Proper scenario in case of meeting aliens:

Should and advanced civilisation ever arrive on our planet in pursuit of contact, this is what you do.

Make them land somewhere very remote, like some ridiculously posh, yet unopened, very clean Dubai hotel in the middle of the desert, or some sublimely romantic village on some remote Irish island, or in the middle of Greenland or something… Just as long as they never ever see places like New Delhi or South LA or pretty much any city in Mauretania. 

Then send some incredibly sophisticated person, I dunno, Michelle Obama or something, someone very calm, clear witted and diplomatic, to say hello. Give them stuff like good cognac to drink, excellent bread to eat, show them a very pretty renaissance painting like the Birth of Venus. Play them some Mozart, give them the collected works of Shakespeare, read a short depressing yet brilliant short story by Hemingway, let a small child recite a haiku, that's possibly not about drunken conversations with the moon. Give them an exotic flower. Maybe a shoemaker’s lamp. Then send them the fuck far away, very fast, before they start asking question. Pray they don’t receive Internet, or can read our minds. Just send them off with a dowry of a white cotton shawl and a beautiful wooden chair and a lovely clay bowl and ask them to speak nicely of us to other civilisations.

Because perish the thought they would ever find out about our religious institutions and paedophiles, about our wall Street greed and dictatorships, the horrid crusades and pollution and natural resources drainage, genocides and war rape, Congo, pharmacy lobbies, Japanese cartoon porn, meth labs and serial killers… Good luck asking them to think nicely of us when talking to other civilisations then.

The thing is, we want the aliens, when they happen, to be ethereal and serene, angelic almost. Like Theo was. Sublime, and mild. God-like, if you will. What we think we would be like, if we found the time and money, to be this slow, this quiet, this beautiful. We want to look at them and see calmness, beauty, health and wisdom of old Buddhist monks, regarding universe and death and all that stuff that doesn’t really change anything, we just don’t like it, because it’s dark… And we always want to go into that selfish direction, thinking – imagine what they can do, imagine what they know. Will they bring us shiny gifts? Will they bring us medicine and resources and science and poetry? In that case we’ll make a really good impression and pretend to be very eager and meager, like Oliver Twist. Please, sir, give us something. We’ll steal from you and dirty your clothes, but please take pity on us, because somewhere within the putrid mess of our fucked up psyches, I’m sure we can find something nice if we dig long enough…

Cause of course if they came to ask something of us, asking *us* for anything, we’ll just fucking kill them all. Cause then they’re pests.

Are you kidding me? We will NEVER be welcomed into that club. NEVER. We are the most selfish, the worst species in the world, and I’m saying this in an affectionate way.