Images Courtesy: NASA/JPL/Caltech/ASU .....Oh, and the American tax-payer. o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o Martian Money a most appropriate addition to your basket of currencies. o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; FACES A long, long time ago in a country near and dear to our hearts, the face on all of our coinage, no matter the denomination, was the very same face. That face was the face of LIBERTY. These days we recognize money as money because we recognize the famous faces of presidents of long ago. Here on Mars we just call 'em faces and that way we can put cool spaceships on our coinage! Oh, and then there's the big fellah, CYDON, or CYDON-The-Great as we have come to learn since the discovery of the Memnonian Tablets. The Face On Mars gazing up into the sky day and night, this face is the face of CYDON. This scull of some, as yet, unknown kind of crystal, shines brightly even before sunrise. Rumor has it that the face was carved to honor CYDON for saving the binary system to which ancient "Martians" had once fled to escape the incoming destruction which would be caused by the arrival of the new planet crashing the ort. ........CYDON left Mars, (it wasn't called Mars then that detail has still to be deciphered), and he came, first, to the planet now known as Earth, (again not what it was called then, and at that time it was the second planet from the sun). Upon the dedication of the Face On Mars, and probably even before, and for unknown millennia there-after, the, now, third planet was affectionately known to the galaxies near and far as "Belle". ************ 2BContinued ************ }}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}} The FACE NOTES feature my original artwork only, no NASA images were harmed in the production of any of the Face Notes. I thunked-up all of the spacecraft depicted on the notes, save one, and in the case of that one, the 35 Faces note, I created an original flying object d'art by studying an actual, albeit a, very grainy photograph. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm The 1 FACE NOTE The 1 Face note is the first note that I had to thumk-up. I needed to mint a coin, or rather, I needed to produce an entire mint-set. I had to keep the cost of production to an absolute minimum, but also create something that had real, actual value. I used the Treasury Department's issuance of fractional currency, and of a fractional currency shield as a preliminary design concept which I could adopt, although I had never seen one. I may have seen an individual fractional currency note, maybe, some thirty years ago but I did not remember what it looked like. The beautiful thing about the fractional currency shield idea was its cost to produce, and to be able to have it be something of real worth, that is, to those of us who have an interest in such harebrained ideas as Flying Saucers, huh, yeah-right, or to those of us who listen to late night AM radio shows, or to those of us who collect coins or stamps, or, even, people who trade in foreign currencies, or people who would just like something colorful and different and new that they can hang on their wall with a smile. Anyway, the cost to print would be low, even in color. Now what must each note contain which would lend one to believe it to be actual "money"? Well, the Cydonian notes, I decided, each had to say: "Federal Reserve Bank of Mars", "Legal Tender", "Series 2006", the denomination, and also include a serial number, but the Face notes which, like coins are by definition of a value of less than a dollar, the Face notes needed only to be recognizable as coins, albeit paper coins, or fractional currency. I looked at the coins in my pocket and what I noticed was that there was actually not a whole lot on the obverse, or front, of the coins. There was a face, the word "LIBERTY", the date in which the coin was minted, and the words "In God We Trust". On the reverse, or back, of the coins was a building or an eagle or a torch, the words "United States of America", and the words "E~Pluribus~Unum", and the denomination. I decided to include as much as I could on each note, but put everything on one side of the sheet of paper, or coin. I drew my grid of individual note frames and decided upon the denominations for each, and whooo I thought to myself, this is going to take forever to draw, by hand, and letter each note with all of the essential information, and make them look; one as good as the next, and pass as money, (at least after a little splainin'). LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL The 1 FACE NOTE (Take Two, Make That A Couple-Three) The 1 Face note, let's see, I needed to save some time already right from the start, so I chose to make three of the notes identical, like when you reach into your pocket and pull out some change, invariably you come up with several, if not a lot of, "pennies". The United States has cents, England has pennies, but Mars is neither here nor there. Any who, I figgered if I made the 1 Face note with a flying saucer in a hard bank, or just sitting there hovering in a hard bank, and copied and placed and colored them identically, well, I could bill two stirds with one kone. I could add my time-saving two cents, or 2 Faces, and create a formation of three identical little- green-manned objects, all in one swell foop. On the 1 Face note, and on all of the fractional currency (less than 1 Cydonian) notes I decided to include a spacecraft, or two or three, of some sort, and also settled on limiting the wording to: the word "LIBERTY", the word "MARS", the date "2006", and the denomination; drawn in two different ways. I drew the actual number plus I added the word Face or Faces, and I drew the word which spelled-out the number (while not adding the word Face or Faces). In the late 1800s the United States issued a 5-cent coin which was not a Half- dime. Half-dimes, which had a percentage of silver content, had been discontinued many years before. The new five cent piece would be made almost entirely of nickel. The new "nickel", as they came to be known was quite a striking coin, but there was a problem with the design. When the design went to production it was beautiful, but it contained a loop-hole which conmen quickly capitalized upon. The new nickel was the same size as the nickel in your pocket, but it did not have the words "Five-Cents" anywhere on it, not even word "Five". 'Then how did anyone know it was a Five-Cent Piece ?, you may ask!', and you may. Well, I'll tell you how, Guy-Lee!, while the designers were into all things beautiful, the denomination was enumerated by a large Roman Numeral "V" on the reverse of the coin. The coin was only made of nickel so the V just had to represent Five-Cents, right? Well, sure, until it was given a light gold electro-plate, and then, to the unsuspecting person that "V " represented Five-Dollars, and continued to do so until they were set straight, but by that time the confidence-man was long gone. The new nickel went back to be redesigned before the next years issue and the word Cents was included under the V, or "V cents". ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Dated 2006, which marked the beginning of the celebration of the approaching Vinylian Revolutions b'Zillenial^. Legal Tender on Mars, these notes are accepted by retailers*** throughout all of our solar system** and beyond! (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( 1 CYDONIAN equals 100 FACES 1 CYDONIAN equals 1.4303608 U.S. Dollars* ----- 1 FACE equals .014303608 U.S. Dollars* o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o On Mars, paper is worth its weight in gold, on Venus, not so much. o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o0O0o *( On The 4BEX: The Foreign Body Currency Exchange ) **( Coming soon to Earth commerce near you ) ***( On Planets: Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, X and sometimes Uranus ) ##### Copyright (C) 2010 Marti J Hughes