Is There Life in Outer Space? Case File #L22-B
By John Henry Carrozza
Felix Leibowitz was a weatherman, and a damn good one. He had
been reading weather reports on the air at WZZZ in New York since
the end of the war, and still insists the Nazis could have won with a
really good feta cheese quiche. His co-workers described him as
being in his mid to upper sixties with an occasional gust of wind from
the northeast. Though he usually put up a cold front, they recounted
that he only rained on weekends, and never more than a couple of
inches. He received his degree in meteorology from the Svelding
Institute for Primitive Studies, and later an honorary Doctorate of
Political Epistemology from Yale University, even though he thinks
the Cold War was an Eskimo coup.
These credentials obviously rank Mr. Leibowitz as a man of solid
character and Ptolemaic credibility, and it is with these fortitudes in
hand that the following story was relayed by him to the Princeton
U.F.O. Research Institute and therefore examined with high regard.
“I had been working late one evening last August, due to a pile up of
charts and barometer readings, which I had to burn in order to find
my desk. As I recall, a peculiar eminence on my radar screen led me
to predict twenty-seven inches of snow for the following morning.
Little did I know that the eminence would soon play an important part
in my exciting evening activities.
“Upon leaving the station, via the stairs which lead down to the lobby
of the building – or up from the lobby, depending upon which way
one is going – I exited through the front door and made my way
along the sidewalk to Melderman’s Café and Pop-up Book Store,
where I had eaten every evening after work for the past twenty-two
years, with the exception of 1972, when had Mr. Melderman
experimented by turning the place into a discotheque and musk ox
farm, which failed miserably.
“I ordered the usual three eggs (one poached, one fried, and one
painted orange and set on fire), a side of bacon (boneless), a fresh
coffee (with day-old cream and a tiny umbrella), and a pop-up
version of Neitzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. Afterward, I walked
home to my little farmhouse on the Upper East Side and continued
an ongoing chess game (then in its twelfth week) with Nellie, my pet
gorse bush and spiritual guru. Just as she had taken my bishop with
a brilliant feign move (she cast her voice to the mailbox, imitating
Grover Cleveland, and when I turned to look, she snatched up my
black bishop and painted it white), a bright light appeared in the sky
and descended to the ground on the other side of the house. At first,
I thought it was a meteor, but – as I am, in fact, a meteorologist – I
decided learnedly that it could not have been any such thing, as I
distinctly heard it to be humming “Irresistible You,” which meteors
never do, except during Chanukah.
“I excused myself from the game in order to have a look around the
back, but not before moving my pawn to a spot just behind the water
trough, where I planned to use it for a surprise attack on Nellie’s
queen several moves hence.
“When I arrived in the backyard, I noticed nothing unusual, save for a
dimly lit hot dog stand adjacent to the patio, which I would not have
given another moment’s notice were it not for a sign that read “Hot
Dogs: Five Cents,” which seemed too good to be true. I approached
the stand with curiosity.
“Behind the counter stood a figure about five-and-a-half feet tall,
wearing a red and white-striped suit and a paper hat. He looked
rather like my cousin Bernie, except for his green, scaly skin, two
dozen eyes, and tentacles.
“I ordered a hot dog with extra mustard, and he insisted that I have
relish with that. I said no, that I was allergic to relish, as it caused me
to break out in daffodils and call my mother collect. But he went on,
saying that this was no ordinary relish, and in fact wasn’t relish at all,
but borscht with food coloring. I gave in, but, searching my pockets,
could not find a nickel, and he was reluctant to break a five. Finally
we reached a deal upon a Neil Sadaka record I had velcroed inside
my jacket and a half acre outside of Buffalo, and I took a bite of the
frank.
“The last thing I remember was placing a wager on the
Syracuse/Boston College game, and when I woke up I was strapped
to a table in a strange room, surrounded by alien creatures and U.S.
senators, mostly Republicans. I had all kinds of electrodes taped to
my forehead, and they turned the table into a position that would
have made Trendlenberg vomit, then began flashing pairs of images
before me and asking which would be seated quicker at Sardi’s. I
had no trouble between Gerald ford and a bundle of parsley (a trick
question – obviously, they would be seated together), but when they
showed me Mussolini and my aunt Hildegarde, I went into
convulsions.
“Afterwards, they took me dancing and to a fancy dinner at some
Italian restaurant in Cleveland and made me pick up the tab. Then,
they left me in an abandoned warehouse with an eggplant named
Louie, and for six months I could only sit on a mailbox on the corner
of Dabney and 23rd and recite Anna Karenina to an imaginary
goldfish in Latin.”
After reviewing the story as recalled by Mr. Leibowitz with
painstaking scrutiny, the Committee for Extraterrestrial Affairs, with
the aid of a judge and the defendant’s aunt, Hildegarde Fuhrerbottle,
had Mr. Leibowitz committed to the Music City Mental Institution in
Lespatuk, India.
Although a small investigation ensued, the case was closed after
police arrested a vendor in Minneapolis for selling hot dogs with
borscht, and who confessed after listening to seventy-five hours of
country music that he was, in fact, a Republican.
