Mission Three: An Attempt to Ketchup

Yielded again! "This is your fault," I looked at Scott.

He just frowned and replied, "I know."

After the 30 minute penalty was over, the two of us began building our rocket ship.

"Hand me a crescent wrench," I commanded.

Scott handed me a hammer.

"Get me a miter saw," I ordered.

Scott handed me a tube of superglue.

"Now, I need adjustable joint pliers," I said.

Scott handed me a super battle droid.

It was difficult work, but I managed to put together a rocket that would get us to the Starcore space satellite.

Before boarding, I said my goodbyes to Captain Koma's family.

Those poor Australian rednecks.

Soon, Cyclops, the battle droid and I were at the Starcore space satellite and I read the detour outloud. "A detour presents a yadda, yadda yadda....Talk or Walk."

Scott suggested we take Walk. "It would be great exercise," he commented. "Walking does wonders for the glutes."

So I chose Talk. Being a paper salesman, I was sure a little space diplomacy would be easy enough, and if anything were to go wrong, I'm also skilled in aggressive negotiations.

The three of us met with the representative of Zatox.


"Hello, dum-dums," the tiny floater said. "As I'm sure you've heard by now, one of our spacecrafts crash-landed on your planet Earth and I'd like to get it back."

I replied, "Well, I don't think we have that kind of authority. We're just reality show contestants."

"Then why am I meeting with you dum-dums?" the little guy asked.

"Our dum-dum host picked the challenge," I answered. "There's no telling what goes on in that senile, telepathic mind of his."

The alien seemed concerned. "Telepathic?" he said scratching his chin. "This is not good at all."

"What's not good?" Scott asked. "The new Fall lineup?"

"You Earthlings," he said with obvious disgust, "have begun to acquire telepathic abilities. What's next? Lasers shooting out of your eyes?"

Scott and I laughed nervously.

The green extraterrestrial continued, "That recon spacecraft was meant to study your planet. Officially it was intended to research your bizarre mating rituals, but unofficially we wanted to spy on your military capabilities to ensure you war-mongering dum-dums can't harm any of us on Zatox."

I tried to reassure him, "Don't worry. We're more concerned with producing unnaturally colored ketchup than mastering space travel."


"I like the purple kind," Scott added. "It's funky!"

"Besides," I continued, "I'm sure your weaponry is far superior to ours, and the telepathic guy that I told you about, he's confined to a wheelchair. Just build stairs and you've got him beat."

"Actually, Zatox has no weapons," the alien stated. "I did develop a button that if pushed would destroy the entire Universe, it's called a hadron collider, but other than that, we're defenseless."

"Hmmm...well," I had an idea, "you can take this battle droid with you. Have your scientists examine him then you can mass produce your own. An army of these guys would be all you'd need to take over all of Earth, and if you do it during the Superbowl, nobody would even oppose you, so long as you don't say anything bad about beer or the Patriots."

The Zatox ambassador said, "Throw in some of that purple ketchup and you've got a deal, dum-dums."


We waved bye to the little alien from Zatox and the super battle droid, then headed back to Starcore's command center, the pit stop for this leg of the race. If we're not the first team to arrive it's proof that the Bush Doctrine is right: Diplomacy is a waste of time and we should have just bombed the gazoo out of him.