Maybe you read it over the weekend, maybe you stuck your head in the sand or maybe you just don’t want to join the record number of subscribers reading The Failing New York Times. The country’s most important newspaper (kids, newspapers are the things your parents read on their iPads) reported on a $22 million government organization created to investigate — and I’m being completely serious when I say this — aliens.
Called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, this program is not headed up by Spooky Fox Mulder or the skeptic Dana Scully, but an actual, non-fictional human being. Luis Elizondo ran the department until he quit in protest in October, begging U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to take the organization’s efforts more seriously.
Now we here at The18 have a level head when it comes to aliens. Nothing against aliens of any kind — except ALF, fuck that cat-eating scumbag — but there’s a general rule of thumb in the scientific community: It’s never aliens. (At least, until it is.)
Fermi Paradox aside, the likelihood of aliens buzzing around the planet is astronomically low. It’s almost as low as the possibility of an alien playing soccer. But what if aliens have infiltrated our sport (aside from Zlatan, obviously)? Would we recognize these otherworldly talents as being from other worlds?
An unidentified flying object soaring to meet the ball. Photo: @causticgifs | Twitter
Over the last decade soccer has been dominated so thoroughly by two players that it makes you wonder: Are Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi truly human? The rate at which Messi and Ronaldo have scored is so far ahead of anyone else right now it’s almost as if they’re from another planet. We’ve run out of superlatives to describe their exploits; perhaps we need a new language, one from their home solar systems.
Ronaldo and Messi will face each other on the pitch for the 34th time on Saturday in Madrid for the latest edition of El Clasico. The two supposed humans have combined for 38 goals in the previous 33 meetings between them.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard ignoring the Prime Directive. Photo: @Shishirsharma7 | Twitter
Watch the highlights of these players facing off against each other and tell me with a straight face they’re the same as you and me.
First up, Lionel Messi, who we’re told was born in Rosario, Argentina, but was probably born closer to the star system Alpha Centauri.
Messi sees things before they happen, like he’s mastered control over the space-time continuum to travel as light speed. Like a quantum particle defined by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, he phases in and out of the reach of defenders, who can never determine both his position and momentum.
Now Cristiano Ronaldo, whose leaping ability has likely espoused numerous UFO sightings.
The aforementioned NYT report said the government program is studying possible alien alloys, which I’m pretty sure are what Ronaldo’s abs were forged with because they’re harder than anything humanity is capable of producing. Ronaldo’s strength and power are seemingly powered by fusion reactors the likes of which humanity has yet to master.
They’re both simply inhuman.
OK, so we’re not really suggesting Ronaldo and Messi are aliens. We’re not saying they’re from another planet. We’re just saying they’re so gorram incredible that maybe they are.
Whether you’re Team Ronaldo or Team Messi, enjoy Saturday’s El Clasico. And if you see any unidentified flying objects screaming around the Bernabeu, be welcoming to them, and try to keep PSG from signing the occupants.
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