You know what I liked most about being a liason to the aliens of the Third Expedition? Screwing with their minds.

Sure, there were always other human functionaries around who would've make my ass into an umbrella holder if they'd caught me at it, but that just added to the fun, and anyway they couldn't speak ?'!a, so they never knew exactly what I was saying. As for me, I speak ?'!a like a native. If you learn enough languages when you're a kid, after a while learning another one is like finding your underpants after an orgy: inconvenient, time-consuming, and sometimes sticky, but almost always doable.

This one time we were driving past the Washington Monument and I said to the aliens, "See that obelisk? It was built to the exact reported size of George Washington's phallus." (They double checked their information repositories here to make sure they weren't misunderstanding. You should've seen the expression on their tentacles.) "I'm not going to go into details, but ... listen, ever heard the phrase 'father of our country'? George Washington. Honest to God truth. But people don't usually like to talk about this stuff in polite society. I wouldn't mention it if I were you."

Or last month, when we kept seeing people walking dogs. "You can tell whether the human owns the dog or the dog owns the human by who's choosing the direction they go in. See that little brown dog over there? One tug and they're on a side street. The human's definitely the pet there. The dogs keep them in little plastic rooms lined with newspaper at night. But people get touchy if you get the owner wrong. I wouldn't mention it if I were you."

So now that I've been kidnapped and am being brought back to their home planet in preparation for what sounds like a bitch of an invasion, of course I'm as scared as a man with a incontinent seagull on his new hat--but I also have all kinds of new possibilities. And who knows? Maybe I can even bend things a little in our favor.

"Hey," I say. "Did I ever tell you what happened to the last batch of aliens that visited earth? It was a pretty distressing situation: I wouldn't mention it if I were you. But here's the thing: you know how we've only got one moon now?" …