ALSACAT:

Venus and the flying saucers

STRASBOURG. -- The Strasbourg observatory communicates: a Strasbourg newspaper having echoed celestial phenomena observed in various circumstances by several of its readers and attributed to "unknown craft", the Strasbourg observatory communicates:

"The sightings communicated recently by various people seem to relate quite simply to the planet Venus which is currently shining vividly in the sky after sunset. We caution inexperienced observers of certain illusions frequently caused by atmospheric disturbances (scintillation, passage of high clouds, etc.) in the case of particularly bright stars. For centuries, most returns of Venus to the current phase of maximum brightness have caused similar phenomena."

The Grain of Salt
of André WURMSER

LIKE THE MOON

A Strasbourg newspaper recently gave this news, the authenticity of which has been proven by the unanimous testimony of countless readers: the Alsatian sky is crisscrossed by unknown apparatuses, flying saucers, V1, V2, V3 and the next, by radio-controlled rockets, apparently atomic bombs, pilotless planes, mysterious and phosphorescent craft (it's clear!) to such an extent that the celestial vault is completely cluttered with them and that a Code of the air route will soon have to be enacted, in order to prevent the explosion, by meeting inadvertently, of two equally unknown, equally mysterious craft and both loaded with sudden death.

And the first unknown craft that does not respect the rules, will be fined.

The emotion was, as we say when you are a journalist of old stock, at its height. In the souls of peaceful citizens, Cold War times cast a chill. Such was the terror of the brave people, and by the proximity of the big boom that the sale of astronomical telescopes itself experienced a no less big boom. Everyone scan the sky. In The Hunchback, an adorable melodrama, it is about a dead woman who walks and speaks in her tomb, instead of sleeping in there. Every Strasbourg resident spent his nights scrutinizing the infinite spaces, and, for the window open to the coming war, forsook the marital bed, instead of sleeping in there. And opinions agreed: it's full of flying saucers, in there!

Thereupon, irritated, the Strasbourg Observatory informed its fellow citizens that the planet Venus shines in this season with a particularly bright brilliance, that it is the same each time it returns to its current phase, that this phenomenon was observed at a time when the Soviet Union was not threatening Costa Rica with sudden annexation, and that the venereal peril is not what a vain nation of amateur astronomers thought.

So that assuming that two mysterious craft collide, what would fall on Strasbourg would be two ducks.

Poor Venus, who would have thought that she would take pleasure in disguising herself as a saucer and disturbing the nights of lovers in Alsace? Tell me, Venus, we sing in La Belle Hélène, what pleasure do you find in making my virtue cascade like this? The first virtue of an observer is objectivity. But go look at the sky with composure when, as soon as you wake up, while you are shaving, while you are having lunch, while you are walking all along the Ill, along the water, while you kiss your wife and while she argues with you, the press, the radio, the governments and the lunatics invent tensions and calculate the date and the strategy of the third last, the most inevitable war in the World!

Pascal said, and each flying saucer could say to the Alsatian who discovers it: "You wouldn't be looking for me if you had never found me." Found in your newspaper, in your radio set, in the deliberately catastrophic speeches of your deputy.

The most heartbreaking thing is that, obviously, the Strasbourg newspaper said to itself: flying saucers in the Alsatian sky, this is completely in our line! Everything that panics is ours, everything that convinces the poor people that they will be pulverized tomorrow at three o'clock is our business!

Certainly, before publishing these comments from readers, the newspaper in question could have consulted the observatory of its city:

- Later, the director would have said. I don't trust scholars. They don't understand politics. They're gonna end up saying it's a planet!