Blase'

Blasé
We don’t see them very often any more. It was a quite a novelty at first, they were so different from us. Friendly, to a point, but you never felt like they were open and real. To me they always seemed to be guarded and slightly uncomfortable. There weren’t that many of them where we lived, it isn’t the most important place on earth. We do have some schools and research installations here, but nothing of any substantial import.
When they arrived, it was the story of the century. It answered the question about whether we were alone once and for all. We aren’t. But very soon, the novelty wore off and things returned to normal. Steven Hawking was wrong, there really wasn’t any reason to hide our existence – of course we couldn’t any way, the electromagnetic radiation was out there. They were neither hostile nor brilliant. A little ahead of us, but not that much. Oh, we learned a lot, moved our science ahead by a couple of hundred years, answered some stubborn questions, got a better handle on energy, and some medical breakthroughs, but you know how short our attention span is – no one pays any attention to Shuttle launches any more.
So, it’s really no surprise that the excitement wore off. Sure there were press conferences, presidential speeches, banquets, video games, movies and all of the things you would expect. But we are so immune to sustained excitement – novelty wears off so quickly the stimulation so quickly deadened. Now, no one seems to care, at all. Most of them have gone; they seem to be bored with us too. Maybe is they had tentacles, or green scales, or wings it would have been different. But they are so similar to us it’s hard to get excited, it’s hard to really care that much. Almost everyone quickly lost their interest. The news conferences were interfering with regular programs. MNF was actually superseded one time, I mean what kind of values does that represent.
It’s okay with me. Maybe the next group will be more interesting, or their timing will be better. Or they will have better stuff for us. I hope so. Or maybe we won’t be so blasé, not so bored.