The preposterous picnic
By: Aaron Sakulich
Issue date: 2/16/07 Section: Ed-Op
Originally published: 2/16/07 at 2:17 AM EST
Last update: 2/16/07 at 2:17 AM EST
Originally published: 2/16/07 at 2:17 AM EST
Last update: 2/16/07 at 2:17 AM EST
That night, he was not to meet the occupants of the spaceship, but they did eventually introduce themselves. Their names were - and I swear with your god as my witness that I am not making this up or exaggerating it - Bucky and Bob. They had a huge dog, weighing around 400 pounds, named Bo. This unlikely trio took Nelson to their home world.
Their home planet seems to have been a lovely place. Homes were made with rock and steel interiors. There were no government buildings, for the world was totally at peace, and no hospitals, for the population knew the secrets of living a healthy life. They had cars without wheels or bumpers that floated a few feet off of the ground, obviating the need for roads, and lived by a simple set of twelve rules similar to the Ten Commandments. (One of the two extra commandments was not to eat anything that wasn't food. Good advice, but does that really demand a commandment of its own?) They also had meat, fish, eggs and salads to eat, and out of their day, they needed only to spend one hour working. Their day was divided into 38 parts, roughly an hour long apiece. They had three moons, and the sun was about as bright there as it was here, though it hung much larger in their sky.
You'll note that I've avoided naming their home world, mainly for crude, showmanship purposes: Their home planet was Venus. I never would have guessed that, mostly because Venus does not have any moons, and her days are actually about 245 Earth days long. Due to the hilarious astronomical oddity that is retrograde motion, a Venus day is actually longer than a Venus year. Based on these two things alone, I think that it is safe to say that Nelson never went anywhere other than his own imagination.
When Nelson returned to Earth to find that neither his neighbors nor the government believed his strange tale, he wrote a pamphlet called "My Trip to Mars, the Moon, and Venus." He became an overnight celebrity and began to host his wonderful picnic. I wish that were all to the story, but, like all UFO enthusiasts, he had to make his dollar off of it. Remember the 400-pound space dog named Bo? He claimed that he was given the creature by Bucky and Bob as a present. If one were to send Nelson a bit of money, he'd mail out a tiny bundle of black hair that was supposed to have fallen off of Bo due to his exposure to cosmic rays. (The dog, conveniently, was much too shy to come out in public.)
Their home planet seems to have been a lovely place. Homes were made with rock and steel interiors. There were no government buildings, for the world was totally at peace, and no hospitals, for the population knew the secrets of living a healthy life. They had cars without wheels or bumpers that floated a few feet off of the ground, obviating the need for roads, and lived by a simple set of twelve rules similar to the Ten Commandments. (One of the two extra commandments was not to eat anything that wasn't food. Good advice, but does that really demand a commandment of its own?) They also had meat, fish, eggs and salads to eat, and out of their day, they needed only to spend one hour working. Their day was divided into 38 parts, roughly an hour long apiece. They had three moons, and the sun was about as bright there as it was here, though it hung much larger in their sky.
You'll note that I've avoided naming their home world, mainly for crude, showmanship purposes: Their home planet was Venus. I never would have guessed that, mostly because Venus does not have any moons, and her days are actually about 245 Earth days long. Due to the hilarious astronomical oddity that is retrograde motion, a Venus day is actually longer than a Venus year. Based on these two things alone, I think that it is safe to say that Nelson never went anywhere other than his own imagination.
When Nelson returned to Earth to find that neither his neighbors nor the government believed his strange tale, he wrote a pamphlet called "My Trip to Mars, the Moon, and Venus." He became an overnight celebrity and began to host his wonderful picnic. I wish that were all to the story, but, like all UFO enthusiasts, he had to make his dollar off of it. Remember the 400-pound space dog named Bo? He claimed that he was given the creature by Bucky and Bob as a present. If one were to send Nelson a bit of money, he'd mail out a tiny bundle of black hair that was supposed to have fallen off of Bo due to his exposure to cosmic rays. (The dog, conveniently, was much too shy to come out in public.)
