A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

In search of...

There have been a number of news stories this week about the search for extraterrestrial life. First, there was an apparent detection of a radio signal from space by SETI, then the quick debunking of such claims, and finally a CNN story about how alien civilizations might use physical means to contact us, rather than radio waves.

All this fills me with a feeling of dread. My conception of alien visitors has been shaped by movies like Alien and The Thing, not ET and Close Encounters. This attitude is a direct result of conversations with my grandfather, a retired general who apparently served in some clandestine military organization. We aren't allowed to visit him anymore, but I still write when I can.

Digging through some old papers, I discovered a letter my grandfather sent me after I wrote him about the SETI@Home project, which uses home computers to analyze radio telescope date. He wasn't pleased, to put it mildly. I've transcribed the letter here, for your edification. It's a bit long, but well worth the read.

It was with growing trepidation and concern that I read your letter explaining the purpose of the so-called "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence." If I understand correctly, a group of overpaid horses' asses are sending radio signals into the cosmos in the hopes(!) that some...thing on the receiving end will respond. What happens after that is probably unclear to these eggheads, so let me be the first to throw a bucket of water on the high-tech circle jerk going on.

As a military man, it doesn't surprise me to hear this kind of pie-in-the-sky horseshit from a bunch of Ivy Leaguers who've never seen the business end of an Arcturan spine liquefier. Apparently some in this country have forgotten those hellish days, not so long ago, when mankind fought for its very existence against all manner of slimy, intergalactic fiends. Certainly, there were sycophants and toadies on this planet even then, those who told you that Invasion of the Body Snatchers was an "allegory for McCarthyism," or similar nonsense. We who had been in the trenches knew, of course, and we foolishly waited for the rest of the mouth-breathers on this planet to wise up.

We'd be waiting a long time, as it turned out. Soon enough, that acid-dropping bastard Roddenberry foisted his twisted Utopian view on the good television viewers of this country. Gone were the (accurate) scenes of giant, bug-eyed daughter thieves from the Death Nebula. They were replaced by the (wildly erroneous) images of a goody goody, hand-holding, hippie paradise where man and alien worked, lived, even slept together. The mindless sheep of America ate this Star Trek garbage up with a spoon, forgetting everything they'd learned about triffids, Metalunans, and the Krell. Before I knew it, people were joking about alien abduction and wearing flying saucer tee-shirts. All the work we'd done seemed for naught.

Given today's appeasement-minded climate, it took little to wipe the last of my doubts away. And obliterated they were, like the frogs at Dienbienphu, by the foolhardy embrace of the so-called "SETI Project." It's no longer enough to shoot primitive signals into the ether or send rickety probes beyond the solar system. Voyager - that's a hoot. Imagine if the Incas, in their infinite wisdom, had sent a bottle across the Atlantic for Pizarro to pick up that contained not only detailed schematics of their soft underbellies, but a for Christ's sakes MAP to Peru. Obviously, the fact they did no such thing doesn't exactly help them now, but what's to stop some interstellar conquistadors from snatching up our crude attempt at reaching out and following it all the way back to the third planet in the Sol system? Only to them it's not "Sol," but rather "Harvest Sector 97767D."

Now these pencil-necked geeks are actively participating in this insanity. I'm told one can actually download a program, called "SETI@Home," no less, that allows your home computers to be compromised. The horror...thousands upon thousands of interconnected machines all stained by this madness. The time has come to set the record straight, to sound the call to arms, and pull the wool away from our eyes before it's too late.

Extraterrestrial infiltration is a fact. Those bureaucratic suckholes you mindlessly send to Washington, DC every four years have been compromised since before the Civil War. In fact, if not for John Wilkes Booth you'd all be vacuuming algae in the Crab Nebula. Sic temper tyrannis indeed.

These people, with your fancy-ass degrees and their fluffy prose, sitting in those opium dens they call homes, smoking "chronic" and watching that X-Files garbage. Forget Roswell and all your trendy Hollywood conspiracy theory crap. The truth is HERE, I know. My fellows have fought these sonsabitches and their pungent human lackeys since the Tunguska Incursion of 1909. I was but a whelp then, but rest assured I'd been cleaning EBE clock decades before that Chris Carter punk wet his pants viewing those first episode of Night Stalker.

I've watched, helpless, while men in my battalion, men I considered brothers, were ruthlessly and repeatedly probed. I led a special battalion in the incineration of "compromised" civilians. The press called us barbarians. How, they asked, how could we set upon a town full of innocent people? With about thirty USMC-issue M240 flame-throwers, was my answer. I would have had that meatloaf-headed Andromedan back in 1982 if it wasn't for those darn kids and their illegal flying bicycles. Hide one goddamn grey and it's curtains for the human race, mark my words.

I know they think you're being helpful, but wake up. When the invasion begins, we're not going to be inundated by cute little Muppets, like in that terrible third Star Wars movie, but by giant asteroid dwelling worms, like in that fine second Star Wars movie. And you stooges with code signatures like herpes all over their computers will be the first into the vat, my friend.

The Gipper had it right; the SDI system was perfect, only it wasn't designed to be directed earthward, but outward! The best military minds of the 1980's conceived of a brilliant defensive shield against alien incursion, and those bleeding-heart pansies killed it. Of course, they'll whine and bitch about preserving a few measly acres of South American trees, but when it comes to saving the whole planet, they somehow can't grow a pair. Well, I hope those hippies enjoy the rest of their lifetimes in galactic servitude. When they come for me I'll have a little surprise waiting for them, and it won't be Richard Dreyfus playing some goddamned neon music box, either.

Thank you, and God bless the United States of America and Planet Earth.

Maj. General "Buck" Vonder Haar (Ret) USA

Sorry, he signs all his letters that way.