Happy Halloween

I didn’t write this, I just edited. Any Simpsons fans out there? Then consider this weird post an equivalent attempt at one of their bizarre Halloween episodes…

An alien predator investor landed in Reno (of all places) from
a distant solar system. He was looking to harvest human heads to take back with
him as a delicacy. But he was greedy and wanted to bring back every human head on the
planet, about 6 billion heads. Fortunately, heads are a lot smaller
than the entire body and only require about one cubic foot of storage per head.

Naturally he ended up loving the Reno-Tahoe area for all its
beauty, recreation and cheap real estate, because,  hey, this place is special and everyone wants to live here… So he decided to hang out  in Incline Village.

His plan was to travel the world collecting heads, returning to Incline Village to take
a break and recreate in between runs. But he then realized he needed a bigger place to store all the
heads he’d be collecting because his 12,000 square foot lake front house wasn’t big enough.

There were protocols, you see. He was supposed  to inspect and sort the heads prior to
loading his ship, so he needed some serious storage space. (Too bad he didn’t know about the Reno Tahoe Industrial Center.) After some quick calculations, our alien hero found that to lay all
the heads out as compactly as possible, he would need an area about 215 square
miles… in other words, about a 15-by-15-mile square.

“Wow,” he said to himself. “What a coincidence. I can actually store
these heads almost precisely within the outer perimeter of the Reno-Sparks metro
area.” So he made the executive decision to store them in Reno-Sparks while he
chilled at The Lone Eagle Grill.

Now, the thing is, our guy was somewhat of a ditsy alien. So instead of laying
waste to Reno-Sparks to make way for the storage he needed, as most aliens would,
he decided to actually purchase the land from a helpful local commercial agent who shall remain nameless (for essentially selling out all of humanity for some huge commission? Dude, where are your scruples?)

Anyway, our alien predator investor was an astute internet researcher and did his homework. He noticed
that 169 parcels had been sold in 2007 in the Reno-Sparks area,
averaging about $28,000 per acre. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to secure a 100%
loan for the 137,600 acres he needed that would cost him $3.9 billion, not to
mention the cost of the homes he’d have to buy from everyone in town.

Bummed, but determined, he said, “Screw it, I’ll just
beam these heads to my ship and sort them out later.” Because his ship was a
cube measuring 9,960 feet per side, he had more than enough space to store all of
humanity’s heads, which required only 1,817 feet per side (1/3 mile).

He thought to
himself, “Gee, that’s pretty amazing actually that I can carry the brains of all humanity in such a small space.”

He began by collecting the heads of
Reno-Sparks-Tahoe residents first, to test his storage system, but also because he loved
his privacy (you know those Lakeshore Drive types). To store just the 400,000 heads for the region, he only needed a
box measuring 74 x 74 x 74 feet.

After sucking the heads off every man, woman and child in
Reno, Sparks and Tahoe, he thought to himself, “Golly, the ways these foolish
Humans procreate, I should come back in 50 years, and there will be 12 billion
heads or more to acquire.”

So he took the local resident heads back with him to his
home planet and sold them on ZBay for 150,000 Quatloos a head, a hefty haul. As a result,
he was able to secure enough venture capital to purchase options on all of the land in
Reno-Sparks for his next trip out, plenty of space to store every human head on the planet.

Just wait till he gets here, people… the market will be back!