Hello readers. Please, continue reading this, even if you don’t want to. Listen, I know you don’t like me, and I don’t like you either. But your lives are at stake! There is danger brewing in the greater Boston area and I fear I am the only one who can stop it. Evil forces more powerful than you can imagine are slowly gaining a foothold in this great city and they want to destroy you! I’m your only hope, so you’ll have to follow me if you want to live. Otherwise, it’s disembowelment for you, and I hear that is rather messy.
The trick, though, is that these evil minions look like you and I. It’s just like the 1988 John Carpenter classic They Live, starring “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. In fact, the whole situation is frighteningly similar to the movie. You see, in the film, aliens are trying to oppress humans by means of the media and government. But I come to you to say that the film may not be fiction! In fact, even the ol’ Daily Free Press may have been infiltrated as well.
Normally, I’d say fighting fire with fire is the way to go. I’d shoot back with some smart aleck retort in my column, exposing these aliens with my acerbic wit while giving you, dear reader, a good laugh. But if they’ve infected every media outlet, I have no other choice but to go vigilante on their Alpha Centurion asses.
So what exactly have they been doing? They’ve been regulating, my friends. You don’t think that the recent Federal Communications Commission crackdown was random, do you? No, that was all a subtle piece of the future alien overlords’ plan to destroy humanity. What about the war in Iraq and its subsequent media coverage? Yep, it was all a plan of the alien overlords. And what of the continuing popularity of “reality television”? Well, that one could be the stupidity of the populous, but for the sake of my awesome crusade, I’m going to blame those pesky aliens.
At any rate, they’re filtering most everything good and enlightening and flooding your ears and eyes with watered down sewerage in the attempt to melt your brain. Obviously, I’m going to have to resort to violence to stop this, since my pen (or word processor, as it be) is obviously pretty dull at this point. They fear anything that may offend, which would stir the comatose masses out of rage and may even inspire them to form their own opinion and, gasp, think. It’s time for action.
So right now, I’m gathering materials for my superhero costume. I have an old towel with a dinosaur skateboarding on it set aside as my cape. I also went ahead and made a hat out of tinfoil. It’s a tinfoil superhero cap. I’ve decided to forgo the boots though and just wear sneakers. Running around and murdering aliens is tough work and I need all the arch support I can get!
So here I am, with a katana, a towel-cape and a tinfoil helmet, ready to fight an evil I can’t pinpoint. No publication is safe, from Entertainment Weekly to The Boston Globe; I will rid the world of our horrible media oppressors. I will walk the earth, decapitating our evil foes with one swoop of the $20 sword I purchased at that weird Renaissance store in the mall. I will make the world safe again for those who are not politically correct.
You may think I’m crazy, but that’s only the media-induced brainwashing pumping that idea into your head. The only way for me to counteract that is through vivid, disgusting imagery and painfully truthful observation. The following exercise will set you free from the oppressive shackles of the extraterrestrial invaders.
Imagine the following image: A cute little kitten purrs as a speeding car approaches. The car breaks fully, 10 feet away from the kitten, and a young woman comes out and pets it. Rainbows appear and Skittles brand candies start to rain down. The cute kitten then utters the famous Skittles tagline, “Taste the rainbow.” The young girl starts singing and dancing, and American Idol’s Simon Cowell appears to mock her singing. Then she eats a Mentos: The Fresh Maker. Simon laughs and nods in approval. Ah, everyone loves Mentos. Stay tuned next time because Paris Hilton will be guest starring! Hey! Did you hear we might be getting cable in the dorms?
Now, what was I saying? Oh no, they’ve gotten to me too! On the bright side, while that experiment failed, allowing them to further rot your brain, at least everyone’s distraction allowed me to mercilessly gut 15 more of the hideous beings from another world. Well, it’s looking like this is a one-man battle, though it pains me to believe that. So before I walk off into the sunset, I beg everyone to join my cause. I know I’m seen as the village idiot, but just look around for a few minutes. While I’ll never be known as El Quintino: The Caped Psychopath, the man who single-handedly beat back the oppressive wave and saved the world, I can still look back on my life and smile, knowing I did the right thing. I walk the line. Which side are you on?
Quintin Marcelino, a junior in the College of Arts and
Sciences, has been a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached by email at