Posthuman Blues

This evening found me chatting with Scientologists (I got my hands on a no-kidding e-meter) and watching "Alien vs. Predator," which isn't half-bad. It's most definitely a big-screen movie; if you miss the theater release, I don't see much point in rushing to watch it on the small-screen.

Like all "Alien" movies, it suffers from the "biomass problem," which I was relieved to find Roger Ebert noted in his justifiably scathing review of "Alien: Resurrection": The Giger-aliens (or xenomorphs -- call them whatever you like) use humans as incubators, not food. In none of the "Alien" movies have I seen an alien actually chow down on anything. Yet, defying basic physics, they grow many orders of magnitude within minutes of erupting from a host's chest.

What gives?