I'm Matt Champagne. Watch me type things at you.
ATROPHIED BLOG
Go ahead. Call him Gollum.
In central China recently, in the village of Gezhai (Henan province), a bunch of people were so freaked out at this cute little guy that they thought he was an alien. It’s actually an atrophied ape (duh, I mean, look at it; that’s obviously an atrophied ape), but the first woman who saw it stealing cucumbers from her—I don’t know, where do you keep cucumbers? a cucumber vault?—thought it was an alien. And then the whole village thought it was an alien. And then Rod Serling walked out from behind a tree in a tweed blazer smoking a Kent and said: “A strange visitor. A small village. A slight misunderstanding. And I’m talking about me and how I ended up in central China in this suit. Forget that freaky little monkey and let’s figure out how to get me out of here. And then something about the fuckin’ Twilight Zone.”
The headline actually said the villagers “mistook” the atrophied ape for an alien. Which suggests that at some point previously they met some alien that looked like this ape and thought it was him. “Oh! That’s an atrophied ape? Weird. ‘Cause I could’ve sworn it was Grolmax from FK-642. Same hindquarters, same weird nose, same fucked up eyes. My bad.” Awkward, right? It must’ve been like: “Hey Grolmax! What’s goin’ on, man? Oh. I’m sorry. You’re not Grolmax. You’re just an atrophied ape. Carry on.”
Did finding out that it was an atrophied ape and not an alien calm everyone down? If so, how? Why would that be better? “Hey, everyone! Calm down! It’s not an alien! It’s just an atrophied ape! Don’t worry.” See: I don’t believe in aliens, but until now I also didn’t believe in atrophied apes. And now that I know they exist and look like that, I’m really wishing it was an alien. I’m freaked out that it’s not an alien. Like, I need that thing to be an alien. What a disappointment that it’s an ape. Because now I can’t go up to it and say: “Look, this is really exciting that out of all the planets in the galaxy you’ve chosen ours to visit, but you gotta get the hell outta here because we’ll hurt you if you stay.”
I have always wanted to say that to an alien: “We will hurt you if you stay.”
I remain
Champagne
