I’m making an interstellar request to our neighbors on Mars.  The evil ones that got a lot of press in the first half of the twentieth century, not the ones that built a big atmosphere machine with huge blocks of ice so that the mutants could eventually breathe.  You know – the ones with antimatter cannons and cannibal robots.  To any and all Martians that are listening, please load up your hyperdrive battle cruisers with legions of tripods, zip over to Earth, and invade us.  Please.

Why have I invited our soon-to-be-conquerors?  What is it that made me lose my faith in mankind?

I’ve been perusing the news sites and I ran across an article on Time.com titled: Social Networks Target Pets.  Yep, that’s right … Doggyspace.com has risen.  It’s a chance for owner’s to load pictures, bios, and interests for their dogs so that their PETS can make friends online.  I just took a handfull of Excedrin.

Social networks have been in place for a long time and anything that attracts visitors on the Internet is going to attract white-hat and black-hat online marketers that are trying to monetize that traffic for whoever can pay.  Sometimes its for something useful, such as the entire first season of Manimal, but most of the time its for online dating, mortgage quotes, porn, or Cialis.  Let me interject, its 2008, why in the world would you pay for online porn?  It’d be like paying for air.

These are the same bastards that spam my website with comments filled with inbound links to their site-of-the day bullshit – “work from home!”, “gamble online!”, or my personal Aussie favorite, “stronga longa donga!”  That one I’m actually considering.  If you wonder why your comments don’t immediately appear on my columns, I have to review each one personally before approving because of these ass monkeys and their ‘bots spidering the Internet for cheap links back to their crapper web sites.

One of these ad wizards came up with the idea of a dog Facebook.  I just wish I had been there during his Eureka moment.  Like back on November 5, 1955, when Dr. Emmett Brown fell, bonked his head, and had a vision of a flux capacitor for the time traveling DeLorean.  Why couldn’t the Libyan terrorists show up for the Doggyspace dumb ass?

Firstly, he doesn’t get any originality for the name.  Doggyspace?  The board room meeting could have gone something like this:

“We need to make a place for pet enthusiasts to list their pets like Facebook or Myspace.”

“Hmm … we could call it CatBook?”

“That’s a good idea, Rogers, but it just doesn’t have the right ring to it … I know there is the perfect name out there … what could it be?”

Second, the luxury pet market is already well developed.  I think I just threw up in my mouth when I wrote “luxury pet market”.  My grandpa had a bluetick coonhound named Duke.  He loved that dog more than his wife, which is the Oklahoma way mind you.  But to say that he ever spent more than the $9.95 for a fifty pound sack of dog food from Wal-mart would be an outright lie.  Now there are spa-like kennels for dogs and cats that will pamper your pets while you take a vacation – massages, gourmet cooks, gilded fire hydrants … you name it.  I wish I was lying, but its all true.

Did you know that in the last ten years, spending on pets has doubled?  Or that in 2004, the pet market boasted a $31 billion industry?  Compare that to the $20.3 billion toy industry, toys for human children.  Apparently, we’re spending more money as a race on dog toys and dog accessories than our own children.  Someone’s ass needs to be kicked.

So for as bad as Doggyspace.com is as an idea, there will be some empty nester or no-lifer browsing the Internet when they stumble upon this shitter website and think, “Great Scott!  All my dreams have been realized!”, and rush into creating a membership account for Precious the Poodle.  The fact that dogs can’t see in two-dimensions (i.e your computer screen), can’t read or speak a single word of any known language on this planet, and would just as likely eat your keyboard than type on it … doesn’t seem to make a bit of difference.

Don’t believe me?  Watch Best in Show.  These people are real.  These people are your friends, co-workers, relatives, neighbors.  They are all around us.  Doggyspace.com launched in July 2008 and already has … 700,000 subscribers.  God help us, God help all of us.

Which brings me to my point.  I’m sending an open invitation to any extraterrestrial species that is listening.  Please come, bring lots of phasers, and invade us.  I’m not talking about the wimpy aliens like E.T. or Cocoon, I’m talking about hardcore xenomorphs such as Predator, Aliens, body snatchers, Martians, Zentraedi, and Independence Day.

I’d be happy to help point out any potential problems in your invasion attempt.  First on my list, get immunized.  Pronto.  We’ve got a lot of crazy shit down here that will wipe out your entire expeditionary force, such as the Flu, Ebola, AIDS, and Syphilis (you dirty aliens, you!).  Since you’ve been intercepting our broadcasts and satellite signals for years, I can only assume that you’ve watched movies such as Outbreak and 28 Days Later to understand the idea of widespread contamination.  Either that or just stay in your tripods and blast away.  I’d recommend starting with Detroit or the French in general.

Don’t be surprised if you encounter heavy resistance in Oklahoma and Texas.  Every single person in those two states, school teachers, grannies, kids in short pants, they are all armed with automatic pistols, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, and home made demolitions – all for home defense, of course.  Take a note from Red Dawn and avoid those areas until you’ve got ample ground forces assembled in Arkansas and Mexico.

You’ll probably get a welcoming committee in Northern California.  They’ll release white doves, sing songs, and open their arms to you as if you were Alien Nation arriving for interstellar peace and liberation.  Suckers!  Set phasers on high.

I implore you, please come, please put us out of our misery.