And then I hit the conceptual wall: what selection of objects would beentirely new--or at least of interest--to the aliens? My first idea was topresent something unique. I quickly abandoned this approach; it's all beendone before.

Then I thought about juxtaposition, but didn't get very far with thatapproach either. Everything I came up with sounded like an art school exerciseor a cheap surrealistic non sequitur.

I then considered trying to attract the aliens by presenting somethingof value, but had no idea what they might desire--if in fact they desiredanything at all.

Jeremy Campbell provided the conceptual breakthrough I needed with hisobservation on information theory:

"A message conveys no information unless some prior uncertaintyexists in the mind of the receiver about what the message will contain."

Poor Alphonse failed to die; he's now--and always will be--paralyzed.

I have the same problem, sort of. When I try to make it look like I'vedone something by accident or chance, most people can see through my thinpretense. At least it's not permanent.

If there ever were Italians involved with Signor Pizza, they were longgone by the time I moved into San Francisco's Tenderloin. Signor Pizza wasoperated and/or owned by Vietnamese. Their pizza wasn't that tasty, butit was cheap. I regularly patronized Signor Pizza; a large slice--the onlysize on offer--along with a forty ounce bottle of Rainier Ale usually satisfied.

One time I was waiting at Signor Pizza for a fresh pie to come out ofthe oven when a garishly dressed prostitute in a short glittery red dressbegan haranguing the man chopping vegetables with an interminable monologueabout her "big house back in Maryland."

"... and it's got a lovely yard with a beautiful garden and twolittle ittie-bittie dogs, and these little dogs are so cute they just runaround and run around and I just love those little dogs, they never stop,they just run everywhere and I love 'em so, you know what I mean?"

The man with the cleaver (Signor Pizza himself?) turned around and smiled."I know that kind of dog. Chop up. Put on pizza."

End of story.

She began reading a literary magazine; I wondered what her face lookedlike. When she finally brushed back her hair I could see she wasn't youngat all; she appeared to be about as old as me. Not very old, really.

I think Janet never played such a game, but it doesn't matter: the ideais enough.

I then remembered a Joseph Heller quote that amicably ended the discussion:

"Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along withsuccess come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation,medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure."