Space post, coast to coast

Yesterday, as I was milling around outside this very library (the one I'm writing this in), I heard the oddest...sizzling sound, coming from above. Before I had time to even look up to see what the sound was coming from, a small, cylindrical object about the size of one of those tennis ball containers plunged from the sky and into the asphalt, barely missing my head. Eventually, the smoke from the landing cleared, and, after getting my fingies singed a few times, I managed to pry the object out of its crater.
I found it was a hollow cylinder, and it had a lid which could be screwed off. I removed the lid, and found inside some papers, written in English, which appeared to be letters. But the names mentioned in the letter were very strange, and the fact remained that this thing had come from the sky. As I read the letters, I realized something: Along with having narrowly escaped an interstellar braining, I had stumbled upon what appeared to be a piece of space mail! Rock on!
Below is part of the (long) letter:

1
To the most honorable Xylylnahn;

I, the Observant Kuymrg, am writing this letter to you as part of the required
summary concerning my observations of the Planet Tholcandren, known to its
natives as "Earth."
The dominant species of Tholcandren, known among
themselves, and now by ourselves, as Humans, is what this letter will be mainly
concerning.

Humans are an intriguing species. They are exceptionally intelligent, indeed, I
would guess that they are only about a few centuries, no more than a single
millenium, behind us in technology. It is only a matter of time before they will
be able to travel the heavens with the same speed and efficiency as us. They do,
in fact, have means with which to travel through space, but only extremely
primitive ones. They haven't been able to transport themselves to their nearest
neighbor, Malcandren, yet (they have, however, transported machines meant for
study to this planet, and to many others within their vicinity). They have
colonized practically all of their planet, they can even be found (if only
sparsely) in its least hospitable areas.

However, for all their intelligence, they seem to lack something else
fundamentally important. They have a great deal of smarts, but are sorely
lacking in something infinitely more important: wisdom. I have seen a great many
absurdities that they practice commonly, some so ridiculous one can hardly
believe that they are intelligent as they are.

They have, of their own accord, split themselves up into seperate empires,
instead of living peacefully together, without dividing themselves. Naturally,
this division leads to conflict, and a lot of it. These conflicts occur for
numerous reasons, and many times they will be started by one person who does
something extraordinarily disagreeable, and therefore, other nations are pressed
to resist this person, and from there everything escalates into conflict in which many
Humans lose their lives. Currently, things are especially chaotic in this
respect (and in many others).

Each of these nations is ruled seperately, and, strangely, all of them are ruled
by their own kind, Humans. An incredibly dangerous way to go about things. As a
result of this, the Humans have gotten themselves into more messes than can be
counted. How they can expect a flawed, imperfect person like themselves to lead
a nation to prefection I have no idea. A large part of their problem stems from
the fact that many of their leaders have long since given up the practice of
turning to Maleldil for assitance, in fact, they, and many of their fellow
humans, have refused to believe in His existence altogether, flatly defying
simple logic, because the existence of Maleldil and His Laws barr the way in
what seems to be the Humans' primary pursuit:

Pleasure. They seem consistently seek only their own pleasure. Whether these
pleasures be excessively luxurious lives, the escape of unfortunate realities,
or perhaps involving themselves with multiple members of the opposite sex, the
Humans often pursue, first and foremost, the enigmatic, perfect Pleasure, which,
many fail to realize, can only come from Maleldil.

Anyway...

While the Humans maintain the appearance of being
ruled by certain groups of their fellows, put together and called "government",
their real rules--or, in any case, the ones more faithfully followed--come from
a seemingly omnipresent influence known simply as "pop culture". Pop culture is
made up primarily of an organization known as the Media. The Media came about
when Humans progressed to the point where they were no longer constantly
fighting to survive; they had leisure time. To fill this leisure time, they
invented ways to entertain themselves. The earliest form of this entertainment
came about in the forms of simple games, many of which are popular still today
with them and have little to do with either pop culture or the Media. The next
form of entertainment to take shape were things known as Books (rather similar
to our own Kadshyna), which were many slips of paper on which were written
words, which, in turn, would come together to tell a story, or make a point, or
something of the kind (like this very letter). These slips of paper would be
arranged in such a way as to make up a comprehensible order, and were bound in a
case of leather. Through books, opinions were widely expressed, and they most
definitely influence the Humans. Books are most definitely part of the Media.

Another part of the media is Music, which is the Human word for the Art of
Maleldil. For the longest time, Music was used the way we use it, to simply
convey emotion and beauty with simple sound. The Humans used their own voices as
instruments to add to this music, and, eventually, they began to put words to
their music. This form of spoken music is very prevalent and influential in the
Media, and the artists who make it have an enormous amount of influence (more on
this later), despite the fact that much of the words spoken in this popular
(shortened to "pop") music says nothing of importance; the messages contained in
the songs are frivolous or downright harmful, and the songs would lose little
without them.

Also, there are what the Humans call Plays, in which some Humans will act out
situations as specific characters for the entertainment of their fellows. These
plays have much the same power of suggestion as do their more sophisticated
counterpart, Movies, but for some reason they do not have as great influence as
do Movies.

Then there is what is called "Radio," which uses special beams (basically the
same as the Rolygn Waves) to transmit all sorts of sounds, from music to spoken
words, into small boxes, and from these boxes the transmitted sounds could be
heard. Radio used to be incredibly influential, indeed, there was one incident
in which a young man used the technology to transmit the words and sounds of a
play about Tholcandren being invaded by "Aliens" (beings from other planets,
like ourselves) and thus sent millions of his fellows into a panic, as they
believed what he said was actually happening. No, however, Radio has grown
somewhat obsolete, having been replaced by its more sophisticated counterpart,
Television (see directly below).

Two of the most recent forms of Media are incredibly powerful, and they go hand
in hand: Movies and Television. Movies, as stated above, are much like plays,
except that they can be recorded, preserved, and seen by millions. In this way,
their messages are spread much more effectively than Plays.

The second, Television, is a combination of many things. The Television itself
is a large box, on one side of which is a large, glass screen. Onto this screen
images are projected, and from machines called "speakers", which are usually
nearby the Television, project sounds to go with the images, and thus create the
illusion to whoever is watching the images and hearing the sounds that they are
really experiencing the situation. These images and sounds are transmitted much
the same way Radio sounds were transmitted, and thus, a single message, event,
or form of entertainment can be seen and heard by millions.

Now, what, exactly, is shown in Television? Primarily, there are things called
Television Shows (or Series), which are like Movies, in that Human actors
portray specific characters in certain situations. However, while the characters
remain the same, there are different performances dealing with different
situations on a regular basis. As a result, many of the viewers of these shows
can form a strong attachment to the characters and their messages.

More prominently, there are things called "Advertisements". Some background must
be given before I explain these: For the past century or so, Humans have been
using a strange procedure to manufacture goods. Rather like their nations are
divided, their manufacturers are likewise divided into numerous companies, all
of which manufacture various goods. Advertisements are like very brief shows in
which a specific company will vie for the viewers attention, and by making their
product look more appealing than others, try to get the viewer to think they are
in dire need of whatever product is being advertised. Advertisements tend to be
flashy, fast, and in all other respects generally obnoxious. And even though
they are not supposed to, they probably take up more time on Television than
does anything else.

Now, throughout the time all these forms of Media were being developed, there
was another form, different from the others because it was (supposedly) meant to
provide information, instead of entertainment. This particular part of the Media
is called the Press. The Press is made up of hundreds, even thousands, of
publications rather like books except that they report on current events and
have updated editions published and released on a regular basis. Most of these
publications will claim to be objective, fair reports that are not biased
towards any individual viewpoints. This is a lie. All of these publications are
most definitely biased, some more so than others. And, unfortunately, many of
them are biased in support of the various idiocies plaguing Humans.

I apologize for the time I took to describe the Media, but it is vast and the
explanation was needed. You can probably already see how the Humans minds are
nearly controlled by this semi-organization (it's more of an omnipresent entity,
really). All seperate factions of the Media are constantly pushing various
veiwpoints, ideas, and promotions on their hapless patrons, many of them
conflicting and competing. No doubt this is largely responsible for the
crippling confusion Humans suffer.

Interesting, ain't it, to get an alien's point of view? I wonder if he's met C.S. Lewis; I think I espy some similarities between the letter and a certain trilogy of books that Lewis wrote. How odd.
More to come.

Brace yourselves...

...first post in a looong time:
Any regular readers of mine will notice that I haven't posted in the last, what, month?
This is pretty much because we were moving, and thus our Internet service had to be uprooted and transplanted (more on that irritating little saga later).
We have moved into a big ol' remodeled "A" house (if anyone knows what "A" means, please let me know. As far as I can tell, it means the house was built way back when in the forties). It's a lovely place, but the location is what's really fantastic. You can bike almost anywhere. To a movie, to a fast food place, to the library, to the pool, to church...seemingly everything is a stone's throw away (with the exception of what will be school next year, but even that is significantly closer).
So we have moved to a great house with a great location. That's one bit of news. Second bit:
My birthday was June 23. I am now fifteen. WHEEEEE!! PERMIT TIME!! Can't wait to get out and terrorize the populace in the process of learning to drive. Heheheh...
Third bit:
I am typing this on a computer at the library. Verizon, our ex-ISP, is being a butthead, true to the nature of massive corporate beasts. We have spent the last month grappling with their oh-so-connected highnesses over at Verizon, trying to get the Internet back up at our new place, only to come to this thoroughly irritating conclusion:
We cannot have our good ol' DSL service back, as it isn't provided to our area. So we can either revert back to dialup, or do all our Internet business at the library, as I'm doing now. Fortunately, they do have DSL (or something else fast) here, but the only browser they have is stinkin' old Explorer. I hate Explorer! BAAH!! I want Firefox (my apologies to IE users veiwing this site. It looks great in Firefox, it really does, IMHO).
Lastly, I would like to offer my thoughts on War of the Worlds, which I saw Sunday.
There was something about WW that seemed different from other movies. For one thing, it held my attention for the entire time. Not so with most movies, which tend to have their snore moments. No boring bits here.
Something else about WW, though, that struck me, was that I had never seen a movie quite so...gritty...as this was. This movie is truly a series of unfortunate events. After the first hapless dude gets torched with a heat ray, the three D's (death, doom, and destruction) never let up, until the very end. The only other movie that I've seen that constantly hammers you that way is the Passion. Not that I'm making any other comparisons between the two. Jesus' crucifixion and takeover by hostile aliens are two very different things.
In my opinion, if you are over ten years old (there are rather disturbing bits), and are reasonably fond of sci-fi, you should definitely see this movie. It's not Spielberg's best, but compared to the other films trying to break the schlock-block, it's good stuff.