idk

— (via young-n-rckless)

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”

Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”

Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.” 

Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”

Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”

Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”

Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.” 

“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”

“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”

“… well, actually…”

“… what?”

“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”

“…”

“…”

“…what?”

“we sent-”

“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”

“y-yeah”

“and they didn’t… die?”

“Well the first few did”

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”

aka The History of Russia

aka Arctic Exploration

1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.

2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)

3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.

4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)

Like, an alien invasion is about to start and the book is a chronicle of how the aliens couldn’t handle both humans in general and the range of environments and ended up being destroyed through the eyes of one of the aliens.

Like a caption from the book would be something like

“So we sent a recon team to this place called Russia, but all we’ve heard back thus far is about the temperatures, giant monsters with fur the humans call “Bears”, and that once again, we have been reminded of how heavily well armed almost ever human settlement is.

Thus far we have lost more than a good chunk of our forces through experiments gone wrong, unsuccessful fire fights, and above all else, the humans seem to be more worried about these strange variation of their species calling themselves “Clowns”.

I don’t know what a Clown is, but sounds as if it is the dominant faction of this planet, and considering we only just found out humans practically poison themselves with this thing called beer and only get stronger and more violent, I don’t ever want to encounter such a being.

“Human Colony SDO435**, this is Gxanimi survey vessel 3489. We regret that we must inform you that the wreckage of your ship ‘Gecko Flyer’ has just been detected on planet F56=K=. We offer expressions of sympathy for this catastrophe.”

“Shit, thanks for telling us, we’ll be right there.”

“Why?”

“To find our people, of course.”

“… you wish to retrieve the corpses for your traditional death rituals, of course, we understand. We have sent the coordinates.”

“What do you mean, bodies? No survivors at all? There must be some.”

“Official mouthpiece of Human Colony SDO435**, the ship has crashed. It has impacted the planet’s surface at speed. Moreover, this might have happened as much as five vek ago. We do not understand why you speak of ‘survivors’.”

“Oh, there’ll be survivors. There always are.”

“(closes hyperspace voicelink) How sad that they are unable to accept the reality of their loss.”

*

“Hey, Gxanimi survey vessel 3489, thanks for letting us know about the Gecko Flyer. More than half the crew made it!”

“Made what?”

“They survived! A couple of lost limbs and so on, but they’ll be fine.”

“… but that vessel was destroyed! Images have been examined!”

“Oh, well, everyone in the fore-below compartment was crushed, obviously, but the others made it out.”

“… but the crash was vek ago! Excuse we… at least eighty of your ‘days’! How could they survive without a ship? Without shelter and supplies?”

“Well, the wreckage gave them some shelter, and of course the emergency supplies kept them going until they could start growing stuff. It’s actually a nice little planet, they said. Quite a lot of edible flora and fauna. T-shirt weather, in summer, too.”

“What is… t-shirt weather?”

“Oh, you know, when it’s comfortable to go around with only modesty covering over the epidermis. Exposed limbs.”

“That planet is so cold that even water solidifies in its atmosphere!”

“Well, in winter, obviously. But we like that. Listen, our people have been raising crops down there, and that’s usually how we rule a planet as ‘colonized’…. is anyone else using it, or can we call it?”

“Er… we have claimed the warmer planets in the system, but we believe we could come to some arrangement.”

*

It was really nice, the humans thought, how carefully most of the aliens kept an eye out for downed ships after that, once they found out that humans tended to survive anything less than explosive decompression or… well, explosions generally. They’d immediately inform the nearest outpost of a wreck’s location, or even ship survivors back themselves. It was very thoughtful.

They didn’t find out until a long time later that the Gxanimi had put out the word to every species they were in contact with. It was vital that everyone knew the things they had learned about humans after that first encounter.

1. Humans can literally walk away from an impact that renders a space-worthy hull so much scrap and would have actually liquefied a Gxanimi.

2. Humans will eat just about anything not immediately fatal to them - including, in extremis, the corpses of their dead crewmates. In fact, most human vessels keep a list of those willing to be eaten and those whose socio-religious scruples forbid it. They have a ridiculously high tolerance for dangerous substances, and if they can breathe on a planet they can probably eat something on it too. They also have something they call the ‘Watney Protocol’, which requires them to carry live soil samples, seeds, and simple tools that will allow them to start farming their own native foodstuffs on any remotely habitable planet immediately in the event of an accident.

3. Once they’ve farmed a planet, they bond with it. They’ll be polite, but it’ll take significant effort to get rid of them even so.

Conclusion: If a human ship crashes on a planet you like and want to keep, get other humans to come and get them immediately. Remove them yourself if you have to. Even the worst crash can result in a thriving colony in a few vek.

It was spring 2014, early in the week.  Pretty sure it was a Tuesday, but it’s been awhile.  It was so dead in our store, I hadn’t seen anyone in over 40 minutes.  Eventually, in comes this mom and we start chatting.  She said she was here to buy her son a game he wanted, Grand Theft Auto 5, and could I help her find it?

Now, I’m sure many of you are aware how awful Grand Theft Auto 5 is in terms of violence, gore, and sexism.  But in case you don’t, the Grand Theft Auto series has always been one of the most violent series that you can buy in stores.  The very first GTA was banned in Brazil and condemned in several countries, GTA 5 has a graphic torture scene that is player initiated.  GTA: San Andreas had the Hot Coffee scandal which happened in 2004 when modders found unused code in the game for a sex minigame that was player controlled.  And that’s only the beginning of the controversies surrounding the GTA series (click here to read more! X X X X X X X )

Anyways, back to me and the Mom.  Who will now be referred to as Mom because she is that awesome.  Since I was behind the counter I pulled a copy of GTA 5 from backstock and started ringing her up while making polite chitchat, the usual cashier stuff.  But everything changed when I asked for her ID because of the M rating.  At first Mom replied, “Oh sure thing let me grab it.”  And started digging in her purse.  But then what I said registered with her and she paused and looked at me.

“M rating?  What does that mean?”

“Oh GTA 5 is rated M for violence, gore, bad language, and other stuff”.  I won’t bore you with the whole spiel I go into when I’m asked about the M rating but basically I just explain why the game is rated M, what the M rating means, and that they can go on ESRB.org to see why it got that rating. 

So I tell Mom about the website and she whips out her cell phone and gets on the site and starts reading.  And she got MAD.  She starts telling me about how her son knows she doesn’t like this sort of game and how he is going to be in so much trouble because he knows better than to ask for this sort of thing as she doesn’t tolerate this in her house.  And he is so grounded for thinking he could get away with this.  Then, Mom looked me in the eye and asked me to look up several other games for her to see if he’d done this with any other games.

“Yea sure thing, which games would you like me to look up?”

“Bioshock 2.”

“I can already tell you without looking that Bioshock 2 is rated M.”

“MY CHILD IS SO GROUNDED FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR.  What about the first Bioshock?”

“Yep, that’s also rated M.”

“OH MY GOSH, what about Gears of War?”

“That entire series is rated M.”

To spare y’all from another 10 rounds of that, basically take every popular M rated title from the last 5 years and insert them in the above dialogue. 

Eventually, Mom says “Oh my gosh, you must think me a horrible parent.  I can’t believe I let him have those games.”

“Ma’am, I don’t think that at all.  The fact that you’re concerned about this tells me that you are a good parent.  And just so you know instead of throwing out those games you’re more than welcome to trade them in here and get some store credit or cash back for them.”

“Really?  I’ll have to do that, I don’t want him playing those games anymore.”

“Yea, we also take gaming consoles, iphones, and tablets too!”

“Oh that’s wonderful!  Thank you for being so patient with me and telling me all about this. I’m going home and to go through his gaming collection right now!”

And off she went, leaving me bored till I finally got to leave for the night. 

BUT THAT’S NOT THE END.  THIS IS WHEN SHIT GETS AWESOME.

The next day I’m working again, bored out of my goddamn mind.  There’s only so many times you can alphabetize the store before going insane.  As I’m looking out the window I see a car pull up and Mom hops out and then pulls out two huge duffel bags and walks in.

“Hey welcome back to Gamestop!  What can I help you with!”

“Oh I’m so glad you’re here!  So last night I went through my son’s game collection and most of them are rated M!  So I decided to teach him a lesson about why you don’t lie to your mother.  Seeing as I bought him these consoles and most of the games were bought with my money, his game consoles and games actually belong to me.  Therefore, I would like to trade in all this.“  And proceeds to pull out his XBox 360, PS3, and every game he had for both consoles (over 50!) as well all the extra controllers and headsets he had. 

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.“  I will never forget her smile when she said this nor the look in her eye.  This is not a woman to be crossed.

So I traded everything in and she got back over $300 in store credit for everything.  And with it she bought a Wii, a couple extra controllers, and a couple games rated E.  Then she looked me in the eye and asked if we had any extra boxes laying around for the XBox One and if so could she have one?

“Are you going to put the Wii in it and give it to him?“ 

“Yes.  Along with a note saying that this is what happens when you abuse the trust of your mother.  I’m going to make sure this never happens again.“  It is at this point that Mom ascended to God Tier status with all Gamestop employees falling to their knees for a chance to bask in her glory. 

I got her an XBox One box and sent her on her way after asking her to take the survey on the receipt. 

“Oh of course dear, you’ve been such a big help.  Let me write down your name so I don’t forget it.”

“Of course!  I’m Lexi, but if your son asks my name is Deegan.“  (Deegan was my store’s manager at the time. 

If they pull the “company policy” line, ask to see it.  Ask to see it in writing.  Ask to see that they have put in writing that you will be performing 15 minutes unpaid work every day.  Check your contract. 

Teamwork is dreamwork