“When we sent them examples of our very best cultural offerings, they said they ‘rather enjoyed the amusing little tinklings’ of Mozart and the ‘adorable scribblings’ of Rembrandt,’” said Morrison, adding that his team will no longer transmit samples of music and art for the aliens to belittle. “They then said they could completely understand how our incredibly low intelligence and level of evolutionary development would allow us to enjoy such ‘low-caliber’ sensory stimuli.”

“They were absolutely relentless,” Morrison continued. “I personally feel pretty terrible about myself right now.”

The NASA scientists noted, however, that the tone of the discourse changed dramatically after the aliens were sent images of a man jumping from ramps while riding a Kawasaki Jet Ski.

“For some reason, when they saw this footage, we received a barrage of messages saying ‘Hold on a second, what is that?’ and ‘Please, tell us everything about this Jet Ski,’” said Morrison, later reading several more excerpts from the transmission, among them, “How fast can the Jet Ski go?” and “Is the man riding the Jet Ski a king on your planet?” “They are evidently completely mesmerized by Jet Skis, and have offered us anything we want in exchange for the technology.”

At press time, NASA had received a transmission from the alien species in which they apologized for their earlier messages, saying they had “greatly underestimated the Keepers of the Jet Ski.”