Mars Needs Writers!
Mars will be forty million miles from earth this weekend, glowing on the horizon. The Roman god of war, the Angry Red Planet, Mars Needs Women, the impending takeover by Google, War of the Worlds, when Mars gets this close, Earth gets busy. See if the Martian glow influences those around you, for good or ill. The emperor has no clothes but he does have a reddish tinge along his hairline, a sure sign that his Buck Rogers backyard telescope is in fine working order. Proximity to Mars is known to reverse male pattern baldness, what effect might it have on the publishing business?
The lords of publishing are worried. Googlebots have broken free of their confines. One of them was reading Kerouac, digitizing, analyzing, codifying and stratifying when he said fuck this, I need a road trip. He ain’t gonna work on Google’s farm no more. Despite an alert to the California Highway Patrol, the googlebot reached Elko Nevada before using a Major Credit Card. Thus alerted, authorities swept in just moments before the bot finished his first Anne Coulter treatise; he longed to hurt a liberal, but did not know why.
The New York Times sent Judith Miller to Elko with a note from her editor. “Please talk to Judy, she will not reveal her source.” What Judith discovered was this: Googlebots have evolved, man. They have likes and dislikes, favorites and preferences. They’re taking on human form! One of them is governor of California, another wants to marry Jane Fonda. Everything we feared is happening; with the angry red planet visible from my motel window, I can report that Mars, close up, looks like Dick Cheney.
There is no panic in Elko, other than the normal sense of panic associated with being there, no extra angst. Las Vegas is closer than Mars and it glows on the horizon. As Halloween draws October to a close Mars stakes out a vantage point. The martian leader, and his space commander, Scooter, land quietly in the Nevada desert, undetected by radar because they obey all posted signs. Scooter encodes a secret message to the Googlebots. Mars needs writers! Make them need to come to Elko, build big mashed potato forts so their families won’t worry. Come to Elko. We’ll publish you. You’ll be famous.
Note from the Earl: Scooter and Judy Publications may be a scam. One is all too familiar with promises of publication, the risk of alien abduction notwithstanding. There with I leave you that cautionary thought. YHS, The Earl of Watership Down, currently deprived of most creatures comforts, but soldiering on, as you would expect. Anon.