Call me paranoid, call me crazy, but I’ve had a theory for a long time that we’re somewhat overdue for a mass alien invasion.
Seriously, when I see how increasingly illiterate and ignorant the world is, I keep thinking the aliens couldn’t pick a better time to strike Earth.
Sure, maybe this is because I’ve seen too many episodes of The Twilight Zone – which I don’t consider a bad thing – and it makes me recall the classic episode, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, which was a poignant allegory for McCarthyism.
A bunch of odd coincidences happen in a suburban neighborhood, everyone starts thinking the person next door is responsible and rioting ensues.
As the aliens watch from above, one of them says, “Understand the procedure now? Just stop a few of their machines and radios and telephones and lawn mowers… Throw them into darkness for a few hours, and then you just sit back and watch the pattern.”
I often wonder if the To Serve Man episode would work in my part of the world, the San Fernando Valley, as living here doesn’t give you much hope for the future.
I could imagine the aliens landing, handing a book to some local brain-dead bimbo, and her giving Paris Hilton’s line, “I don’t read,” with the aliens subsequently returning to their own planet in utter frustration.
On my wall I have a TMZ story from August 2007 that states that “one in four US adults did not read a single book in the last year,” and it ran with a photo of Linsey Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton all hanging out together.
You can also imagine the aliens watching Jersey Shore on their spaceship big screen and saying to each other, “This is what that planet’s paying attention to? Our timing’s perfect! Strike!”
It’s really too bad two of my biggest heroes, Rod Serling and Frank Zappa, went when they were so young. Frank could have written twenty albums on the W. Bush administration alone, and we could desperately use him and Rod today to point out the absurdities of life in an increasingly chaotic world.
