This, my friends, is what comes of going loopy from renovating a house. Hopefully next weekend we'll finally be painting the floors. I thought I'd introduce you to a few of my new friends.

Pineas

This is Pineas. Pineas slipped into a pine tree back in the '40's when his spacecraft got lost on the way home. He still feels like a fool. He was hanging upside down for a little bit of back traction - it had been a long flight, some two hundred years, and his entire body hurt - and read the controls upside down, and hit the wrong button. A little like reversing your car into the house when you meant to go forward, except he landed in a pine forest. As the pines were the closest thing to alien body matter he could find, it was easiest to slip inside the trunk of one for a bit of a sleep. He woke up when the machines came a decade later, and found himself sliced like Grog ham (don't ask - it was from the Baturn rings, and a horrid creature, but quite nice smoked). Like many aliens who found themselves in similar situations, he was caught with a look of suprise. He never thought this would happen to him. Pineas passes the time describing various smallgoods he's consumed across the galaxies to his pinealien buddies, who drool with envy, particularly when he talks about the fabled tripled cured snork, a fatty creature raised on zappel grass, which gives it a lovely flavour that is reminiscent of jet fuel.

Pinevard

Everyone loves Pinevard. He's very old, and rarely tells a story, but when he does, everyone listens. No one really can conceive the distance he came to get here, and he came with a message, which he forgot many, many light years ago.

He loves Earth passionately, perhaps because he was a botanist on his home planet. Everyone feels very lucky that his companions did not survive the landing, because if they had, there would have been no humans to grow the pines to cut into floorboards. Once they watched Alien on television and Pinevard couldn't stop laughing. That whole thing with the face sucking alien was nothing on the Csk'Cskick. When he talked about them to the others in the floorboards no one spoke for fifteen years.

Pinebet

Pinebet used to work as a librarian on Endriavine. No one believe her until she said 'ssh', which made Pinevard's eyes bleed yellow resin.

She does miss the books, though. She'd been given the job to organise them all, a huge job, but an important one, gathering all the knowledge of all the galaxies in one planet whose atmosphere was so perfect nothing ever went mouldy. She forever regretted taking the job of going to Earth to find more works for the library. She found their stories unfathomable. Even the paper they were written on was useless.

She passes the time reciting all the gazillion alien alphabets one by one. The Y'ui was the longest one at 32,000 character, but sounded beautiful, like the rings of Saturn.

Pineelope

Darling Pineelope was kidnapped by a pirate when she was only 80 years old. She was very beautiful before she was sliced into 19 floorboards. Her kidnapper died when he refused to enter the pines.

She watched him dehydrate and wither, giggling. The joke was always on him anyway, as Pineelope's people were known for turning their mates into pickles with ying ying juice. Still, most of the aliens had the hots for Pineelope. There was something about the way she smelled. Which was odd, as there was no visible nose. Visitors would pick up on it, particularly when the floor was sanded every few decades. They loved it too.

Pineander

Pineander was an annoying twat. His voice was really high pitched, because he grew up on one of the trelium planets, which affected the vocal chords. He felt the need to describe everything he saw in intimate detail, and even worse, would give away the plot of any old movie they re watched with the house owners at Christmas. In fact, there was a kill order for any of his kind across the entire universe and beyond, which is how he ended up in the pine forest and then the floorboards, because he was escaping a team of bounty hunters. The only thing that saved the other pinealiens was that he slept for nine years at a time and was awake for only two months, giving the other aliens just enough time to rest their ears.

All of the above was simply an excuse for this week's #threetunetuesday, which Hive account@ablaze kindly encourages. Here's a few songs the aliens and I enjoyed this weekend, in between the scrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeee of the sander and my husband moaning.

Magazine - Song from Under the Floorboards

I ran into my ex at Bunnings today, and turns out he still has a grudge, which he's now been carrying for 22 years. 'Hi, how are you?' says I, smiling. He grunted and disappeared into his Land Cruiser. Still, this song always reminds me of him. I had it on cassette tape. I still love it.

In the Pines

Forget Nirvana. There's other versions. I love this one. Bill Callahan has one of those voices.

Castles Made of Sand

Pine - sanding - sand, get it? I know, I've been sniffing too much pine flooring. Two weekends of it. But jesus you can't go past Jimi. Even if you have heard this song a million times, or heard any of his songs a million times, they're still good. This sends me back to my childhood and a ceiling of finding aliens in the pine ceiling. There were puppies too, but mainly aliens. Poor buggers, trapped forever.

With Love,

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