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An Alien Learns About Catfishing

Wormhole is an alien sent to the Earth to observe human behavior. He splits rent with a slovenly man named Al.  This is a conversation Wormhole and Al had while watching an episode of  Catfish.  

Wormhole: You are watching yet another program on the Music Television channel that seems completely unrelated to music.

Al: This is a show about people who get catfished.

Wormhole: What is “catfished?”

Al: It’s when you talk to someone on the computer. And you tell them you’re someone who looks way better than you. Then you go meet them, and they’re like “Wait. You’re not Brad Pitt.” But they don’t even care because they liked your computer words so much.  

Wormhole: They do not find you repulsive?

Al: Maybe a little. But if you have good computer words, it doesn't really matter.

Wormhole: And this catfishing is how humans find suitable mates?

Al: Most of them, yeah. Sometimes it doesn’t work though. Like one time I pretended to be Paul Walker. But then we met up and we’re talking about how I really let myself go, and my filmography and stuff, and she pulls up my IMDB page and she’s like “You’re not Paul Walker! Paul Walker’s dead!” That was a bad beat. But I learned from it.

Wormhole: So the next time you pretended to be someone who was not yet dead.

Al: No. I pretended to be someone dead, but also fat: Chris Farley from Saturday Night Live. It was a lot more believable. When I was trying to be Paul Walker, I had to spend so much time explaining my extreme weight gain, I barely got to talk how much fun we had shooting Varsity Blues.

Wormhole: I have not seen it.

Al: Well you're not gonna understand Earth until you do. Anyway, so I'm just playing the shit out of the role of Chris Farley. And I'm telling this girl how insanely high I was when we made Beverly Hills Ninja and she's like “You poor thing” and touching my face and shit. But then she just goes on wikipedia for some reason and finds out I'm dead. I mean, what are the odds?

So next time, I pretended to be Pavarotti. Pretending to be an alive person was a new challenge and it really energized my performance. Anyways, we went for Olive Garden and it was going great but then she was like “I’m dying to hear you sing.” We’d talked on the phone some, but I had mostly just hummed and made fart sounds and shit. Now it’s put up or shut up, so I just break into “Living on a Prayer.” I’m just wailing and I know she’s digging it and I’m just thinking “Check, please!” It was so good everybody in the restaurant just stops and stares. And then she’s staring too. And she’s like. “You're no tenor. You’re a baritone!” And I’m like “So I sing like I got a pair. Sue me.” And she threw hot cocoa on me. We still wound up having sex on the roof of a Baskin Robbins. But not because she liked me or anything. The view from up there is just real special. It does things to you.

Wormhole: You were successful then?

Al: Yeah. I put that one in the win column.

Wormhole: Have you ever been catfished?

Al: No way. Even if I was dumb enough to fall for something like that, up I haven't been putting myself out there much lately. On account of I was engaged to Selma Hayek for like 5 years. She had gained a lot of weight. And grown maybe four or five inches. But what a sweetheart. I don't know where she went, if she fell down a well or what, but I’ll never forget those nights we had eating squirrel and drinking moonshine and talking about her IMDB.