Golublog: An Anthropology Blog

Hl4vot: Hey Rex.

Rex: d00d! Hlav what’s up? Long time no see! :))

Rex: r u on earth?

Hl4vot: no, still on mars.

Rex: whoah. No lag on the line.

Hl4vot: ;)

Rex: shit – you guys got that portal working?

Hl4vot: yeah – pretty cool eh. All the earth content we want, none of the nasty time delays.

Rex: heh

Hl4vot: it was really screwing up our Tivos.

Rex: I remember u bitching about catching the season finale of 24 for like, weeks.

Hl4vot: your puny earthling culture doesn’t have a whole lot to offer except decent cable shows and the poetry of Philip Whalen.

Rex: so u keep telling me.

Rex: can you guys do physical /objects/ yet?

Hl4vot: no – its still very experimental. Hard to stabilize. mostly just spectrum so far.

Rex: spectrum – how’d u get an ip?

Hl4vot: we made sure the dimension portal came out somewhere where you’d guys’d have wireless access.

Rex: YOU’RE TALKING TO ME FROM MARS OVER AN 802.11b CONNECTION?

Hl4vot: :) that’s not the half of it. The portals opens out into the basement of a Starbucks on your earthling Long Island. I believe the community is called “Port Jefferson”.

Rex: YOU’RE TALKING TO ME FROM MARS OVER AN 802.11b CONNECTION YOU PIRATED FROM A STARBUCKS IN LONG ISLAND?

Rex: That is about the coolest fucking thing I ever heard.

Rex: Your likethe super cool martian wardriving experimental scientist.

Hl4vot: yes. No way they’re not going to renew my grant now.

Rex: funny, sometimes I miss Mars, sometimes I don’t.

Hl4vot: Well you know we’d love to have you back here in the lab. I’m sure we could even get you an adjuncting position at UOM teaching exoanthropology. It’d be a cultural thing.

Rex: no thanks, whole thing kinda leaves a bad taste in my mouth. u know how when u break up with someone you gets some of the friends, and she gets some of the friends?

Rex: even more true with planets. Especially Eradze.

Rex: She /is/ the poet laureate after all, right :-/

Hl4vot: well the offer still stands :)

Rex: Hey i saw you guys finally got tired of playing around with the spirit rover.

Hl4vot: yeah.

Rex: …?

Hl4vot: oh we got tired of paying the security guards overtime to stay up all night making sure the thing didn’t try to roll out of the sound stage we set it up in.

Hl4vot: also, I think your instruments are gettig more sensitive. Did you hear any press about the data they gathered?

Rex: Yeah. There dust on the surface was hard or something.

Hl4vot: yeah. They figured out it was mostly paper mache. so we thought “this isgetting boring”.

Rex: heh. u know the president wants to go to mars.

Hl4vot: well we’d be willing to take him – my understanding is you guys would love to get rid of him.

Rex: :) not exactly like that.

Hl4vot: We could put him to work as a zdagoc.

Rex: lol or making trojhax in olympus mons.

Hl4vot: right – “hand me anothre hloyut please!”

Rex: “pass me a jhicaut.” !!

Hl4vot: roflmao.

Hl4vot: i don’t get you earthlings. Most of yor species die early of preventable illness, but you’re trying to come over here?

Rex: Hey man, I’m one of the good guys. Trying to keep things real over here.

Hl4vot: Yeah. Thank god for the jedi. If it weren’t for you guys they’d do something REALLY stupid like electing that insane senator from missouri to run the justice department – what’s his name? Ashcroft?

Rex: uh… well. And btw Hlav, judges are elected, the head of the justice department is appointed by our president.

Hl4vot: wierd system you have over there. anyway, gotta close the portal – the machinery runs quie hot. I’ll let you know when we’ve got physical objexcts thru.

Rex: God the first object to be beamed through a dimensional portal is going to be an extra double tall skinny half caf latte. that’s depressing.

Hl4vot: Please rex – even on Mars we know Starbucks is the devil. gotta go. cu

Rex: l8ter.