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In Space, Nobody Cares If You Scream |
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Written by Scott Meadow
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Thursday, 21 July 2005 (read 1762 times) |
I was watching a series of alien shows the other day on the Discovery
channel or TLC, like there's a difference, and I was suddenly aware of
why these things were so fantasically popular. See, in all
honesty (here's a precedent) I view this type of sensationalism as
primarily cheap exploitation pieces pointing out the extreme
ignorance of the human majority. This is, of course, why I like
them.
But for the first time I understood that it was only an
over-marketed, over-sold and under-critically-educated public that
would ever buy that over 4,000,000 Americans a year were "abducted by
extraterrestrial beings." In short: spend $260 billion a year on
advertising messages and the public that consumes them will believe
just about anything else you tell them, if it's even remotely possible,
all the better.
See I don't believe that this whole phenomenon (UFOs, alien abductions, etc.) can be explained by
Huck and Joe's simplemindedness when they tell everyone that they were
dragged from their trailer park by aliens looking to gang-probe their
anuses. I think simplemindedness just isn't enough to explain it.
I think you have to add gullibility and good old fashioned salesmanship as
well.
By and large, people -- not just Huck and Joe, but the vast majority of homo sapiens -- will believe or
do anything given enough persuasion. Do you think the CIA would
have clamped car batteries to the testicles of POWs if this principle didn't
work? Believe me, no straight CIA operative would've be anxious
to drop another man's drawers and get that close to his testes unless
he was virtually guaranteed results. And how else can you explain Dr. Phil?
People are gullible. Plus you can't pick your nose these days without
finding some representation of one of those gray aliens, probably
selling you a beer or soda in between Boot Camp
segments. Everyone's got this image so ingrained in their tiny
craniums that virtually any time they look up they
swear they see an alien spacecraft instead of two
crackers in a Cessna Beech Baron tossing beer bottles into the
propeller. Nobody even looks for the obvious
explanation anymore because the obvious, and most often correct
explanation is boring and trite and forces them to realize how really
boring and trite life on this little packed mud ball really is after
all.
Who wants to look THAT in the face? I'd much rather gaze at the
short psychic gray guy with the big head than be forced to stare at my
own mundaneness. Hell, I'll even take a little probing if I don't
have to accept the fact that NO self-respecting alien race is going to
travel 10 billion light-years just to get THAT close to my
scrotum. They could've saved themselves the fuel and just called
the Agency.
I mean, seriously: don't they have environmentalists on their home
world or anyone looking after how they use their natural resources? How the hell do they justify to their
alien congress or whatever that it is a worthwhile thing to
travel 98 trillion miles to investigate the digestive systems of a race
so astonishingly primitive that it actually enjoys
the music of Garth Brooks?
I would give anything to be a fly on the wall during one of those meetings.
Elder: "So, Do'ron, you wish to travel to the third planet of this
vastly distant star system so you may study the lower gastrointestinal
tract of ape descendents?"
Gray Alien: "Well, yes."
Elder: "Why?"
Gray Alien: "Well, sir, we believe that we can learn things from these
primitives that we in our advanced technological state have long since
forgotten. We believe that their primitive emotions will
convince us that our cold technology is not a sufficient replacement
for meaningful and enriching loving attachments."
Elder: "Okay. So why the probes?"
Gray Alien: "Well, sir, not having anuses per se, we
are curious as to why so much of their culture revolves around these
small orifices."
Elder: "You've been doing this for fifty years, our tools are
approximately 1 billion years more advanced than theirs and you still
don't have enough data on their bowels yet? Come on."
Gray Alien: "No! No, sir, this is a serious scientific expedition!"
Elder: "(tapping all 8 fingers) Remember, I'm psychic."
Gray Alien: "All right, okay, it's fun. Sir."
Elder: "Well. Fine, then. Don't crash on any ranches and
mutilate some cows while you're there for good
measure."
Gray Alien: "Yes sir!"
Thank the big dude for biodiversity, huh?
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