[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzE0AyX8tVQ&w=584&h=390%5D
There was an original different plan for this. Originally, I was going to write an essay where I talked about doing one random Aliens quote a day in conversation. Because I’ve seen Aliens so many times, and it’s great, although my secret affection is for Alien 3, but let’s not get into that.
Anyway, the plan was to do one Aliens quote every day in conversation, and it had to be with strangers, and I couldn’t ever repeat any quotes, and I couldn’t ever reveal what I was doing. I figured this would get interesting at some point. Like, you can say “Look into my eye,” and that’s fairly easily dropped into conversation in a lot of contexts. Ditto with “Absolute badasses!” However, you soon run out of quotes like this, and soon you’re down to very weird quotes. Try working “Guess she don’t like the cornbread either,” into a causal conversation sometime. Your opportunities for doing so are very limited.
However, this plan completely backfired. All I learned is that people completely ignore weirdness in conversation. If you say “Guess she don’t like the cornbread either” to a store clerk, without context, they just blink and do their best to act like you’re not crazy, even though you are clearly crazy. It’s sort of like that scene in Fight Club, where they have to fight with strangers, and the strangers desperately do everything they can to continue with their day-to-day lives, even when acting normal in response starts to become slightly insane.
Anyway. People are desperate to cling to normalcy? I guess is what I learned. But I’m not even sure that I learned that — I might be wrong about that. What I definitely learned is that I did not have a very interesting essay, since me saying odd stuff and no one reacting was… bad. So instead I just provided the list of Aliens quotes that I used and was going to use, since I did them in order of awesomeness. Yes; I misquoted a few things slightly. Yes; I know that “Game over, man!” is not on the list. I hate that quote; everyone overuses it. On the other hand, Ripley causally being bitchy to Bishop, or the odd unnecessary part where Ripley tells Newt not to look directly at the welding torch — these things always kill me.
So this is the explanation for the list. Now you cannot leave a comment saying, “You got paid for listing quotes?!!!” Or, “This is just a list of quotes?!!!” Etc. But know this: I could have just done a list of quotes and still gotten paid. So revel in my niceness, for providing this essay. Or rage at the unfairness of the world that allows some people to list Aliens quotes as a job. The world is generous, but the world is harsh. Isn’t that the message of the movie Aliens, after all? No. It is not the message of that movie. But if I was lazy, I would have ended the essay that way.
Instead, I will end the essay by asking this: why didn’t they seal the ceiling ducts? Think about it. Also, isn’t it great that Ripley lives because she’s a smoker? Think about it. She only survives the face-hugger thing because she has a cigarette lighter in her pocket. As a fellow smoker, this always made me happy. Anyway; the end. I say we take off, nuke this essay from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. 
