Mr. Editor: Are There Really Any Non-Mexican Aliens?

    Americans seem fascinated by the question of whether there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Putting aside the dubious assumption that there is intelligent life on earth, the question must be split in two:
        1. Are there other lifeforms out there as brilliant as we humans?
        2. If there are such lifeforms, what are the chances that we’ll hear from them?
   The answer to the first question can be anything you choose ─ "Yes," "No," "Maybe," "Probably," "Definitely, "Whatever," "I don’t give a shit" ─ depending on what religion you subscribe to or how much grass you’ve smoked.
    As for the second question, "What are the chances that we’ll hear from them?" the answer is more straightforward: "Absolutely none."
    Granted, the universe (which as you may be aware is a very large place indeed) could easily be teeming with millions upon millions of high IQ alien civilizations sprinkled hither and yon amongst the few hundred trillion galaxies visible to the naked Hubble, each galaxy containing a few hundred trillion stars like our sun many of which are surrounded by cozy little solar systems like our own with small blue planets circling them on which Allah or Jehovah or Krishna or Dennis Kucinich or some other omnipotent being has ordained a cornucopia of life forms and put them under the supervision of ape-like mammals whose males wear Levi’s and whose females have a passion for designer handbags.
    The problem, however, isn’t whether superior carbon-based entities such as editors of the New York Times inhabit the far reaches of the cosmos ─ it’s whether we can expect to be texting with them on our iPads or iPhones or iPods one of these millennia.
    And that’s where that annoying son-of-a-bitch Einstein comes along to gum up the works and spoil the fun with that stupid dogma of his about nothing being able to travel faster than the speed of light.
    Albert is dead and not about to debate all you fans of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Scottie, and Sulu, who know that all we need to do to speed up our phone calls is to switch into Warp Drive, point our Priuses toward the nearest Worm Hole, and jump into Hyperspace, so I’ll just content myself with pointing out that all of you trekkies are full of shit.

● There ain’t no such things as Worm Holes.
● There ain’t no such thing as Hyperspace.
● Warp Drive is a total crock.
● The velocity of light is 186,000 miles per second and nothing, not even Barney Frank’s tongue, can transmit information or saliva faster than that.
● Scottie's dead, Sulu’s doing commercials, Nimoy is writing bad poetry, and Shatner has abandoned his starship captaincy in favor of transforming himself into a human blimp.

    Live with it! That’s the way it is! It’s not up to you! You’re stuck with it already!
    The upshot? It doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn if you believe there are green pen pals out there with antennae and tentacles and multiple sex organs interested in tweeting attractive earth chicks because there’s not a Chinaman’s chance in hell that anyone will ever hear anything from any of them or that any of them will ever hear anything from any of us:
    It’s really very simple:
    There could be a gazillion super races flourishing throughout the universe or there could be none. We don’t know. We will never know. They’re all so fucking far away it would take longer than a geological age for their "Wish you were here" cards to show up in your E-mail.
    You got that?
    Can you wrap your mind around that?
                                                                
* * *
    
Oh...My...God!...
    You’ve discovered, based on incontrovertible evidence from the Syfy channel, several Steven Spielberg movies, your sister’s hairdresser, and your personal observation of a strange greenish bluish yellowish violetish light in the sky last Wednesday, that there are oodles of super-intelligent lifeforms in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and Messier 59,762 and that they’ve been busily messaging us and dropping by in their Toyota UFOs for centuries and that I’m a close-minded, pig-headed, atheist prick for denying it.
    Okay! Okay! Okay!.
    Sheesh!
    You win!
    I throw in the towel.
    I like totally, y’know, concede to your superior wisdomability and knowledgeableness and humbly grovel at your feet and beg to kiss your ass.
    What’s more I’m gonna go outside tonight and start sending smoke signals via my personal hyperspace worm hole to the nearest black hole I can find.
    I can’t wait to hear back. I just know something amazingly weird is waiting anxiously at the event horizon for my message. I hope it receives my dispatch before the cops show up and haul me away for polluting outer space.

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
 

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