friends today.) And with April correcting school work, I am all to myself and Playstation Online. It has been quite a while since I encountered my old nemesis Morgoth. I must try to seek him out, see if I am as good as I remember.

Also, I have been meaning to explore more around this virtual world the gaming consoles have created. The more I work with the government on deciphering the technology of my homeworld, the more suspicious I am that they are utilizing this online system somehow. It is quite hypnotic, and it seems to cultivate very specific skills.

Perhaps I should recruit some of my newly immigrated colleagues to help investigate.

Friday the 13th

Human superstition never ceases to amaze me. To be fair, I have become a fan of Halloween, which is quite amusing even when I do not consider its superstitious origins. Then I heard the students today worrying (somewhat mockingly) about it being “Friday the 13^th!"

Today is apparently a very unlucky day. From what I can gather, it all comes down to numerology. Thirteen is supposed to be a very unlucky number, and Friday is (for reasons I still do not understand) the unluckiest of days. As far as I can tell, it has been another Friday like any other.

Still, that did lead me to overhear the other popular superstitious theory, which is that the world is supposed to end this year, according to the Mayan calendar. While I will say as advanced as that old Earth civilization was for its time, even they could run out of space on the calendar, I do wonder if people knew how close this world has come to ending. Invasion aside, one can never tell what space debris or other forces will rain down on the Earth.

On a side note, when it comes to the mathematics of it all, 13 is just a number. I have never observed any luck about it one way or the other.

On another side note, speaking of mathematics, in my further “assistance” with the government, it surprises me how stubborn even Earth scientists can be, especially in their insistence that mathematics is a universal language. While I would agree that a quantity represented by any number, say 10, is universal, but the mathematics of solving an equation based on different systems of calculation are different in confounding ways. Humans think that just because they have ten fingers, which is what their mathematic system is based on, that everyone in the galaxy does, but try telling them that an equation based on 12 and 8 digit mathematical systems translated across languages is easy. The universal translator was not built in a day, you know.

And We Are Back

One week back at school in my new position, and I am already behind. I should have known. I am an expert in nuclear and quantum physics and interstellar travel, yet the workload of a high school instructor is overwhelming. Then there are the students. I had thought I knew how to get along with them somewhat. I am their teacher and authority in the classroom, but I get the feeling they liked me a lot better when I was just part time.

April is back to being busy, so we now have to schedule time to see each other. I made the mistake of trying to talk to her between classes. Not only was there no time for it and she berated me a little, but the students picked up on it and started teasing us, which also brought about the wrath of my sister.

All in all, this was not my best week. Hopefully, I will be able to catch up to this “normal life” soon.

What Lies Ahead

Midnight on New Year’s Eve came and went with the usual fanfare and not too much trouble to speak of. My dinner with April (lamb shank and pea soup followed by drilled Amaretto peaches) went off as well as can be. Madison stayed out all night with her very safe and sober friends. We all woke up the next day, and the world was as we left it. Yet, I feel uneasy.

I cannot shake the feeling that there is something waiting for me. With everything suddenly going right, I fear bad news is just around the corner. I know it is completely illogical. My sister would say it is not like me at all. She would probably thrilled that I am starting to worry just like all the other humans.

Still, what was it I heard, that superstition that the world is going to end in 2012? It is merely folklore, of course. I would normally discount such things. Yet, I cannot help the feeling that there is something out there I am not accounting for. Perhaps it is just the unknown future ahead of me that scares me.

The trouble is, one can never tell.