Quote of the Day, Tinhat Theory Division

“I’ll be damned! Oscar’s trash can is a TARDIS!”

 

Today’s quote brought to you by my new Sesame Street DVDs, in which it’s insisted that Oscar’s can is a 3½-room one even when he walks around carrying it.

 

Why yes, we’re having a Muppet fest here, why do you ask?
 

Random ETA: Way to go, Sir Pterry!

On Assumptions

Blah blah blah new year whatever.

Quite a while back, 10cents and I were talking about the kinds of aliens we default to. For her, an alien prototype is a human with funny forehead makeup or funny ears or whatever. For me, an alien is a bizarre animaly thing, organic and inhuman.

Well, actually that’s not true. I have true prototype aliens: there are aliens and Space Aliens. The aliens are either made in Jim Henson’s workshop or are Doug Jones in a lot of makeup and green screen.* On the other hand, Space Aliens are the Little Green Men of popular lore—the big-eyed glowy ones who live in UFOs. This is an important distinction to make.

We realized, though, that it was probably due to our early influence. When I was a kid, I read a lot of UFO stories and watched a lot of Star Wars.** She had watched a lot of Star Trek, which I didn’t actually watch until college. So when we talked about aliens, we found we were considering two different things.

I wonder what other prototypes there are in our heads that are so damn different from other people’s. Makes you curious, doesn’t it?

I’m also curious. When I say alien to you, what do you think of?


*I once noted that those two factions would make up two thirds of a cast if Doctors! was made into a TV show—one third Muppet, one third Doug Jones.

**Not to mention a very early point in my life in which the Yip Yip Martians traumatized the hell out of me.