Aliens Moved My Cheese

“Babababababababa, oooma mau mau baba oooma mau mau ooma mau mau baba ooma mau mau…” -The Garbage Men

I am a student of the absurd. I like hearing about strange phenomena, not because I believe any of it but because weird shit makes me laugh. I like to hear about alleged incidents so bizarre, I piss myself laughing at the strangeness of it. I try to remain objective when I hear about unexplained phenomena. I often think to myself, “under what circumstances could something that odd actually happen?” I also enjoy coming up with equally bizarre alternative explanations. That almost always leaves me thinking of funny scenarios and that gets me laughing and cutting up again. I am a skeptic but not just for skepticism’s sake. Let me explain what I mean by that. I don’t just say, “that sounds silly it must be bullshit” without qualifying my reasons for coming to my conclusions. I also recognize the fact that I’m not always right on the money about my suppositions. I know hard to believe right? You my five readers thought I was perfect in every way. I enjoy the method to my brother’s madness. He is looking at strange phenomena from a purely anthropological perspective. I get it, Aaron doesn’t care if the story is true or not, he just wants to ascertain what the story says about human culture and the human condition. He dispassionately dissects the story and humorously tells us what this means to us as a species. I’m a different sort of animal. I try to go into my investigations of the strange with an unbiased perspective and sometimes I’m even successful in accomplishing that goal. On the other hand, I am far more the skeptic than my brother. I see or hear something that sounds like it’s pure bullshit, and that usually indicates to me, it probably is pure bullshit. I’m a realist with a good imagination, that sometimes just goes off on wild tangents of speculation simply for my own amusement and hopefully the amusement of others *wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

What I have noticed in researching this series alien topics is that the stories I find easiest to disbelieve are the one’s that get repeated routinely by the majority of UFO enthusiasts. The rampant pattern of abductees repeating and confirming what the other guys claim to have seen is getting both boring and somewhat ridiculous. It sounds oddly like religious belief. The sheep follow the herd because they want group acceptance. The original, way outside the box sounding stories that stop me in my tracks and make me do a double take are the one’s that really peak my interest. In a strange sort of way I find these somewhat more credible because it doesn’t sound like the alien contactee was going along with the standard cookie cutter concept of what aliens are supposed to look or act like. Now that’s not to say their stories are any less bogus or true but it does break with convention and makes them stand out from the crowd of herd animals towing the UFO visitation/abductee party line. I also need to see proof before I’ll fully accept that aliens are visiting us or exist at all for that matter. That’s the skeptic in me talking now. I like proof. I can work with credible unfalsifiable evidence. What I won’t do is blindly accept supposition and eye witness testimonials as fact. Mama didn’t raise no fool. For starters, how many people who claim they have been abducted by aliens have an existing diagnosis of mental illness? I’ll bet the statistics are sketchy at best. If we took an accurate unbiased survey I’ll bet you many abductees can be discounted on that basis alone. If they’re a loon and they have no physical proof, that at the very least might suggest the abduction/visitation is questionable. Many alien abductees claim they were seized in their bedrooms after they went to sleep. Well even if we ignore the fact that is a phobia many normal people have, the fact that they were in bed prior to the abduction suggests they might have been asleep and dreaming the whole thing. Most abductees do suggest the whole incident of getting abducted had a “dreamlike quality.” Tadaaa!!!! Maybe that’s because it was a dream Capt. Picard! Then we have the obvious possibility that some people claiming UFO visitation/abduction may just be making that shit up for attention. When we discount these types of claimants, who does that leave us to rationally consider as credible/believable witnesses? A very tiny minority of the people with odd stories who don’t fit the usual UFO geek stereotype. Even after considering them as possibly credible, we can’t take their statements at face value without physical evidence and that is pretty much non-existent. That is why I’m skeptical about UFO contacts and abductions as a matter of principle. Like the X-Files movie “I Want to Believe” I actually want to believe sentient aliens exist and are visiting us. That would be so cool bro! Nobody will be happier than me if the Ufologists are right. I’d like to get off this rock as soon as possible. You people are starting to bug the fuck out of me. I just can’t bring myself to blindly accept anything without proof of a scientific or evidentiary nature. Call me old fashioned but I outgrew imaginary friends and/or enemies when I was three years old. If the aliens are watching us and monitoring our T.V. shows they probably think “Ancient Aliens” is a sitcom and reruns of “Third Rock From The Sun” are a reality show documentary.

We don’t know what alien cultures are like. So if they do exist, I think we are doing them a disservice by assuming they have similar motivations as we do. The aliens are here to conquer us is a common theme. We are warlike and violent therefore the aliens must also be. The aliens are coming in peace with altruistic motives is another common supposition. Really? Well then how come they haven’t introduced themselves and helped us out? The shit is getting all fucked up down here in a big hurry. The aliens don’t want to interfere with our primitive culture, so they are staying at arms length. That sounds suspiciously like the Star Trek “Prime Directive.” Why don’t we just resign ourselves to the fact that we simply don’t know and if aliens do exist and are here to check us out, one day they’ll tell us what the fuck is going on? If you want to legitimize Ufology, the first thing that needs to be done is to discard all our preconceived notions about aliens and what drives them culturally and start from scratch. Next Ufologists need to do some house cleaning. Stop presenting pronouncements from the lunatic fringe as factual information without supporting evidence to confirm their suppositions. If the aliens really want to abduct somebody let that person be Erich Von Daniken and better yet they can keep his ass. It’s these pseudo-scientific conspiracy nuts that give the entire field of study a bad reputation and a decided lack of credibility. Lastly we should study this field of research like actual legitimate scientific researchers do. Study aliens and what they mean to us from anthropological, sociological, biological, historical and physical science perspective. Search for legitimate evidence using scientific method. If I hear one more uneducated, mentally ill, attention seeking, pseudo-scientific, asshat making ridiculous unproven claims about aliens on T.V. (pay attention Erich) and calling those claims facts, I think I’m going to hurl. Jus’ sayin’….