Let's Talk About UFOs — Because It's More Exciting Than a Stuck Boat

If you ever doubted that the media environment so many of us wallow in has huge problems when it comes to how our attention is parsed, consider that somehow the government’s admission that UFOs are a real thing has not generated nearly the attention that one big boat getting stuck a few months ago did. UFOs are literally plaguing our skies, and the government has the documentation to prove it. Where is the “HaveTheAliensLanded.com” website? Where’s the endless on-site twitter feed? Where’s the television cameras lined up trying to get a perfectly-framed shot? Why-oh-why can’t I find more to read beyond the same articles recapping the same forced-dullness? Give me opinion! Give me wild conjecture by smart people! Funny quips, stupid memes, new meanings to old emojis! UFOs being real has to be more interesting that a stuck boat.

And I say this as someone who was a big fan of the stuck boat. That thing was fucking awesome. But UFOs being real blows that boat right out of the water.

Part of the problem is lack of much information to go on. A non-stop media frenzy requires a steady drip of information that has the perfect level of sensation — not so much as to be unbelievable, and not so little as to be dull. Our UFOs are both too sensational and too lacking in information. A few grainy infrared videos and some very down-to-Earth Navy pilots with blown minds is about all we have.

I don’t know about you, but in my life these days nearly every conversation turns to UFOs. And I find that even with the little confirmed information we currently have, a number of very rational conclusions can be drawn. And those conclusions tip perilously close to Earth-shaking.

These conclusions have become my talking points (probably to the annoyance of my close people who have heard them a dozen times over now). But since I’ve got the talking points, I thought I would lay them out in this mini-blog. I put them out there to give people like me who are desperate for more to read on the topic something to peruse, and to contribute to stirring up the media frenzy this subject deserves. I give you a rallying cry: “UFOs! At least as interesting as a stuck boat!”

I am not going to indulge in flights of fancy here. I think the evidence of alien visitations, abductions, cattle mutilations or what-have-you remains far too weak to pique my interest. The conclusions we can reach just from the confirmed evidence we have now and what the government has admitted are plenty fantastical enough without delving into the deepest parts of the fattest sci-fi hepatoloies. I’m going to stick to the facts as they stand now — though I refuse to be hemmed in by the government and the NY Times framing of those facts. And if there’s going to be a media-frenzy I’d like to see it stay grounded in facts, while having the imagination and willingness to challenge any official narrative applied to those facts.

At the same time, I want to point out that we are living through a period where there is a chance — small but real — that extra-terrestrials are regularly visiting our planet. Even hard-core empiricists agree that right at this moment there is no good explanation for the “objects in the sky that go zip.” It’s probably not aliens… but it could be. It really could be. That ‘could’ is pretty special. Savor it while you’ve got it. Smoke up and indulge in the wonder of it, by all means. Because once the government report is released, it’s more likely than not that the chance of extra-terrestrial presence on Earth will return to nearly, if not quite, zero. We are living through what might well be the only few weeks of our entire lives where extra-terrestrials on Earth is an small but real possibility. Enjoy it while ya got it!