Buttheads from Outer Space

by Jerry Mahoney

  Silence.

  Quentin looked up, but there was no sign of any spaceships. Lloyd and I knew there wouldn’t be, of course. All the spaceships were currently headed the other direction.

  “Come on out now!” Quentin yelled at the sky. “IAmAWeenieBurger!”

  You could see on Kaitlyn’s video that the other reporters had all left by then, but she was zooming in for a close-up, as Quentin became even more frantic. “Don’t leave the press conference! I have proof! Behold!” He held up the plastic baggie of number four gunk he’d saved.

  “Is that silly putty?” a reporter joked, barely glancing at it.

  “No, it’s the by-product of an alien excretory process! My analysis shows chemicals not present on Earth, proving it comes from extraterrestrial AAAAAAAAH!”

  Quentin fell behind his podium, and fur flew into the air all around him. “Whoa! What happened?” Lloyd said.

  I leaned in for a closer look at the screen. “He’s being attacked.”

  A high-pitched chattering echoed from the TV speakers in surround sound, as Quentin and Mr. Mudd flailed their arms and screamed, “Get off me!” From all around Quentin’s yard, hyper gray rodents appeared and jumped into the fray. “Help!” Quentin wailed. As the few remaining spectators stared at him in disbelief, he wriggled around on the ground, shouting, “IAmAWeenieBurger! IAmAWeenieBurger!”

  “IAmAWeenieBurger!” Mr. Mudd joined in.

  “What’s attacking them?” Lloyd asked.

  They were small, furry creatures, just like the one we’d seen on the sidewalk the other day. They each had a distinctive burnt sienna glint in their angry eyes. “They’re squirrels,” I realized. “Insane mutated squirrels.”

  So this was what happened when they devoured the leftover number four. It turned them into crazy-eyed super-squirrels!

  It took three people to pull Quentin and Mr. Mudd free of the attacking horde, and when they stood back up, the baggie that used to have the number four in it was now empty. “No!” Quentin wailed. “It’s gone! It’s gone!”

  Reporters raced back to the scene, rolling cameras and popping flashbulbs, as the squirrels scurried away and Quentin sat down on the ground, in tears. For the first time at Quentin’s press conference, something newsworthy had happened. It became the top story all afternoon. “Squirrel Attack at Alien Hoax!”

  Once again, Quentin made the front page of the paper. Mr. Mudd was mentioned briefly inside, on page A19.

  Lloyd flunked his history test, but I was happy pretty much all day about the way things played out with the buttheads. We got to hang out with aliens, and we didn’t doom our planet in the process. Go us. At the end of the day, we tracked down Kaitlyn at her locker to compliment her on her excellent camerawork.

  “Yeah, we finally got revenge on Quentin,” she said, high-fiving us.

  “You mean, you were trying to get revenge on him, too?” Lloyd asked.

  “Duh,” she said. “Don’t you remember at my eighth birthday party when he barfed ice cream cake all over my Purse Puppies? Why did you think I was always following him around with my camera? To record your aliens?”

  “You mean . . . you knew about the aliens?”

  “Of course,” Kaitlyn said. “I read your blog. And I got plenty of footage of the buttheads while I was recording Quentin.”

  “So you were the fourth like!” I said. “But if you had footage of them, why didn’t you post it? That would’ve gotten you so many hits.”

  “Yeah, and possibly had us all picking out toe jam for the rest of time.” Kaitlyn gave us a look. “I heard that, too.” She slung her backpack over her shoulder and headed for the bike rack. “Later, guys.”

  As we watched her go, I realized there were plenty of cool people here on Earth, and maybe next time Lloyd and I had an urge to meet some aliens, we should try to get to know some of the people here instead.

  18 Read all about it! Our blog post on the news is on page 274.

  EPILOGUE19

  After his disastrous press conference, Quentin made the cover of Newsweek again. “Too Successful Too Young?” read the headline. It was all about kids who’d done something amazing when they were little and been built up like they were bound to rule the world someday. Almost all of them spent the rest of their lives trying to recapture that glory and failing repeatedly. After it came out, a lot of newspapers vowed to stop doing those “Kids Who Are Changing the World” stories and just let kids be kids. Quentin, on the other hand, vowed to do something even bigger and better next time, and to destroy me and Lloyd in the process. So we have that to look forward to.

  After the whole TV meltdown, Mr. Mudd stopped teaching science and wrote a book about the aliens. Not many people believed it, but the few people who did became totally obsessed with him and treated him like a hero. He began devoting all his time to attending alien conventions, where he often appeared in a butthead costume and taught classes on how to speak in farts.

  The real surprise was what happened to Kaitlyn. Her reports about Quentin and his meltdown got tens of millions of hits. She got so popular online that the local TV station hired her to do a kids’ report for the five o’clock news. She never made anyone’s list of future superstars, but she found something she liked to do and was good at, and she worked hard at it. Lloyd and I watched her every time she was on, between Johnny Touchdown’s Fumble Follies and Tommy Tornado’s Wacky Weather.

  I’ve always known that only a few people get to be super geniuses, but for the first time I realized that it’s OK to be one of the other people. I resigned from the Smart-Off team, because I hadn’t earned it, and Quentin got to be the Super Brain again. It was only fair, and it kept him busy so he didn’t bug me and Lloyd too much. The two of us joined the bowling league. We came in dead last, and we had a blast.

  So I was an unpopular sixth grader? At least it was better than being a popular dung beetle. Even if you’re the coolest dung beetle in the world, you’re still eating poop all day. When I thought of it that way, I was satisfied with my life. Sure, the people who are freakishly good at one thing or another get all the attention. But with that comes all the pressure. Nobody was expecting me to cure cancer or become president or host a TV cooking show. All I had to do was just keep on living, and as long as I did, who knows what might happen.

  Lloyd and I vowed not to invite any more aliens to Earth. We just went back to playing bike hockey in the parking lot of the Mexican fast food place that had to close after all the bacteria outbreaks. That was how we spent our time, playing games and hanging out, and it was the absolute best.

  Anyway, as far as changing the world, we’d been there and done that, even if no one but Quentin, Mr. Mudd, and Kaitlyn would ever know.

  19 An epilogue is the part at the end of the book that no one ever reads, but you should read this one, because it wraps up the story pretty well. Also, read our blog on books, on page 276, especially if you wish this book wasn’t over just yet.

  APPENDIX

  THE PEACEFUL EXTRATERRESTRIAL’S

  GUIDE TO EARTH

  by Lloyd and Josh,

  Earthlings

  http://peacefulextraterrestrialsguidetoearth.freeblogz.biz/holidays/

  Holidays

  There are lots of days on our planet where people throw parties, appliance stores have big sales, and most importantly, we get the day off from school. One of them is the day this guy Abraham Lincoln was born, because he did lots of great things and then died watching a play, which is just about the worst way to go. When you come to Earth, don’t see any plays. Trust us. They’re horrible.

  The best holiday of all is probably Christmas, which is when humans bring a tree indoors, then they run really old cartoons on TV and parents finally buy kids all the things they’ve been saying “no” to all year. Christmas usually falls about three weeks after they release the new Xbox.

  Then there’s another day everyone celebrates, which isn’t technically a holiday. It’s called a birthday, and
it happens once every time the Earth circles around the sun, on the day you were born. Birthdays are great unless they fall around Christmas, because then a person’s two biggest present-getting days end up mushed into one, and they have to wait a whole year to get anything else off their wish list.

  There was once a guy named Jesus who was supposedly born on Christmas Day. Man, he got a raw deal.

  Posted by Lloyd and Josh, September 14 at 7:38 pm

  Likes: 4

  Comments: 0

  http://peacefulextraterrestrialsguidetoearth.freeblogz.biz/inventions/

  Inventions

  Humans are really proud of the things we’ve invented, like fire and light bulbs, and deep frying foods that aren’t normally deep fried. The truth is, though, that next to iPhones, all of those other inventions are complete garbage. That’s because iPhones are pretty much every other worthwhile invention rolled into one. They’re a camera, a calculator, and best of all, a way to stream skateboarding fail videos during lame school assemblies.

  Grown-ups also use iPhones to make these things called “phone calls,” which was how people kept in touch before Thomas Edison invented texting. Phone calls are conversations where every other sentence is, “What? You’re cutting out! Hello? Hello?” Also, there are no emojis on phone calls, so it’s impossible to tell what anyone’s really thinking.

  iPhones are so much a part of life that life without an iPhone is absolute torture. You might see people laughing at a picture and saying, “I am so Instagramming that!” If you have an iPhone, you can look it up right away, but if not, you never find out what was so funny. Or if you overhear someone say, “Did you hear about Katy Perry?” an iPhone helps you find out right away whether she has a new single or she’s dead.

  Posted by Lloyd and Josh, September 17 at 4:51 pm

  Likes: 4

  Comments: 0

  http://peacefulextraterrestrialsguidetoearth.freeblogz.biz/bathrooms/

  Bathrooms

  When Earthlings have to poop or pee, we go to a place called a bathroom. “Bathroom” is kind of a dumb word for it, because we don’t usually take a bath there, but I guess no one wanted to call it a pooproom. They were probably afraid kids would laugh every time someone asked the teacher for a pooproom pass. Or maybe some fancy adult was worried about getting all dressed up for the opera or something and then having to say, “Pardon me, but might you kindly direct me to the pooproom?”

  After we finish going to the bathroom, we flush the toilet, and the poop and pee are taken to the ocean, where they become the fishes’ problem. They always say it’s bad to drink seawater, and it’s pretty clear why: because seawater is made up of 90% fish pee. Think about it. How could it not be? If fish were smart, they’d invent plumbing that dumped all their waste products on land. But their brains are about the size of rabbit turds, so instead we get to dump all our pee on them, and it swirls around with their pee in the biggest toilet in the universe. This is also why people shouldn’t eat sea salt.

  Lloyd says: If my dad was naming bathrooms, they might be called “libraries,” since he always takes a newspaper in there to read while he does his business. I think seeing what the president is doing with his tax dollars helps his poop come out faster or something.

  Posted by Lloyd and Josh, September 19 at 1:04 pm

  Likes: 4

  Comments: 0

  http://peacefulextraterrestrialsguidetoearth.freeblogz.biz/games/

  Games

  Humans love to play games. At first, games were stupid, like cavemen seeing who could stare at a rock the longest. (Spoiler alert: Grok won.) Later, games were ways for moms to keep their kids busy so they could drink wine and talk to their friends on the phone. Eventually, people made moms feel bad about this, so moms came up with this thing called Family Game Night, where they forced their husband and kids to bond while eating microwave popcorn and playing games from the 1950s. There’s one called “Life,” where you pretend to be a person who’s living a life, which is exactly what you’d be doing if you weren’t wasting your time playing the stupid game.

  Most families eventually stop doing family game night. Usually, this comes around the time the dad realizes the kids are old enough that he doesn’t have to let them win anymore. Right after this, the kids start to realize their dad is a hyper-competitive jerk. No one needs to hear their father shout “Boo-yah!” every time he passes “Go” in Monopoly. That’s when the mom realizes she’d rather be on the phone drinking wine again, and family game night comes to an end.

  Josh says: My dad let me win at checkers until I was ten. It would’ve ended sooner, but I didn’t realize he was letting me win. I thought my dad was just really, really bad at checkers, and I felt sorry for him. So around when I was eight, I started trying to let my dad win. The games would take hours. Finally, one night, I got so frustrated that I shouted out, “I’ve been trying to let you win!” And my dad replied, “I’ve been trying to let you win!” Then we both agreed checkers was a dumb game, and we never played it again.

  Posted by Lloyd and Josh, September 19 at 3:03 pm

  Likes: 4

  Comments: 0

  http://peacefulextraterrestrialsguidetoearth.freeblogz.biz/old-ladies/

  Old Ladies

  Old ladies are pretty much the greatest people on Earth. Sure, they smell weird and they pinch kids’ cheeks, but they also let kids do things their parents won’t, like eat hot fudge sundaes for dinner and play M-rated video games. (The key is convincing them that “M” stands for “Math.”)

  There are a few things no one should ever do with an old lady, though. One is to get in a car when an old lady is driving. They are very slow, and it’s impossible to hear the radio over the sound of the other drivers honking at them. Also, never eat their chocolate chip cookies, because they’re guaranteed to contain nuts, raisins, celery, or something else that totally ruins them. Old ladies don’t understand the kinds of foods kids like.

  More than anything else, though, the number one thing not to do with an old lady is to get into a conversation with one. Old ladies get tired doing just about everything else in the world, but somehow, talking to kids never wears them out. First, they will ask us about school. Then, they will ask why we never wear the sweater they bought us for Christmas. Then they will talk about all the medical problems they have. This is why the average length of an old lady conversation is approximately forever.

  Josh says: I have two grandmas. We call them Grandma Cuckoo and Grandma Nutjob. It’s not what it sounds like, though. Grandma Cuckoo earned her nickname because she has a loud cuckoo clock in her apartment. Grandma Nutjob is called that because she used to work at the Planters Peanut factory. Also, they’re both totally wacko.

  Posted by Lloyd and Josh, September 19 at 1:38 pm

  Likes: 4

  Comments: 0

  http://peacefulextraterrestrialsguidetoearth.freeblogz.biz/being-sick/

  Being Sick

  Being sick is usually a good thing.

  Doing a cool trick on a skateboard is sick. Playing a prank on a substitute teacher is sick. Wearing a T-shirt with Hello Kitty as a skull that has a snake coming out of its eye sockets is super sick. When someone says someone is sick, it’s a compliment—with one exception, which is when a doctor says it.

  When a doctor tells an Earthling we’re sick, it means we’re headed for Puke City. Getting that kind of sick is about the least sick thing possible.

  We’re not sure why doctors use the word “sick” to mean something bad, when everyone else agrees “sick” is good. It must suck, because doctors can’t use the word “sick” in a cool way like the rest of us. Otherwise, they might end up saying something like, “Hey, man, that new liver we gave you is totally sick!” and their patient would think he was going to die.

  For humans, there’s one good thing about being sick in a doctor-type way, which is that we get to stay home from school. It’s like an unexpected holiday, where we can stay in our pajamas and play on the iPad
all day. There are only two things that can ruin a good sick day. One is if we’re too sick to enjoy it. If a person spends long enough bent over a toilet barfing their guts out, pretty soon, they’ll wish they were back at school dividing fractions.

  The other thing that can ruin a sick day is if, when we get back, our teacher makes us catch up on all the work we missed while we were gone. It’s not fair. When teachers are out sick, no one makes them go back and write all the hall passes they would’ve given out if they’d been in school.

  Posted by Lloyd and Josh, September 19 at 11:01 pm

  Likes: 4

  Comments: 0

  http://peacefulextraterrestrialsguidetoearth.freeblogz.biz/sleep/

  Sleep

  Humans sleep about one third of their lives, which you might think is kind of a waste, until we tell you that nothing good is on TV at night and no one else is awake anyway, except really creepy animals, like bats and owls and Josh’s neighbor who has tinfoil on his windows and who Josh’s dad says he’s “keeping an eye on.”

  When humans sleep, almost everything in our bodies keeps working. Our lungs keep breathing, our stomach keeps digesting, and our heart keeps pumping blood. Unfortunately, our brains pretty much conk out the whole time, so we can’t use them for anything productive. It’d be cool if people could spend their sleep hours doing all the stuff they don’t want to waste time on during the day, like sit-ups and reading classics of American literature for English and Language Arts. When kids wake up, sometimes their parents ask them how they slept, which is pretty much the dumbest question in the world. We wish when our parents asked that question, we could answer something like, “It was great. I ran a 5K and finally got to the end of Anne of Green Gables.”

  Mostly, people sleep at home in their beds, but another great place to do it is in Mrs. Michaelson’s social studies class. She’s so boring, sometimes, she puts herself to sleep. We’ve still never heard how World War I ended.