O-M-Goodness! Here we are on day 27 of my chum John’s 30-day build of his LEGO Ultimate A-Wing Starfighter, which means we are 9/10 of the way through the construction of this beast — only three more days to go after today. I’m not ready. I haven’t got anything to wear. I don’t have a speech prepared.

There comes a point when you have to make a stand (Click image to see a larger version — Image source: John Alflat)

John’s message accompanying today’s photo(s) was as follows: “I’m making a stand, no, I’m making a stand — a black stand. Hopefully tomorrow it will be finished then the fighter goes on it for the few remaining bits. I just hope the stand will be sturdy enough.”

I hope so too. Now I have visions of the stand collapsing in the middle of the night and the fighter tumbling to the floor. I hope to hear declarations as to the sturdiness of the stand in tomorrow’s briefing.

In the meantime, in earlier build blogs — notably Day 12, Day 13, Day 14, and Day 15 — we considered the conundrum of communicating with aliens. In fact, I’m still chuckling from John’s comment in one of these columns when he said: “If an alien language were to be spoken, I’d be confident we could translate and understand it, just as we do with the French.”

The reason I’ve returned to this topic is that I’ve just finished reading Embassytown by China Miéville and now my mind is a jumble of thoughts. In a nutshell, Embassytown is a remote outpost on the planet Arieka, which is located deep in space. Humankind has established a tenuous relationship with the native aliens known as Ariekei who essentially have two mouths. The spoken Ariekei language involves their two mouths speaking different aspects of words simultaneously, and then things start to get complicated.

This is a multi-layered tale that boggles the brain. Unfortunately, I really can’t do this work justice here. If you are interested in learning more, I suggest you read the associated article on Wikipedia and also the comments on Amazon. In the meantime, as always, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts regarding any aspects of communication with aliens, including books and movies to which you would give a “thumbs up” (happy face) or a “thumbs down” (sad face).