Aliens speak to Earthlings through graffiti!

“Reno officials who are painting over graffiti around town are committing a crime against humanity,” claims noted University of Nevada, Reno aliobiologist Ahmed Shirtpakin. “Look at this. This is the history of an entire culture, the Doglips of the Canis Major system, leading right up to the moment they achieved the universal theory of spirituality and discorporated. … Allow me to translate: In the Second Pashtun, High Priest RoverFidolus had the grace to ask the Rose Golden One the meaning of life. ‘It is simple, empty one,’ said the Avatar, ‘Life is …’

“And then you hit a big Band-aid-colored patch that almost, but doesn’t quite, match the paint on the rest of the wall.”

Reno City Councilman Dwight Dortch appeared dumbstruck by the news. “With all the wisdom and scientific information that is being passed to us on these vertical surfaces, we must immediately begin building more vertical surfaces. That is why I recommend Winnemucca Ranch developers build 10,000 new homes out there. Where are the aliens going to communicate with us out there? On rocks? On those craggy buttes? On the beautiful blue sky? Work must begin before the next election!”

Dr. Shirtpakin says there are three problems with gleaning useful information from the aliens, who are harder to catch than a greased Chippendales dancer at Harrah’s.

“First,” he said, scratching at his graying, scruffy beard, “we never know when they will bestow upon us a new nugget of information. Unfortunately, they paint their wisdom right next to gang tags or sometimes right on street signs or billboards. It appears to me they believe we Earthlings use any flat surface with writing on it as a ‘bulletin board.'”

He says the second difficulty is that the design of the soundwalls on the main highways around Reno and Sparks appear to confuse the aliens. The mountain and river vistas seem to be “too natural” for the Doglips, who prefer not to pollute the natural world with their petrochemical-based pigments.

Finally, the world-renowned scientist said, the graffiti-abatement vehicles work too quickly.

“One day, I’m over by Sparks Mayor Geno Martini’s, where they’ve written the formula for a cancer cure-all, and the next day, I go over there, and there’s an aquamarine patch on the forest-green utility box. Jeez, if they’d written it over on Sutro, I could have put a frame on it. I gotta get one of those digital-photo phones.”

Other scientists are more wary of the aliens’ reasons for presenting the knowledge of the universe to a backwoods little planet like Earth. In fact, they’re also more than a little suspicious of Dr. Shirtpakin.

“Remember the ‘flagella are proof that an intelligent being created Earth’ thing back in the ‘90s?” political scientist SueMae Simpson asked conspiratorially. “He’s the guy.”

In the meantime, Dr. Shirtpakin is compiling the greatest alien knowledge he’s collected from soundwalls, traffic signs, building corners and mailboxes around the Truckee Meadows. “This is going to be the bible of alien spirituality.”

“I don’t know,” said Michael Hartman, 32, a Reno computer technician who happened to be walking past the site. “Looks some kinda gangbanger shit to me.”

April Fools’ content