A Nice Place to Visit?

July 1997

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.
-- Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson)

July marked the 50th anniversary of the mysterious incident in Roswell, New Mexico. For those normally concerned with more earthly matters, the story goes that in 1947, the Air Force announced it had recovered a crashed object in the desert believed to be a flying saucer and its crew. The Air Force later retracted the statement, saying something like, "Sorry, folks! Big mistake! It was, er, a … weather balloon! Yeah. No aliens here, ha ha, and definitely no large gun-metal gray spacecraft with blinking lights and a loud humming noise, no sir!" leading many people to suspect a government cover-up.

Now, I believe we're not alone in the universe, but I'm sure that aliens have never been here because I don't believe we're worth the effort to visit. Here are a couple of reasons why:

TELEVISON: Imagine living 40 light-years from Earth, and receiving these strange signals: 40 year-old first-run "I Love Lucy" episodes. Curious, thinking these Earthlings spend all their time putting on nightclub shows for one another, you fly towards the planet, picking up more recent signals as you approach. Any intelligent being not frightened off by all of 1970's TV would definitely turn around at the first sight of the "Mom, I Want to be a Skinhead Nun" episode of the "Ricki Lake Show."

LEADERSHIP: If aliens were to land in Washington DC today, and announce "Take me to your leader," they'd take one look at our elected officials, chuckle, and say, "No, really, we want to speak to your real leaders." Our latest brood of boneheads can't agree on the same scapegoats for their mistakes. Do we really want them representing humanity when the ship lands? I want people like Mother Teresa, Stephen Hawking, Nelson Mandela, Maya Angelou, and (Nobel Prize winner) Jose' Ramos-Horta out there on the landing strip, not some public poseur looking for photo-ops with little green men he can ask for campaign contributions.

PRIORITIES: Say our visitors decided to stick around, meet some of our citizens, and learn about our society. Eventually they would stare at us and say, "You mean, you pay your professional athletes how much? And you pay your teachers and educators how much?" It would be tough to claim we're an intelligent race when we don't try to make our young people intelligent.

HOLLYWOOD: If the aliens monitor our culture, will we be able to explain away movies like "Independence Day" or "Mars Attacks"? "No, we're not xenophobic, we just enjoy shooting things that are different from us." Which leads us to...

WEAPONS: Take a look around, we've got lots of ‘em. Between heavily-armed countries and heavily-armed citizens, the aliens might as well paint a big bulls-eye right on their spaceships. Landing here would be like crossing your new neighbors' lawn to visit while they're skeet-shooting from the front porch.

Aliens may not have visited just yet, but maybe that'll change in the future. I'm hoping that we'll get to meet the neighbors someday, once we're no longer the eyesore of the neighborhood. I'll keep watching the skies.

LEGAL STUFF: All content copyright © 1996-2006 Daniel O'Leary. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication, publication, or distribution.

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He has previously written online editorials to NJ-shout.com (RIP), Great Society.org, and Songsource.com, among others. He has also been featured in ShoreGuide and AbsoluteWrite.com.

Dan is a current member of the NetWits humorist's collective.

Since his early twenties, Dan's writings have also been prominently featured on the refrigerator in his parents' home. "Sure, they make no sense," Mrs. O'Leary comments, "but we're proud of him -- no matter what everyone else says."