IT'S A KITTASTROPHE

Snoozie and Ralseepy

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/05/what_state_prisoners_get_to_wo.html

You start a game of Little Guy by saying, "I'm gonna hand you a little guy." The little guy is some kind of baby animal you are imagining. "Oh," she might say in response, "Okay," and hold out her hands for it. I will then mime handing her the animal. This provides some clues as to the little guy's size, weight, and general ungainliness.

She then gets to ask questions about what kind of little guy this is, BUT NO QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS ACTUAL APPEARANCE OR SPECIES ARE ALLOWED. Qualitative questions, or questions about his behavior, are the only ones permitted. She can ask "Is he soft?" or "Does he seem nervous about being held?" or "If I put him in the bathtub, does he seem okay with that?" or "Would he like a lil grape?" or "Is he the sort of little fellow who would wear a vest in a children's book?" but not "Does he have fur," "Is he a reptile," "Is he from Asia," etc. Some questions are in a grey area so you have to follow your heart, but the point is not to identify the animal as fast as possible: the point is to guess the animal purely based on vibes + how he would act if he were in your living room right now.

And I'm not limited to yes or no answers! If she asks, "Would it feel appropriate to see this little guy in a propeller hat?" I can reply, "Oh no, he has a gravity to him. A bowler hat would be a more appropriate hat." Or if she asks, "Does this little guy have protagonist energy?" I can say something like, "he probably wouldn't be the main character in a children's cartoon. He'd probably be the main character's ditzy best friend who's always eating sandwiches, or something."

Space (and stars) are a much newer concept to Erid, at least relative to us. They cannot perceive stars. They can't even see their own sky.

And then here we are, utterly obsessed. The number of songs, movies, and TV shows that reference stars, the moon, our sun, it's light, astronauts, space — we can hardly go five minutes without bringing up at least one of those things. NONE of them are things Eridians have an established affinity for; to them, they're scientific concepts, and that's pretty much it.

And yet, stars are one of the first things our kids learn how to draw. We have a specific name for the connections we trace between them, and those constellations have been built into thousands of years of our history. We fought a proxy war based on who could get to them the fastest. I absolutely believe that, to Erid, this would be our defining characteristic above and beyond anything else.