Turn on the jukebox by a movement of the hips, "Imitation of Life" by American band R.E.M. starts to play.
I am transported to what could be a field of sorts, a plot of land in which jack o’ lanterns shine their humorously spooky glimmer, somewhere I've never been to before, where U.F.O.’s roam the night skies with technological ease and Coca-Cola is the cultural wine. A place that I surely have seen in the innumerable movies that the star spangled nation of classified violence and planned coups on foreign soil threatened by “red influence” has churned out for us, third world dwellers to enjoy, to envision a better life, a life that no one can truly ever achieve, for this illusion goes both ways.

This is a land of visual signifiers, where the natural is but a hoax, a place of play pretend. Let's pretend I wasn't raised by the internet, let's play as if I didn't feel completely disconnected from my motherland, let's imitate those on the screen and absorb all things unreal, let's become a beacon of references and behaviors, let's astral project to a filmic realm of heavy-handed, candy colored propaganda. Let’s become one with pop culture’s paraphernalia. Let's adopt a new tongue and become so fluent and skilled in it that you are forever banned from having smooth conversations with those who surround you, for the time that you've spent honing your craft in foreign sounds and ways to construct sentences has changed the chemistry of your brain beyond any repair. Let's isolate and ignore, for there are better things to see and believe in, just live off the worldly grid, find solace online. Let's go as far as isolating ourselves from the internet streets that are bustling with life and activity, for people are a disease and we want all things beautiful and tailored to our own specific interests. Let's create an echo chamber devoid of any political discussion, let's ignore it all, let our sustenance rely solely upon images and pretty things, let’s take our minds off of imminent annihilation.

Aliens have landed on my mother soil, a long time ago. The green folk, they have a taste for hindering progress, but how can we blame them? They’re far more experienced, they’re good and considerate, they bring us glossy trinkets, they let us have a peek at their refined, evolved ways, they teach us how to be better, they’ve civilized us. Just like the ones that were responsible for the Giza pyramid and 9/11 in the minds of conspiracists who don tinfoil hats, these aliens have stained this country in a way that all that can ever shimmer is foreign. Long live the green folk and their paternalistic approach to tearing cultures apart!

I have been visited by aliens, I wear the costumes they’ve brought me, I’ve adopted their peculiar sayings, I even have become a connoisseur of their fine arts. Thanks to their much needed intervention, my gummy brain now floating in a crystalline capsule for them to probe with, I can see the world through green-colored glasses.