by Ridley

According to the box, Alien Factor is about monsters that invade Baltimore, "as a broken down space ship from another galaxy dumps its petting zoo in somebody's backyard."

Baltimore? Why Baltimore? The question forced my mind into a deep trance. I felt my consciousness drift across the universe (and drool drip down my chin) as I entered the mind of some ugly-ass alien. I could read its thoughts as easily as I can read on the toilet. Digging deep within its gooey, extraterrestrial memories, I found the answer...

Baltimore! Baltimore! That's all I heard for months until I gave in and took the family on a vacation to the Milky Way galaxy. We loaded up our paper-mache spaceship with pets and headed for Baltimore, Maryland, the greatest city in America. (At least according to their website.)

En route, our mischievous leemoid got loose and bit the astral-navigation space-time displacement unit array clean off! Before I could fix it with a wire hanger and some duct tape, we drifted off course about 26 years! So instead of landing in Baltimore in 2004, we landed there in 1977. Ah hell, what's a few Afro's and bell bottoms going to hurt? We're on vacation!

As we descended into the Terran atmosphere, our trailer hitch popped loose and down went our camper, where Bobby-Jo was napping with our pets! I knew that piece of barbwire wouldn't hold that latch. At least our trailer crashed in the outskirts of Baltimore and not downtown. That would have been embarrassing!

I tuned in to a local TV station to see what these Earthlings looked like. EWWWWWE! They have this smooth pinkish surface covering their sinew!

I borrowed a human skin suit from this feller named Jamie Gumb and headed into town, in search of my trailer. I found a bar & grill called the AnIr Lounge, where I ordered me a mess of pickled peanut pigs feet casserole. They had a pretty good rock and roll band playing, Popeye Liberace and the Hair Scares. I sat through three songs before I realized they couldn't actually pop their eyes out. Buyer beware!

The next day, that mayor feller agreed to go looking around with me. We found my trailer, and there was Bobby-Jo, laying out on the ground all hurt and busted up in her new joggin' suit we bought at Astromart! It was the most horrible thing I'd ever seen. So I took a picture.

Poor Bobby-Jo was too weak to talk, so I initiated telepathic contact. It's kinda slow, but I finally figured out that Bobby-Jo was telling me, "Run! The propane grill got busted up in the crash and it's gonna blow up!" Me and that mayor feller ran away just in time! KABOOM! There went my camper! I only had three payments left on that sucker! I got so dang mad I could've died!

I timed it. It took a full minute for the alien to say, "It's going to blow!" That's like, 0.01 baud rate telepathy. Alien technology sucks. They're so powerful they can hop across galaxies, yet they have trouble rounding up three "petting zoo" monsters? It's the equivilant of letting loose a hungry baby lamb on New York city, and then being COMPLETELY POWERLESS to stop its path of destruction.

Once again I delved into the alien mind, seeking unspeakable answers, and unbeatable bargains.

I told the sheriff and that bunch down town to stay out of my way, that I'd take care of these creatures myself. Sure enough, I tracked down my pet inferbyce just as it was about to eat two of the humans! I happened to have my jumbo as-seen-on-TV electronic bug repeller that I bought at a flea market with me. I turned it up full blast just in time to bust the inferbyce shell before it got at those humans.

Then I heard on the radio that the goofy old mayor feller done got eaten up by my zagatile! That ole thang's diabetic and just was takin' a sugar spell. I knew it'd calm down if I gave it a shot of insulin, but I had to act quick, before it wound up mounted on somebody's wall. Those dumb locals probably wouldn't know which end to mount!

Okay, so what about this one scene, where the body of a grown man, which looks like it was soaked in acid, was mistaken for a progerian, the accellerated-aging disease that only effects little children? How do you explain THAT?

I shot it in the chest with my insulin gun and I told them people I killed it with some poison and they believed me. Suckers. All I needed to do now, was find that dagblasted leemoid. It done bit one guy and turned him into a 35 year old progerian! It can do that, ya know. Don't believe me? I took a picture!

I found my leemoid in a patch of woods. I 'rassled with it until it was sleepy sleepy enough to get it in the ship without a fuss. Sometime during all that roughhousing, it messed up my human skin suit. Wouldn't you know it, some woman was spying on us!

I hid in the shadows so's she wouldn't get all googly-eyed and lusty when she saw my sinewy physique. She kept on and on about wanting to see what I looked like, and managed to catch a glimpse of me. Boy did she ever scream and carry on. I knew she was fixing to tear her clothes off and jump my bones any minute!

That durn sheriff must have liked her or something, because he come out of nowhere and shot me. I figured I'd play dead, because if he saw me he'd want some of me too, and my hammer just don't swing that way! After they left, I packed up my leemoid and went home. That was the worst vacation we'd ever been on! Baltimore is ass. Next year we're going to the Kushavavian stellar fair in Andromeda!

Well, there we have it. Only one question remains...

Why Baltimore?

- Ridley once declared galactic war on Baltimore, but nobody noticed.