Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country, pp. 116-117:
"But seriously, if you keep up with current events in supermarket tabloids, you know that a team of Martian anthropologists has been studying our culture for the past ten years, since our culture is the only worth a nickel on the whole planet. You can sure forget Brazil and Argentina.
Anyway, they went home last week, because they knew how terrible global warming was about to become. Their space vehicle, incidentally, wasn’t a flying saucer. It was more like a flying soup tureen.
And they’re little all right, only six inches high. But they are not green. They’re mauve.
And their little mauve leader, by way of farewell, said in that tweeny-weeny, tanny-wanny, toney little voice of hers that they were two things about American culture no Martian could understand.
Top image from, with caption: Jean Siméon Chardin, Still Life (The Silver Tureen), dated 1728; below image from
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