I've a dream... 

I'm going to build a huge radio telescope

and broadcast my blogs as binary code to the heavens someday

so that any intelligent life elsewhere intercepting them

will *shudder* in terror and stay away!!

P.E.T.I

The Prevention of ExtraTerrestial Investigations

*catches breath*

[Updated at 4:20 P.M.]

You know Cheri_Herald figured this out!!  There was a secret strategy to this, a twist of negative psychology...but listen to her:

Oh no, no, nooooooooooooo---They'd have to check you out!

Posted 8/20/2001 at 4:00 pm

Damn straight, hon!  So now that it's out, here's what I was really thinking:

So what am I up against??

In 1961, Dr. Frank Drake, an astronomer who is a member of the Advisory Board of the SETI League, developed an equation for calculating the number of extraterrestial civilizations:

According to Drake's Equation, there are about 10,000 technologically advanced, communicative civilizations in the Milky Way, our galaxy.

So why can't we/they (SETI) find any?

Are we that inept in reaching out?

Why are the years of massively-arrayed searching and searching so entirely unrecompensed??

Because Dr. Drake was wrong!  There are currently only 9,999 such advanced communicative civilizations in our galaxy—discounting us!!

I mean, what the hell kind of message are we sending them anyway?  Counts on digital fingers up to ten?  A digitized rendition of the Pythagorean theorem??  Hey baby, school’s out forever in the rest of the universe—they’re all hiding out from us because they know Earth 101 (Room: 3rd planet from Sol) sucks!!!

That’s why I feel the sun has set on SETI
And I just want to get PETI
Cause I figure that YETI
and his distant kith and kin
Will dig a real fellow-motherfucker
And just decide to BLOG on in!!

So what I really want to say is:  Aliens Here Welcomed!

(after all, they couldn’t be much stranger than all the rest of you! )

There is nothing worse for mortal men than wandering.
         --The Odyssey

I haven’t fallen asleep but I have awoken.
And find myself a stranger here.
This land of vertical time
With nothing before and nothing behind.
And nothing to do
But add the zeros
Here jettisoned about
As numerous as the carcasses
Of insects drought-stricken
And desiccated by the sun.
So I count them
One by one by one…
And though they’re adding up to nothing
They’re tallying to infinity.
So I’m encasing each one
In its own little glass block
And building a staircase
To the stars.