Kvelve's Comments: So many questions, so few answers

Today’s topic dudes and dudettes is one that has boggled the human mind since there were minds to be boggled.

As Seinfeld might say, “Aliens, what is the deal with aliens?”

I might add, what is up with the wide variety of extra-terrestrial buggies they seem to be arriving in.

Now I know there are lots of skeptics, me to a degree among them.

But I’ve had a close encounter of the unexplained kind myself. Yup, and there was no alcohol or mind bending substances involved.

These days, Navy pilots are trying to catch up with whatever it is that is apparently invading Earth’s airspace and it’s making their superfast F-18s look like me trying to beat, for example, the vast majority of humanity in a foot race.

I was an offensive lineman mostly because I am a large human being, but also because I don’t like running more than about 20 yards.

That aside, the Navy and its handlers are starting to admit some of these encounters are unexplainable. Kind of like the whole impeachment thing.

My encounter came at about 2 a.m. one morning when I stepped outside on a restless, sleepless summer night. I was hoping my 135-pound Shar-Pei/Shepard mix, Marvin, would do his business so I could sleep when I was eventually ready.

I was looking up into the night at a clear, star-filled sky. Off in the distance I couldn’t help but notice two bright lights, one directly above the other. Never noticed those two stars, I mumbled to myself. I noticed that Marvin seemed to notice something up there too.

Suddenly the “stars” moved from vertical stack to a horizontal one, still separated by the same distance, whatever that would have been. And then, in a wink of the eyes, they shot off in opposite directions at a speed faster than a tailgater on I-90.

Never did figure out what that might have been and it hasn’t affected, affected, affected me in the least. But I also noticed that Marvin, who at 10 years old did not like going too far away from his fancy schmancy LL Bean doggie bed, was still looking up. And, he did not want to go back inside. This was a dog, mind you, that I had to sometimes drag his bed with him on it to the patio door, then gently roll him outside.

Anyway, if there are really alien creatures visiting this planet I’ve got a lot of questions for them.

What is up with the eyes space dudes? Everyone who claims to have seen them or met them or been probed by them all mention the “almond-shaped” eyes.

And why are they so big? Can you use those bad boys to see through things and stuff? Cool!

And what gives with the two holes where a nose may have once existed? Has your home planet gotten so stinky your noses just evolved away? I used to feel that way whenever the wind in Billings shifted and blew a combination of refinery, stock yards and slaughter house aromas toward my neighborhood.

None of that was as bad as when a friend of mine let go of some internal gas while we were driving his dad’s semi-truck and it was so bad I had him pull over so I didn’t hurl in the truck.

And has the need to hear vanished from your cultures? You don’t seem to have ears in the drawings I’ve seen. Are you bat-like and bounce sonar signals off everything? Did you once have CNN on your planet and couldn’t stand that useless noise so you just genetically engineered them off your head?

I’m not sure what’s the deal with the whole no clothes thing but maybe it just got too expensive and you don’t seem to have any “private” body parts anyway.

Why are you here? What could you possibly want with this planet? Why is a duck? Is the higher you go really the much?

Wait, where are you going? Come back here, I have so many more questions to ask.

Damn, there was so much more I was hoping they could teach me.

— Chuck Bandel is a reporter for the Clark Fork Valley Press and Mineral Independent newspapers. His column appears weekly.