The Structure of Interpersonal Relationships as Basis for Society

On Earth you can't just walk up to anyone and go, “Hi! You wanna play?” That's actually the worst way to find someone to play with. Earthlings are weird about doing something just because they flat out enjoy it. Laughter must be balanced with at least ten times as much not-laughter, which must be why if word gets out that you want to laugh and play right off the bat they think something is wrong with you. They won't play with strangers; you have to be friends first.

And Earthling friendships require an unbelievable amount of time and memory. I've never been able to maintain much more than one friendship for any length of time.

Here's just some of the things you need to know when you have an Earthling friend

Name - First and Last

There are suffixes you can add to a friend's name to indicate you think of them as a friend: -ster, -arino, -man, -san. You can also rhyme their name with another noun to give them a “nickname”. “Stan the Man” (common), “Larry the Cherry” (unattested). Generally, the more you abbreviate a friend's name, the closer you are, ie. Robert – Rob – Roh – R. If you can get a friend's name down to a glottal stop, you've peeked.

Means of Income

Enjoy? (Hint: Most don't)

Approximate Age (Hint: Always guess low and be surprised to find out it's higher)

Married? Dating? Divorced? Cause of Divorce/Death?

Name of partner and its means of income, if any

How well they get along with partner (Usually, they just had a fight)

If separated from partner, reason for separation. (Hint: It's always the partner's fault.)

Sexual Preferences

The greater the friendship, the greater the detail

(Note: never GUESS that they are gay. And never ask. You HAVE to deduce this from context.)

Names of Parents & Siblings

Are they living or dead?

Get along with? (See: Offspring. It's the same, only in reverse.)

Name(s) of offspring & approximate age(s)

How are they doing is school?

Are they sexually active yet? (find out their ages before asking this.)

How do they get along with each other/parents? (Hint: This will deteriorate as they get older then reverse itself.)

Names of other friends

Favorite music (Usually whatever they listened to in high school)

Pet peeves

Who do they like?

Who do they hate, even if for no reason? (You have to hate them, too.)

And there's a lot more. A real lot. All of this must be kept in easy reach at all times. No you can't write it down. If you do write it down, you can't refer to your notes during encounters.

The amazing thing is how adept Earthlings are at juggling this information. I've seen them hang out with as many as ten friends at once, and keep it all straight.

Another thing about friendships is you have to be proactive. All the time you have to be calling, returning the calls of, writing, thinking about, considering the feelings of, and whatever-ing your friends. It's a major pain. And if you're out somewhere and you run into a friend, only it's been a while, and you never returned those calls, forget it. It's worse than starting from zero. Especially if you can't come up with an on-the-spot-good excuse why you didn't call back. (Note: “Didn't feel like it” and “Had nothing really to say to you” are not on-the-spot-good excuses. The truth is usually a bad idea here.*)

All the rules are another thing.

Here's just one of the rules you have to try to remember: Say they invite you over to share a meal. And you know you should bring something just to be nice. So you ask them what you should bring. They tell you not to bring anything. You insist you should bring something. They say, no, no, they have too much food as it is. Bring nothing. So you bring nothing. Therefore, they will never ask you over again.

Another one is which of the Earthlings of the other sex you can talk to. You need a flowchart to keep that straight.

And without warning the rules can change. There was a time in my life here when I could sit on a couch and go poo. They even gave me special pants to wear for it. Now? Nope. Even your family might not forgive you for getting that one wrong. And I'm not even sure when the change took place. Just one day, they stopped putting the special pants on me. And I was supposed to know.

Eye contact

Oh, my god, eye contact. I swear I'll never get that one right. There is a fraction of a nanosecond's difference between too much, too little, and just right. And it varies by situation. What's right on a date is really wrong at the gym. I almost have had to have sex so many times because of it. So mostly I don't make eye contact. And I don't have a lot of Earthling friends. It's too complicated.

You have to care too, even when it's not fun. Like when they're sick or depressed.

“You're sick? Well, could you tell me about it from over there? Because I really don't appreciate you breathing on me right now. Yes, I care. But a real friend wouldn't breath on another friend when he's sick. It's just courtesy.”

OR: “You feel sad? Is it the same cause as yesterday? Because, if it is, I think you exhausted all the info I needed then. You're mom died, right? Yes, we talked about it. You're sad. I told you I was sad for you. After that, there really isn't a lot to talk about and I've got a lawn to mow. Let me know when you feel better and we can play again.” (These are what not to say. Honesty – again – not the best course of action.)

To help, there are boilerplate phrases you can memorize for initiating conversation:

“Great minds think alike.” (Upon encountering a friend in the bathroom.)

“Hey, look what the cat dragged in.” (Upon a friend entering you presence.)

“Ut. There he is.” (See above.)

“S'up?”

“Working hard or hardly working?” (At work.)

“Can't complain. They won't do anything anyway.” (In reference to work)

“Did you watch the [team name] last night?” (I'll have to get into sports in another report.)

Subjects It Really Helps To Know Something About - Men

Cars

Basic Carpentry/Masonry/Wiring

All Major Sports (Watching)

Becalming Women

Jokes

Yard Work

Small Engine Repair

How large that woman's breasts are

Farts

Subjects It Really Helps To Know Something About – Women

Clothes

Being The Responsible One

Something You Read

Feelings

Childcare Philosophies

What Another Friend Did In A Similar Situation

Meal Prep

Stain Removal

Subjects It Doesn't Help At All To Know Something About,
& I'm Coming To Think Are Detrimental

Linguistics

Byzantine Empire (even knowing it existed, let alone that it was the eastern Roman Empire)

Anthropology

Evolution

Any History Other Than War Own Nation Was Involved In

The Historical Jesus

Particle Physics

Astronomy

Any Science, Really

Neurology, Say

And I could go on all night.

Observer003 - Earthlings

*”Here” being this situation. Come to think of it, though, this also applies to Earth in general.

Basic Earthling Economics: Simplicity Made Complex

Economics is their study of how to make more and more money. Economists are Earthlings who use a lot of charts and big words to make it seem complicated, so they can have jobs.

Earthlings have a lot of different jobs that they don't need, I guess because there's so many of Earthlings. For instance, some of them have a job where they have sex in front of other people as entertainment. Others go around digging up really old things to try and figure out who used to own them and what they were like. Earthlings don't really like people who don't have jobs. It's like, “C'mon. Look at this guy. He sits in a room and lets strangers tell him how crappy their life is. So don't tell me you can't come up with something.” They find their unemployed a little suspect.

Which makes me wonder when they evolved into all these jobs. Because when they started out, it was hunt/gather. Not a lot of nuance. I mean, maybe they would wake up in the morning and the day just felt a little “wooly mammoth”. Or perhaps “gazelle” was just calling to them. “Nuts, nuts, nuts. I'm tired of nuts. Let's make today a fruit day.” “Shaman” was the first step on the long road that's led to blogger.

Anyway, economics.

Of all the things that Earthlings do, economics is the simplest to explain. It's this: all Earthlings strive toward getting more stuff with less effort. That's it.

Some of them have gotten to where they don't have to work at all. And, as best as I can tell, they did it by having the right ancestor at the right time. They all have some ancestor who did something ridiculously unscrupulous at a time when it was still legal to do it. Or maybe not even legal. They just got away with it for long enough and were smart enough to stop in time. Or make friends with the right people so they could keep doing it forever. There is no getting rich on Earth by being nice. They say they want everyone to be nice, but they build systems that reward people who aren't.

Right now, though, most of them have to work for their money. So, employers want to get the most out of their employees while giving them the least. And employees want to get the most out of their employers while giving them the least. This is why employers think that their workers are lazy and employees thing their employers are heartless.

But they are all always working toward their ideal economy, which would be where everyone just hands around a big stack of money to each other. Which they would the invent a machine to do for them. Which they could so easily do. It's right there in front of them. They have banks. All they have to do is make a really big one and put a billion – whatever money units – in it. Everybody gets an account and it's all electronic. They put the billion dollars in one person's account. And then it would immediately transfers to the next person's account. And then the next. And then the next. All the way around the world.

And since it's electronic, it all happens at the speed of light. So, at any given moment, everybody has a billion dollars. Anytime they want something they just go out and buy it. The person they buy it from gets the money in their account and it all starts shooting around the world again.

This is also how they can make evolution select for nice people, too, instead of jerks, like it does now. Jerk Earthlings have a huge advantage, the way economy works now, because

a) if the jerk is their boss, they have to put up with it, because they need the job

b) if it's a customer, they have to put up with it, because they need the money

c) even if it's a co-worker, they have to put up with it because they still need the job

d) sometimes Earthlings will just give the jerk whatever they want, just to get rid of them

So the jerks always get their way and rise to the top and the nice people are stuck at the bottom.

In the new system, the jerk Earthlings have no leverage. If Earthlings want somebody to fix their house, they have to find somebody who does that just because they like doing it. They can't jerk them into doing it. They have to nice them into doing it.

So I predict all the jerk genes would die out within one generation.

• Observer003 – Earthlings

Earthling Failure Desire as Indicator of Primitive Hunter/Gatherer Work Egalitarianism

Earthlings have a need for futility. They go out of their way for it. They even have special buildings and clothing just for getting futile things done. Then they stand at mirrors and admire how futile they've been. They call this whole thing “exercise”.

And they do this by taking things that used to have a point and removing it. See, they go to these places called “gyms” in order to lift up a lot of heavy things. This would make sense if they had a lot of heavy things they needed about three feet higher, but they don't. Because after they lift it, they let it back down. This seems to need a lot of practice because they don't just do it one time, they do it over and over, many times a week.

I think it came from when they used to have to hunt, and failed, mostly. Nowadays they can eat right away. It's just: Hungry? Eat. Hungry? Eat. All day long. It just doesn't feel right to them to succeed all the time. So they invented exercise.

Also, there is danger in it. Look: They take a heavy iron bar, and add a bunch of weight to it. Then they lie down under it and see how many times they can lift it up off their chest. The goal is to try it one more time than they actually can. If they risk crushing their trachea, they're doing it right. If there is no danger of this, they add more weight.

And running. Running used to be for getting somewhere, or away from somewhere, faster than walking. Now it's for getting all the way around back to where they started. They could have just stayed there and be done with it. (I've never seen one Earthling who looked like they enjoyed running. Mostly they look like their face is melting.)

And they've even invented the treadmill to make running even more futile. It makes it so they don't even move forward at all, no matter how fast they run. They can even adjust it to make sure they don't move uphill, either.

They even invented a portable single stair staircase. They get immediately to the top and have to go back down again. They make this failure by starting to go up a step but, since there isn't one, they have to put the foot back down behind them. Then they fail with the other leg.

Now, after a few generations of this, they've forgotten any of this stuff had a purpose to begin with. They're just making up the weirdest stuff they can.

“Swing your arms here, now here. Up here. Down here. Bend at the waist and palm the floor. Palm the sky. Palm the floor. Kick, kick, kick, kick. Look like a tree!”

I don't know why Earthling females need to fail. Maybe the finding of fruits and nuts is a challenge, but after that, the gathering is all downhill. It's not as easy as going to the grocery store, but it's not like they had to run down the banana. Beat it with a stick. Maybe be the female's equal need for failure indicates a more egalitarian division of work than Earthling anthropologists currently suppose. Their women hunted, too. And so developed the failure need right alongside the males.

Observer003 - Earthlings

Exodus as Big Red Flag

I've mentioned the Jews a couple of times now, so I guess I should tell you their story. The Jews lived a long time ago. They still live now, but back then they were the Israelites. Or the Hebrews. They had a funny god named Yahweh who liked them so much, he said he was going to treat them special. And if there's one thing you don't want as an Earthling, it's to be treated special by Yahweh. He had some issues. They have whole books of it.

He liked them because of this one guy, Abraham, and told him he was going to make a whole country out of how many kids he was going to have. Then he forgot about it and wandered off. And Abraham's kids moved to Egypt. They were there for a while, but the king of the Egyptians, Pharaoh, started to get nervous because the Hebrews were breeding like rabbits. So he made them work harder, thinking they'd have less time for sex. But they kept at it. So he made them work even harder. But I guess the Hebrews really liked sex. So Pharaoh said, “Well, I guess I'm going to have to kill some of them, then. Just the kids, though.”

Luckily there was one Hebrew woman who had no concept of probabilities. She put her kid in a basket and sent him floating down the river.

* * * * *

The things that could go wrong with you floating your baby down a river:

1. Basket leaks, baby drowns - likely
2. Alligators - likely
3. Death from exposure - likely
4. Just keeps floating out into the ocean and is never heard from again - likely
5. Somebody just as bad off as you will find it and raise it – really, the best that could be hoped for.
6. A rich Egyptian woman will find it and raise it – not likely at all

* * * * *

So a rich Egyptian woman did find the baby and raised him as her own. She called him Moses. And he grew up to be a big guy in Egypt until he killed another Egyptian for beating on a Hebrew. So Moses beat feet out of Egypt and hid out as a sheep raiser.

It was round about then that Yahweh remembered the Hebrews and how he was supposed to give them a big piece of land to live in. He looked around and saw they were all down in Egypt and Pharaoh was being hard on them. Yahweh took this personally because he thought it meant that Pharaoh didn't think he was much of a god and could treat his people any way he wanted.

So Yahweh looked around some more and saw Moses tending his flocks and dropped down to visit him as a burning bush.

* * * * *

Right here, this should have been a big tip off for Moses. Of all possible incarnations, Yahweh chooses this one? I can imagine him sitting in his – office? on the pot? garden? I really don't know where Yahweh did his thinking. But he's going over his list of how to appear to Moses.

1. Jackal-headed man
2. Pure, non-blinding light
3. Blemish-free white bull
4. Storm cloud (good, but might want to save that one)
5. Old, but muscular, man
6. Fawn
7. Frog (May cause confusion later)
8. Fire (hmmmm...)
9. Shrub? (Hey!)
10. Burning Shrub!!!

And Moses doesn't even question this. I think if I was out tending my flocks and a burning bush started talking to me, I'd think I'd been out tending my flocks too long. But Moses buys right in. Of course this is Yahweh, the god of my people. How else would you explain it?

* * * * *

So Yahweh goes, “Moses. Over here.”

“No, not behind the burning bush. I am the burning bush. I appear to you as a burning bush – for reasons that are my own. For who is more inscrutable that the Lord?”

“Surely no one.”

“You got that right. Anyway, I'm glad you're here. I need your help with a problem. My people are suffering down in Egypt.”

“Yeah, I know. I was just there.”

“And you're going back.”

“Eesh. Love to, but I can't. Things are a little hot for me down there right now. You see, I -”

“Yes, I know what you did. Don't worry about it. I'll protect you. I need you to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go.”

“You can't do that?”

“No. It won't work if I do it.”

“How come?”

“Because I'm not going to let him let my people go.”

“Oh, okay.” Moses said. “Really? What? You're not going to let him let your people go?”

“No. Because I want to show him what a tough guy I am. I'm going to send him all these plagues and frogs so everybody learns not to mess with me.”

“Really? What about your people?”

“I'll get to them. Don't worry about them. I've go this really sweet piece of real estate picked out for them. Place literally flows with milk and honey. You're going to love it.”

“Wow. And no one else has found it yet?”

“Actually – well, we'll get to that later. First you've got to go tell Pharaoh to let my people go. I need you to get up in his face and go, 'Let my people go! Let my people go!' ”

“But you're not going to let him let your people go.”

“At first? No. But eventually. It's all in the plan.”

“Okay, but why do I have to keep going to him when you're not-”

“Jesus Christ, will you just do it? I don't have to explain everything to you. You know enough. You've just got to trust that I've got it all worked out.”

So Moses went up to Pharaoh. The first time, Moses turned his stick into a snake to put a little fear into him. And Pharaoh is like, “Whoop-di-doo. Even my guys can do that.” I don't think Yahweh even had to harden his heart on that one.

The next time, Moses turned all the water in Egypt into blood. Like something from a horror movie. But Yahweh hardened Pharaoh's heart and he said, “No, you can't go.”

The time after that, Yahweh hit them with a plague of frogs. Frogs everywhere.

“I woke up and there” - this is Pharaoh talking now - “There was one staring me right in the eye. I freaked. I was, like, 'Blah! Blah! Get out of here!' Then I jumped out of bed and almost skidded out the window. Those things are slick. You ever step on one? Gross. And they were all over. You can't walk anywhere because you have to watch every step. I was in a meeting and one jumped up and hit a eunuch right in the face. That was funny, though. It was like a big wet slap in the face. Psshh.”

And Moses goes, “So let my people go.”

And Pharaoh starts to waver, because it's, like, frogs.

* * * * *

How do you even come up with that? In a hundred years of coming up with bad things to do to people, I would never come up with frogs. Or, if I did, I would just giggle and move on. Frogs. Jeezus.

* * * * *

But, anyway, just as he was about to give in, Yahweh hardened his heart.

“You know what? This is bad. So why don't you – no.”

“No?”

“No, you can't go.”

“But you were about to say something else.”

“Yeah, I was gonna – No.”

Moses looks up at the sky, then back at Pharaoh.

“You're sure?”

“Ah, to hell with – No.”

The time after that, I think it was locusts. They are bugs that eat everything.

And by the third time, Moses was just like, “Let my people go.”

“No.”

“Okay.”

And he started to go, but Pharaoh goes, “You know, it really doesn't seem like your heart is in this anymore.”

“Huh? Oh, no, no. I meant it. It's just that – well, I guess our god has got some issues to work out. And I need to apologize for that.”

“Oh, gods. Pshaw. Don't get me started. We've got gods with bird heads. I mean, you've heard of bird-brained? These guys have whole bird heads.”

Moses nods. “Yeah. Yeah. You know, when this whole thing is over, we should sit down and have a beer. Our god – Well, if I had known going in, I might have, well – Never the easy way with this one, I'll say that.”

“Yeah, and you know – and definitely about that beer by the way – but I'm really sorry about this whole not letting you go thing. 'Cause it's weird. Every day I wake up and say, 'I really should let these people go. I mean, I really have no reason to keep them.' But then it's like somebody flips a switch and I get all jerk about it.”

Moses just nodded and left.

“I'll call you about that beer. That's one thing I'll miss about this place. You guys brew some kick ass beer.”
 

Next came hail. Which had to be a hard threat to sell for Moses. What did Pharaoh know from frozen water? He lived in a desert. Regular water falling from the sky was rare enough, but frozen water falling from the sky? So Moses had to explain hard bits of water falling from the sky, which he had never seen himself.

“Hard water? I don't get it. Water isn't hard. Look, I can put my had right through it.”

“Right, but this is going to be water you can't put your hand through.”

“Why not?”

“Because it's hard.”

“What do you mean, 'it's hard'? Water is water. It doesn't get hard.”

“But – Look. From what I understand it's going to be almost like rock falling from the sky.”

“So rocks are going to fall from the sky.”

“No. Hard water.”

“Okay, look. Whatever. We've had water fall from the sky before. It doesn't happen often, but, to tell the truth, I kinda liked it. It's breaks up the monotony of sun, sun, sun all the time. So Yahweh can make hard water fall from the sky for forty days and forty nights for all I care. Bring it on.”

* * * * *

Really, if you're going to make a threat, you have to make sure the guy understands the threat, or else it doesn't work.

* * * * *

So this is when things really started to get dark. Yahweh told Moses to smear lamb's blood over all the Hebrews' door jambs because he's going to kill all the first born in Egypt, Earthlings and cows. (Yahweh had a thing for firstborns.) The lamb's blood would tell him which houses to skip. (I know. This from Mr. Omniscient.)

So Moses did this and Yahweh did his thing, after which he finally let Pharaoh let the Hebrews go. Oh, but with one little kicker. Yahweh told Moses to tell the Hebrews to go to their neighbors to ask to “borrow” all their gold and silver. This is going to work because Yahweh is going to soften their hearts. Like using that skill wouldn't have helped right at the beginning of all this. And the stereotype of the Hebrews being covetous of gold is one they will surely live down in time. Nice thinking ahead, brainiac.

Anyway, they packed up their stuff and headed off into the desert. And Yahweh led the way as a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire at night. Till they go to the sea of reeds. There, Moses turned around to see how they all were doing. And he saw a cloud of dust in the distance, but headed their way. He looked back at Yahweh. He looked at the dust. He looked at Yahweh. He made a gesture that seemed to say, “And just when were you going to tell me about this little part of your plan?”

Yahweh shrugged sheepishly. “Don't worry. This is going to be epic. Legendary.”

* * * * *

I'm guessing at this point Moses wished he'd gotten some credentials from the burning bush.

* * * * *

“It's Pharaoh, isn't it?

“Yup.”

“Brought the whole army, didn't he?”

“Yup.”

“We're trapped against the sea here, you know.”

“You think you're trapped against the sea here.”

“You hardened his heart again, didn't you? I don't believe it.” Moses shook his head. “Whatever. Forget it. You're going to do it anyway. Let's hear your idea.”

“No, let's see it.”

Yahweh took a huge breath, held it, then let it out, slowly but firmly, from his nostrils. He pointed at the sea, which rippled, then parted, revealing a stretch of dry land reaching all the way across. Moses was pretty amazed.

“How long can you keep this up for?”

Yahweh indicated that they should probably hurry.

So they did. All the Hebrews charged into the gap. And a short while after, Pharaoh and all his chariots charged in after them, none of them seeming to notice the weird guy on the side blowing a jet stream of air from his nose. (I wonder if any of them got any god-snot on them?) It was a pretty cliffhanger situation, because the Hebrews just made it across when Yahweh's breath ran out. The water rushed back in and crashed into Pharaoh and his men.

* * * * *

There's a lot more to this story, but I'm going to end here for now. I'll pick it up again in another report. This one was hard because I had to read a lot and think about it.

Observer003 – Earthlings

Ancient Fauna

Dinosaurs were the Earthlings before the Earthlings.

You can tell something is a dinosaur because its last name ends in -us - tyrannosaurus, brontosaurus, triceratopsus. You can make something that isn't a dinosaur a dinosaur just by adding -us to it. And if you really want to make it a dinosaur, you add an -asaurus to it. A dogasaurus would be a dinosaur dog. Like that. (A catasaurus would be stupid, because what would it do? Dinosaurs were already lazy. Add a cat to it and you have double lazy.)

Then a big space rock fell on them and they all died. It fell on them when they were all in one place at DinoCon. DinoCon was when they would all get together and talk about dinosaur stuff, like how hot it was getting. Boy, they would kill for a little more ice. And what were these new little furry things they kept seeing running around like they owned the place? And how Tyrannosauruses were jerks. They kept eating everybody. Stop that.

And they all would dress up like other dinosaurs they liked.

The only ones that survived were the birds. Maybe nobody liked them and wouldn't invite them to the DinoCon. The birds were maybe the smelly kids of dinosaurs. So maybe they made the giant space rock fall on the other dinosaurs. Birds were sociopathic, smelly kid dinosaurs. If you come here, never trust them.

The lizards also survived, but I only have hypotheses as to why.

Observer003 - Earthlings

Cultural Disachievement As Reflected In The Arts

All the art they make now is crappy. It used to be good, but not now. This is because of capitalism. Capitalism makes things cheap and plentiful. This is good for fatness, but bad for art because there are way more people who think they can make art than people who really can or should. This leads to an art glut which makes everything worse because people how go to look at art get so sick of seeing the same thing over and over that when somebody finally does something different they think it's genius.

And you have to see it over and over. Every third Earthling you meet does art. And they all want you to go to their showing. A showing is where you eat cheese, crackers and wine and comment so vaguely on the art that no one can tell if you're insulting it, which is the only defense of your sanity you can make.

I used to think it was me, that I just wasn't getting it. Then I realized that art is one of the two great ways of understanding Earthlings. (The other one is language.) Art reveals the comical extent to which they will go to maintain a delusion. I'm just not sure if the artists are in on it.

There's an guy here who makes a whole painting of just one color. Just one solid block of one color. That's it. And there's another guy who just drizzles paint all over. One big rectangle of paint drizzle.

 

And it helps if you're crazy. Crazy artists get the biggest bucks. And dead ones. But not the Napoleon kind of crazy. The bad kind. The one where it might kill you.