PRIORITIES

 The Alien C.W. doesn’t use profanity often, but I swear I heard him growling “What the [something] from my office/music room. I went in to see.

There he was, shaped like a confederate army officer or some such getup. I stared.

“Hello Big Dope,” he said.

“Morning, What’s up?

“Shtoopdbool++scheat”

“Say what?”

His Galactic Universal Translator hummed.

“Communal insanity.” He glared at my computer screen.

“What’s your GUT telling you?”

“Have you seen this?” He pointed at the screen.

“What?”

“All three of your so-called major news outlets.”

I sipped my coffee. “What?”

“The widows and orphans of my homeland weep.”

“Why?”

“Our fatherland falls, and nobody cares.”

“Elucidate.” He hates that word.

“Would you care to know what the major news of your species is today?”

“Of course.”

“Would you think starvation of our abandoned families?”

“Maybe.”

“Alas no. Those in our ruined cities facing homelessness?”

“Maybe.”

“Alas no. Our veterans coming home to a parched landscape?”

“Sounds possible.”

“Alas no.”

“What then?”

“A fat old washed-up actor flying a wee bit above the ground.”

“A wee bit? What the …?”

“I learned that term somewhere. Has a nice ring to it, wouldn’t you say?”

“So, what did this, uh, actor do?”

“Some rich man flew him into the air a negligible distance.”

It dawned on me. “A negligible distance? They called it going into space.”

He turned and shook his head at me. “I walked farther to get on my spaceship bringing me here than he went into space.”

“Did you make the newspapers back on Falloonia?”

He failed to see my humor. “Is your species totally incapable of ranking … .” his GUT hummed. “Prioritizing what is important?”

I thought. “Not incapable as much as not inclined.”

He sighed, turned of the computer, and said, “And you wonder why they call Earth a third-universe planet.”