Voodoo Time Dot Com

If you’re in New Mexico and it’s the second Tuesday of February, you’re likely to find yourself in the midst of a little celebration. After decades of crop circles, cattle mutilations, midnight abductions, and anal probes, New Mexico lawmakers have finally come to properly appreciate these cultural contributions of extraterrestrial beings.

After many months of emotional debate, state legislators in Santa Fe have agreed to set aside a day somewhere between the 8th and the 14th of February to commemorate the alleged crash landing of an alien spacecraft in the New Mexico desert near the town of Roswell in 1947. The US government claims that such an event never took place, whereas Roswell-area merchants assure us that it most certainly did, and they are more than happy to sell us a map to the crash site, as well as a variety of paraphernalia including T-shirts, expensive binoculars, and alien bobble-head dolls to take along on the trip. They’ll also sell you astronaut ice cream which tastes dry and chalky, and not at all like ice cream - or like astronauts for that matter.

So, standing in the middle of godforsaken nowhere with an ice cream wafer in one hand, and a bobble-head martian in the other, we begin to suspect the New Mexico tourist industry has a pretty good thing going. And it is in this spirit of intergalactic commerce that thousands of Star Trek fans in aluminum foil hats will descend on Roswell on February 10, 2004 to celebrate the first annual Extraterrestrial Culture Day. There is sure to be no shortage of garish homemade costumes and awkward social interaction.

There exists a whole cornucopia of marketing opportunities here. Between merchandise and tourism alone, there are fortunes to be made. Think bus tours, lectures, star gazing, and of course the ubiquitous “Our intergalactic overlords travelled 12.68 light years from Alpha-Crapulon IX, and all they brought me was this lousy T-shirt.” T-shirts. And for the total abduction experience, participating gastroenterologists will be offering 30% off all colonoscopies.

Actually, I made up that last part. But I think it’s a pretty great idea.

In 2006, Extraterrestrial Culture Day will fall on February 14 - St. Valentine’s Day. I can see the two holidays colliding in a big way. I’ll let you make your own anal probe jokes.

Bye for now.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2003 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Weird. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.