UFOs – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Men in Black Movie Marathon

Sena and I have favorite movies. We both like “Up” and “WALL-E.” My favorites are the Men in Black trilogy. That doesn’t mean I think the 4^th sequel was bad. But I have lost count of the number of times I’ve watched the first three.

I haven’t watched them in the last several months because I couldn’t find them on cable for some reason. I’ve just learned that that there will be a marathon of the trilogy on January 14, 2023 beginning at 2:30 PM. They’ll be on the Comedy Central channel.

I’m a fan of comedy and I like the chemistry between the two main characters, Agent J and Agent K.

I have favorite lines from each movie. In the first Men in Black film, I like the exchange between the two agents after the recruitment scene following Edwards’ (the soon to be Agent J) first visit to the MIB Headquarters. They’re sitting on a park bench and K is talking about people and what they don’t know about them and extraterrestrials.

Edwards: Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.

Agent K: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.

Another favorite where Agent K is showing Edwards a universal translator, one of the many wonders in the extraterrestrial technology room, which gives us a perspective on how humans rank in the universe:

Agent K: We’re not even supposed to have it. I’ll tell you why. Human thought is so primitive it’s looked upon as an infectious disease in some of the better galaxies.

In MIB II, the dialogue between Newton and the Agents makes you wonder what extraterrestrials really want from us:

Newton: Gentlemen, before I play the tape, there’s just one question I need to ask; what’s up with anal probing? I mean, aliens travel billions of light years just to check out our…

Agent J: Boy, move!

This is part of the Men in Black 3 dialog between Agent J and Jeffrey Price about how to use the time travel device:

Jeffrey Price: Do not lose that time device, or you will be stuck in 1969! It wasn’t the best time for your people. I’m just saying. It’s a lot cooler now.

I remember 1969. Things are not perfect now, but they are better. What we don’t need is a “big ass neutralizer.” As long as we remember what dark times were like, we have a chance to make cooler times.

Sasquatch Cribbage Board Game!

Today was the inaugural game on our new Sasquatch cribbage board. It’s a very handsome item, made of walnut by the maker, David Sprouse, in Ferndale, Washington. His website is 3MoonsMakerSpace and he markets the boards on Etsy. It was delivered only a couple of weeks ago. It came with pegs and deck of cards. It has a hole in the back for hanging on a wall, if you want.

We played the game to 61 just for the sake of brevity since the point was to show off the board itself.

I don’t know really what to make of Bigfoot stories. Many claim to have spotted the creature way out in places like Washington state and elsewhere. There are reports of a few sightings even in Iowa.

I wonder why you never find corpses or even fossils of Sasquatch? Probably because extraterrestrials beam them up too quickly in order to harvest the fur for throw rugs for their space ships. The usual problem, of course, is getting the smell of beef jerky out of them.

Evolutionary Thoughts

By now, you’ve probably read the digital news article describing how we’re all going to evolve into beings who resemble extraterrestrials (ETs) because of our preoccupation with digital technology.

The authors describe us as eventually developing another eyelid that’ll protect us from the blue light emanating from our gadgets. Our hands will become claw-like and permanently flexed because of the way we’re always gripping our smartphones.

You’ll also develop a third hand that protrudes from your butt so you can catch your cell phone as it slips out of the back pocket of your skinny jeans. Come to think of it, that’ll also give rise to a weird new meaning for the term “butt dialing.”

Of course, the article is a criticism of our preoccupation with our gadgets, but it’s still fascinating as speculation about how creatures, including humans, evolve in response to the pressures in our environment.

This kind of thing makes me wonder whatever happened to Neanderthal. The males were huge, especially their arms, which came from frequent arm wrestling with Sasquatch for the last shred of beef jerky. Neanderthal had a very prominent brow which developed to keep snow and pterodactyl droppings out of his eyes.

And this reminds me of the discovery of the fossil of a giant creature on the Greek island of Crete in 2003 (I think). The skull had a huge nasal opening in the center of the skull. That was probably for a trunk, as in elephant trunk. But paleontologists thought it might have been the explanation for why ancient Greeks came up with stories about the terrifying one-eyed cyclops.

And what about that carp with a human-like face on the top of its head? I saw that one a week ago on the show The Proof is Out There. I thought sure Michael Primeau, the forensic video analyst on the show, would dryly dismiss it (“This video is clearly faked.”). Instead, the other experts thought it was natural. Tony summarized it as an example of the “plastic” evolution, by which I think he meant phenotypic or evolutionary plasticity. These are changes in a creature’s appearance, morphology, or physiology in response to changes in its environment. Regarding the carp, one expert opined that the face would confuse its main predator, the eel, by confusing it.

I still don’t get that one. How would the carp species even begin the evolutionary process? Does the carp just think, “Huh, I think that eel might get confused if I had a face like a human”? I get it that the changes occur at the genetic level, but how exactly does it get started?

Could you google the answer? I couldn’t find anything specific, like x plus y equals human-like face on a fish that many humans would not care to eat.

And how about writing? I wrote this blog post longhand using pen and paper, something I gave up doing years ago but which I am sort of rediscovering gradually. I had an old typewriter for a while, which gave way to something called a word processor, which was a stand-alone device made writing and editing text, and eventually I got a computer—which really messed things up.

The thing is, I can remember getting something called writer’s cramp. If you remember that, then you probably recall how painful it was. Back then, did anyone ever wonder whether that would lead to the evolution of a claw like hand?

Could evolution have consequences pertinent to people who are always looking up at the sky looking for UFOs? Some of them, for some unexplained reason, never seem to have a smartphone with them. Anyway, could their eyes migrate, carp-like, to the top of their foreheads to counter neck strain? And could this lead to the evolution of a third eye in the center of the forehead? It would prevent falling into manholes. There are other consequences from evolving into a cyclops.

We would be adept at forging thunderbolts. We would be very talented at cultivating vineyards and herding sheep and goats. But our tempers would still be pretty bad, even worse. We would abandon courts of law and ignore justice. We would be violent giants, feasting on the flesh of ordinary humans. All this because we kept searching the sky, hoping to see UFOs and see ETs, which we would eventually resemble anyway because of our preoccupation with our devices.

I have a pretty good supply of pens and paper.

Extraterrestrials Want to Cut a Deal with The Daily Crave

We tried The Daily Crave Spicy Sriracha Lentil Chips and they’re pretty good. Extraterrestrials like the snacks and are apparently interested in cutting a deal with Jared Edy, who I think owns the stores. They want a piece of the action. They are bringing satchels of cash to the table along with proposals to cease and desist corn tassel abductions, which are old-fashioned in any case.

Their history of the corn tassel controversy is complicated. It’s based on the aliens’ misunderstanding of detasseling. In their corner of a galaxy far, far away, corn tassels are alive and kept as pets. They think they are rescuing the tassels by abducting them. They think walking corn fields to detassel corn, which involves yanking out the tassels at the top of the plant, amounts to cruelty to animals.

Time for the short story about detasseling from an Iowan who has done it. The tassel is the male part of the corn plant. It pollinates the corn ears, which are female parts. To make corn hybrids, farmers and seed companies must cross pollinate the corn. To make sure the right pollen from one type of corn gets to another, they must hire hundreds of people (often college students) to detassel the corn which isn’t earmarked (get it?) for cross-pollination.

I’ve done detasseling and it’s one heck of a chore. At the end of the day, my hands and arms were so sore I could barely lift them. I was exhausted, but when I tried to close my eyes at night, all I saw were endless acres of corn.

It turns out that careful explanations of what detasseling corn is all about on this planet cleared this up for aliens.

There are many stores across the country selling The Daily Crave chips. Several are in Iowa, mainly in the Des Moines area. That may be why some Iowans occasionally see UFOs.

Update on Attic Weirdness

This is an update on the attic, the hatch for which is in our garage ceiling. We haven’t heard any knocking noises lately.

Yesterday, the HVAC guys came to reattach the duct which somehow separated from the roof vent. They showed up at 7:00 a.m. and were pretty much done in 20 minutes. They charged close to $300, which Sena is still complaining about.

Now we’re wondering how the two repairmen fixed it without dragging another tall ladder into the attic. The picture suggests that reattaching the duct and the roof vent involved either levitation or aliens—possibly both.

The roof vent looks like it’s above the floor of the attic by about 12 feet. We couldn’t see exactly how it was done because we didn’t climb up the repairmen’s ladder. The view was limited by angle of the hatchway and the darkness.

I checked the before and after pictures (the after picture was taken by one of the repairmen) of the duct repair job. Sometimes paranormal images take a while to develop, a phenomenon well described by goofball UFO researchers high on intergalactic substances dropped by intoxicated aliens careening in out-of-control, souped up space ships blundering through one of the many wormhole vortices commonly located near fast food joints.

Sure enough, aliens were clearly involved in vandalizing the duct which they were too drunk to realize is not another wormhole but the connection between the kitchen exhaust hood and the roof vent. They looked dazed and confused.

After the repair, it sure looks like an alien was involved in climbing up the wall studs to reattach the high end of the duct. He’s obviously sneaking back down the wall. It looks like levitation is the key.

The big question is how would this creature know the city code covering proper ventilation duct installation? And another question is how did it get a job with the HVAC company?

The HVAC guys were astounded by how many nails were in the walls in the attic. They’re clearly visible. Somebody went wild with a nail gun. I’m not saying it’s aliens—but it’s aliens.

They also found a walkie talkie in the attic. We’ve never owned walkie talkies. I don’t know where it came from, but I’m guessing aliens were using them to phone home. Could that account for the knocking noises? Maybe they communicate by knocking through the walkie talkies, just to throw us off. I think they got the idea from Tony Orlando and Dawn: “Knock 3 times on the ceiling if you’re homesick….”

These and other questions await further analysis by goofball UFO experts. You’re welcome.

Why Do We Want to Believe?

I heard a song called “Marfa Lights” on the KCCK 88.3 FM radio program, the Friday Night Blues Show with John Heim aka Big Mo. The lyrics mention the Marfa Lights, describing them as UFOs or flying saucers. It was the first time I ever heard a blues song mentioning UFOs.

I looked it up later on the web. It turns out there’s a town called Marfa in Texas where people see strange lights. Years ago (and maybe even nowadays) a lot of them think they might be UFOs or some other paranormal phenomenon, like ghosts. A couple of studies in 2004 and 2008 pretty much debunked them as automobile lights triggered by atmospheric changes like temperature inversions. Still, some people want to believe they’re something weird or cosmic.

On the same evening I heard the song, I watched an episode of Ancient Aliens which is one of those shows which has a paranormal theme, mostly involving aliens. They talked about a blind seer named Baba Vanga, whose predictions about the future are thought to be 80% accurate. The speculation by the hosts of the show is that Baba Vanga might have been tapping into a phenomenon called the Akashic Record.

Encyclopedia Britannica on the web says the Akashic Record is said to be a “…compendium of pictorial records, or ‘memories,’ of all events, actions, thoughts, and feelings that have occurred since the beginning of time.” (Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Akashic record”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Jan. 2015, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Akashic-record. Accessed 13 August 2022.)

It’s not a physical thing, but it sounds like an ethereal public library. The Ancient Alien enthusiasts suggest that anyone can access it, even aliens (of course!)—if you have a current, valid library card and don’t have any overdue books or have at least paid up all the fines you owe.

In fact, there are a lot of entries on the web claiming you can access the Akashic Record just by formulating a clear question, like “What does Kellogg really put in those so-called all natural Kashi Granola Bars—and what exactly is Pyridoxine Hydrochloride anyway?”

Then you have to get into a pretty deep meditative state, which is nothing like mindfulness meditation. You need to ask really specific questions and insist on talking to the head librarian if you start to get the run around about certain resources being on reserve only for high-level professional mediums who charge outrageously high fees to search the record for you.

People want to believe. That’s why you can even find a WikiHow with detailed instructions for tapping into the Akashi Record to check out any of the episodes from the first season of the X-Files.

The Akashic Record might even have the Cliff Notes on what is going to happen to humans in the remote future. Ancient Aliens guys seem to spin this a couple of different ways.

One is a version of the matrix theory, which means that we’re living in some kind of computer simulation run by aliens who set this up with a special code or script that absolutely must be followed—meaning that the future is strictly determined. That would be bad because it sounds like it ends with a tremendous nuclear explosion on Mars, which humans eventually colonize but then can’t get along with each other because there are not enough rib joints for both humans and aliens.

The other future scenario is that humans evolve into beings who can tolerate indefinitely prolonged deep space exploration and go planet-hopping for the rest of eternity looking for Douglas Adams’ restaurant at the end of the universe. Forget getting in if you don’t have a reservation.

Maybe the question for the Akashic Record keepers should be pretty basic.

Why do we want so hard to believe?

TV with Heart

The other night I watched a show I’ve seen 3 times and it still makes me want to cry. It’s the Heavy Rescue 401 episode with Bear the heavy wrecker operator with the Ross company who lets an 8-year-old boy diagnosed with cancer hold the steering wheel and pull the horn as they take a drive around the farm where the family lives.

They hug and it’s tough to tell whether Bear is comforting the boy or the other way around. I guess it’s both.

I saw a Facebook page about the boy, who succumbed to cancer a few years ago. People are still leaving warm messages.

I watch a fair amount of TV and I make fun of most of it, including the paranormals. They’re pretty formulaic, re-investigating decades old cases that never get solved about alien visitors in spaceships, leaving behind evidence that goes missing from government storage warehouses. Because it gets lost, nobody has to explain why there is a notable lack of any convincing evidence for what most UFOs are and who might be flying them.

I can’t generate much emotion for the paranormals. I mostly laugh at them. How can you lose or throw out physical evidence of UFOs and aliens so many times?

“We need to make more room in here; can we toss something in the trash compactor?”

“Sure, get rid of those photos of military personnel taking selfies with aliens driving UFOs and drinking beer. That’ll make room for the 400-page binders of the syllabus for the graduate school course ‘Effect of Chimpanzee Eyebrow Dandruff on Prime Interest Rates During the 20^th Century.’”

One of paranormal shows did an extensive review of the Kecksburg, Pennsylvania UFO, the one shaped like a macadamia. No wait, it was shaped like an acorn. It was dark and brooding, full of intrigue, veiled threats, and an alien pilot. As usual, evidence was lost.

Did you know Kecksburg throws an annual UFO-themed party? They just had the 17^th Kecksburg UFO Festival just last month, replete with something called a burnout contest, fireworks, and crafts. The people of Kecksburg aren’t letting the government conspiracy get them down. They’re more than happy to let the paranormal producers visit because it gives the town leaders a chance to draw more tourists to the area.

I get a kick out of Men in Black (MIB) too, and I won’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the first one and the first two sequels. In Men in Black, Agent K shows the new recruit, Agent J, a special universal translator and says MIB is not even supposed to have it and says, “I’ll tell you why. Human thought is so primitive it’s looked upon as an infectious disease in some of the better galaxies.”

That’s why it helps to watch some other TV shows, the ones with heart where real people who are not acting but living do the mundane things which are seldom the most treasured of miracles. They remind you of the better human qualities like humor, kindness, love, generosity, gratitude, and the experience of sorrow that can sometimes humble a species which often suffers from overweening pride.

It can sometimes make you cry.

Sena’s Epic Bigfoot Expedition!

We know you’ve been waiting for Sena’s next Bigfoot safari and it turns out aliens from the third galaxy on the left have been dropping them into Sand Lake at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area.

The aliens shoot through a gravel road type of portal and beam their Bigfoot pets who’ve outgrown their homes into Sand Lake. They eat like growing teenagers and the interdimensional highway is a convenient way to get rid of them. It’s a good thing they can dog-paddle to shore.

The uptick in Bigfoot sightings probably has a lot to do with the incoming hordes of invasive insects, including the most recent pest, the Spotted Lanternfly. It’s not hard to figure out why. Bigfoot creatures eat the bugs by the handful.

What’s not so clear is where the Spotted Lanternfly actually comes from. Oh, I know the official report is that they’re from China, but that dodges the conspiracy theory by many people (I don’t know them personally) that the Iowa State University (ISU) Extension agents are cultivating them on the sly. Their website downplays the whole affair and says you can send them specimens preserved in hand sanitizer if you’re interested, but nope, there’s no infestation.

Sure; tell that to Thompson Aero, Inc, which has been dusting crops and park woods areas around the city lately, using what they want people to think is Neem Oil Spray. You can buy a product called Neem Oil spray at Walmart. They sell it claiming it kills the Spotted Lanternfly.

In fact, our sources reveal that the opposite is true. Neem Oil actually nourishes the bug and increases their reproductive capacity. The ISU Extension office is in on it because the real goal is to increase the population of Bigfoot creatures (who like Spotted Lanternfly more than beef jerky) in Iowa because the states in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Wisconsin are snatching up all the tourism trade. You didn’t know it was all about money?

This whole business is run by the ISU Extension, which is why it’s called Area 41. Don’t buy into the hogwash about the name pointing to this being an ongoing April Fool’s Day joke.

There’s such a thing as the Freedom of Information Act and those in the know (who I don’t know at all) found out about this scheme. They planned a Storm Area 41 similar to the Storm Area 51 Raid in Nevada in 2019. That was said to have started out as a joke—and then really crapped out.

Anyway, Sena is keeping an eye out for Bigfoot. I can’t promise that she won’t launch another expedition in the future. Even the men in black with their big-ass neualyzers can’t stop us.

ZAP!

You know, I don’t think there’s any such thing as Area 41 or Bigfoot either. Hey, I just saw a tall guy and a pug both wearing black suits walk by my window. The pug was singing “Who Let the Dogs Out.”

That’s weird. It’s way too hot outside to be wearing black suits.

My Plan for the Unidentified Frying Objects!

We have to get the UFO thing under control, and it’s going to take more than mass produced tin foil hats. I watched a couple of paranormal shows the other night and saw The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch and The Proof is Out There hosted by Tony Harris.

I poke fun at The Secret of Skinpicker Ranch and The 200 Proof Moonshine is Out There, but not in malice. It’s because they are funny. Just to let you know, I think they’re both pretty good entertainment, although I favor The Proof is Out There because of the skeptical approach.

As usual, Tony and his experts politely debunked a few alleged paranormal phenomena and used a sense of humor doing it. I’m still not sure why Tony calls the current series the Skinwalker Edition. He never really investigates what the skin picker cast members are up to, which usually involves saying “What the bleep” after seeing the odd orb or two and occasionally having fainting spells.

I think Tony gets green screened into a couple of pictures and videos of the Skinpicker Ranch in northern Utah where it’s located and politely comments about what the cast is up to on the show. I cannot understand why an astrophysicist, Travis Taylor, is on the show, other than to try to give it credibility for the pseudoscientific approach. However, Dragon (played by Bryant Arnold), who is just a security guard, gets more camera time than Taylor.

That said, I think it’s way past time to get a better understanding of these Unidentified Frying Objects (UFOs). We’re talking about an astral chicken here, who is anatomically altered to function as its own wormhole vortex. I think the White House has been aware of the alien poultry cloaca portal vanguard (APCPV) for decades.

There are not enough tin foil hats to go around, people. Besides, they are a waste of good aluminum foil wrapping paper, which should be reserved for the resistance fighters when it comes time to roast the invaders. Don’t blame me when you get caught; you’ve been warned.

What we really need is a large coop to confine these galactic free range cluckmeisters. We need to toss the so-called Unidentified Frying Objects, which are actually alien cloaca black hole benders, into the skillet and add poultry seasoning. You want them to be golden brown.

It’s important to be committed to the goal, even when their hired thug abductors which commonly look like little green men (the small grays are the custodians). The abductors tend to be easily tricked into setting you free if you find a decent BBQ rib joint for them. Jimmy Jack’s Rib Shack in Iowa City is a good choice. They also do chicken.

You’re welcome.

How Many Fallen Angels Can Twerk on The Point of a Pin?

Okay, so the title sounds familiar but it’s wrong. And why does it matter? For the record, the actual quote is more like “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? It comes from philosophers in the Middle Ages. Before I get to the point of all this nonsense, I have to tell you I was shocked to find an actual equation formulated by a guy named Anders Sandberg that can help us find the answer—if we ask the right question. Sandberg says we can get the right answer if we reformulate the question. This would mean you can’t use the head of the pin, but should use the point.

That makes so much sense. Why didn’t I think of that?

Anyway, Sena found an article (“Humanity Will Need to Survive About 400,000 Years if We Want any Chance of Hearing from an Alien Civilization”) that says something called the Drake Equation shows that it’ll take about 400,000 years before we have contact with an alien civilization. The Drake Equation tries to estimate how many Communicating Extraterrestrial Intelligent Civilizations (CETIs) there are. The equation has been called flawed because of the unpredictability of quantifying the probability life may appear on a suitable planet. It’s a matter of conjecture. I don’t get the math, but the concept is interesting.

Now the author of this blog post (it’s actually a WordPress blog called Universe Today) cites a study from a couple of researchers that essentially ask a different question, mathematically speaking. The researchers think of this as a thought experiment and give a rather pessimistic outlook on the whole thing.

Now look back at a 2016 New York Times article, “Yes, There Have Been Aliens,” an opinion piece written by astrophysics professor Adam Frank. He is more optimistic about the Drake Equation and cautions us to “…ask the right question.”

You’ll have to subscribe to the New York Times if you can’t read Frank’s full opinion piece in one sitting. Not that I have any dispute with him, but this reminds me of Agent K in Men in Black who praised supermarket tabloids as having the “Best investigative reporting on the planet; read the New York Times if you want, they get lucky sometimes.”

Again, the math is beyond my little pinhead, but Frank was a lot more optimistic about contacting aliens. It sounds like the outlook on this depends a lot on how you set up the equation. Get the point?

Now, haven’t these guys checked the news and watched the paranormal TV shows? Are they not aware of the large population of UFO watchers out there? One source says that Canadians are spotting up to 3 UFOs a day.

Hey, aliens even stop to admire our lawns. Giorgio Tsoukalos, AKA, the hair guy, from Ancient Aliens would say the aliens contacted us a long time ago. So, why do we need the Drake Equation?

That’s why we need to ask the right question. So how many times do aliens grab their groins while rapping unintelligible lyrics on the point of a pin?

That’s right; the answer is zero—aliens don’t have groins. You’re welcome.

Featured image picture credit: Pixydotorg.