RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

yes, I’m slightly insane

This morning I was greeted by a sad email from Germ Bookstore. It began:

Staff, friends and patrons of Germ Books mourn our beloved founder, Jennifer Yael Bates, who died on May 17, 2007, after a 20-month struggle with leukemia.

Ms. Bates’ passing eerily coincides with the Fishtown bookstore’s long-planned relocation from 308 East Girard Avenue to 2005 Frankford Avenue…

My only contact with Jennifer was by email. She had theories about the Toynbee tiler. Those theories never panned out, but they were definitely interesting.

Germ Books specializes in books about UFO’s, the occult, conspiracies and the supernatural. For the rest of this post, I want to talk about something I don’t mention nearly enough around here: My lifelong love of UFO’s.

Huh?

Why do I love UFO’s? If you want to see how religions are fostered and grown, UFO’s are the current theistic ground zero. UFO culture and lore is absolutely, without question the beginnings of a new religion.

All UFO/alien stories bring gods down to a level close to human. They’re beings like us, intellectually superior, but neither omnipotent or omniscient. Just like all old religions, these new gods are in collaboration with our leaders. Unlike old religions, this collaboration doesn’t grant our leaders legitimacy, it makes them sinister, conspiratorial and something to be feared. This attitude towards government and leadership is a radical departure from nearly all of human history. In most UFO lore, gods and government are the enemy. That’s interesting.

But not all the alien myths see extraterrestrials as the enemy. Some stories couldn’t care less about government. On the new agey side of the lore, aliens are our brethren and teachers. Their purpose here is good and benevolent. Most stories are a mix of these 2 strains of thought. I love reading the myths and find them endlessly interesting and entertaining.

Overall, we see the beginning of a polytheistic faith with races of competing demi gods. Some are good, some are not, some can’t be described as either. Humans are much lower and are often pawns in their affairs. Our leaders are sometimes aliens themselves or in other stories merely in collaboration with them. Some aliens feed on our energy - mainly fear - while others are benevolent. The earth and all of humanity is some sort of experiment. (creationism/evolution) That experiment is in grave danger of termination. (Armageddon) The aliens are in some sort of ‘war’ or dispute over this. Love is the pure energy that transcends all else and serves as the real “God.” (Jesus/The Matrix)

While humans are pawns, being human (through reincarnation) is a really big fad among the dead soul community. Human life is apparently a much sought after incident. The emotional blindness and the visceral and primal emotional experience are like crack for interested souls.

Now I know this sounds insane, but it’s no crazier than any religion… which brings me back to the point that this is the festering theology of some sort of proto-religion. In 1000 years it’ll have a name and a lot of money.

So… do I believe that “they” are out there?

There’s a third group of people, best described as rationalists. This group is full of scientists, astronauts, historians, U.S. Presidents and plenty of other well regarded “nutjobs.” They disregard most or all religious and conspiratorial aspects of UFO stories, but acknowledge that there are occasionally some very compelling and unexplainable examples objects that fly and can’t be identified. What are they then? I have absolutely no idea.

I’ve never seen a UFO (with 1 exception that wasn’t quite spectacular enough to call entirely out of this world) but have spoken with people I trust that have seen some very strange things in the sky. The best story is from the rocky shores of Maine.

Many years ago, a good friend and his family sat on the beach, watching the stars when 2 objects appeared and “danced” over the horizon. They moved like insects, seemingly weightless and unaffected by mass or gravity. They moved like that, but they moved with incredible intelligence. He described it as beautiful. The experience affected him profoundly. Along with my friend and his family a dozen other witnesses were on the beach that night. They all watched in awe.

The objects were clearly solid and moving in 3 dimensions. The approached, receded, gained and dropped in altitude. All of this was done at impossible speed with impossible maneuverability. After about 10-20 minutes they stopped dead and one at a time shot into the sky and out of sight.

Years later, the video for Radiohead’s (sort of the token pop-band for this new religion, listen to the lyrics and read my synopsis of the new religion again) “Pyramid Song” was released. My friend told me that the UFO’s featured at the end of this video looked “exactly” like what he saw. Here’s the video:

What were they? I have no idea. I’m pretty sure they weren’t swamp gas, satellites or the planet Venus. Other than that, I have no comment.

Rest well Ms. Yael Bates.