I don’t know if you pay close attention to NASA and our country’s space program. If not, you should be, because space exploration is one of the most intriguing and relevant topics facing our society today.

I’m just kidding. Outer space sucks. It’s nothing but a bunch of blackness, flying rocks and flashing lights. If you want to see that, you… well we all know there’s a Source Awards joke coming here so let’s just move on…

I stumbled across an article recently that claimed scientists are close to discovering Earth’s “twin planets.” According to legend, there are a few yet-to-be-discovered planets in the galaxy that closely resemble Earth in terms of atmospheric properties and proximity to stars. Not sure why they’re called “twins” if there’s a bunch of them, but whatever. The point is, this news brings us one step closer to discovering alien life, every NASA employee’s wet dream.

Everyone thinks the discovery of aliens is going to be so awesome. We’ve seen so many movies like ET and Independence Day, we assume discovering aliens will lead to either hyper intelligent beings helping us to advance or own society, or an interstellar war for domination of the galaxy. We think aliens will show us amazing new technology or use amazing new technology to blow us up. Either way, we think that’s cool.

I don’t doubt that there could be life on other planets. I’m not saying it’s definite, but it’s possible. Given the vastness of the universe and the fact that all planets essentially formed in the same manner — rocks crashing together — it’s highly possible that somewhere out there, some planets have an atmosphere that will sustain life. They’ve found water on one of Saturn’s moons, so there could be aquatic life (or maybe it was Jupiter; who gives a fuck?). Aliens could definitely exist.

However, I think we have seriously underestimated the odds of those aliens sucking. We search for life on other planets, but we don’t consider the possibly that maybe we don’t want to meet whatever’s out there. Aliens could be annoying. They could be dicks that try to attack us. They could see Earthlings, and believe that we’re the evil aliens, and attack us in self-defense.

Most likely, they’ll just be boring. There’s a very good chance that aliens aren’t as advanced as humans. Maybe they’re primitive creatures that can’t communicate. We’d essentially be traveling 50,000 light years to find a groundhog. Even if aliens are as advanced as, more advanced than, or exactly like humans, they’re not gonna speak English. Best case scenario, they’ll communicate through a series of clicks, like those African tribes. Then we’ll have to take 30 more years to fly an African click language translator over to galaxy XQ78, star 3B, planet 14. In reality, if aliens do communicate, they’ll probably have some method of communication that we could never possibly understand. Like maybe in alien culture, blinking seven times in rapid succession means “go to the bathroom before we head over to Uncle Steve’s house.” Or maybe waving hello and reaching for a handshake is their international sign for “I come to destroy your culture, you worthless fucks.” I don’t know why we expect to walk right up to aliens and start talking about their life. Communicating with aliens is going to be like talking to a coyote or a tennis ball.

Furthermore, evolution is such a crazy process that no other planet could possibly have undergone the same exact pattern as Earth. So likely these alien forms aren’t even something we could try communicating with. Hell, we might not even realize they’re alive. Keep in mind, plants are living things. If an alien came to Earth, would he try talking to a tree? No, he’d just assume it was no different than a rock. In fact he’d probably think, “look at that tall rock with leaves on it!” He’d say that sentence in his alien language, but you get the point. What if alien “life” is like a plant? What if aliens are blobs of gel that slither around at .01 MPH? What if aliens are the exact same as clock radios, only they have a spleen instead of an AM/FM switch? I’m telling you, it’s gonna suck when we cross the entire galaxy and spend $50 billion to find a clock radio that performs photosynthesis.

Let’s assume we’re going to find aliens one day. The odds of there being unfathomable and unbreakable communication barriers between us and them, or no communication at all, thus rendering our discovery worthless, is 92%. The odds of an intergalactic war is 7%. The odds of them being really cool and telling us how to fix Earth’s problems is 0.00000001%. The remaining odds say they’ll be pretty decent, but have a few annoying quirks, like telling the same stories over and over and never getting to the stuff about laser beam technology.

Now, scientists are going to tell you that we can study and learn from alien life, regardless of what that life is. Don’t believe the hype. We’ve studied dolphins for like 30 years, and what have we learned? Nothing. Oh sure, we figured out that they communicate through some kind of sonar or sonic booms or whatever, but nothing we’ve learned is applicable to life in any way. It’s like my grandfather used to say, “Ain’t no dolphin gonna pay my electric bill.” My grandfather was an illiterate man, but his message was clear. We’re spending millions of dollars on our space program when the average American can’t afford their mortgage. And for what? To discover aliens who are going to inevitably suck? Screw that. Aliens are assholes. Oh, you might meet an alien, but then you give them your phone number and they never call.