Alex Ganon Reviews: Absent Aliens

Where are they!?

I mean, come on already, I've been waiting my whole life for them to either come down here or beam me up. I'm tired of the terribly taunting tardiness of these things.

(Hah, does anyone else out there get this weird sense of peaceful elevation from writing alliteration…nothing else can give the same satisfaction. A good oxymoron is a distant second. The most peculiar thing is that those two are probably the easiest and crudest of the poetic tools available. The above even cruder because I ditched the "T" noise for a "Th"!)

Below, I'm going to state the top reasons for why I believe our little light-bearing wise extraterrestrial guides have not or will not arrive to carry us like a baby kangaroo to the ascendant existence we assume we deserve. I sarcastically promise my words will be well thought out, backed by irrefutable hard science, and indisputable.

The below very well may be quoted by teachers to elementary school children in the near future.

The first thing you need to know is that I am an idiot. The second is, "No, I'm not! You are!"

We all are. It's just that some of us are smarter idiots than the others. In only the last 150 years, we've done things like:

Not wash our hands before surgery.

Let our children lick lead paint.

Let our government recommend a shit diet.

Had a doctor prescribe smoking cigarettes.

Had a doctor prescribe unnecessary antibiotics.

Had a doctor prescribe a lobotomy!

Had a doctor prescribe opioids and antidepressants carefree, creating a culture of drug abuse and dependence that has destroyed lives and created a mental health crisis.

Oh jeez, I didn't think I would go off on the medical profession there. I recently had surgery, and it's possible I have some subconscious resentment towards them…. I shouldn't though, the surgeon did a good job.

My point is we are not so bright. The kind of organism that will pay a "delivery fee" on his gas bill, so he doesn't freeze to death. Or complains about spending too much on electricity but leaves all the lights on in the basement, so the spiders don't come out…

I do that…and they most certainly will come out if I leave them in the dark. (Spiders do not belong on this earth. I'm not scared of them. I hate them.)

Idiots like me do not deserve to meet the higher being that would be the advanced alien.

You've heard the "we're bugs to them" argument, I'm sure. Knowing what I think of spiders, I don't blame them. Disgusting, dirty things that would surely give you some infectious skin-rotting aliment if one were to bite you. That's what I think a spider is, and that's what our aliens think of us.

That brings me to the first and most probable reason I have not and will not ever come face to face with an E.T.

NO. 1

Why the hell would an advanced alien species ever feel the need to come down and visit, say hi, or in any way show themselves to us? It's easy to assume that they have the ability to detect us way before we could even see their figurative shadows. One look at our world and our gross soft gooey flesh, and they would say "no thanks" and move on. It would be the logical decision. Why bother interacting? They would get no benefit from having us in their lives.

No, Alex, they would want to research us. Like we feel the need to study some uncontacted tribe in the jungle. They are empathic explorers, right?

Umm, no, that seems unlikely. Do you think they gained the technology to move freely across the stars out of some desire to investigate and reach out to new life forms?

Do they also ride the Enterprise? Before setting out on their journey, did they get some kind of doctorate in anthropology from their prestigious alien university? No, that's just dumb human stuff. If they actually do have a post-secondary education, they would be better off getting a real job or risk going into default with their student loans.

(I assume they too would have student debt because if there was a better way to learn, surely we wouldn't be dumb enough to continue this for-profit academic system, right?…I mean?)

Any reason you can think of to argue that an advanced ALIEN society would want to waste their time coming to earth to interact, study, observe, or whatever….any reason you think of… is a human reason. The chances of them having similar notions are just as good as the chances they have five fingers, hands, blonde hair, or hazel eyes. Doesn't matter what you rationalize. It's human rationalization, as a product of our own unique evolution and experience. Something truly alien will not act like us, look like us, have our history, or think like us. Even the concept of thought may be inconceivable to them.

So the number one, most plausible reason for me to miss out on the alien visitor sci-fi dream come true is:

THEY DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ME! Or you, or your neighbor. Stopping to say H.I. will give them nothing except covid.

No 2.

Any nerd of sci-fi, like myself, has probably watched the movie "Contact." It plays with the notion that the first viable interstellar broadcast was made during the 1936 Olympics….You know, the one with Hitler.

How embarrassing for us, right?

No, not really. As far as an alien would know, its just a funny looking creature with a funny looking thing under its nose. There is no need for humanity to be concerned that our first impressions to the aristocratic aliens are that of possibly our biggest instigator of evil acts.

The point that this movie makes in that scene gets me wondering, though. If television broadcasts do escape our planet and continue forever as light should. And assuming that whole doppler effect thingy doesn't garble the content beyond use. What would the aliens really know about us via our media and entertainment?

Imagine those little space squeakers sitting in front of their 20K resolution ultra ultra supreme ultra HD screen doing some pre-contact prep. With space snack in hand, what would they learn?

Let's pretend they don't understand the concept of art or fiction like that Tim the Tool Man movie Galaxy Quest. I mean, the concept of make-believe and art could very well be unique to humans making the whole concept of fiction…alien to the aliens.

Keep pretending a tad bit more and picture these E.T.s closely studying our entertainment while en route to earth, eagerly engaged to either explore or eradicate.

What would they see while binge-watching our broadcasts?

I want to ignore our news and documentaries.

Yea, they'd see that too, I'm sure, but what about the more entertaining stuff.

If everything you watched on T.V. was true, what kind of world would this be? If you were a little green fragile thing, whose neck would surely snap if you moved that giant head of yours too fast, would you really be so eager to visit if your primary intelligence-gathering came from our television?

No, you'd turn that goddamn ship around! No self-respecting alien would come to a planet full of axe-wielding lunatics, vampires, zombies, and werewolves.

Godzilla even!

They would probably quarantine our whole quadrant.

(That's a thing, right?)

Then, on the way home, these aliens would cautiously be giving every planet they passed a wide berth. Who knows where Ridley Scott's xenomorph could be hiding.

It's even more so for the sinister alien that had plans to destroy or enslave us. Not knowing the difference between fiction and nonfiction, they will begin to doubt their ability to be victorious. Humans destroyed the 'Independence Day' guys, and they had way bigger ships, 'Starfleet' seems like they have their shit together. Not to mention they have these 'Jedi' things with freaking 'Death stars!'

Humans never lose. Say cool shit when they blow your head off too!

The number 2 slightly less plausible reason I won't see any aliens is:

Earth is full of monsters, humans have an inappropriate amount of military firepower, and they like to blow shit up.

** is what I use to think**

Now listen as I entirely refute my own point above.

Science Fiction just sucks. I get that in the 60s to 80s, the whole Star Wars/Star Trek lasers, phasers, and warps, hyperdrive premises were imaginative. Totally understand that, at the time, those ideas were like, "Wow," that's some cool, distant future tech we are introducing.

So what do we have for sci-fi nowadays?

Surely, this imaginary tech has developed in some sort of ratio comparable to our actual scientific advances in the last 40 years. You would think, since the sky's the limit when it comes to fiction, that our pretend advances would exponentially increase over the years, right?

Why the hell hasn't it?

Still, right now, there's a story being filmed or written telling me that big hunks of metal and rockets are somehow this crazy super-futuristic marvel just because it's in space.

If for real, an advanced alien ship was on the way and watched our movies and believed it was nonfiction, they would still see this crude Enterprise-looking space ship as something akin to a bamboo raft.

"Impulse drive? Hilarious," they would say.

"Phasers? Well, that's cute."

That's how you know we are all idiots. When we can watch sci-fi, set hundreds of years into the future, and all we still have is archaic bullshit. We haven't even imagined a tic tac shaped craft that can move so fast it seems to be in almost two places at once. Even our mightiest fully operational Death Stars wouldn't stand a chance to a small little alien breath mint.

Do you get what I'm saying? Even if everything Hollywood ever imagined became a reality, it would still most likely be no more than space junk to them.

At least Asimov had wearable nuclear batteries and fortune-telling math.

If you write sci-fi, imagine harder.

So, I guess reason number 2 is a dud. Oh well, I already wrote it down, didn't I?

No. 3

I remember when I first heard about Erich Von Däniken and his whole space monkey thing. Well, I forgot about it almost immediately after I became aware. Then that weird dude with the hair showed up on that Ancient Aliens show, and I was reminded.

It's ok if you didn't see it. Honestly, your probably better off. Judging by first impressions, I would say they may be of the same ilk as those who believe bigfoot can cloak like The Predators.

If you have no idea who Däniken is either, then I am truly envious of you, so let me ruin it.

It's really quite simple. Because we think we know everything about everything, we know that it's absolutely impossible for such an extremely intelligent species like us to have evolved to our current state naturally. We are so smart, I guess, that there's no way we could have gotten ourselves to where we are.

Naturally, we must have gotten a genetic hand from some space people. Obviously, aliens go around to all the universe's worlds, tampering with the local fauna's evolutionary processes.

You know…so the fauna can build pyramids and stuff.

Basically, we were monkeys, then space people came and changed us into humans, so now we're just space monkeys.

Suppose I want to give these space people human traits and characteristics like we continually feel the need to do to aliens, to the point of exhaustion. What possible reason would they have to tamper with our biology?

Well, if I had ridiculous Ancient Alien host hair, I would say, "Oh, it must be because they needed us for slaves to build triangle-shaped monuments that serve no purpose." Or maybe, "Bah, they're just ultra altruistic beings that decided out of pure grace to grant us a higher level of consciousness."

Omniscient oppressor?

Or...

Omniscient oracle?

Boring…

How about an omniscient oligarch?

Remember Herbert's Dune? Great book.

The first time I tried reading it, I was barely a teen. Didn't finish. The second attempt a few years later, though, I was blown away. Probably the first real sci-fi novel I ever read. If you haven't heard of it, no worries, later this year, it will be available for all in its third attempt at a Hollywood adaptation. Or is it fourth?

I can't wait. Not because I'm a fan, I'm actually dreading it because I'm a fan and have no faith in book-to-movie adaptations. I'm excited at the thought of making my wife watch it with me and seeing her face when Jason Momoa dies. I will turn to her and say, "I guess your boyfriend isn't that tough after all." This will be a big win for me and my life.

In the book, though, a side plot is that these soldiers never lose. They are raised on a harsh planet that has harsh rules: violent brutes that live to fight, unstoppable, unbeatable.

Assuming that…well, ok seriously... PRETENDING that an advanced alien race has tweaked our genes to make us who we are, what better reason than to create a good old fashion shock trooper army. Think about it. If they have the know-how to turn us from monkey to man/woman, would it not be simple to just cut the need to kill, hate, or any emotion at all for that matter? It would make us a perfect pet, anyway. I wouldn't believe that they just didn't think of it. More likely, they added it to the mix. Intentional.

Omniscient means what it means.

Since our creation, we've been skull-smashing, war-waging, Violent vindicators. A skill we have been perfecting. Being alien, aliens maybe just don't have the skill set to act out a war effectively.

Those evil lizard people that live across the universe are getting closer and closer. Maybe in their intelligence and foresight, they saw the need to cultivate a race of beings that would evolve with a consciousness to conquer. To protect them from others.

The third reason I won't see any aliens is:

The evil lizard people are too far away, and we will still be in this boot camp well past the end of my life.

No. 4

Perhaps we're the best there is in this cold, vast place. Hey! Someone's got to be first, right?

This has to be the most depressing of thoughts. Is it possible that we are currently the most developed out of all the worlds in all the galaxies? Well… it's not impossible.

Even the Tic Tac incident could very well be just the Chinese. Or maybe even us in the future playing around with time travel.

We all imagine superior beings coming from the stars to show us the way. To take us with them to some farfetched fantastic fairy-tale frontier. What happens if they never come? Or rather, what if nothing out there has the means to come?

Something has to be first. Is our own self-worth really not capable of having the notion that it could be us? Even thinking it over now, I don't really remember hearing about any theory or conversation that ponders the question. I mean, maybe Star Wars, they were mostly human except for the odd random goofball alien sidekick. Unfortunately, I think that's more a subtle subconscious signal-pointing to humans being racist. Besides that, is the thought just so gross we won't even think it?

Weirdly it's actually easier to imagine us humans being alone than it is to imagine being the most advanced lifeform to date.

What if, when we die, we are somehow graced with all knowledge of the universe and find we are the best there is? I know my ghost will piss himself laughing. Only because it is such a sad thing to think we are the most advanced thing this universe has to offer. We would be the default caretakers of all—us…who have even polluted our own orbit with a mess of junk and garbage.

The fourth and final reason I won't see an alien is:

There are none worth seeing.