He has the bad kind of thumbs. The kind whose nails are disproportionately wide and whose cuticles start way too close to the fingertips. Whose nails are moonless.

These are the thumbs of aliens. Deformed aliens. Even the other aliens wrinkle their noses (or whatever passes for a nose on an alien) at the sight of such hideousness.

"Them's some ugly thumbs!" they say to each other in their telepathic language, shaking their heads in disgust.

I don't care that he's a brilliant man. That his conversation is, indeed, scintillating. All I can focus on are those damned alien thumbs.