UFOs—Always Around and Always Round

I’m reading a book entitled Earth by Timothy Good that investigates the existence of UFOs. It’s not a bad book. I’m reading it because I’m fed up to my gills with the misinformation being floated about by so-called climate scientists and just about any other scientist for that matter. I’ve decided to branch out into more mainstream inquiry. That and it’s too damn cold outside to do anything else.

I’m not sure what my take on UFOs is. I did once talk to the man who claimed he was from Alpha Centauri back in that bar when I was in the Army. That would seem to indicate the existence of extraterrestrial life. On the other hand we were in a bar, so—so you see my problem.

It’s like the eyewitness account mentioned in the book when I was still in the Roman numeral numbered introductory pages. My reference to Roman numerals is only a cheap segue trick allowing men to mention that UFOs were spotted as far back as the days of the Roman Empire, when Lucullus was about to battle Mithridates when “all on a sudden, the sky burst asunder, and a huge flame-like body was seen to fall between the two armies. In shape, it was most like a wine-jar.”[1]

My only question as I read this account was, “Didn’t they have saucers in those days?”

But back to the eyewitness account. It seems a journalist, a sports journalist at that, was driving through a town at 4:15 one morning. That’s all I’m going to tell you about his account because there are very few places one could be driving to or from at 4:15 in the morning. Throw in that he was a sports journalist and I think we can safely assume he was drunk, wasn’t driving safely and didn’t see any UFO—in any shape whatsoever.

Then there is the report from a couple that encountered a flying saucer, also while driving one night. “‘We kept driving but we both ducked down, expecting it to hit us.’ I thought, ‘This is it. We’ve had it.’”

So far this seems pretty reasonable. I maybe would have stopped driving but had I continued I definitely would have at least ducked down, too. And I probably would have mouthed the words, “Oh shit,” which is practically the same as thinking, “This is it. We’ve had it.”

But what the man said next makes their story seem just a tad implausible.

He said, “I’m a realist…but if I live to two hundred I would never see anything like that again.”

Really? Two hundred? Realist?

No realists is thinking in terms of living for two hundred years—one hundred maybe, but never in a million years, two hundred, but even if they did entertain the thought of living to one hundred, I doubt they’d be much concerned by what they might see should they reach that milestone.

Another account, which leaves me teetering on the brink of credulous or incredulous, but frankly leaning toward crazy is a report from another man who was out walking his dog.  He was identified as an engineer so the reader not think him a crank. What he and his dog, Syd, witnessed was so terrifying that they both “ran like hell” and even when safely home, “the dog watched out the bedroom window till at least two in the morning.”

Now staring out a bedroom window till two in the morning doesn’t make the dog crazy but staring at your dog staring out the window certainly might be an indication that you have issues.

As you might have guessed, each story individually raised doubts in my mind, but taken as a whole, they got me to thinking—in a good way. The UFO they all saw were shaped like saucers, as are most UFOs sighted throughout history except those that look like wine-jars.

How many times have we seen these giant Frisbees fly across the screen in movie theaters or across our television screens in documentaries airing at 2 in the morning? But even more important are the number of eyewitness accounts that speak of these flying saucers vehicles. 

Throughout history, going all the way back to Biblical times, obviously lucky, privileged and—until proved otherwise—sober individuals have described aliens arriving here on platters, almost like meals on wheels without the wheels.

Despite this overwhelming and irrefutable consistency, there appears to be a concerted effort to ignore the obvious. Earthlings continue to build rocket ships that look like Phallic symbols. We continue to believe that these majestic, not to mention virile vessels will take us anywhere we want to go in space—essentially, where no man has gone before.

After that reference, you’re probably asking, what about the Enterprise? True the main deck is round—or will be round when it is built sometime in the 23^rd century—but it’s still a round thing on a stick, more a lollipop than a saucer. Mankind apparently remains convinced that big and long is the way to go even though round and flat is the way most space travelers are going.

Call me a skeptic but I think it’s high time we move away, far away, from the notion of sending men into space inside a ball on top of a stick. If we are dead set against sending them up in flying saucers, better we send them up in a wine-jar—something the people they visit will not only recognize but also appreciate.

---

[1] Wikipedia, and they don’t lie.