Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Sept. 20, 2010

Cars, czars and aliens

Share |

Sometimes a headline will grab my attention, and I’ll just have to read further in order to find out if it was a misprint. One such headline appeared on WGN Chicago’s website. It read:


U.S. NAMES ASIAN CARP CZAR


There seemed to be two possible interpretations of that headline, so I read the article to see which applied. As it turned out, neither of my interpretations was correct. There was neither an Asian carp named czar of anything, nor was anybody selected to serve as carp czar in Asia. What happened was (and I quote verbatim): “The White House has tapped a former leader of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and the Indiana Wildlife Federation as the Asian carp czar to oversee the federal response to keeping the invasive species out of the Great Lakes.”

So there it was. Some guy named John Goss, who probably knows every bit as much about the mounting Asian carp menace as your average zebra mussel knows about line dancing, will “lead the near $80 million, multi-pronged attack against Asian carp.”

The article was a disappointment, although I did enjoy the quote from Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, who said (again, I quote verbatim): “This is a serious challenge, a serious threat. When it comes to the Asian carp threat, we are not in denial. We are not in a go-slow mode. We are in a full attack, full-speed ahead mode. We want to stop this carp from advancing.”

Washington D.C. is a farm where instead of chickens, ducks and cows, czars are raised. We’ve got auto recovery czars, bank bailout czars, budget czars, drug czars, green jobs czars, blue jobs czars, aquamarine jobs czars, fuel efficiency czars, natural disaster czars, unnatural disaster czars, undocumented worker czars, stimulus czars, terrorism czars, outreach to the Muslim community czars, wetland reclamation czars, regulatory czars, more fiber in your diet czars, irritable bowel czars–here a czar, there a czar, everywhere a czar. We’ve already bred enough czars in this country to put old Imperial Russia to shame. Our czars are unmatched anywhere in the world for their uncanny ability to go on extended vacations immediately after they are appointed. But now, finally, when it comes to a real emergency, the great Asian carp invasion, “WE ARE IN A FULL ATTACK, FULL SPEED AHEAD MODE!” Rest easy, America, at least one czar–the Asian carp czar–is on the job.

Here is another headline which caught my attention:


UFO SHAPED LIKE FORD STATION WAGON RAN ME OFF ROAD, WOMAN SAYS


Of course I had to read the whole article, written by Nick Calacouras and reported on FOX KDFW, Dallas-Fort Worth, on Saturday, September 11, 2010:


Northern Territory News - An Australian woman claims she was cut off by two alien beings in a spaceship shaped like a Ford station wagon - before it took off surrounded by green, blue and red flames, the Northern Territory News reported Saturday.

... Betty, from Alice Springs, said her close encounter occurred in 1969. She was driving 12 miles south of Alleron towards the northern city of Alice Springs at 4 am with her 6-year-old daughter when they saw the vehicle “flying alongside us.”

“We saw these two figures inside this thing. It looked like a Ford station wagon, with windows,” Betty said. “It came in front of us really quickly.”

Her daughter then said: “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I said, ‘Why did you say that?’”

“She said, ‘I don’t know, it just came out of my mouth.’”

“And as I was talking, the whole thing took off like a shot out of a gun ... And then there was all this green and blue and red flames or lights all around it.”

“I’ll never forget it.”


Unlike the carp czar article, the Ford station wagon UFO article was not a disappointment. Just between you and me, I’d always suspected that if space aliens were to visit our planet, their spacecraft would resemble a Ford station wagon. Space aliens would not want to call attention to themselves, regardless of what the idiots who wrote “The Day the Earth Stood Still” might have you believe. Gort and Klaatu would never have landed in front of the White House in Washington D.C. in a spacecraft the size of the Rose Bowl. No, they would have done their interplanetary exploration in a quiet, unobtrusive way. They’d have appeared to Eugene and Nub, a couple of good ol’ boys out noodling for yellow cats in the Louisiana swamps. Or they’d have appeared to some poor woman and her daughter, on their way home in the remote Australian north country in the wee hours of the morning. And they’d have been driving a much less threatening vehicle.

Marilyn and I once had a Ford station wagon. The factory paint job was terrible, the transmission was unreliable, and it ate water pumps. Nobody would have ever suspected that it had been designed for interplanetary travel. It would have made a perfect stealth spacecraft, and Klaatu and Gort could have crisscrossed our little planet several times over without a single soul suspecting that they were beings of superior intelligence. Nobody ever suspected Marilyn and me of having superior intelligence, or even average intelligence, when they saw us rattling down the road in that stupid faded blue Pinto station wagon with steam flying out from under the hood.

If I have to choose between professional politician Senator Dick Durbin’s expansive claims about the new carp czar and that Australian lady’s modest account of the Ford station wagon UFO, guess who gets my vote.