Studying hyumans

Joseph Simonton of Eagle River, Wisconsin,
claims that a flying saucer landed in his back
yard one day and an extraterrestrial got out and
gave him some pancakes.

There were no other witnesses to this remarkable
occurrence, so it is certainly tempting to say
that Simonton must have been hallucinating. There
is no reason to think that he was consciously
perpetrating a hoax, however. He has not tried to
commercialize on his encounter in any way and
seems to be baffled by the whole experience, just
as you would be.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a skeptical astronomer, who
explained other UFOs as "swamp gas," was sent by
the Air Force to investigate the Simonton
mindfuck. Dr. Hynek took some of the damnable
pancakes back to the Dayton Air Force base, where
the UFO investigation is headquartered, and
scientists there determined that the pancakes
were perfectly normal and contained nutritious
wheat germ, perhaps indicating that the Space
Brothers are Ralph Nader fans. Dr. Hynek himself
says he thinks Simonton was telling the truth,
i.e., he believed in his experience.

Dr. Jacques Vallee also investigated this case
and says that he too is convinced that Simonton
is honest.

Simonton himself has no idea why he, of all the
people on Earth, was singled out for this
perplexing gift.

If Simonton merely hallcuinated the whole
episode, where did the accursed astral pancakes
actually come from? . . .

Simonton's adventure is more characteristic of
UFO contacts than readers who are unfamiliar with
the subject will realize. The newspapers and TV
generally cover only a tiny fraction of UFO
reports and usually publicize only the contactees
who establish quasi-religious movements around
themselves, based on doctrines of peace and pop
ecology allegedly transmitted by the UFOnauts.
Such messianic accounts are comfortable reading,
since most of us secretly would like to believe
that benevolent Space Brothers are trying to save
this planet from the various disasters that seem
to threat it, but they are a minority. The
Simonton pancakes are much more typical.

— Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger: the Final
Secret of the Illuminati

When humans go off to spend some time in the jungle
with the monkeys, they give 'em bananas to get on
their good side. I've never heard of any of them
wanting to institutionalize Monkeydom.

I hope some of you Bright Sparks out there can see
the connections here.

Via Orlin Grabbe