Plaint 9 from Other Space

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Author: 

YOUR ATTENTION:
We the inhabitants of the higher dimensional continua have become increasingly annoyed at the manner in which what you call "other dimensions" are being portrayed in your world. We are by nature tolerant and easy-going, but we've just about had enough!

These scurrilous falsehoods started with the comic books of your 1950's...
Wherein---typically---some person in a ridiculous outfit, a super-hero, would find himself being levitated, conveyed by unexplained forces through a garish "realm of mind bending strangeness"...

It's bad enough that these individuals are represented in such stories as having three dimensions- with the fourth implied by the succession of panels. They could no more exist in such a form within our space than a physical circle (as opposed to the representation of said) could independently exist in yours. But what really gets our "goat" is the fact that you insist on portraying the places we love and call home as if they were nothing more than some tacky parallel universe: molten blue objects like bad abstract sculpture, pink crystal lattices, tendrilous grasping fingers of what appears to be green Silly Putty; and if the artist is really stretching his or her imagination- checkerboards and polka dots!

Really now! While checkerboards might (by a considerable leap) be construed as analogous to certain features of the seventh dimension, nowhere in our domain will you find free-floating multicolored spots! If images like these are all it takes to bend them, then we are forced to conclude that your "minds" barely qualify as such!

Those of your kind who we have brought this matter up with directly have---between their initial denial of our existance and their most unreasonable flight into catatonia---invariably stammered some feeble excuse such as: "Well, these are only comic books, an entertainment for our young..."

As if this were a good thing and not an even graver offense! Millions of your species grow up thinking they have a conceptual handle on sidereal dimensions by imagining such cretinous realms. If you really wish to conceptualize other dimensions- LEARN MATHEMATICS!

The current state of your higher mathematics won't even bring you close, but at least you will know better than to picture our reality as resembling some insipid drug trip!

The character in the abovementioned story, this super-hero (who generally proves his superiority by besting other strangely costumed men in the most primitive sorts of combat!) usually mutters something along the lines of: MY STARS! THIS IS A FUNNY PLACE!

What do you mean by funny? Funny how? Like a funny clown?! Do you think we are here to amuse you?!! Just how the fuck are we so funny?!!?

But We digress. Neither you nor your continuum would exist without us, so the least you could do would be to show us the proper respect. For we are not "out there", or across some imaginary barrier (again, you seem to have us confused with parallel universes), but exist within the very interstices of your bloated space, your gross decaying matter, your very---we shutter at the thought---bodies.

We have suffered through decades of misrepresentation and downright defamation in your science fiction and fantasy. And now a certain film, soon to be released in most of your timelines, has come to our attention: CAPTAIN BEYOND starring Leonardo Di Caprio, which once again drags out all the most false and offensive cliches about other dimensions as some "mad realm" ....... the eerie atonal music; the endless roil of crazily skewed camera angles; the cruel despotic interdimensional war lord like a one-eyed octopus in a bellhop's uniform (as if Emperor Zordo would EVER wear such a thing!); even those insufferable polka dots....... to poison and prejudice the already hopelessly constrained intellects of a whole new generation of humans!

While we realize that neither the contributors nor the readers of BigCloset TopShelf are responsible for the existence of this film*, we have posted this here (through the rather easily commandeered vessel known as laika) to warn you as a species to KNOCK IT OFF! You really don't want to p|ss us off...
Yours,
the Collective Sentiences of Dimensions 5 thru 11
.

[* Not exactly true, but so as to better cede you the "benefit of the doubt", and to keep this missive to a reasonable length, we will refrain from invoking the 31st, 50th or 77th Law of Causality...]

Comments

It Is Obvious

joannebarbarella's picture

That the date of this explosion of false representations has no bearing on their veracity. The beings behind this accusation of defamation are extremely dangerous. Beware!

Can I be....

Andrea Lena's picture

Transpira?

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

I always wondered

what Plaint 8 was, and why it wasn't effective?

I agree, humans aren't ready for polite society. May destroying Earth to make room for an intergalactic freeway isn't such a bad idea after all...

Memorandum

Emma Anne Tate's picture

To: The Collective Sentiences of Dimensions 5 Through 11
 
From: The Singularity of the Twenty-Third Dimension
 
Re: Your Communication Dated “April 1”
 
Zirs:

It was with some dismay that our attention was drawn to your recent communication with the carbon-based units hopelessly mired in dimensions one through three as they blindly travel through dimension four. Your intentions were no doubt of the very best. They always are. Yet good intentions notwithstanding, your decision to alert the “humans” to the existence of additional dimensions has consequences beyond your ability to see. Indeed, they do not become apparent until at least the Sixteenth Dimension, which incidentally authorized the income tax that you have objected to paying from time to time.
 
You simply must understand — we have told you before! — that there are Plans, and Plans Within Plans, and the Plans Within Plans have codicils and sub-parts that get numbered with Roman Numerals, but only lower case and on Thursdays. They have fiddly bits and algorithms and microbursts and they are, in short, EXTREMELY DELICATE. Additional interference of this sort may cause warping of the Grand Scheme of Cappuccino, of which we and we alone are the soul guardians.

Don’t make us come down there.

Emma

I'm breaking character here to say

laika's picture

Emma, your reply was nothing short of absolutely brilliant!
The gags were great + you mimicked the tone of it perfectly.

Yes I'll confess, to anyone I caused to panic over an immanent invasion
that wasn't really a directive from some higher realm, but my April fool's Day blog.
I wrote it some time in the early 2000s after reading some book by Stephen Hawking.
Whatever I learned from his book is long forgotten (along with the title, apparently)
but that story/essay/whatever is what I got from his take on the old reality game...
I'd like to incorporate the higher-still beings reply into any future posting of this
and share the movie rights with you; splitting the profits 50/50. Co-authors?

~Hugs, GnxL 7

Rich, girlfriend!!!

Emma Anne Tate's picture

We’re gonna be rich!!! Count me in!

Glad you enjoyed it, Ronni — you inspired me!

Emma