Gumby meets The X Files

Today I found a DVD of Gumby shows from the '80s series, including Gumby's Close Encounter. shown above. The '80s series isn't radically different from the '50s & '60s episodes, but it's a bit more New Agey and political. In Close Encouter, Gumby is beamed into a '50s-style flying saucer by the tiny, big-eyed, noseless "grays" popularized by Whitley Strieber's first memoir about alien abduction, Communion (1986). The grays want to take a small sample of Gumby's DNA with which to rejuvenate their own irradiated genes, obviously not realizing that Gumby is a wodge of clay.

The soap opera Dallas had a similar episode after the release of Communion. Like Strieber, a scriptwriter mentioned that the aliens smelled of cinnamon. (a common symptom of temporal lobe eplilepsy...)
Anyway, back to Gumby. After taking a nasal swab or whatever with their ever-present silver wands (roughly 50% of real-life abductees report seeing them), they agree to give Gumby the secrets of free energy so he will never have to pollute or use fossil fuels again. Environmental lesson and creepy ET abduction all rolled neatly into one - just like the average abduction experience. Many abductees report such anti-pollution messages from the aliens.

Now I am not a believer in physical abductions by little bug-eyed gray dudes from space, but so many people all over the globe have described remarkably similar ET experiences that I have came to suspect humanity is expressing our greatest fears, concerns, and desires by manifesting these hallucinations/fantasies/tulpas, or whatever you care to call them.

UFO/ET abduction stories are today's folklore. Our ancestors who feared the uncertainties of the forests had elves and trolls. Seafaring men had sea monsters and sirens. Stories propagated the fear - folklore was born. In time, as threats decreased, the folklore became more entertaining and benign in most parts of the world.

I'm tired and this probably isn't making much sense - best STOP. Maybe I'll post something on my alien theories on High Strangeness when I'm not so hopped on cold medicine.