Dealing with Close Encounters

A Local Council Initiative

Do not depart from your daily routine. If that happens the aliens win.

But be prepared.

When encountering aliens, whether in a highway incident or alone in the woods on a moonless night, remember the three point plan:

• Freeze
• Freak
• Fumble

It is vital to abandon any pretence of emotional detachment or competence. Aliens are overwhelmingly weird, and nothing you know about life on Earth can prepare you to deal with them.

You may be tempted to evaluate strategies for fight or flight. This is fruitless. Aliens will not do anything predictable.

Freeze

Your first response is to become immobilized with terror. This gives the aliens time to do suspenseful things with their technology and awkward other-worldly limbs.

Freak

Next, scream, gibber, howl, drool, and otherwise vocalize and act out your powerlessness and inadequacy in the face of the unknown. The aliens will avail themselves of the opportunity to remain emotionless at this display, their botoxed latex features barely registering attention, reinforcing their inhuman nature.

Fumble

Finally, make a desperate, clumsy attempt to escape. Perhaps juggle a weapon ineffectually, trip over your feet, fall on your face in mud or some other humiliating substance. Do not put too much distance between yourselves and the emissaries from another planet, as only a small amount of time can be allocated for your part in this historically unprecedented incident. When the aliens advance threateningly toward you, hold an expression of mind-numbed horror for the full length of the fade to black.

Your participation and cooperation are essential to establish the character and intentions of the aliens, and to mobilize the forces of resistance.

Thank you.

Pastor E. Demshun

Pastor E. Demshun, ladies and gentlemen of the congregation,
Thank you, Pastor, for your kind introduction. I'm delighted to receive your endorsement and to be here meeting all your fine parishioners. And I have great news. I know you all have a wonderful faith, a tree, a rock, a staff to grasp, all of that, and that you believe flying saucers from the planet Zorotor are at this moment hovering just outside the Radar Zone waiting to dematerialize the whoring thieving Babylonian demon-afflicted perverts of this world as soon as the money thermometer over here hits 100 million bucks, but I am here to tell you that I can help.

We will create a health scheme such as this country has never seen before, and you will all receive psychiatric treatment and heavily subsidised medication. There will be centers for graduated care, nice clean places with well trained, friendly staff. You don't have to worry any more about the phone company putting that bad old electronic electricity in your heads.

There is hope, my friends, and it won't cost you a hundred mill, it will come right out of the funds we garnishee from fraudulent evangelical outfits all around the country, and from sales of the firearms confiscated from illegal militia like the one the Pastor runs down in the basement with all those eager, supple young boys he gets over here for the so-called Monday night study group.

Now, now, ma'am, don't take on so, it's the least I can do.