After reading Nathan W. Pyle’s Strange Planet, your perceptions of the human race and their world may shift a bit. So be warned.
A collection of Pyle’s online cartoons, this book imagines the dialogue among a family of aliens who are (seemingly) just learning about our strange Earth customs.
Strange Planet does what the best cartoons do – it makes us look at our reality in a new, unfamiliar light. It’s what Bill Watterson did with Calvin and Hobbes and what Gary Larson did in his The Far Side.
In one four-panel strip in Strange Planet, one blue alien asks another why her skin is tinged red. “I was exposed to the nearest star. I feel more attractive. It’s the star damage,” the bulb-headed creature explains to her friend.
What is this pair of extraterrestrials really discussing? What we call sunburn. “I crave star damage,” the friend admits, poking fun at the human obsession with having skin that has a deep, supposedly healthy tone.
In another strip, a young alien stretches out in bed. “My body cannot endure formal education,” he tells his mother. “I’ll measure your mouth hotness to verify your claim,” comes back the response.
“Your malfunction is legitimate,” the parent concludes after reading the thermometer, “You may occupy the life chamber” – or as we call it, the living room.
In this book, a cat’s purrs are called “vibrations.” The Tooth Fairy is “the magical mouth stone being.” Baseball is the sport of “orb catching.” And socks are “foot fabric tubes.”
And if you have trouble keeping track of the lingo, Pyle helpfully includes a picture glossary in the back just in case you can’t understand what the heck these aliens are on about.
Sometimes all you have to do to reprogram a person’s senses is to skew their brain into a slightly off-kilter position. That’s how the mundane takes on new meaning.
And isn’t that all you can ask of any book?
Dan Brown
Source News
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.