Greetings Earthlings: Regal M-116-S here. Presently I am quite bored with your publicized social functions, and it is against my Prime Directive to read the minds of your leaders and expose their prurient thoughts concerning Brangalina to your huddled masses. On the other hand, Charles has yet to provide me with that plane ticket that will enable me to journey to Hawaii to observe that hula dancing ritual I have heard so much of…

So, I found myself fallen from academic grace once again as I actually subjected myself to the viewing of your network news. It was not all so bad. After all, the adorable little creature that owns that particularly large TV was perched upon what would be my knee if I were not limbed after the reticulated manner fashionable back on Regal, and was complying with my margarita requests most promptly. Hence I saw no need to critique her information tastes. Information is not, after all, her purpose.

Then came the news on all five networks, about the great swapping of a badminton playing deserter from your besieged and evaporating army, who was apparently such a bore that your Taliban enemies—not exactly a band of Joe Rogan imitators themselves—decided to part with him rather than parting him from his head, which I believe is their preferred form of diplomacy.

Not to disparage the fellow, but as I saw him blinking away what remained of his five year high, he appeared to be quite a harmless boy. I know I am no soldier; however, I breakfasted with Babyrs, lunched with Vlad Tepish [after disconnecting my olfactory glands mind you], and supped with Cortez as his hounds supped on Aztecs. Also, might I point out that I have survived for thousands of years on your nasty little planet, which is the equivalent of one of your terrestrial educators surviving a weekend on a Detroit street corner! My point is, I know a dangerous human when I see one, and this fellow would not even be regarded as a bait human on Sirius—I have warned you about those people should they come knocking—and is certainly no fighting stud.

Then, to my darling’s horror—she is American you know—the TV screen came alive with the faces of five furious fiends from some monotheistic battlefield. Why they appeared a match for any band of movie villains. My alcohol vector blurted, “You mean he traded that pasty faced kid for those five killers! What is up with that?”

And so I was called on again, in my capacity as advisor to human kind, and responded as recorded below—with a sonorous and sage-like tone mind you, “Oh child, this is a ‘cunning camel trade’ as old Tamerlane once said after bagging the Ottoman Sultan not far from the spot this trade was conducted. Look there, you see that brown fellow of yours: the willowy orator—oh there have been so many—Oh yes, Caliph O’Sauron, your Dark Lord. He is taking quite a bit of temperature at home over his human repairing pyramid scheme, understandably so, as you people have not yet mastered transmigration. You are all in an uproar over the fate of your corporeal forms, prone to malfunction as they are. Believe me, I know. This LaFond avatar is creaking already—can’t even get it up to half speed without it wheezing to a stop…

“Yes, in any case, this Dark Lord of yours knows that he must pave the way for his successor, probably that bloodthirsty little female who was married to King William the Fornicator. There is no better mood for the demos to greet the ascension of such a savage little monarch than war fever. How is one to make the nation eager for more decades of a war?

“Make them feel as if their good-meaning leader was duped into exchanging their badminton player for the enemy’s five machinegun toting martyrs! Even the opposition party is calling for the rattling of whatever passes for a national saber these days in the matter of the Russian strong man. They will now demand more killing of these pesky goatherds, and the dignified Caliph will drag his feet, to make way for the Mother of War as she will surely one day be called. Just think of how startling the news casts will be then!

“Beyond all of that is the matter of perpetuation. Empires must have continuous war to survive—the old grow or die axiom. Your Caliph’s drones rain down death upon women and children and ambulance drivers in order to draw more jihadists into this global war—which is not too terribly easy to prosecute from the back of a donkey, or even those SUVs—and boost military contracts. Every new enemy fighter sparks a mote of fear in the millions of American eyes that reflect from these countless TV screens. That glimmer of fear, My Dear, is the stuff nations are built upon…

“Oh yes, the Jeopardy show will be fine, thank you. And an extra shot of tequila please. We must make it fair for old Alex you know…”