So What's With The Glut Of UFO Nonsense?

 I will be sticking with "nonsense" in this post. Most of the stories I'm seeing could, perhaps would, have been front page on the "rags" next to check out counters. I don't even notice if those exist anymore, and if they're still at the counters, I ignore whatever the covers blare at potential customers. Even if they're so ridiculous they might make me laugh, it's a hard no. Call it mental censorship.

But suddenly the stories are all over the place. Let's start a couple years back with pilots supposedly having video from their cockpits of "TicTac" like UFOs following their planes, suddenly making right angle turns at speed, dropping into the water of the ocean without slowing or splashing. If one could believe them, they'd be amazing, some kind of technology way above us at this point. But... CGI. It exists. I haven't the skills to duplicate that kind of video, but I've seen it in theaters. You likely have as well.

There are alleged brown skulls that have the huge eye holes in the face that would do any alien-party role player in Roswell, New Mexico proud to wear... except it wouldn't fit over their heads. Thank goodness there's flimsy plastic white ones for sale there, eh? Meanwhile, I look at those photos and think "movie prop." Any human with the skill set and a streak of mischief could have manufactured one. So, proof of nothing alien, unless you judge the mindset of such a designer/manufacturer to be "alien" - to you at least. Maybe not even so alien if making it came with the right price tag. I bet they could do T-Rex skulls too, or super giant King Kong ones. Heck, I'm sure they already have. We've seen those movies too.

It used to be the stories were about abductions and surgeries to find out the internal anatomy of helpless victims. Somehow those folks always managed to arrive back on earth, a "big chunk of weird", but somehow scar free and with a deep thirst for whatever was served in the local bar... on somebody else's tab of course, since telling long stories is thirsty work.

The flavor of the stories has morphed again. The most recent ones are alleged to be from some previous administration's has-been, spouting secrets about how jets at 40,000 feet are stopped and held stationary for a bit before being safely released to continue to wherever. Or our moon walking astronauts either never arrived but the "proof" was set up by resident moon aliens who somehow knew how to get all the details right, or our astronauts did arrive and were being observed by aliens while hiking around on the moon. No doubt those aliens were waiting to see what was going to happen to the neighborhood now that some "wrong color" new neighbors were starting to show up with big reflective heads, and wondering how they'd affect property values. Was it time for them to move further out to the suburbs... of Mars?

Conspiracy theories abound around these stories. Maybe they're waiting for us to overheat this planet and make it perfect for their next colony? Or they're in league with (pick an enemy, real or fever dream) and will reveal themselves as they start to round us up for dinner - theirs, not ours. Maybe they have the "fix" for what makes us (fill in the blank with your favorite flaw) and with enough study will step up and rescue the deserving of us from the flawed rest of us. Note that nobody ever manages to come up with a reason for them wanting to rescue us. I figure that last is just our own desperation and unwillingness to change speaking.

I suggest a more plausible conspiracy. The actual humans who wish to take control of the entire planet have figured out that fear, especially irrational amorphous fear, can make us do just about anything. We'll attack anybody "other", align with whatever silly improbably hope seems to be offered, believe almost anything without question. All this combined would prompt a vast majority of us to cede our own thought processes to a leader, do whatever is "required", and enable such a professed hero/leader to do whatever the hell they want to whomever the hell they want for as long as they just keep us afraid and make promises for improvement.

If you have trouble accepting that concept, tell me how recent elections around the world are NOT proof it's already being done. No aliens necessary, of course. Sorry if that spoiled it for you.

How To Get Haunted

 Or maybe this should be "how to haunt somebody." It's a "Concept of a Plan."

I was joking with a friend online earlier that I've never actually met in person, and who's now in hospice, about seeing my crocus when they bloom this next spring. It started with a notation by me that now that the snow had again melted, the tips of last fall's crocus bulbs were poking through the dirt by between a  quarter and eighth of an inch, and really needed snow again to protect them with the expected sub-zero weather coming up. He replied with the assumption that they would be yellow, to which I countered with a list of all the colors I had ordered them in, some of which I'd never seen in a crocus before, like orange or blue.

Both of us know he won't be leaving Arizona for Minnesota to see them in bloom. It's not necessarily his expected life span, as he's been holding on for a nice while now. Even my dad hung in there with official hospice status for eleven months, and I've heard of both longer and shorter stays by different folks.  In his case not traveling that far is guaranteed by his health concerns and difficulty in any mobility. Travel of any sort isn't happening. I'm not sure he even makes it to see his doctor, as a nurse pops in to visit him regularly. The nurse is the go-between for things like a change in medications, in addition to tending immediate needs.  Anyway, he's already been sticking around for longer than he initially expected. The positive is his mind is sound, he spends time researching a specific climate change topic, and he still has - at least occasionally - his sense of humor. Some days it's rare, but it hasn't fully deserted him.

I told him that we wouldn't know till April the actual colors the crocus the crocus would bloom in. But then, a few practicalities occurred to me, and I shared those with him.

"We'll have to see what's left from what the squirrels dug up to eat. This means, of course, to find out you have to stick around till April.  : ) That, or figure out how to haunt me as a ghost. So-o-o... first you have to believe you can be a ghost, then manifest as one, then figure out that you'd want to bother with haunting anybody, then whether that might be me, then figure out how to find somebody you've never met.... I suppose there's a part in there where  you'd have to decide if it's worth all that energy! LOL "

His answer was prompt:  "Cute, me a ghost? Why not? :-))) "

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile I expect we'll continue to correspond almost daily, sharing thoughts about the world, politics, climate, personal history and experiences, philosophies about life and death and what has meaning, etc. We'll continue till it can't.