There are times when I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm involved in media communications and I have reason to be.

There have been two incidences in the past week or so that have seen media types attempting to contact people involved in ufology for a couple of things and in both instances, you should run - not walk - run if you have any contact with either of these situations.

The first one that I'm going to talk about here is one that personally involves me. I came home from work one day this past week and checked my personal email to find that I had a message from a young lady, who shall remain nameless, requesting my help with an article that she wanted to write for a local Toronto paper. Now after much deliberation, (all of about 12 seconds) I decided that I would answer her questions here on Strange Days... Indeed instead of in an email where my language usage would not have to be curtailed.

She is planning to write a piece about the best places in the Greater Toronto Area to look for UFOs. She opens up the email by asking me to tell her what I think is the TOP TEN list of most-likely spots to go, for those who'd love to see a UFO within a short drive of the city. (C'mon Ma, let's bundle up the kiddies and go watch us some UFOs) If anyone interested in UFOs knew of even one place to go where we could see UFOs on a consistent basis there would be no reason for this show because we'd just send all the skeptics out to UFOland for a looksee.

The second question that this poor lass asked me is "What should one take along on a UFO-hunting trip?" I am SOOOO tempted to say some aluminum foil to cover your head from the deadly RAYS and some strawberry ice cream because rumour has it that they like that and you can use it as bait... .oh, and the last item? Your lucky rabbit's foot because you're going to need all the luck you can get to see a UFO. To be perfectly blunt, the Fish and Game people do not issue licenses for UFO hunting and believe me, they would if they could.

Now in all honesty, this young lady just needs to do a little more research into what UFOs and the study of them are all about and her requests are fun because they are tame and don't hurt people. The next person however, is not so nice and is not so tame and definitely wants to hurt people.

John Velez who is intimately involved with Alien Abduction cases received a real gem in his email from somebody who wants to produce a reality type of TV show that he is calling "Alien Implants: Hard Evidence Live" and what he proposed to John was this:

He said he is about to do a pitch meeting with a major Television station and would like John to provide two people and/or convince them to come on this TV show and be operated on live to have implants surgically removed and then they would examine the implants on Television right there and then for all to see. In case you missed it, I'm going to put it in layman terms. You are to be a guest on a television show where you will be cut open by a surgeon and have something removed from your body so people can see what it is and if you're lucky, they might stitch you back up again afterwards. Simple... case closed... 60 minutes and everyone goes home... some of us with a little less of what we had when we came on the show, though.

Now what this particular individual obviously didn't realize when he sent this email to John was that john does his damndest to help people who have experienced being abducted by aliens and turning two people into some kind of a twisted sideshow for television does not constitute helping. I shall refrain from telling our gentle listeners how John Velez responded to this... person but needless to say, it probably was not the type of response he thought it was going to be.

I said earlier that I was embarrassed to admit that I work in media communications and I am... because it is obvious that we haven't cleaned out the media gene pool in a little while and some of the scum is rising to the top...

But that's just my take on it!