All we have to do is cross out words like "baby" and "darling" and replace them with Jesus. --Eric Cartman

By the time the Aliens landed, their saucers had been flying back and forth over most of the cities on Earth for several hours. Everyone saw them, and the only thing keeping the Martians (as the inhabitants of the planet Earth mistakenly came to be known) from mindless panic was that each flying saucer towed a bright red banner with white letters that said Buy Two Get Three Free.

Many of the most familiar images of this event depict a saucer landing before a crowd of Martians with their arms aloft extended in sign of welcome.¹ Alternatively, we imagine the Martians before their towns, in array of battle, as if to defend themselves.² Neither version is particularly accurate.

The Aliens landed first at the seat of power of one of the larger Martian tribes, at a place known as the White House. This place was so-named for a fantasy regarding the color of the skin of those who were in power. It seems that they thought it was whiteness that put hundreds of millions of Martians under the dominion of a minority of them.³ Surprisingly enough, there were groups of Martians at this time who actually claimed to have white skin. These groups built up a great cult around being a 'white person,'⁴ confining a great many privileges to such a color, even though the shade of color to which they referred was not actually white at all.⁵ It was mostly beige and occasionally pinkish or even red; the White House, however, was actually white. This concept became useful to Aliens, for the Martians favored the Aliens for their superior whiteness as much the wild gorillas, chimpanzees, and other primates of Earth favored the Martian females over those of their own species.⁶ But I will have more to say about the notorious Martian females later.

The silver saucer (some say yellow) floated down and quietly steamed above the perky green grass. A few red lights blinked at uneven intervals around its perimeter while nervous Martians peeked at it from behind shrubs.

The underside of the saucer emitted a large cloud of steam and lowered a ramp. More curls of steam gushed from inside along with an eerie green light. The crowd of Martians heard steady, business-like steps, amplified by the hard walls of the saucer. The shoes responsible for the echoing footsteps appeared on the ramp, below the clouding steam. They were fairly normal-looking brown business shoes. Legs appeared next, as the figure descended the ramp, and the legs were clad in stolid gray slacks. A small, slightly plump man with black hair and sharp features emerged from the steam and stepped off the bottom of the ramp, which closed behind him. By now, the Martians crowded the lawn, and watched his movements with awful anxiety.⁷

He nodded pertly to the people milling about, many of whom were pointing weapons at him, and said, 'I am not an Alien. My name is Barrow, I am the second secretary of the American Association of Aerial Advertisers, and I am here, representing our newest members, the Aliens. Kindly take me to the President!'