A story about.. something

A long time ago, when I was young and foolish (as opposed to being old and foolish now) I went on an impromptu camping expedition one night with my friend Bryan Carnett. My dad had passed away the year before and I’d inherited his 1968 Dodge Pick-em-up truck, which I drove all over the country (the country being the county I lived in and occasionally down to Sacramento).

Bryan, because he spelled his name with a “Y”, was every bit as impetuous and free spirited as I, so we’d often go on these overnight excursions and not wonder in the least what our parents thought about it. In my case it was just my poor, beleaguered mom who’d lost her beloved husband scantly a year before and was dealing with a wild, out of control teen son who wasn’t dealing with losing his dad very well at all.

Bryan had a full set of parents, both of whom were terrific people but a bit lax in the department of discipline.

We’d thrown a couple of sleeping bags into the back of the truck which was the extent of our “camping gear” and made our way up to Stumpy Meadows above Lake Edsen, a very isolated and lonely place, wherein we found an old logging road and made our way back into the woods, surrounded by towering pine trees for miles around.

We pulled over into a little clearing out in the middle of nothingness and climbed into our sleeping bags in the truck bed. There we laid on our backs, staring up at the stars and contemplating all kinds of deep, philosophical things such as which one of us was going to get up the nerve to make a move on Traci Bordges (“Gorgeous Bordges”) and what kind of beer goes best with Kentucky Fried Chicken.

We managed to fall asleep somewhere in the middle of all that excitement and much later, I was awakened by the feeling that someone was staring at me – it was some kind of person nearly five feet tall who had 5-8 friends, all standing around the truck.

It was a moonlit night but the pine trees filtered out most of it, so it took me a few moments to realize that the majority of light illuminating our visitors was coming from some source on ground level behind a grove of trees to our right, which definitely hadn’t been there when we’d parked in the clearing hours earlier.

I nudged Bryan, who awoke and glanced around before reacting in the only way that a sensible, intelligent young man would..

He screamed.

This broke my seconds long pattern of stunned silence by causing me to scream too, and as we both screamed they scattered, heading off toward the soft pulsating glow of light coming through the trees, making a sound like startled deer tramping through the brush.

In the midst of our panic laden, piercing yells we managed to get out of the back of the truck and into the cab, where I faltered for my keys and somehow got them into the ignition despite how badly I was shaking. As the engine roared to life, I slammed it into DRIVE, and we drove out of there at a high rate of speed, narrowly missing trees and not looking back to see if the glow of light rose up and flew away or anything like that – we didn’t care what it did, we just wanted to leave very, very badly.

Neither of us had been this scared before and it hadn’t occurred to us that they might have been frightened too – I think we were convinced that they had run back to their whatever-it-was to obtain weapons and rope.

I must have been doing about 50 mph, which is pretty fast for a logging road, and it wasn’t until about 15 minutes later, when we’d gotten out onto the two-lane highway, that I slowed down and both of us had calmed down enough to speak of it.

Bryan summed it up for both of us quite nicely with a simple question, “What in the hell was THAT?” I told him I didn’t know, which probably would have gone without saying but we had to say something. We talked about it for maybe a half an hour as we made our way back to town, speculating as to whom they might be and where they’d come from.

We ruled out someone playing a joke on us, because that far out in the woods it’s a good way to get shot, which would have happened, had we been armed.

As we got back into town, we vowed not to tell anyone about it and I held onto that for years. I found later that Bryan had told his girlfriend, which elicited the reaction we’d suspected – she thought we were nuts, or better yet, stoned.

We were neither.

I finally told someone about ten years after the fact and they seemed to believe it, so that loosened up my inhibitions enough to tell a few more people whenever the subject came up. One person several years ago was so receptive of my account that he urged me to check myself for implants. Others have just simply stated, “Well that explains a lot” (knowing me).

These days I don’t care if anyone believes it or not, or what they think of me, so that makes it blog-worthy.

I’ve long since lost touch with Bryan so I have no idea if he even remembers it, let alone has told anyone else.

It happened though, and I know several things beyond a doubt – we weren’t drunk, stoned or hallucinating in any way and whoever was standing around the truck looking at us that night.. they were strange. Not a one was over five feet tall, so they were peering over the edge of the truck bed and their heads were abnormally large with eyes to match.

I remember long, spindly fingers grasping the edge of the truck and movements that seemed graceful beyond anything I’d seen before. The light from the trees was so soft and minimal it was impossible to make out details, leaving most of what we saw to be in shadows and silhouette.

The movie ET came out a few years later and, as my friends sat in the theater with amused looks on their faces, enjoying the film for the supposed science fiction that it is, I couldn’t help but feel a little creepy – some of the effects were all too familiar, especially.. THE HANDS.

I don’t know if there’s anything out there in those stars we see in this desert sky at night, but I suspect there might be. I don’t know who or what we encountered during that summer night in the seventies out in those woods, but I don’t think they were hikers from Sacramento who were up for a weekend jaunt.

I find a certain arrogance in people who state as a matter of fact that the human race is alone in this universe. How do they know that? I certainly don’t, which I guess makes me a cosmic agnostic.

A friend recently asked me if I made this up. I think she was really, REALLY hoping I did.

Sorry.. nope.

UPDATE - Bryan has since tracked me down, having found this post online via a name-search his son did on him. He remembers the event and CONFIRMS THE STORY.

So there.. I’m not crazy after all!

..a message from X3lph the reddish, translated from Pleiaden dialect using a snorfdrum.

Peoples of what you call Earth, this must serve to notify you that we have deposited the one you call Rhodester upon your soil once again after the fifth or perhaps seventh round of testing and extraction and more testing, followed by one more extraction and then a final test.

We say fifth or seventh due in part to the different numerical system we use which is based on ones and twos, but also we lost count on a previous attempt when Rhodester briefly regained consciousness and started telling stories.

This message of notification is in response to the outcry voiced by many Earth peoples when it was discovered that Rhodester was not among you, which was one or two of your Earth calendar “weeks” ago, but we lost count because, once again, he regained consciousness. We have since discovered that he has a strong resilience when it comes to the blood of the Moof worm, but we have since rectified the problem by assuring he stays under with the simple act of whacking him on the head with a Glubian mallet whenever his eyes start to flutter open. No more stories, yay!

It was said during the previously mentioned outcry that we should have provided notice of another invitation of Rhodester (you say “abduction,” we say “invitation”.. potato, po-tah-toh) but first of all that stipulation is not in the original Eisenhower contract with your peoples, which your president Dwight signed in his own blood ( a requirement of ours) and second, why should we notify you of anything when in the blink of his third eye our High Commander Xer8lts could annihilate the populace of your pathetic planet?

Just so you know, and not to alarm you or anything, there has been much more urgent insistence from the high counsel that he do so as of late, given the frequency of unfortunate occurrences that seem to indicate you as a people are bent on the destruction of your lovely home.

Seriously, why doesn’t someone do something about that damned oil spill? We could have easily rectified it, but it’s against our constitution of minimal interference so we just let your leaders bicker on and point fingers (as short as they are, which we find laughable) while we sit here in our twirling little ships, watching with horror.

Granted, we would like to inherit a pristine planet someday, but it appears not to be, due to our own stupid benevolence toward you “ten percenters” (a reference to the amount of brain you use, which we also find laughable).

But I digress, for which I offer apology. I just get emotional when I think of one day treading upon your fare planet after the transportation of the remnants of the human race to the internment camp on our fourth moon (or possibly seventh) in late 2012, and having to sludge along through black goo while smelling the carcasses of dead and rotting animals.

This began as simply a notification of the return of Rhodester, and it shall finish as such, with a thank you thrown in out of benevolence and good will. We are glad you let us “borrow” him (potato, etc.) for we are now that much closer to developing a serum that will enable us to communicate telepathically with our domesticated house pets, thanks to the unique DNA structure of Rhodester’s brain.

We feel that he should be back to blogging in fine form by tomorrow, which is your Tuesday (or Thursday) once the Glubian headache wears off.

Forever yours, or more honestly, the other way around after 2012,

X3lph the reddish

Have you seen this show on ABC called “V“?

Mrs. Rhodester and I watched it and all I can say is that had I KNOWN Morena Baccarin was the babelicious reptilian leader of a powerful alien race, I never would have let her near my dogs.

She might have eaten them.

At this point longtime readers of this blog are rolling their eyes as they say, “There he goes again, with that stupid story about how Morena Baccarin lived in his building and he met her one day while walking his dogs.”

Babelicious Morena Baccarin

Well now I don’t HAVE to tell that story, smarty-pants longtime readers of this blog! You’ve already told it! But did you tell new readers about how she said I had nice looking dogs and how I said I liked her dog and then she thanked me and then later we were watching a new series called “Firefly” and hey, there she was?

You should also tell them how I didn’t know she was a hot-shot actress during the dog-walking bit and how surprised I was to see her pop-up as a main character in Firefly and how I was suddenly walking the dogs about seven to ten times a day after that.

So last night we’re watching “V” because we both like sci-fi but I also make it a point to see anything Morena Baccarin is in, like Stargate and the movie about Firefly that was called Serenity, and we noticed that another actor was in it who was with Morena Baccarin in Firefly and Serenity and we’re both thinking, “Geez, does Wash have to get killed in EVERY DAMN THING HE’S IN?”

The answer, evidently, is YES.

Alan Tudyk as WASH in Firefly

“V” was originally a TV miniseries in 1983 and I’m glad they decided to remake it and touch-up some things that kind of bugged me, like not having Morena Baccarin as the leader of the alien race. Of course she was only four years old then, so I guess that would have been a bit silly.

But they updated other things that would appeal to an audience of 2009, like the part where Morena Baccarin as Anna, the babelicious leader of the alien race, offers the citizens of earth universal healthcare.

I had to go smoke a cigarette after that.

Morenaaaaa.... uh HUH..

We’ve been watching the original miniseries because they’ve been playing it in preparation of last night’s big debut of the new “V,” and we’ve been laughing at the special effects that we thought were so awesome back in 1983, because compared to the awesome special effects in last night’s “V” they are pretty cheesy.

However, we know that someday we’ll think last night’s special effects were cheesy because the new special effects will be REALLY awesome, which will probably be because we’ll be watching the real reptilians come to earth and take over.

All I ask is that they’re lead by that babelicious Morena Baccarin and that she doesn’t eat our dogs.