Interplanetary Delinquency

The Cantaloupe

Hello everyone and a very late happy new year. The Cantaloupe has had a long and illustrious history and yes, my current writing efforts are not going out to producing much in the way of entertainment of you all. I think it's mainly because I'm more selfish than ever before. You see when I could be making people laugh and thus happy, I'd rather go to school or spend time with girl. How selfish can I get? Thus I owe all of you an apology, because things aren't going to change. When you get the Cantaloupe you will get it. That's when you'll get it in case you were wondering. Get it?

Our Earth is in Peril

A picture I saw on someone's fridge the other week got my thinking. When you have kids, sometimes you will have obedient ones and sometimes you will have disobedient ones. I'm not talking about you specifically as in you the reader, because most of you are not in the position to be having kids. Having kids is bad, they drain your wallet and they steal attention from you. Anyways I was talking about a random person's kids. What is true about all kids is that they crave attention and they want people to notice them.
A healthy child will find that they are happier receiving good attention for doing good things. There are kids however that do not receive a lot of attention period and thus will rebel as a mean of having others notice them.For example, a child may neglect their school work so that mom and dad will notice them and spend time with them. A child may beat another kid up. Sometimes a child will even listen to country "music". Usually, children will do this when their parents are absent.
This brings me back to the picture on the fridge. It had aliens in it. This made me think, are aliens a lot like disobedient children? Actually I have no idea why I made this connection, but that's not the point.
"What do aliens do us", you ask. Have you seen the movies? Aliens are evil and they have in mind only to abduct and torture innocent people, or they want to annihilate the human race entirely. For these reasons, people are afraid of alienkind.
But why do you think aliens act the way they do? Most people don't even acknowledge their existence! Just like a neglected child, a neglected alien is likely to lash out in an attempt to get your attention. Then we simply reinforce that behavior by giving them that attention. Humankind is guilty of ignoring these cries for help from a species vastly beyond our own in technology, but behind in the area of social development.
Now I ask, just because these creatures are more destructive than your average child, does that mean we should treat them any differently? No! So when a large UFO flies over the city of Los Angeles and reduces it from a thriving city to a pile of dust, should that dominate the newspapers around the entire world? No! That just gives these attention-starved aliens what they want. Soon they'll do it again just so we will know they are here. Instead we need to commend the good things the aliens do. Let's take them to our leaders and make them feel welcomed. Let's announce in the newspapers all the times when the aliens DIDN'T reduce a city to heaps of rubble. For example the daily news could be "ALIENS FOUGHT URGE OF DESTRUCTION OF PLANET AND WON!" Wouldn't that help the aliens get positive attention?
You don't have to believe me and do what I say. You can all huffy and talk about those "aliens these days that have no respect for anything. They're noisy, lazy, foul-mouthed and most of all completely murderous!" Why do you think they're murderous? It's because of you and your self-fulfilling prophecies. You cause them to be so with your ignorance.
Aliens are here to stay, they aren't going anywhere and they are the future of Earth. Let's teach them how to govern it when they eventually take over. You can love them, care for them, show them how to ride a bike. Yes, be their friend, but give them firm boundaries. If they get out of line, they need disciplining. They crave discipline. Even if they vaporize one of your kids as a joke, remember not to get too upset. Tell them how wrong that behavior was. Try and see things from their perspective; your kid may have been annoying them and might be just as at fault as the alien. That doesn't get them off the hook however and they need to be punished for their actions. I recommend a loss of privileges for such an action. For the next week they will not be allowed to insert their uranium tubes into their stomach. If they vaporize more kids, then you'll have to just be more firm. Hopefully it won't come to that.
Thanks for listening to this, the future of our planet depends on your actions.

Our Wonderful Land to the North

Two weekends ago I took an unexpected turn and drove north three hours to the city of Edmonton. There had been a fairly substantial snowstorm two days before I went up and that city was blanketed. Thus, when I got to drive around town, every road in the city was covered with bumpy hard-packed snow. Clearly the city council had decided to save money for the city by abandoning use of snowplows. A smart decision I must say. Let driver's drive at their own risk. It's a very good motto for anyone to have. Say a thumbtack truck accidentally unloads all his cargo in the middle of the Trans Canada Highway, well it's too bad if you're a sucky driver. You could have avoided the ten foot high pile of tacks! It would take half an hour at least to clear the road. That's far too much time and effort!
Now I must say I don't know where I'm going with this piece of writing. Am I making fun of the city of Edmonton? Yes, it would appear to be the way of paper, but really I wanted to mention it as a start of a satirical piece. It didn't work out very well and I'm not quite sure where I want to end up. You see I often do this, I'll start out saying something and then I'll stop and realize this doesn't work out that well.You see, the city of Edmonton has loads of good memories for me. I can't really complain about it too much. But that's not something funny and because of that I feel I have failed you as an audience.
If any of you ask it of me, I will end my life

Inside a Common Elevator

Since I'm bad at writing comedy, I'll write biography instead. They have always said that the best cure for a crazy man is to find a crazy woman and that would cure you. Well Melissa isn't quite that crazy, you know, as me.
You see sometimes a man likes to carry around a lunch pail sized box that has flower patterns on the outside. I am one of those types of men. You see when you carry around something like that, people will always ask you what is in the box. It gives you an aura of mystery. What if there is nothing in the box? Also some men like to have cola bottles (you know the candy) in that box so they can give it to their girlfriend while in an elevator. They're the best candy ever so why wouldn't you want to have them in a flowery box? Also some men have smaller boxes in these boxes, you know the whole Russian doll thing. And yes, unfortunately some men when taking out the smaller box, accidentally drop the larger box onto their girlfriend and hurt her in the process. I swear I didn't mean to! However sometimes when you're riding an elevator you have an urge to drop to one knee and ask Melissa to marry you with the contents of the smaller box. I got such an urge almost two weeks ago. And so I did it. I know it's the most incredibly romantic place on the Earth, probably because I know the female mind much better than anybody else, how else would I know that what woman really want for Valentine's Day was a bag of potatoes?
Anyways the moral of the story is that I am going to be getting married, most likely in November to a very wonderful girl (oh yes, and for bonus points, she is beautiful as well). So for the next couple issues of The Cantaloupe I will talk about wedding preparations. YAY! Okay, I might not for all of them.

Question of the Occasion

What Cantaloupe-esque thing should I do at my wedding?

Thank you and have a wonderful January

Trevor YVR Plett

(Oh yes, I predicted this would happen. I got engaged on January 13, 2007. It was an event that I very often referenced as "Christmas", making Melissa think it would actually happen at Christmas. She doesn't quite understand metaphors, and I don't quite understand onomatopoeia. Now go back to the Cantaloupe archives and find an issue called "Hope Hype Type" which mentions the day I would propose. Go and find it yourself!)