Posthuman Blues

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not really out to get you...

I bought Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher" tonight. I couldn't help myself; apparently it's King's take on the contemporary "alien menace" mythos (a la Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs). It's great fun to see how this particular meme spreads and mutates, and whether the commodification of the archetypal "alien" has anything to do with the close encounter phenomenon as studied by the likes of Dr. Jacques Vallee, John Keel and Aime Michel.

There are "real" aliens, and there are the aliens in our heads, ready to burst forth like hungry lizards from thick-skinned eggs. How do we determine the difference?

Let me be clear: I think it's genuinely possible that we're being invaded by something "otherwordly." "Invasion" is almost certainly a shallow, imperfect term -- especially since it appears to have been going on since prehistory. If "they" merely wanted to take over the world, "they" ("it"?) would have done so by now. Something altogether weirder is happening. I suspect we lack the vocabulary to describe it. Are we getting closer? Possibly...