There are many, many, many Refined
Beings in the universe. They are skilled
at all the arts that humankind knows of, and many more we’re just not cool
enough to have discovered yet. But there
is one thing we can do much, much, MUCH better than any alien. (UnRefined
Beings as we are.) We have rhythm and we
can carry a tune. Our music is the best
music in the universe. Nothing has been
the same since the Kotter Moment; the moment alien life managed to get into our
television frequency in the 70s and heard the theme song from “Welcome Back
Kotter.” (You can’t get the Welcome Back, Welcome Back, Welcome Back
out of your head now can you?) Ever
since then the universe has been obsessed with our music and has downloaded
everything we’ve got. Unfortunately for
the universe they believe that the laws of the creative entity formulate the
distribution and payment for their art.
In other words every being in the universe owes humankind $150,000 per
song (that’s the price for illegally downloading music based on current
copyright law) and they have each got a copy of every song ever recorded… The universe is facing bankruptcy on a MAJOR
scale. That’s why some aliens figure
they are better off just blowing us up.
I have to admit I wasn’t sure about
this one. But it grew on me. And there are footnotes – I have a weakness
for fiction with footnotes. It is funny,
it helps to know a bit about late 70s pop culture, and for a short giggling
diversion it is a good choice.
