I want to correct a few things. We are tall and thin. We tried projecting ourselves but it came out like we are shorter than you. We’re not. We come from a planet with less gravity, so we are thin and tall. Stately, even. Anyway, we don’t like your gravity and don’t like to walk around on your planet. The atmosphere dries out our skin, too. That’s why we stay in our ships.

We’re not supposed to contact you but, of course, some of us have to bend the rules. There was some kidnapping and probing but it was not authorized. Sorry. There were reprimands and demotions.

Yes, we can make ships that fly real fast but that’s about it for advanced technology. We can’t really share it with you because you don’t have the right materials on your planet to duplicate it. And you go fast enough, really.

We just observe. That’s all we are allowed to do. It’s pretty boring, really. You know what really got us going? Paper towels. We never thought of it! We have a statue of your Guy in the Flannel Shirt on our planet now. And Wet Wipes are standard issue now. Another gem. Chip clips. I could go on. We want to pay you back but we got nothing. Cures for diseases? We forgot them a long time ago. We had something like cancer but we got rid of it with DNA manipulation. That opened a sack of worms, let me inform you. Was it worth it? We got bones that can snap like a pencil now.

This is not an official communication. I just wanted to get a few things off my thorax.

Another thing, did you make English hard just to annoy us? I’m assigned to English language. Thanks a sockfull! With the euphemisms, the idiomatic sayings, all the tenses and the, by the way, prepositional phrases, it makes for an enormous headache. The spelling! I won’t go into that. And finish your dam sayings! We puzzled over: “a stitch in time” and “you can lead a horse to water” forever until we found out there was more to them. I mean, what the dickens?

Whenever it gets on me, I think “paper towels, paper towels, paper towels”. We didn’t get the little pictures on stuff (there’s a great word, stuff) for a long time. They forgot how to write? We finally got that they were product symbols. Subliminal?

And we don’t like your food. Ever hear aliens stole our food! Won’t happen. Except for popping boba. And we can’t duplicate it either!

We brought back swearing and sarcasm to our planet. They asked us what good is it? It makes you feel good when you’re assigned to a stupid planet for a really long time said Xthyg. Oops, demotion time. Like I care, he retorted. We don’t have jails on our planet. We assign someone to follow the offender around and annoy them to the degree they annoyed others for a while.

Well, I’m saying too much. A river in Derche,
Blyg