Well I Thought About the Army.

  Most boys and some girls at some stage go through a phase of playing armies, I guess it's something that you see on TV and in movies and think is really cool. This is just a reminder that real war can be fairly awful, there's bad food, noise, dust, lots of marching, tent erecting, gun cleaning and killing people plus your smart uniform gets all dirty and your Mum's not around to wash it for you! So the reality does not at all match up with the fantasy. This is the same with a number of childhood aspirations I eventually discovered. They seem awesome at first, then learning how to do the job is quite boring. I'll take you through a few professions that I was going to pursue as a child until effort rose it's fugly head.

Army Officer - As I found out this required going to some weird army university called Duntroon or something, I had 6 more years of school to complete at that point so the thought of doing more wasn't palatable. The army was then out, playing armies was still totally in though.

Park and Wildlife Officer - I love animals and wearing khaki shorts (even too this day) once again there was university to complete but I thought it might be easier because I knew a lot of the animals names already. Then I found out there was fencing and wooden hut building involved plus you might get posted to somewhere dusty which was kind of what I hated about the army i.e. getting my khaki shorts dirty.

Chef - This was realistically something I could do but then I figured out that someone has to do all the washing up from the cooking plus the restaurant. Would that be my job as a chef? I didn't know but I'd already washed enough dishes by the age of 10 to know I was definitely going to avoid it as a an adult. Being a Chef was too risky, think again Dan.

Astronaut - Too me this was like driving a car but in space and with rockets. I was never on board with all this going to the Moon business but shooting lasers from a safe distance at evil space aliens seemed a good way to earn a living and there was generally a uniform that was sometimes khaki. I then found out you had tone Russian or American to become an astronaut so that drew a line through that plan!

  So it was one crushing revelation after another on the career front for little Dan but then something wonderful happened, I found sport, but that's a whole different disappointing chapter.    

We'll Make Great Pets

  Life after aliens come and take over won't be as super fun as you might think, of course there will be no hunger and hover trains along with using their alternative energy technology will make day to day live much easier and cheaper (if they allow us to keep a monetary system?) but with every large change in the structure of society, a unique set of challenges is thrown up to overcome.

  Would you let your daughter marry an alien? I would, but then I'm not a hateful bigot, it's a good chance our friends from the stars are going to want to participate in our customs and dating/mating will be an area they may be really keen to get involved. Be careful how you react when your son brings home a young alien overlord for dinner as being vaporised in your own home is not the heartwarming last memories you want to provide to your family.

  I guess we'll all learn their language eventually, but for older humans that are a bit stuck in their ways expect to see a lot of vaporisation incidents after an alien has lost it's temper after having being repeatedly spoken to in a condescendingly loud voice in some customer service situation.

  While I'm on the subject of customer service, these organisms can't expect to take over a whole planet and that everything will run fine! I just hope they have the foresight to instigate an efficient customer/slave service program. I would assume feedback is essential when building a multi-planet slave corporation anyway.

  So there's a few bugs to work out but it's going to be great, and if an arriving alien needs to probe you don't be a big baby and cry about it, they're only doing their job.