He was jogging through the park. As he rounded one of the large bushes, a little man stepped out in front of him. Was it a leprechaun? He didn't think so, it looked like he had antennas. An alien? Maybe, but why was he wearing a tuxedo? Did they make tuxedos on his planet? Was it possible that the one thing the creature's species had in common with human beings was that they had both invented the tuxedo? What were the odds of that?
Then Joe realized what an idiot he was. (Actually, Joe had a hunch about his own stupidity much earlier, but now he was gaining further evidence to back-up the theory.) The little man wasn't even green, he was orange. What kind of leprechaun was orange? Joe could have saved himself at least several good milliseconds of thinking time if he had made this connection sooner.
But now Joe was already wondering whether an albino leprechaun might look orange. Hmm... No, of course not, it would be white like every other albino creature. Then again, maybe for an alien, "albino" meant turning orange instead of green.
Wait a second. Now Joe was really confused. "Was I just thinking that this little man was an albino leprechaun or an albino alien?" Joe said aloud.
"Ahem." The alien or leprechaun cleared it's throat.
It seemed that the albino leprechaun or (possibly albino) alien was getting a bit miffed that Joe was standing there thinking about whether he was a leprechaun or an alien. Whether Joe was thinking about his albinoness or non-albinoness didn't really bother the leprechaun or alien too much, because frankly he didn't know what Joe was thinking. He had slept through the Earthling Mind-Reading lesson back in the Planet Earth Takeover Seminar. (And because he had opted for the three-day seminar rather than the five, the teacher had only spent three minutes on the mind-reading portion of the course. By the time the alien or leprechaun had woken up in class, the teacher was already onto the Tricking Your Earth Specimen into Getting on Board the Spacecraft lesson. Fortunately, he had not missed that part.)
Well, since the cat is pretty much out of the bag, why don't we at least come clean about the leprechaun or alien. Or was it "alien or leprechaun"?
(Lest the reader assume that the author is being overly technical - or in the terminology of your species, "anal" - the order of the words actually makes a substantial difference psychologically. Most human beings would assume a "leprechaun or alien" is most likely an "alien", while an "alien or leprechaun" is probably a leprechaun. However, a leprechaun or alien holding a laser gun or four-leafed clover, well, that's another story. In that case, most human beings will start to get very confused.
Now, a leprechaun or alien holding a laser gun or four-leafed clover, wearing a green top hat or a space helmet, talking in an alien language or with an Irish accent, well, now you're going to be completely lost. It might be interesting to write an entire story in the above fashion. The suspense of what species the character was would be drawn out quite well, and by the last sentence, when it was finally revealed that the character was an alien (or leprechaun), the reader would simultaneously have to reevaluate every event in the story with the new bit of information. "Aha!" the reader might say. "So that's why the little man beamed that pot of gold into the eighth dimension!" And so on, and so on.)
So to cut to the chase: the little man was an alien. And no, he wasn't an albino.
Actually, on the alien's planet, albino meant neither white nor orange. An albino was a kind of sandwich, similar to a vegemite sandwich, though made with Zwarkel claws rather than bread. Albinos were very rare, and walking, talking, albinos were even rarer, which is why it would have been completely ridiculous for the little orange man to be an albino. (There were walking, talking sandwiches on the man's planet, but hardly any of them were albinos. The deli that had been caught in the Great Kroanfrazure Storm which was responsible for animating all the planet's sandwiches served few albino sandwiches. It is believed that the animated albino sandwiches were captured by the deli's owners and promptly served to customers as soon as the walls of the deli were hunted down, tranquilized, reassembled, and later de-animated.)
So there Joe was, standing behind a bush, interrupted from his jog, staring at a little orange man in a tuxedo.
Not again, Joe thought.
