Friday 24 September 2010

In the beginning...

Well, I suppose I should start by explaining how this company came about. I've got a few ex-military friends who had the wonderful job of sitting at the bottom of those silos “you don't know about.” You know, the ones spread across the Midwest U.S. mostly in the backyards of farmers in Kansas and Nebraska. Anyway, after a few years of babysitting the button that could end the world, my buddy, Frank, was assigned to a stint in southern Nevada, just north of Las Vegas, actually about 120 clicks north-west of Las Vegas. You may have heard of the place: Area 51. He couldn't say much about what went on there, but when he got ready to retire, he managed to convince the powers that be to declassify some of the equipment he'd been working on.
There was this one particular device that Frank had studied closely, and he thought that there might be a commercial use for it. So as long as the military couldn't find any way to use it for an offensive weapon, they agreed to release it to him instead of just dumping it along with all the other still-classified junk.
With my connections in getting supplies, and his engineering expertise, we started investigating just what his equipment could do, and it turns out he was right: there is a wonderfully simple marketable opportunity here. Once we get all the bugs worked out, we’ll be able to send you and your friends on a trip that you’ll never forget. A literal Out of This World experience, thus the name of the company: Ex Terra Expeditions. (Frank says that Ex Terra is Latin for ‘out of this world’.)
Next time, I’ll see if I can explain how the device works, but for now, it’s enough that I’ve gotten this far.

5 comments:

jstme said...

Sounds great! Count me in!!
Please post more details

Anne said...

I love it! It sounds so intriguing! Keep posting more information!

Aaron said...

Ex Terra is out of this world, huh? Sounds more like it used to be terra, but now it isn't; like ex-girlfriend or ex-military.

Eugene said...

Ah...you notice that you used a hyphen when using 'ex' with that meaning? When it isn't used with a hyphen (and preferably in Italics), then it maintains the original Latin meaning: out of. Although it still has a _similar_ meaning used as you did.

Aaron said...

You're right, I did use a hyphen. When I was writing that comment, I tried to not use a hyphen so that the style would match, but it just didn't look right, and I couldn't leave it as such. So, there's a logic and a reason for the usage, but from a marketing scheme, you still might lose some people who don't recognize the difference between the hyphenated ex, and non hyphenated ex. But that's just my two cents.