Roswell is not the future
by Matt Worley

We had a plan for the 4th of July. A sojourn into Roswell for what we jokingly described as an "anthropological study." We wanted to see all the freaks, all the people who were thinking about becoming freaks, and Demi Moore. The buildup was massive, but as the week went on the reality set in. 100,000 people were not going to show up (at the most about 35,000). A large party in the streets of Roswell was not being arranged for our enjoyment, but if we wanted to buy a t-shirt or a stuffed alien....

In other words, this 50th anniversary of the Legend Of An Alien Crash wasn't about fun. It was about two things: money and religion. In the end, I didn't want to be a part of any of it. I realized this the night before we were to drive down the backroads of New Mexico into alien land (even when I was young it was alien land--Roswell's football team was my town's biggest rival). A late band practice and the prospect of not getting to sleep before 2 a.m. because of heat and brain activity nixed the Roswell plans. That and I had five dollars in my pocket.

I awoke on Independence Day realizing another really good reason to stay near home: Mars. Quickly understanding the difference between science fiction and science fact, CNN cut the amount of disturbing pictures from the white-trash-infested Roswell scene to focus on the landing of the Pathfinder craft on Mars. Applause around 11 a.m. (MDT) gave way to color pictures and amazing thoughts of what this country (and world) could do if it actually put money into exploration rather than defense. A chance for an exciting future is much more interesting than oblivion--unfortunately many corporations and individuals are content to build for wars that, if they actually occurred, would certainly set humans further back on the evolution scale.

The excitement of seeing color pictures from Mars, along with quite entertaining black and white details, was just the tip of the iceberg. While the Pathfinder has had a few problems on the red planet, the fact that it got there and didn't merely cause another huge crater in the ground is just plain cool. I've always thought that the future of human kind lies farther than the constraints of this planet--and considering what we're doing to Earth, we certainly need another planet to screw with. This landing is the dawning of a new era--hopefully.

Back in Roswell, everyone had their heads up their butts. There were no televisions tuned to the Mars landing at the convention center. None of the many alien gift shops (some charged $1 just to shop) revealed an interest in real life either. When asked what they thought of the landing on Mars, many parishioners from Church of the Dead Aliens expressed disbelief. One man said it couldn't be true because this would cause his own theory (one that includes live aliens on Mars, Freemasons and NASA in some sort of bed-swapping ugliness) would be disproved by a successful Pathfinder landing. He said that the pictures were obviously fakes made by JPL and NASA to secure more funding. Many people said that the Mars landing was irrelevant to them because it had nothing to do with the alleged crash at Roswell. Obviously a higher intellect was at work.

The most interesting thing to people in Roswell was the news from a mysterious carpetbagger who claimed employment by the University of California-San Diego--an assertion refuted by officials of the university. This strange man (and a couple friends) showed a video tape of an alleged piece of metal reported to be from the Roswell crash site. No physical evidence was shown, and no additional questions were answered. He merely said, "Please accept what you have been offered." A few minutes later he was out the back door and gone. Most in the house believed. Praise the metal fragment, we will be vindicated at the rapture.

If the government was interested in doing just one more nuclear test in this state, this weekend in Roswell might have been a good time and place to do it. The fact that this was world news--especially in the wake of the landing on Mars--is just plain sad. The amount of contempt I had for the people in and around Roswell this weekend could have burnt a hole in the Earth if converted into energy. If it was merely crass commercialism, we could have just chalked it up to one of capitalism's evils and walked on. Blindness and ignorance in the face of truth is not only something we could use less of in this country--it would be best if we stepped on this bug five or six times to make sure the poison has been eradicated.

Matt Worley usually just laughs at the blind and ignorant, but its hard to laugh in the faces of 50,000 people if they don't get the joke.

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