BUG GUTS & Beauty
By Orpheus Allison
Dinner in Bangor led to acknowledgement of alien invasion. Yes, aliens are coming to Bangor with the intent of subjugating hapless diners for some yet unannounced invasion from outer space. Had to make a trip down to the Queen City for a clinic visit and learned of these new foreign immigrants threatening the sanctity of the dining table.
Citizens with young children are especially vulnerable to these one-eyed freaks. While waiting for the chicken fingers and pizza slices these one-eyed bandits are bending the minds and snagging the wallets of unsuspecting patrons. Hide the women, cover the kids’ eyes, and scream like a banshee the Queen city restaurants are possessed by alien life forms wanting your cash.
Dining establishments are now adding to their table top toys with a new machine. This one-eyed device looks like an all black version of ET. The Extra Terrestrial of movie fame was a creature with two huge eyes and a head that sloped to a small neck on the back. These devices have one eye and a sinuous neck. They’re all black and look cloned.
The intent is to provide entertainment for diners who lack skills in having intelligent small talk at the dining table. Pretty pictures of food and beverages are randomly displayed, as are quixotic questions with countdown clocks that entice people to touch.
ET was captured with Reese’s Pieces. These devices use intriguing questions to lure the unsuspecting family members and friends into touching a key. The cost of ET’s interest was a heroic effort to reconnect with family in the days before cell phones. In Bangor these devices will cost you $2 to play a game. There a 30 to choose from.
The screen warning about the fact that one pays to play would make a fine print lawyer blush with humbleness. You can’t see this warning on the countdown screen and when you are able to find a screen with the price or your hostess remembers to tell you the price for amusement, $2 will have been taken from your bank account. Painless is the procedure. If by accident you are captured in this prison of the mind, the wait staff will be happy to wipe the charge from your bill. ET at least thanked Eliot.
All these alien life forms possess the same name, Izooiks! They wear little silver name plates and look beguilingly cute. Certainly for a passel of kids with two exhausted parents fresh from a malling experience shopping these “harmless” cretin machines are better than the crayons and paper of time past. For parents each meal has a $2 tax to be paid for the privilege of not conversing in polite society.
Foreign invaders are taking your money! Save your two bucks by having the staff remove these monsters. Otherwise be prepared to pay to play. Sounds like a slightly less than lawful situation.
Stop this foreign invasion! Instead of saying “take us to your leaders.” These devices in all restaurants, good, tolerable and horrible, are capturing us by saying “take us to your eaters!” Tables too small to hold three plates now are more crowded as they take our $2 and give us indigestion.
The alien invasion continues. Soon these will be in the bathrooms, bus stops, and streets of our northern cities and towns. Run, run, the aliens are here!
Orpheus Allison is a photojournalist living in the County. He began his journalism career at WAGM television later working in many different areas of the US. After 20 years of television he changed careers and taught in China and Korea. Graduating from UMPI he earned a master of liberal arts degree from the University of North Carolina.
