humor – Page 94 – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Greenhorn Green Screen

Yesterday, the Elgato Green Screen arrived and unboxing took longer than deploying the green screen itself, which just pulls up and pushes back down into its case. You can see how it works on my YouTube channel. I had to update this post this morning when Sena reminded me that today is St. Patrick’s Day!

Actually, making a green screen video was harder—but not terribly hard. I think the software for processing a green screen project probably differs from brand to brand, although I can’t swear to it. Anyway, I used Power Director and the instruction from PowerDirector University were really helpful. Frankly, I tried so many times to make a halfway decent video that I got plenty of practice.

I even tried to make a really bizarre green screen by wearing my green shirt. Much to my surprise, it didn’t really make any difference, which shows how little I know about this.

I was a little worried about the lack of light control I had. I have big faux wood blinds in my office but I moved the screen closer to the back of my chair and that seemed to help. I had to be very mindful that it was right behind me so I would avoid running over it with my chair.

The first few videos I made I looked like a monster because my eyeglasses, my eyes, and even the inside of my mouth gleamed with bright, ghostly lights. The more I tinkered with the chroma key and denoise control, the less prominent they got. If you notice, I still look a little green around the gills. I need practice.

The screen came with a few instructions:

Use the central handle to extend or contract the screen; try to avoid touching the screen itself.

Be careful when setting up near children.

Only use the central handle to raise and lower it so you won’t jam your fingers.

Use the stabilizer feet; otherwise, it will fall over.

When not in use, lay the screen horizontally on its feet.

Don’t leave the screen exposed to direct sunlight.

Don’t attach items to the screen.

Don’t set it up in areas prone to strong air currents, which can make the screen and move and compromise image quality.

Keep the screen free from dirt and dust; if it needs cleaning use a soft cloth with water and mild, neutral detergent. Never use benzene, thinner, and other volatile agents because they can cause permanent damage.

Don’t iron the fabric; small wrinkles will smooth out with time.

Have fun!

Mydriatic Madness

I got my eyes examined yesterday. They put mydriatic drops in like they usually do. It’s been a while since my last exam. I remember a long time ago the eye clinics used to give you a free pair of those flimsy paper sunglasses to cut down on the glare and blurriness. I see them going on Amazon for $30-$60 bucks for 50-100 count boxes.

Anyway, they put the mydriatic drops in and after a few minutes, I was blind as a bat. I had to use the restroom and ended up talking to a mop for a couple of minutes. I thought it was strange that a skinny old guy would wear gray dreadlocks.

When I got back in the hallway, I was somewhat disoriented. I walked up and down the hall and must have got off on a side route somehow. I stopped next to a counter, just trying to get my bearings and a guy wearing a white cap asked me,

“Sir, would you like a corn dog? It’s made from plants!”

I said, “Hm, how much?”

“Only $15.99!”

“Excuse me while I check your rating with the Better Business Bureau.”

His face looked like it was starting to drip.

I walked briskly away and eventually found myself in a dark, blurry hallway. I stumbled through a swinging door and heard somebody exclaim,

“Oh no, the surgeon just fainted! Quick, get that guy scrubbed and gowned!”

I haven’t been in surgical garb since medical school, and never that fast. I was a little concerned and asked,

“How did you drag the surgeon out so quickly?”

A scrub nurse snapped, “Doctor, it’s an emergency penectomy! Here.”

Everything was blurry. Something slapped into my hand and it had a trigger. When I pressed it, there was a noise like a mini buzz saw.

“Can anyone direct me back to the eye clinic?”

“Hurry, doctor, it’s about to burst!”

Somebody bumped my arm, and I heard a scream. I said,

“Isn’t the patient anesthetized?”

“Doctor, you got the scrub nurse!”

The floor was getting slippery for some reason and I stumbled to my hands and knees. I managed to get out of the operating room. When I got to my feet, I ditched the scrubs but kept the skull cap because it had some nice red spots on it. Skull caps are usually pretty drab.

I heard somebody shout, “Call Security! The guy is wearing a bloody skull cap!

I sure didn’t want to run into that guy, so I veered into a brightly lit hallway away from all the noise. Bright lights worsen the glare you get after mydriatic drops, so I had even more trouble seeing. It led to what turned into an elevator. It was full of people in dark clothes. When the elevator stopped, I could feel the wind. Apparently, we were on the roof. There was a deafening whirring noise. I had to yell over it,

“Am I anywhere close to the eye clinic?”

“Don’t worry, doctor, remember to duck your head as you board the helicopter. We have to move fast!”

The view of the hospital campus is spectacular from the air. When the air ambulance attendants realized their mistake, they lowered me in a basket back down to the door outside the eye clinic. I was glad to get back inside because it gets a little chilly in a helicopter.

Anyway, to make a long story short (too late!) I got squared away with, among other things, a new prescription for eyeglasses and a fine for practicing surgery without a license.

I had no trouble finding my way back to the parking ramp. Horns were honking everywhere. Everybody was pressing their car key fobs to find their vehicles. I think most of them were leaving the eye clinic.

Picture credit: Pixydotorg.

Green Shirt Green Screen

In a couple of days, I’m going to get a green screen delivered. I hope it works to create special photo and video effects I wouldn’t otherwise be able to pull off—unless I used an old green shirt like I did for the chicken wishbone video. The wishbone is obviously way out of scale compared to the chicken, which is one of several sculptures on the Iowa River Landing Sculpture Walk in Coralville installed in 2013. It’s called Iowa Blue: The Urbane Chicken.

The green screen I’ll get is more professional and will likely take alien guidance to learn how to use it properly. Since aliens never reply to emails (greenguy@galaxy9dotorg) or take phone calls, I’ll have to get directions elsewhere. The link is to a website where I saw the abbreviation TLDR for the first time; it means “too long; didn’t read.” It’s very long, but I did read a fair chunk of it.

I used the green shirt sleeve to help me edit my video in order to make a composite of the wishbone and The Urbane Chicken. I just set the chicken bone on it and made a short video of it. Then I used video editing software to clean out all the green from the chicken bone video and superimposed it on the big chicken photo, making it look like an alien object hovering next to the chicken.

I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I did it anyway. I’m hoping I’ll have better luck with a real green screen, if I can figure out how to use it.

Watch Yourself

I watch the Weather Channel TV shows Highway Thru Hell and Heavy Rescue 401 and I hear a lot of the towing guys say “Watch yourself!” Often, they say this as they’re about to pull a jack knifed semi out of a ditch. Sometimes a rigging line breaks and a large hook will snap back at lightning speed, which can take your head off, even if you are watching out for it.

I notice many of the older tow crew members are now saying while grinning at the camera things like, “I think it’s really important to teach the younger generation the things I know because I’m not going to be doing this forever, and I’d like to retire sometime in the near future and let somebody else watch out for flying snatch blocks and tow hooks which can take your head off, which would not necessarily be painful because you might die instantaneously, but then there are those other inconvenient consequences like funerals and insufficient life insurance policies with bizarre exclusion clauses disallowing benefit payouts to grieving widows and children because of deaths caused by non-Underwriters Laboratories certified flying snatch blocks and tow hooks, unpaid mortgages and loans for things like exorbitantly expensive snatch blocks, tow hooks, not to mention multi-ton wreckers and rotators.”

Anyway, the expression “Watch Yourself” could also figuratively mean being mindful. Mindfulness meditation has taught me to notice more about what’s going on inside and outside my head.

I do daily sitting meditation, although I may miss a day here and there. And by sitting, I want to make it abundantly clear that I don’t assume the lotus position. My joints are stiff enough that, when I try to stand up, they might have enough spring steel energy stored to whip loose, similar to flying snatch blocks and tow hooks.

While I’m sitting, I do a lot of thinking. By the way, it’s not a mistake to think and feel a lot of different thoughts and emotions during mindfulness sessions. That’s one of several myths about mindfulness. It’s not mandatory or even possible to shut off your yammering mind. I can choose to focus my attention on it or not.

If I try to shut my internal talk off for any length of time, it’s like gripping a slippery valve. Sooner rather than later, my grip slips and thoughts explode like flying snatch blocks and tow hooks. I watch myself and I notice when I’m thinking my hands get tense. As soon as I notice that, my hands relax and I focus on breathing—or maybe it’s the other way around.

Watch yourself.

The Ultimate Chicken Wishbone Pull

We’ve had this chicken wishbone on our kitchen counter for 3 days and we decided that was long enough to let it dry out. We’ve done this wishbone tug-of-war before and I won. Sena wanted a rematch and make it official.

It’s legal to do the wishbone pull contest with a chicken furcula (the anatomically technical name, which is Latin for “nasty little chicken bone”). And you don’t have to do it on Thanksgiving. You can look it up in the official Chicken Wishbone Rule Book in Washington, D.C.:

Article 7, number 349, sub-paragraph 88, line 42, mayo on the side:

“It is legal to use a chicken wishbone to make a wish, and you don’t have to do it on Thanksgiving.”

Now that it’s settled to everyone’s satisfaction, can we move on? We set this up so there would be no confusion about the rules and what’s disallowed (nothing).

The wishbone should be dry after a few days, or whenever you get tired of looking at that ugly forked bone on your kitchen counter.

According to tradition, if you and your opponent hold the opposite ends of the wishbone, make a wish, pull the opponent off his feet, place him in a half nelson (not a full nelson because remember, one hand is holding your end of the wishbone), roll strategically out the back door and into the rear yard, find some deer poop and liberally smear it on your opponent’s face (according to official Washington, D.C. code requirements), switch to a step over toe hold (it is forbidden to clench the wishbone between your teeth during this maneuver, subject to penalty points), and immediately knee him in the groin while chewing off his ear, starting at the top, (points off for chomping from the bottom), and win by coming away with the longest fragment, as determined by congressional hearing, and if you’re not in a nursing home by the time it’s concluded, you’re declared the winner and your wish may or may not be granted, depending on whether you blab about it at any time before you die.

There are a few tricks to know. If you hold your side of the wishbone toward the middle and let your opponent do all of the pulling, you’re more likely to end up with the longest fragment.

When both of you know that, wishbone pulling contests can turn into marathons. The longest one on record was 50 years, according to the biggest liar on the face of the earth, who shall remain nameless for the time being.

Para-Debunking on Debunking Day

Today, in honor of Debunking Day, which is held on March 11 annually (starting in 2005) I thought I’d introduce a new word. It’s Para-Debunking and you won’t find it in the dictionary, at least not in our brand-new hardcover Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. It was just delivered yesterday. We needed at least one physical dictionary for when we play Scrabble. We’re also waiting for an official Scrabble Dictionary, also on order. The heft of a real dictionary feels really good, by the way.

Anyway, the definition of “debunk” is “to expose the sham or falseness of” something.

Before I give you my definition of para-debunking, I should say that it’s a spinoff of the word “paranormal.” I know it doesn’t really make sense, but hang on, I’m getting to that.

You’ll never guess how I even found out it was Debunking Day today. Sena found out yesterday that a radio DJ was planning to observe the holiday by looking up something on MythBusters, another TV show we used to watch a lot.

That led to Sena finding a couple of X-Files episodes (a big-time paranormal TV show in the not-so-distant past): Sunshine Days and The Rain King.

If you can pick any topic to find debunkers always ranting about, the paranormal would be one of them. I’m not out to actually debunk it, so you can put your guns down. But the two X-Files episodes made me think of maybe something more important than just garden variety debunking.

Sunshine Days, an episode in the 9^th season, originally aired in 2002, with Agents Doggett, Reyes, and Scully investigating two murders at a house that is off and on tricked out as the Brady Bunch house. This is the accidental result of the staggering psychokinetic powers of the homeowner, Anthony, whose psychic talents were studied when he was a child by a parapsychologist, Dr. Rietz. Anthony developed an attachment to Dr. Rietz and created doubles of the Brady Bunch (gaaahhhh!) because his family life was bad.

The agents take Anthony to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. and convince Assistant Director Skinner and a scientist that Anthony’s powers could change the world. But as Anthony demonstrates his powers by levitating things, including Skinner, the strain of it makes him deathly sick. Skinner is no lightweight.

As he lay dying in the hospital, Dr. Rietz realizes that Anthony loves him like a father and that relationship is more important than using him for his paranormal powers to change the world since it would kill him. Paranormal power is not debunked, but the real power is the power of love. That’s para-debunking, which doesn’t have a holiday but should.

The other X-Files episode is The Rain King, which aired in the 6^th season in 1999 and features Agents Mulder and Scully investigating a guy named Daryl in Kansas, who claims he can make it rain whenever he wants, thereby controlling the awful drought that has plagued the area for months. I think it’s important that this is set in Kansas. As usual, Mulder believes that somebody is making it rain, but maybe not Daryl. Scully is skeptical as usual and tries to debunk the whole thing.

It turns out that the local weatherman, Holman, is responsible for the crazy weather because he’s been in love for decades with Sheila (who had been engaged to Daryl but he was not down with the plan). But Holman just can’t work up the nerve to tell her. He even creates a tornado that tosses a cow through Mulder’s hotel room ceiling. Holman finally convinces Sheila that he really loves her, which brings back the sunshine. The moral of the story is that we should be nice to each other because you never know when somebody will direct their paranormal ability at the skies and clobber us with flying cattle.

Just kidding. The idea is the same as it was for the Sunshine Days episode. It’s more important to feel our feelings and share them with others as long as that doesn’t involve hurling livestock at each other.

Get the idea? The paranormal is not debunked, but para-debunked in favor of focusing on the important stuff humans can achieve on earth without paranormal involvement. Maybe we can treasure what we already are capable of doing.

OK, let’s vote. Who wants to add Para-Debunking Day to our long list of holidays?

About Me Page Revisited

I’ve been looking at my About Me page and see that it needs revising. I’m way past the stage of being in phased retirement and I’m pretty sure I can’t do without this blog—or at least some way to keep writing. I notice I said that I was not sure how long I’d keep blogging.

I recently updated my YouTube trailer. It’s my first attempt at an elevator pitch in years. It’s a 48 second video, probably the shortest video I’ve ever done. According to some experts, it’s 3 seconds too long. If you want to read the long version, it’s on this blog, “Elevator Pitch for a Very Slow Elevator.”

Anyway, I’ve been retired from psychiatry since June 30, 2020 (there was a minor clerical glitch in the exact date). My wife, Sena and I have gotten all of our Covid-19 vaccines—until they come up with more. We have made Iowa City our home for over thirty years.

We play cribbage. One of the most fun cribbage games we played was the game on the Iowa state map board. That was a blast. The video of it was over 10 times longer than most YouTube videos I make. That’s because the main reason for the game was to talk up Iowa. You really ought to visit, maybe even move here. You can get used to snow. I keep reading articles on the web telling me I’ve got to stop shoveling at my age. I’ll think it over.

We also like going for walks. One of our favorite places to walk is on the Terry Trueblood Trail. Sometimes you can see Bald Eagles out there.

I have not yet mentioned Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, even once. That’s a big difference from the old About Me page. It was the first thing I mentioned then, because it was just about the most important role I had in life.

It took a long time before I began to question that once I retired—about a year or so. It was a lot like being a firefighter. In fact, my pager was the bell, and I even had a firefighter’s helmet, a gift from a family medicine resident who rotated through the psychiatry consult service. I didn’t wear it when I interviewed patients. It would have alarmed them.

I also carried around a little camp stool. It was because there were never enough chairs in patient rooms to accommodate me, the trainees, and visiting family. Often, I sent a medical student to find me a chair from out in the hall—until I got the stool. I slung it over my shoulder and away I went. I was sort of like the guy on that old Have Gun—Will Travel (paladin) TV show (a 1950s-1960s relic with a gunslinger called Paladin). Have Stool—Will Travel. A surgeon, who also doubled as a palliative care medicine consultant, gave me the little chair as a gift. I passed it on to a resident who took it with good grace.

I miss work a lot less now than I did when I left. I think I must have loved my work. Maybe I loved it too much, because leaving it was hard. There are different kinds of love. I love writing. I love long walks and watching the birds. And most of all I love Sena.

I’m gradually replacing work with something else I love, which is writing. Mindfulness meditation and exercise also help. And let’s not forget, I change electrical outlets. I think I’ve changed just about every outlet (and many toggle switches) in the house. They ought to do away with those bargain bin plugs. Just because they’re cheap doesn’t mean they’re any good.

I’m not sure yet how I’ll edit the About Me page. Maybe I’ll just call the first one Chapter One and this one Chapter Two.

Pegging Around Iowa

Sena and I got the Iowa map cribbage board and pegged around the state. It was a great way for us to relearn what’s great about Iowa. There is a ton of fun things to do in Iowa.

The 2022 RAGBRAI route, scheduled for July 23-30 will run from Sargeant Bluff to Lansing. It’s the oldest and largest recreational touring bicycle ride in the world, according to the RAGBRAI website. RAGBRAI stands for Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. It’s the largest, longest, and oldest recreational bicycle touring event in the world.

It was started by Des Moines Register reporters John Karras and Donald Kaul. The 7-day trip goes from the Missouri River to the Mississippi River with many stops along the way.

One of them is Mason City, where John Dillinger robbed the First National Bank in the 1930s.

Lake Okoboji in northwestern Iowa is well known for a lot of reasons. It’s a great place to boat and fish, but if you’re an X-Files fan, you’ll recognize that it was the setting for the episode “Conduit,” in which a young woman was kidnapped by aliens although Fox Mulder was unable to prove it happened. The show misspelled the place as “Okobogee,” a mistake that was easy for any Iowan to detect. It was actually shot in British Columbia.

Of course, Iowa City is the home of the Hawkeyes, The University of Iowa, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The African American Museum is in Cedar Rapids.

Clear Lake, as some of you might recall, is where the Surf Ballroom is. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, after performing there were killed when their plane crashed shortly after taking off from the nearby Mason City Municipal Airport in 1959.

Riverside is the site of the Star Trek Museum and the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk in 2233. There’s an annual Trek Fest festival. William Shatner played a hoax on Riverside in 2004 when he visited with a film crew, claiming that they were going to make a science fiction movie there.

Dubuque is the oldest city in Iowa. One of the places to see is the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium.

Although it’s not on the cribbage board Iowa map, about a half hour west of Dubuque is Dyersville, where the movie Field of Dreams was shot. The New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox played there in 2021.

The Pella Tulip Time Festival runs in early May.

You can see Albert, the largest bull in the world, in Audubon. The solid concrete sculpture weighs 45 tons. That’s a lot of bull (obligatory rim shot here).

The Iowa State Fair is in Des Moines, the capital of Iowa. Iowa State University is in Ames. I’m part Cyclone and part Hawkeye because I got my bachelor’s degree at ISU and my medical degree at UI.

Although Nashua is not on the Iowa cribbage board, it’s in our hearts. We were reminded of our wedding at The Little Brown Church there 44 years ago. Come to Iowa and make memories of your own.

The Dictation Dragon Breathes Fire on the Windows 11 Word App

I just got my new computer a couple of days ago, the Dell XPS 8950. I posted about this some time ago. Of course, It came with Windows 11 installed. I’m still trying to get used to it. It has a voice recognition feature that puzzles me. I can dictate in Word and probably other Microsoft applications. However, it seemed to work whether I used a microphone or not. That was puzzling until I relearned by trial and error that my webcam audio connects when my desk stand USB microphone is not plugged in.

I dictated this entire post on the Microsoft Word application containing the dictation feature. I write all my posts in Word before copying and pasting it into my blog, So, this was just an extra step. However, it made the work of creating the post a lot harder.

I’m pretty sure this feature was on my last computer and the Word application that came with it. I just can’t recall it. I know I never used it.

However, it still works the same way as another voice recognition system I have used before-and that’s, of course, Dragon Naturally Speaking. I left a few examples of how this usually works in this blog post just for fun. I have italicized them, but that was probably unnecessary.

I use dragon a lot. When I was working as a. The guy in the dental hospital.

I left that last sentence just exactly the way it was when I finished dictating it, just to make a point.

The point is obvious. You can get a lot of comical errors from using voice recognition software. And I noticed a lot of times that I could type a lot faster than I could dictate.

I used to use a disclaimer, like a lot of other doctors did, after I finished my dictations, similar to the one below:

“This note was created by speech recognition. Minor errors in transcription may be present. Please call if questions.”

This won’t provide immunity to malpractice. But mistakes were so. Problem. In voice recognition software that it seemed necessary to make apologetic–sounding excuse for them.

The voice recognition Feature in the. Microsoft Word app. Has the same problem. You’d better not hesitate more than a microsecond in between words. It’ll put periods everywhere you do that. It will also create capital letters for words that don’t require that. Who are?

That last quotation mark? Who are? Was supposed to be.

OK, OK, it was supposed to give me a new line because I said, “new line,” but it’s a lot faster to just type than to dictate. Notice that the italicized portions of this post are becoming more prevalent. Move on. I said “new line” please:

I don’t think these hiccups are specific to Windows 11 or Microsoft or the Dell XPS 8950.

In fact, I’m pretty happy with my new computer. It does weigh 30 pounds (I did not say 40 pounds, but for some reason the dictation dragon asked me if I said that).

But it’s a lot quieter, except when it’s breathing fire.

Putting the Exley in X-Files

A couple of nights ago Sena was looking at some old X-Files episodes on the web. It was on the Dailymotion site. For some reason, we could see them without login registration. I think it’s usually required. We watched the full length, The Unnatural episode two nights in a row without ads. It was an inconsistent experience. We saw it in both HD and non-HD modes and got slammed by ads at times and other times couldn’t access the show at all unless you logged in.

The weird thing was that all the subtitles and captions, and even the scenes were shown in mirror image. It turns out this mirror issue is not uncommon. I googled it and others have noticed it on YouTube as well as Dailymotion. You can flip the video out of mirror mode—often for the price of software being peddled for that purpose. The most common reason I saw given for the videos being mirrored was to avoid copyright strikes.

OK, so other than that, a lot of the old X-Files shows were available and Sena watched a little of the brutal episode “Home.” Sena can do a hilarious mimic of part of Mrs. Peacock snarling “I can tell you don’t have no children. Maybe one day you’ll learn… the pride… the love… when you know your boy will do anything for his mother.” Sena always ad libbed “the joy” to the “the pride, the love” phrase.

We used to watch the X-Files regularly, making popcorn downstairs in the kitchen and getting upstairs to watch it in bed just in time.

Anyway, we could watch the mirror version of “The Unnatural,” comfortably despite the backwards captions. This is one of our favorite episodes. There are many obvious references to racism and identity. I looked all over for a simplified plot summary, but found a lot of them have glaring mistakes, are too long, and wouldn’t fit with my simple-minded geezer interpretation. So, I’m going to cobble together something from reading a number of them. I’m not saying it’ll be straightforward.

I have to call it a Monster-of-The-Week (MOTW) episode because that’s what a lot of writers do. It refers to X-Files episodes that usually feature some paranormal creature or a criminal with a supernatural ability.

Here’s a tangent I can’t resist because we just watched Mountain Monsters Sunday night for the first time, and I think it was the first episode of the new season of this show which has been on for 8 seasons. It is surely a parody of several shows of the Bigfoot adventure type. It’s basically an ongoing MOTW series featuring a cast of characters who survive on sasquatch snacks and cryptid colas and stage uproarious, slapstick comedy searches for legendary creatures (some of which are apparently part of genuine local folklore) like Spear Finger, the Smoke Wolf, the Cherokee Death Cat, and a dozen others, some of which are unfortunately prone to violent attacks of diarrhea, which Wild Bill (arguably one of the funnies members of the cast) did a side-splitting impression of by hanging on to a couple of trees and sticking his butt way too far out in a stunningly hysterical pantomime of projectile Hershey squirts, all the while getting more and more bug-eyed, cursing a blue streak and brandishing a gun which looked like a kid’s toy you could find at Walmart. The camera angles are all too perfect. We laughed until we cried.

Anyway, getting back to The Unnatural, the show is basically the reminiscence of an ex-cop named Arthur Dales who was assigned to protect a black baseball player named Josh Exley from being killed by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Actually, Josh is an alien who shape-shifted into a black man because he loves the game of baseball. He can also sing the old Negro Spiritual “Come and Go with Me to That Land” on the team bus so well that it was recorded on YouTube and one commenter said he’d pay $100 for a full version of it.

The episode starts with Fox Mulder finding an old newspaper clipping about a baseball game in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, the site of so many UFO crashes that the local landfill could not keep up with all the debris local ranchers were trucking in from the fields. He finds a story which shows a picture of an Alien Bounty Hunter in it. This is an executioner who also shape shifts and knocks off other aliens who misbehave by threatening to expose the alien colonization project going on at the time.

The KKK is threatening the team of black players and the head of the gang is the Alien Bounty Hunter. He’s after Exley because he threatens to expose the project simply because he loves to smack home runs and, even though Exley thinks the game of baseball is meaningless, it’s perfect because you can chew tobacco and get knocked out by wild pitches—which leads to him getting beaned and bleeding green blood on the catcher’s mitt. He wakes up speaking alien but because he remembers he’s from Macon, Georgia, everybody thinks he’s OK. The catcher’s mitt is sent to the lab guy for analysis.

Officer Dales finds out Exley is an alien after he breaks into his room and sees him in his alien form. After Dales wakes up from fainting a half dozen times, Exley tells him that he’s an alien; he’s forbidden from intermingling with humans, and he masquerades as a black baseball player because he loves the game and to escape notice. The way Exley puts it, “They don’t like for us to mingle with your people. The philosophy is we stick to ourselves; you stick to yourselves—everybody’s happy.”

Where have you heard this before? It sounds like Jim Crow to me.

The Bounty Hunter, masquerading as Exley, kills the lab guy and Exley is now fingered as the murderer. Exley and Dales have a short talk while playing catch in the ball park in which Exley says it’s time for him to face the music and go back to his family. When Dales basically asks him why the human race can’t be his family, Exley takes either a surprisingly Green Supremacist attitude or just states the facts saying, “We may be able to look like y’all—but we ain’t y’all.”

In the end, the Alien Bounty Hunter executes Exley. But just before he kills Exley, he tells him to show his “true face” so he can die with dignity. Exley says simply, “This is my true face.”

And while he dies in Dales’ arms, despite Exley telling him to get away because his green blood is poison to humans, Dales sees that it’s red and says “It’s just blood.”

I don’t know exactly what this means and some have called it ambiguous. I speculate that this might have been the culmination of a transformative process and it reminds me of Atticus Finch telling Scout (in To Kill a Mockingbird), “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”