Alien Resident

Which Is Not At All The Same As A Resident Alien

For one thing, if you, as an alien, are a resident, then you are considerably less likely to be perceived as an alien whom is merely residing.  Trust me on this, because this is where today's Intro is going.  Art!

     Say hello to the two-hit wonders Spacehog, an alternative band from South Canada who originated in The Hostile Lands, also known as 'South Yorkshire' which might sound incorrect but which is entirely correct..  They weren't bad, just not designed for long duration and don't seem to have troubled the charts for about 30 years..  This is where 'Resident Alien' crossed my  vision.  Art!

It's behind you! 

     What you are seeing on-screen here is The Doctor, an entity whom we have covered before: an alien whom has been sentenced to an indeterminate custodial  restrictive term on Earth, thanks to his parent non-interventionist super-culture establishing a few boundaries about interfering with alien civilisations.  Not only that, they altered his appearance without his consent and gapped out bits of his  memory to do with time travel, preventing him from utilising 'his' TARDIS to escape his prison term.  I say 'his' because, to be perfectly frank, he stole the time travel device and he's lucky it was only an ancient Type 41, or he might not have been allowed it.  Art!

CAUTION! Interiors may vary.  And be bigger than the outside.

     One has to say that a beneficent alien such as The Doctor is more of a rarity than one might hope, because to his Yin there is also a Yang, in this case The Master, one of the most corrupt and evil Time Lords to ever exist.  He's less a resident on Planet Earth than an occasional visitor, resting up between ravaging the galaxy and not returning library books.  Art!

"Your fine is now £157.34"

     Nor is that all.  Next up is the 'Servitor of Nox', better known as 'Doomlord', from the pages of the revived 'Eagle' comic of the Eighties.  Art!

     This is 'Servitor Zyn', sent to Earth to judge humanity, which calls for being a resident alien there.  If Hom. Sap. pass muster, all well and good, life goes on.  If you we fail, Zyn will wipe us all  out.  Oooops.  

     I'm sure you've noticed that Zyn is so alarmingly different from a human being that he could help not but draw attention to himself, which would make his mission of watching from the side-lines a tad problematic.  Ha!  Art!

     One of Zyn's more useful abilities is to shapeshift, so that he - or it - can blend into human society without stopping traffic.  This is coupled with a Servitor's ability to copy a person's memory and behaviour, meaning they can blend in seamlessly.  Zyn's methodology is to copy someone's memory, then disintegrate them and assume their place.  This does raise the question of missing persons associated with Zyn, but presumably by the time two and two have been put together, Zyn will have made his life-or-death decision.  Art!

     Zyn's plans are slightly derailed when he is, not to put too fine a point on it, killed stone dead whilst cooking up a batch of virus to kill off Hom. Sap.  That's not the end of the story, because the Dread Council of Nox send another Servitor, Zek, to carry out the assessment.  Thus befalls one of the pitfalls of being a resident alien - Zek 'goes native' and decides that humanity has a few redeeming qualities, so his project is to reform them.  Before the Dread Council kills him.  No pressure, then.  Art!

     Probably the most famous resident alien of all, here Superman informs the villains that they can't park there.  We are fortunate indeed that his spaceship crash-landed in Kansas and he grew up with the background of a corn-fed South Canadian youth, all gung-ho for truth, justice and Mom's apple pie.  There is an alternative version of this story where he lands in Soviet Russia, and helps the Bolshevik regime keep their slave population under control.  Interesting twist, nicht wahr?  Art!

     Well, eventually Conrad gets to the meat of the matter, which is a Netflix series called 'Resident Alien', starring Alan Tudyk.  He plays the titular alien, whose name is impossible for humans to pronounce, and is on a mission rather similar to Doomlord's: exterminate the human race.  Art!

A comedy-drama

     Our interstellar visitor in his human form and what he looks like in reality.  He isn't gifted with the assimilation abilities of Doomlord, so he has to Google, Youtube and variously scan teh Interwebz in order to acquire medical skills, as he has assumed the physical form of a visiting doctor, Harry Vanderspeigle.  Thanks to the town doctor being murdered.  O and a young boy is able to see his true form, causing Harry to plot his murder.  Completely ineffectively, lest ye be worried.  

     It ran for four seasons and ended in August this year.  So we shall see.  Or at least I will and shall report back, which is almost as good.

Completed!

I finally completed the 'Blue Kazoo Train' jigsaw last night, or as complete as it's going to get, because there are 3 pieces missing.  Art!

     Sorry about the lighting, the room was pretty dark and I was working with a single spotlight.  Try and spot the three missing pieces for extra brownie points.

More Of Modern-day Mordor's Misery

It keeps on getting worse, by the week now rather than the month as it was before August - you know, when Budanov and his little flying friends began imposing 'kinetic sanctions' <wink wink>.  Today, thanks to the diligence of 'Joe Blogs' we look at 'Alrosa', the Ruffian diamond mining franchise.  Art!

     They're a bigger employer than I realised, having 35,000 employees.  Or had 35,000 employees, past tense, because the same litany of woe familiar from other Ruffian businesses has stricken them.  10% of their non-mining staff have been cut and unprofitable mines are being closed, profits are down as the global price of diamonds has dropped, domestic demand is weak and - sanctions.  Economic ones, not the kinetic variety.


Military But Different

Conrad is definitely a land warfare buff and knows very little about anything with propellors, either ones in the air or underwater.  However - yes that word again! - I do know what I like looking at in terms of aircraft.  Art!

     Here we have the B-58 'Hustler' bomber from the Fifties, and a sleek lady she is.  Conrad is convinced that they asked 'How much engine do you want?' and the response was 'Yes'.  Any spare airframe on the schematics?  What the heck, add another engine.

The Stupidity And The Irony, It Vapourises

I, for one, would be careful of taking on 'AOC', or Anna Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic lawmaker from New York.  She has a quick wit and a sharp tongue.  Art!

     Boorish Orange Oaf Himself constantly confuses the dementia test he was given with an IQ test, which is hilariously ironic in itself.  Him calling anyone else 'low IQ' is a case of the pot calling the entire kitchen black.

"Hello Mr. President!" Ocasio-Cortez posted to X. "Out of curiosity, did those doctors ask you to draw a clock by any chance? Was that part hard for you, too? Asking for 340 million people."

     This rather baffled me until I did a bit of digging and got this info:

a quick cognitive screening tool where you are asked to draw a clock, include all the numbers, and set the hands to a specific time, often 10 minutes past 11

     One rather suspects that Mister Zeppelin Ego is going to regret insulting this firecracker.  Better lay in extra supplies of popcorn!

     That's the result for 'Donald Trump drawing with a crayon' as a prompt, and the AI Art Generator came up with the orange completely on it's own.

     That's probably put me on the watch lists of ICE, the FBI, Homeland Security and the DEA <makes rude gesture>.