THE GREYS may have crash landed on Earth in 1947, but the real invasion happened about two years ago when Bill Barker’s SCHWA merchandise first hit the streets. Since then it seems that there is Grey merchandise for every possible cultural slipstream; for the young and hip there’s trendy skateboarding gear, Fimo rave-pendants and drug paraphernalia (“Take me to your dealer”); while for the committed believer there are various clay, bronze and pewter renditions of the aliens, with or without crashed saucer-craft, in numerous commemorative editions.

The aliens now rank alongside Bob Marley and Sid Vicious in the echelons of tacky Carnaby Street goods for eastern-European tourists; they have abandoned their role as emotionless abductors of hapless Americans for that of media friendly pop culture emblems. First America, then Britain, Germany, France, Scandinavia, Japan, and, finally, a couple of years later, the streets of Moscow will be theirs. This truly is world domination, far more terrifying than anything H.G. Wells could ever have imagined.

So what then if they are real after all? How do the true abductees feel about the gleeful iconification of the terror that comes in the night? And what about them? After fifty years hidden in impenetrable underground fortresses, their cover has been blown in a major way.

How would you feel if you landed on another planet only to find posters of yourself smoking a spliff on every street corner? How do they expect to be taken seriously as ambassadors from another world when T-shirts portray them crammed into Volkswagen Beetles or wearing tie-die bandannas? Who’s going to listen to your message of environmental salvation when you also advertise cars, cigarettes, beer and banks?

Maybe right now the Greys are consulting their lawyers within the secret government, preparing a huge copyright infringement suit that will topple Western economies like dominoes. Or perhaps, more sinister still, it is they themselves who are behind the merchandising assault, numbing our brains before total consumer annihilation.

What effect this is having on the “real” alien industry, the researchers, writers, therapists and believers that inadvertently paved the way for this invasion, will be interesting to see. I suspect that the merchandising phenomenon will have petered out by next summer, but where will that leave ufology and its practitioners? Bitter that no one copyrighted the Grey? Gleefully awaiting a fresh crop of young believers weaned on The X Files? Or laying down their implants with a sigh and returning to less glamorous day jobs, the boom over?

Personally I think the hard core will get harder, forcefully separating the sheep from the goatsuckers and leading them over the hill and far away into Magonia. We will see more in the way of loose religious groups, self help programmes and awareness development systems such as the one Whitley Strieber appears to be creating at the moment. All entirely harmless, probably even beneficial to a lot of people, but it’s not exactly The X Files, is it?!

The expectant air of revelation could never be more palpable than it is today; some people seriously considered that UFOs would play a major part in the American presidential campaigns; the philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation is lobbying and sweet talking the White House to release information; NASA reveals that there was life on Mars after all and Bill Clinton answers questions about Roswell at public appearances.

Seeing a UFO is no longer an embarrassing secret; it is now as much a fact of life as ghosts or telepathy; everybody knows they’re there, it’s just a matter of whether it will happen to them. But for the world-weary underground, eager for fresh knots to untangle, UFOs are rapidly becoming boring; the depths have been plundered and already the abduction phenomenon is transforming into a mind-control scenario.

For now, however, Area 51, MJ 12 and Budd Hopkins are the truth. But soon the UFO mystery must evolve, getting more complex as the claims get more ludicrous. For the Greys, though, this is the end; only when they were invisible were the aliens truly real. Once assimilated into the mainstream, the subculture must move on; but perhaps like their Nordic colleagues, they will return sporadically a few years down the line to remind us of happier, innocent times in UFOdom.

Go on home little Greys, your mission is over.

Reprinted with permission from The Magonia website, www.magonia.co.uk

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