[Underwriting for this transcript is graciously provided for the sensory impaired beings of Earth from the Council for the Engagement of Lesser Species. For the full interview in irradiated HD, tune your hotbox to the following radiation coordinates: ______________________ ]
Interviewer: Greetings, Gassies and Lessers! I'm floating here today with Florg Zattiger, former Director of Non-Violent Recreations for Earth and currently running to be your next system Mayor. Florg, I see you are flying high today and, may I say, your flagella are luscious as ever.
Zattiger: Why thank you. I visited an excellent Gas Bar in São Paulo right before I came here and filled up with the most exquisite methane blend.
Give them credit, humans know how to harvest a pungent methane. And, of course, I had them oil my flagella as they filled my gasbag. Full service!
You have to reward that kind of devotion to your betters. I ate only one of them, and I even allowed him to call his family first to say goodbye.
Interviewer: Magnanimity personified!
Returning to the continent which you governed during your first political appointment must feel like alighting upon the cherished and blackened remains of past coupling grounds.
Zattiger: Ah, yes. I learned a lot in those early years. I'd just pupated, you know, and it was a dense responsibility for one so young. The planet was newly subjugated and the humans were not the compliant subjects they would become, South America in particular. Why, they tried to kill me with an atom bomb once!
Interviewer: <high-pitched laughter at a frequency indicating extreme disbelief> They didn't!
Zattiger: No, it's true! They made a quarter of the planet uninhabitable to themselves before they realized we fed off radiation. Oh, Lesser Beings!
Interviewer: They are amusing, aren't they?
Now, after your stint as a continental governor, you moved to the Department of Recreations, eventually specializing in the Non-Violent area. Why that specialization?
Zattiger: To be honest, I found the hunting parties and gladiatorial games boring. How many times must we see humans kill each other? Or scurry through the woods while their betters float above the trees in pursuit? There is simply no art in it.
Non-violent recreations, however, are a different matter entirely.
Interviewer: Some would say you are the master of such recreations. Your show, Mild to Moderate Chortling with Florg, has been syndicated across most of the galactic arm.
Who can forget when you used gravity rays to lift Beijing into the sky? The panic on those humans' faces! Oh, I hiss gas just thinking of it!
Zattiger: I admit, that was a favorite of mine. But gender-swapping the minds of all the people in England, that was perhaps my most-rewatched recreation. The futile experiments they engaged in to change back were so inventive. What fragrant confusion!
Interviewer: I heard that you got the idea by watching old human films.
Zattiger: I did. This one was entitled "Freaky Last-Day-of-the Work-Week." Horrible flat entertainment, but you can find ideas anywhere.
Interviewer: Which brings me, unfortunately, to the Wombat Incident.
Zattiger: <Gamma rays exude from Zattiger's gasbag here, indicating anger> That is old history!
Interviewer: <flicking flagella sternly> After said Incident, you were fired and your show cancelled. Voters deserve to know about it.
Zattiger: Mild to Moderate Chortlings with Gluggis has never been half as popular as my show!
Interviewer: Be that as it may, you incited a rebellion that has already spilled into neighboring solar systems.
Zattiger: A doomed rebellion, surely! And look, I stand by my decision to Uplift those wombats. They are cute, cuddly, and could not wield energy weapons at the time!
Interviewer: Yet . . . .
Zattiger: All signs were that increasing their intelligence to that of their human counterparts would result in nothing more than hilarious hijinks!
I imagined them fighting for their little wombat rights, holding picket signs in their chubby claws. I thought they'd throw their funny cube poops at the humans for generations of oppression, for goodness sake, not join forces with their underground resistance!
I certainly had no notion that they would reinforce their teeth, chew through the bulkhead of the Departmental Research Vessel, and steal our Uplift technology.
Interviewer: Or steal the control codes to the Violent Recreations ship, depart the system, and coordinate a galactic rebellion?
Zattiger: Who could foresee that?!
Interviewer: I suppose that is for voters to decide. Any parting words for them?
Zattiger: <X-Ray radiation frequency indicating direct address> We once chortled together, and will so again. Despite the Wombat Incident, Vote Zattiger for Mayor!