Wii Are Not Alone

"We are being visited. It is now time to put away this embargo of the truth about the alien presence." – Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell (April, 21, 2009).

Right about the time that last week’s column went live, the National Press Club was holding a conference with the sixth human being to ever walk on the moon. If you subscribe to any number of mainstream news feeds, you might have come across the headline: “Astronaut Says We’re Not Alone.” The story was filed by Political Theater columnist, Joseph Curl, via a humble, little paper called The Washington Times.

It was above-the-fold news on Friday in one of the nation’s most prestigious daily periodicals, but not so much as an anecdote on television or radios this past weekend.

Why would the news producers at FOX, CNN or even VH1 miss an opportunity to lead a news item with as much tabloid potential as this -especially during a slow news week?


Well for one, Edgar D. Mitchell isn’t just some random, senile near octogenarian. He’s a doctor in aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, and he happens to be extremely well respected by the scientific and military communities. He's a good, old-fashioned, American Hero from a bygone era, and taking pot shots at heroes has never been well advised. The campaign to discredit him may very well already be underway. This is, of course, unless Mitchell isn't a whistle blower, but is instead a publicity liaison for the "Illuminati," or S.M.E.R.S.H. or whatever clandestine organization you prefer.

The 79 year old has broken his forty years of silence to address a legitimate concern, “The sun will burn out in due course, and we have to be off this planet if our species is to survive. At this point in human history on this planet, we're now starting, and should be, to reach out beyond our planet and then beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there."

When questioned about the lack of proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life, he responded, “We have that, it's just that it's been covered up and denied by the powers that be in our own government," adding "there's a secret government that may be run by the military-industrial complex."

You can read the entire article here. I highly recommend that you do.

I love a mystery, but I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist. I love science fiction as much as the next geek (and I use the term with respect), and I'm not so egotistical that I think my species is as good as it gets in the entirety of existence, but I'm a stickler for evidence and a devout zealot of Facts. As such, I am willing to entertain scenarios of a somewhat unconventional nature until I detect a gaping hole where a fact should be.

This week on The History Channel, there has been a lot of end-of-the-world programming.

Week two of the series spawned from the excellent Life After People was the opening act for a variety of 2012 Decoding the Past specials, and Prophecies of the Bible episodes. It was enough to make any lapsed Catholic nervous!

In case you are unfamiliar with the whole 2012 hullabaloo, the theory goes like this: The Mayans developed a sophisticated astronomical calendar that predicts the end of the world, as we know it, will occur on December 21, 2012. That scenario was independently substantiated by the I Ching, China's vague, multi-functioning oracle, after American shaman/theologist Terrance McKenna adapted a number code to the variable outcome chart that the three I Ching coins "predict." The 2012 doomsday theory is also supported by Merlin, of all people. No kidding! It turns out that there really was a guy (or guys) named Merlin who predicted all kinds of world events back in the 5th century in much the same non-specific way that Nostradamus did one thousand years later.

What makes this apocalypse scenario a little more compelling than the Millennium Mania that struck us less than a decade ago is that there are several geological and astronomical events that verify the past findings of the Mayan Calendar. Not one or two, but closer to two hundred. And these aren't as vague as the charming quatrains that everybody's favorite French seer jotted down after staring into a silver mirror, either.

There's been much speculation about what form this apocalypse will take, but many have come to the conclusion that a cosmic event will reverse the earth's polarity again (that's right -again! Apparently, Alaska used to be at the equator). Scientists discovered about four years ago that at the center of the known universe is a black hole, and it is inevitable that this black hole is going to swallow our sun some day. In any event, life as we know on this planet will be over. A pole shift will cause catastrophic earthquakes, polar icecap melting and biblical scale destruction. If the sun suddenly stops burning, aside from the lack of gravitational pull knocking the earth out of orbit and everything on this planet taking an abrupt right turn, the temperature on this planet would go way sub-zero in 17 hours. Even if you could somehow devise an ensemble that could keep you warm enough not to freeze to death, all crops and bodies of water would be frozen solid, and you would eventually starve.

So how does one market the end of the world?

By my calculations, in the case of a total pole reversal, Nebraska will be at the equator, and not entirely covered by water, so it shouldn't be too long before you start seeing "Come to Nebraska, your new island home" commercials. Expect to see real estate in Lincoln and Omaha reach Malibu prices as 2012 Mania spreads.

But seriously, if we're all going to die, there's not much point in doing anything differently. In the face of total global collapse, none of us has enough money to bargain with fate. The only feasible escape (and a far-reaching one at that) is either far underground, or way out in space. Since I don't know anybody with their own space shuttle, either destination carries the same problem with a different view, and neither passes for what I would call "living."

And we thought Obama would have his hands full with Iraq and the sluggish economy!

It will be interesting to see what reaction (if any) results from Edgar D. Mitchell's press conference. There are all kinds of spin waiting to be spun, I'm sure. Will the Obama administration open a dialog on any of the many grey (no pun intended) areas that conspiracy theorists would like to see light shed upon? Will we finally see the declassification of government memos on the JFK assassination, Roswell and 9/11?
I doubt it. Not because I'm a pessimist, but because I don't want to know if the doomsday clock is ticking. I want to go about business as usual. Although, it would be nice to know that I wouldn't be expected to pay my Visa bill in the months before the winter solstice of 2012.

"Honey? Pack your bags! We're going to that ice hotel you loved so much in that Bond movie..."

Maybe I'll do that anyway. That way if the world doesn't end, I can play hero. Because with luck like mine, the only way the end of the world can be averted is if it somehow costs me more money.

Where to begin? So many treasures, so little time. Well, I still don't have a Wii...