A professor of literary theory is driving his pick-up down a country lane one night, when suddenly the engine stops, a strange wind begins, and the sky is filled with flashing lights. A UFO is landing right in front of him. He turns off his "Derrida-on-tape" and gazes in amazement as a slouchy set of purple and green aliens come down the landing ramp right toward him, squishing forward on their squid-like suckers, wearing berets and smoking Gauloises.
"Take me to the your existentialist leader, please." says one of the aliens, stroking his goatee.
"That's something of a contradiction in terms. And it presumes a modernist dialectical supremacy which has been widely discredited." says the Professor.
"We are aware of that," says the alien. "Yet the logical tension within the construction of my question is not relevant to choosing to find what we desire. We choose, we ask, you may reply or not."
The Professor thinks for a second.
"Jean-Paul Sartre is long dead."
"We know that - we wished to pay our respects. We aren't fools you know. You of all people should respect the culture of the Other." To emphasize this point, one of the most purple aliens whips around it's seventeen arms like a tree in the wind, hooting wildly.
The Professor goes: "How do you know who I am?"
"We read your book at Altair-Seven book club."
"Well, I don't know where he's buried. France, I guess. Can't you just look it up?"
Exasperated, the alien takes a diffident puff and says: "No wonder you were denied tenure."
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