An open letter to Whomsoever or whatsoever is in control (or not) of the million-plus sightings of disks, domes, cigars, chevrons, v-shapes, balloon-like objects, flashing and/or stationary lights, hovering superstructures, "ball lightning" and other queer objects in the sky; "aliens" or Whomever is appearing to us as large-eyed, gray-skinned, scrawny lurkers in the dark; or Whomever is surgically removing all those animal organs; or Whomever is abducting "thousands" of us; or Whomever has a message for us about global warming, nuclear catastrophe or our own plain stupidity (including all of you "Men in Black" and "Nordics"):
Dear Abovementioned:
It's been about sixty-five years since Kenneth Arnold saw those skipping saucers up in the northern Cascades and no one knows what he saw or if he actually saw anything. There are those who believe the advent of sightings coincides with the use of curved glass in cockpits and automobiles, but that probably accounts for only half of the possible sightings we've had over the decades.
There have probably been over a million baffling UFO sightings/encounters/abductions to date.
Frankly I am getting a little tired of it.
If you have a message for us, let's get on with it. If you are going to attack, what in heck are you waiting for. Our weapons just keep getting better. If you are hoping to acclimatize us to you, fear not. Many of us would welcome your appearance and the rest will continue to go to work and to shop (just don't make them stop shopping).
If you plan to play peek-a-boo with us for much longer, I would expect your little game to begin losing its appeal after a while. Heaven knows why the fascination has lasted this long and with so little to show.
If you're afraid of us, I do understand. I am afraid of us. But I can't move vertically at a thousand miles an hour to get away, so I'm stuck. Go for it--hover and then split. Seems to work for you.
Overall, it's just starting to get a little annoying. Lights in the sky over China, balloons over NYC, Jimmy Carter saw one, we've got specimens at Wright-Patterson in Ohio. . .come on. Play ball with us a bit. Or maybe just go away.
In sum: if you've got something to say, say it. If you are planning to hang around for a while, come and knock on the door--don't skulk around in the bushes, because that just makes us think you're weird. If you've got some amazing technology for us, hurry up, because pretty soon we'll have it anyway, and then you're going to seem like yesterday's lunch meat.
Just quit monkeying around. After a while, even the best mystery needs a conclusion. Otherwise it can turn into a real snooze.
Sincerely,
Fed-Up Earthling
Showing posts with label aliens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aliens. Show all posts
Monday, October 18, 2010
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Full of Monsters
In a recent article in the New York Times, the excellent columnist Olivia Judson (an evolutionary biologist) noted:
". . .there’s no need to invent monsters: you just need to imagine how terrifying it would be if ants were the size of rhinos."
I would like to shout "huzzah" to this and add to the sentiment. My personal belief has long been that the imagination of monsters natural, supernatural and alien springs from the unwieldy, even somewhat catastrophic knowledge the race of humans secretly owns about the near-unimaginable strangeness of thousands of our fellow species here on earth.
Specifically I would like to point out that if one were to spend half an hour looking at any book with close up photographs of common insects, one would have to be convinced that we are living in a world literally crawling with bizarre monsters that feature as much oddity as any we might ever find on any distant planet in our supposed interplanetary future.
Can we hope (or fear) to discover anything anywhere that will be as weird or as creepy as the type of fly that buries its young in the throat of a living deer, and in which its young multiply and fatten, only to fly eventually out of the deer's mouth having mostly destroyed the deer's ability to swallow (leaving it for dead)? Or how about those worms that get into people's eyes and grow gigantic and then slither out of the corners of the poor host's eyes when they feel a need to move on to the next nefarious stage of their squirming, alien existence?
Indeed, review the heads of insects close up with their giant multifaceted eyes and their merciless cutting jaws and read some about their entirely shocking antics--you'll come away shivering with horror; and it will be made worse to know these tiny wretches are currently in the business of making up the majority of the earth's biomass (or perhaps you will fall in love with the little creeps and become a candidate entomologist).
Further, I believe our collective subconscious (let's assume for a moment Jung had a point) registers all this and agrees that we are better served by inventing fantastic versions of these biological realities than by learning in depth about the reality of their biology. This is because, by projecting them out as fantasies, we can put them collectively at a distance and claim they're certainly terrifying but not "real"; and when it comes to science fiction and the hunt for alien life we can even project that they are "far away"; all more comforting fodder than to spend time thinking about the motes in your own eye right now; or the microscopic bugs that infest your pillow (dust mites) that, when blown up to poster size outclass in awfulness the most awful fantasies ever churned out by Hollywood or even folklore.
Ms. Judson's article was partly about the coming Year of Biodiversity and she calls for a "Wild Celebration" of same and I suppose therefore it may be the wrong time for me to be carping about the horror inspired in me by so many of our fellow bio-travelers on this planet (especially the very small ones) stocked so richly with biological wonders.
In any case I certainly hope we never discover any outer-space-creature weirder than any typical insect already on this planet. I don't think I will be able to stand it.
". . .there’s no need to invent monsters: you just need to imagine how terrifying it would be if ants were the size of rhinos."
I would like to shout "huzzah" to this and add to the sentiment. My personal belief has long been that the imagination of monsters natural, supernatural and alien springs from the unwieldy, even somewhat catastrophic knowledge the race of humans secretly owns about the near-unimaginable strangeness of thousands of our fellow species here on earth.
Specifically I would like to point out that if one were to spend half an hour looking at any book with close up photographs of common insects, one would have to be convinced that we are living in a world literally crawling with bizarre monsters that feature as much oddity as any we might ever find on any distant planet in our supposed interplanetary future.
Can we hope (or fear) to discover anything anywhere that will be as weird or as creepy as the type of fly that buries its young in the throat of a living deer, and in which its young multiply and fatten, only to fly eventually out of the deer's mouth having mostly destroyed the deer's ability to swallow (leaving it for dead)? Or how about those worms that get into people's eyes and grow gigantic and then slither out of the corners of the poor host's eyes when they feel a need to move on to the next nefarious stage of their squirming, alien existence?
Indeed, review the heads of insects close up with their giant multifaceted eyes and their merciless cutting jaws and read some about their entirely shocking antics--you'll come away shivering with horror; and it will be made worse to know these tiny wretches are currently in the business of making up the majority of the earth's biomass (or perhaps you will fall in love with the little creeps and become a candidate entomologist).
Further, I believe our collective subconscious (let's assume for a moment Jung had a point) registers all this and agrees that we are better served by inventing fantastic versions of these biological realities than by learning in depth about the reality of their biology. This is because, by projecting them out as fantasies, we can put them collectively at a distance and claim they're certainly terrifying but not "real"; and when it comes to science fiction and the hunt for alien life we can even project that they are "far away"; all more comforting fodder than to spend time thinking about the motes in your own eye right now; or the microscopic bugs that infest your pillow (dust mites) that, when blown up to poster size outclass in awfulness the most awful fantasies ever churned out by Hollywood or even folklore.
Ms. Judson's article was partly about the coming Year of Biodiversity and she calls for a "Wild Celebration" of same and I suppose therefore it may be the wrong time for me to be carping about the horror inspired in me by so many of our fellow bio-travelers on this planet (especially the very small ones) stocked so richly with biological wonders.
In any case I certainly hope we never discover any outer-space-creature weirder than any typical insect already on this planet. I don't think I will be able to stand it.
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