DATELINE–Headlines

Martians. The discovery was made on a Tuesday – are we surprised? The Roman calendar week retains the name of Mars – aka, the personification of war – so why shouldn’t the mass media make offhand allusions to a planetful of (potentially hostile) brethern?

Andromeda Strain? AIDS?

After being prepped for Independence Day, are we shocked that the published ETA for NASA’s Martian probe is July 4, 1997? Most astonishing of all, the news of extra-terrestrial quasi-cellular organic life several million years ago most often comes with the following header: “Are we alone? Nasa scientist have discovered…”

“Hi God, it’s me, MassMedia.”

I think we’re alone now, Nietzsche once sung. But contemporary alien life has adopted a Janus-faced incarnation. More than just a nouveau Deus, the Alien is associated with Unconscious Arrest ("I was alone at night when a ship of kind, child-like aliens abducted me and probed me sexually after which I was able to remember a slew of repressed, traumatic memories;” the Apocalypse ("The end of the world will descend from the heavens and the rivers will turn to blood and only the just – or the just in time – will be spared from their almighty and inscrutable wrath;” and Quiet Infiltration ("Aliens are here, now – we are being invaded by aliens from unknown lands with unknown tongues and habits").

Alien cultures have indeed cropped up all over the land. Alien gods are being worshipped right smack in the middle of our amber waves of grain. Even portions of the mainstream are succumbing to a pox of New Age spiritualism. (Let’s say nothing of John Travolta’s phenomenom.)

We must open our third eyes to these close-up photographs of meteorite-bound Martian protoplasm. There, brothers and sisters, there is our new Question for a time of self-propagating answering machines.