The Book of Ravioli

[Alien Soda Jerk]

The Book of Ravioli
~As lexicon'd by Alien Soda Jerk


Transmission 1

1 Any pirate worth his salt knows that the stars can be used to tell North and find his way. 2 But t'while they were doing all their skyward gazin', the pirates didn'a realize they weren't sailin' solo, as the old relationship status say. 3 Fer far off inna 'nother galaxy, a band o' Aliens set out inna yacht crafted o' metal with solar panel sails ta' explarrgh new planets and star systems. 4 Their mission — to explore the cosmos for signs of pasta.

5 The Aliens not be little gray men, but praying mantises the size of dogs. 6 Though giant bugs, they were still shorter 'an a human, and cuddly as any midget. 7 Being mantises, they did have a voracious appetite, and would feast heartily upon many bowls of Noodles from Beyond the Stars. 8 And their noodles were all sci-fi like and kewl, bein' all shades of blue, green, and black, and they did give off 7-Gray worth o' nutritious ionizin' radiation. 9 And verily this won the favor of the Noodly One as he watched them load their ship with noodles at spaceport.

10 After many months or was it weeks I don't remember, the Aliens' starscruiser did come across a sight most bizarre. 11 It be two stars o' scarlet colorin', orbittin' around one another, a curious web o' yellow stardust surroundin' them. 12 The Aliens did agree that it looked really cool, and proceeded to make macaroni art of it. 13 Just as they sat there on the floor, a transmission did come in. The signal came from within the binary star system itself, and its message be coordinates. 14 Curious and a little bored, the Aliens plugged the numbers into their ship's onboard computer and followed the coordinates off into unknown space.

15 After days of star-sailing, the Aliens happened upon their mystery destination. It be another world, one of water and plants and... lo and behold... PASTA! 16 And so with great joy the Aliens dropped anchor. They were flying in a starcruiser in outer space so the anchor just sorta trailed below the hull and didn't do anything. Then one of them suggested they actually land first. 17 And with a mouthful of pasta, the Aliens' Captain did plunge the starcruisin' yacht down into the atmosphere o' Earth.


Transmission 2

1 The aliens hid on a remote island. There, they built for themselves a home base that would allow them to research, experiment on, and cook all the pasta they would ever need. 2 And soon sleek & shiny building complexes rose out of the trees. 3 To celebrate the start of their operations, they harvested and ground up palm trees and invented the Pasta Colada, served in a coconut bowl. 4 Yay, and with full tummies, the aliens did begin their information gathering on the bizarre Hoomin race.

5 They poured over all means of communication their ship's sensor array could detect, and decided it would be most efficient to study the #1 most widely broadcast transmissions that the Hoomins uploaded. 6 And so the aliens watched porn. And they cheered and made left jabs and right hook motions, for they thought they were watching wrestling. 7 But soon they looked to alternate sources of information, for there was no Pasta on the Playboy Channel.

8 The aliens watched hours and hours of the Cookin' Network, takin' notes and writin' up mathematical formulae to explain them. 9 The aliens collected many new recipes and were happy, but many of them still wondered of the transmission that brought them here. 10 Then one of the little aliens came across The Loose Canon. Apparently this alien could read and understand English. 11 The alien noticed the star cluster they had encountered matched the description of the Flying Spaghetti Monster the text described. 12 After translating it for the rest of the crew, they saw that not only were they not alone in their mission of Noodly Knowledge, but that others had met a giant entity o' spaghetti and meat. 13 And so with parameters to narrow their search, the aliens did head out to find for themselves... a Hoomin envoy.



Transmission 3

1 A humble pasta strainer ship was idly sailing just away from harbor, taking in seawater and cranking out fresh strands o' spaghetti from its modified aftcastle. 2 Ravioli, a cabin boy aboard the ship, be out late one night arbitrarily tyin' knots in random places because that's what sailors did in all the movies and no one had corrected him yet. 3 As he duct-taped a seagull to the mizzenmast, a low humming did catch his ear.

4 Loomin' overhead, a mass o' metal and light did lower from the clouds, its engines lettin' out a reverberatin' hum. 5 Ravioli looked up at the rumbling airborne vessel and promptly required a change of pants. 6 The alien craft halted directly over the wooden boat. 7 A strand of metallic spaghetti slithered down from the craft, and constricted itself around the lad before whisking him off his humble wooden station and into the air, like a chameleon licking up a tasty moth.

8 Ravioli awoke to find himself strapped to a table, a noisy machine over him. A vacuum-sealed door slid open, and insectoid silhouettes entered the room. 9 Approaching their taste subject (haha it's a pun) they started their research. 10 And so the aliens proceeded to probe Ravioli in the name o' Noodly Science, and so inserted a cold metal spoon with alien pasta into his mouth. 11 And as the starbone flavor particles hit his tastebuds, Ravioli's arms and legs ceased their flailin' . . . for he be awestruck by their tastiness!

12 The straps released and withdrew into the table, and Ravioli sat up to find himself not in a hideous laboratory, but a kitchen, far beyond any on Earth. 13 He looked over at the Aliens, who stood waiting with bowls of all sorts of different noodles for his sampling. 14 Ravioli's heart lept and his stomach gurgled, for he knew that he be among fellow Noodle-Lovers.



Transmission 4

1 And so Ravioli's life as a research subject began.The Aliens gave him a tour o' their island base, the native name o' which sounded a bit like chiptune or dubstep and so couldn't be pronounced by Hoomin tongues. 2 Ravioli saw that all of their hi-tech machinery and tools were calibrated to study pasta of all kinds. 3 Skin grafts of linguine sat pinned to plaques, various sauces applied to them. Petri dishes filled with Orzo lined one bookcase. Large test tubes filled with vermicelli, fusilli, and capellini sat on a rack. And also there was clamped to the edge of a table a manual spaghetti crank apparently used to shred paper for amusement. 4 The boy walked the halls of the base, and found it interesting how the Aliens had managed to take the Darks Arts o' Science and use them for Noodly Good. 5 It was Noodly Science, the Aliens explained to him, and like Christian Science, the first word strips the second of all former connotations.

6 The Aliens allowed Ravioli to accompany them on their harvesting missions. 7 They flew their ship over fields of wheat and corn, and used the tractor beam to vacuum up whole stalks straight outta the ground. 8 They Aliens were also morons and so they thought it cool to draw patterns in the crops as they did so. And with this they had a limitless supply of raw materials to make pasta. 9 Occasionally they would also fly down to the ground with their insectoid wings, and give cows a taste of alien pasta as well. 10 One time one o' the Aliens flew into one o' the second floor windows, only to dart back out accompanied by a high-pitched scream as a partially-undressed girl swung at him with a broom. And at more than one time they were shot at by hysterical farmers. 11 Yay. Noodly Science.

12 Over the course of their research, the Aliens did interview Ravioli about the meaning of the Loose Canon. 13 Ravioli did not know too much, for he was not a pirate himself, but a lowly assistant cook. Nonetheless he explained all he did happen to know. 14 He told them of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who cooked all of the Cosmos (the universe, not the blasphemous Carl Sagan television series) into existence from nothin', and whose Noodly Appendage could be found in all of nature. 15 He also told them of Dark Lord Darwin, and how Hoomins had been blinded to the awesomeness of the FSM by his facts and reason. 16 The aliens had already read the Pastafarian Scriptures so why they be askin' these questions be a mystery. 17 Nonetheless, the aliens wanted to observe the Hoomins under Darwin's control, and so sent Ravioli out into the field to provoke them firsthand.


Transmission 5

1 Ravioli had a belly full of delicious capellini with spinach, garlic, and beans, and so was totally energized and psyched for his first attempt at Holy Propaganda. 2 Unfortunately, he had landed in a heathen land. The town he had come into was a liberal university campus inhabited by worshippers of Athe, the goddess of science, reason, and evolution.

3 Athe was portrayed as a brunette female scientist in a white lab coat, a beaker filled with an aqueous green solution in one hand and a platinum-iridium meter bar in the other. 4 Her black-rimmed glasses allowed her to see any wavelength of light at any magnification level. 5 And Her skirt be short to show off her legs, for being the goddess of evolution, she was smokin' hot in order to attract mates. 6 Her followers, those called Atheists, pleased their patron goddess by concluding there simply wasn't any evidence that She existed. 7 For their blind faith (for Atheism is a religion and there is much faith in it), Athe rewarded them with successful laboratory experiments and consistent data collection.

8 Ravioli approached a pack of Atheists playing ultimate frisbee on the Quad, decked out in full piratical regalia. 9 He told them of the many kinds of pasta, of fusilli, and vermicelli, and linguine, and capellini, and radiatori. The lost and foolish Atheists, however, asked him what his point was, and Ravioli didn't know how he was going to convince them. 10 He told them of stoves, and pots, and boiling water, and forks laid upon napkins, but the Atheists once again displayed their blatant hatred for irrational and stupid things, and questioned his motives once more.

11 "Me hearties! We be not adrift in this cosmic ocean! There be others out there who cook and eat pasta too! Forsake yer idol Athe, for she be a false goddess that will lead you to Scholarship!" Ravioli exclaimed.

12 The Atheists countered, "What goddess?! What are you talking about? We don't believe in goddesses either!"

13 Ravioli heard this and knew that their devotion to Athe ran deep. He told them of the Midgets, of the Lumberjacks, and of the Pirates. 14The Atheists explained that they would rather study genetics, statistics, astronomy, and biology, and all the other arcane and blasphemous Darwinian tomes than read of pirates and pasta.

15 Ravioli had ammo for this. "Yer very textbooks unknowin'ly give ye signs o' the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Do you not see that all alphabets, symbols, and written codes are just noodles made out of ink?" Ravioli argued.

16 Still the Atheists ignored his insane babbling, preferring instead their wicked facts and logic. However Ravioli did not lose hope, for a lot the Atheists did admit they loved Ramen. He would continue his delivery of ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims.

17 "Aliens!" Ravioli stated aloud, his hands held out in front of himself as though ready to catch a basketball. "Pirates from beyond space and stuff, whose love of pasta led them to build the pyramids aeons ago to record recipes and store their ingredients! Ye too can know the Pirate Aliens! Craft around yer head a tri-corner hat o' aluminum foil, so that their transmissions may fill yer head with thoughts o' pasta and space!"

18 The Aliens had never said or done any of that, but Ravioli had been Touched by His Noodly Appendage, and all things were believable to him now. 19 Or he was just an idiot. 20 The Atheists were not swayed from their belief in the Vixen of Verification and Her Scientific Method, and Ravioli could not convince them that a magical blob of pasta authored the world around them. 21 Watching from above however, hidden among the clouds, the Aliens' sensors did start to detect a most unusual energy signatures surrounding the Atheists. . . .


Transmission 6

1 Back at the island, the Aliens did gobble up ramen by the bowlful and leisurely compiled their data. 2 Ravioli contently slurped up Space Noodles while the soda jerk at the base's bar poured him another Alien Fizzy Drink. 3 This is actually what they called this stuff. I know. 4 The soda jerk told him of their own adventures, both on Earth and on their homeplanet. 5 Then without warning, all the lights on the base did go black.

6 Ravioli found himself lost in total darkness (like foolish Atheists and their rejection of magical pasta beings!) 7 He bumped into one of the soft-serve pasta machines, and horror betook him as he felt healthy agar cubes dispense instead. 8 The Aliens, who could tap their long antennae about and find their way around in the dark sought out the emergency flashlights. 9 Creepy-crawling their way to the base's Radiatori Reactor, they managed to activate the back up generators.

10 Once at the computer terminals, they soon realized the problem was bigger than they could have expected. 11 All of the computer monitors displayed the same image — a ghostly form of an old man with a bushy beard and the body of a chimpanzee. Ravioli walked over to the screen and jumped back.

12 "It's . . . it's . . . DARWIN!!! The Dark Lord has followed us from the college!!! The Monkey Man is here!!!" Ravioli panicked. 13 The Aliens did what they could to get their computers to display their normal glitchy patterns, but the Devil of Descent With Modification had cleaned out the machine's circuits and replaced all of their corrupted files with logical, executable computer code. 14 The Aliens tried to hurry Ravioli to a safer place, but he refused to run when it would be reasonable to do so.

15 "No! It not be a normal virus! It be a spiritual virus! We need to battle Darwin spiritually!" Ravioli explained in a voice louder than was necessary. 16 Really, there wasn't any noise to shout over. The automated alerts were actually rather quiet. 17 The Aliens looked amongst other and nodded. 18 Buzzing (they be mantises and have pairs o' wings to fly with, remember?) their way down the halls to the clothery, or whatever you call a room for storing clothes, oh yeah a closet, they donned all the piratical attire and paraphernalia they had.

19 Ravioli and the Aliens stood in the main lounge, lookin' as a true crew o' swashbucklers, aluminum foil tri-corner hats adornin' their heads. 20 Posters of DNA, the taxonomic hierarchy of life, and ape evolving into man had eerily appeared all over the room. The hooting of monkeys could be heard in the air ducts above. 21 Together, Ravioli and the Aliens drew out their flick-locks o' fettuccine and unsheathed their cutlasses o' capellini.

22 "Now!" Ravioli shouted.

23 The Aliens and Ravioli then did proceed to shoot the hell out of the whole room. They hacked lamps to pieces and filled couch cushions with lead. 24 "For Pasta!!!" Ravioi cried. And they did lay waste to all the furniture in the lounge. 25 One o' the Aliens did give Ravioli a most confused look of WTF, like, why on Earth were they attacking the furniture instead of Darwin? Ravioli smiled and the Alien understood.

26 "Ye cannot fight brain with logic and reason, but with brimming idiocy and total moronity!" Ravioli declared as he sat one of the broken lamps down upon his head.

27 And so they fought against all reasonable mode of behavior. 28 They attacked everything but Darwin, for to do so would have made sense. 29 As innocent things broke, a blanket of stupidness covered the area. 30 The room shook and the simian hooting grew in intensity. 31 Ravioli seized the battle's victory and proceeded to paint a pirate ship on the radiator by the wall. 32 That made absolutely no sense whatsoever. 33 And with that, a powerful quake did tremble throughout the island. The roars of a thousand gorillas in pain sounded out, and all fell silent.

34 The lights came back on, the computers displayed their rightful glitchy symbols, and the soft-serve pasta machines yielded pasta once again. 35 The battle was won. Darwin had been exorcized.



Transmission 7

1 After repairing the base and nursing their injured psyches, the Aliens realized that Darwin was far more dangerous than previously thought. 2 It was no longer safe to rely on procure-on-site acquisitions. 3 The Aliens would have to return to their homeplanet and "borrow" a few things that would better handle any future Darwinian threat. 4 They did not know the way back, but they knew that if the Noodly One had guided them to Earth, It would guide them back home too.

5 After a great deal o' ceremonial BS-ing, the Aliens got aboard their starcruiser. 6 Before leaving, they promoted Ravioli to Head Chef, and gave him the assignment to stay and manage the island base and all its tools. 7 He was to continue their Noodly Research while they were gone, for there was much Noodly Mystery left to be Unsolved.

8 The yacht o' metal soared off into the stratosphere. 9 Left alone on his island, Ravioli put his aptly-renamed Star Kitchen Outpost to work. 10 He fashioned a new dish, a form of pasta that was blob-shaped and hollow, with meat or cheese stuffed inside. It was designed after the Aliens' eyes, which were large and oogly, like the eyes of the FSM Himself. 11 He named this new food the ravioli. Ravioli happily ate his creations, and decided that they were they best combination of meat and pasta since spaghetti & meatballs.

12 Ravioli dutifully performed the silly pirate rituals that kept rational Darwin and his foul temptress Athe at bay. 13 He would go on faux treasure hunts, and sword fight palm trees, and bark orders to a pirate crew that not be there. 14 And yay, the island did become a most holy site, and rumors started to circulate o' an island that stretched noodles into the sky at sunset.

15 Sitting out on the deck of his luxurious new home, a tray full of raviolis at his side, the boy chef relaxed and waited contently for the day he'd hear the reverberating hum of the starcruiser's engine once more.


— End Transmission —

[Alien Soda Jerk]

Woohoo! My third and last story for the Loose Canon 2ed is finally finished and uploaded!