Washington Comes Clean About the Little Green Men

In a recent public relations initiative, the White House made a promise to issue official responses to any formal petition to garner more than five thousands signatures in one month. They were probably not expecting a letter requesting the President to "disclose to the American people the long-withheld knowledge of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings." Who can say whether the signatories of this petition earnestly believed that the U.S. government had secret dealings with creatures from outer space or whether it was only for the lulz* (as the cool kids are wont to say), but the White House kept its part of the bargain and issued a statement saying that there has been no "credible evidence" of alien life visiting Earth or making contact from government representatives. For the majority of Americans, the question of whether or not the government had various Saucer Men secreted away in New Mexico bunkers was probably a non-issue. The tiny portion of the population who were concerned about such matters are doubtlessly skeptical. Conspiracy theorists are notoriously unreasonable. 


Would you like to know more?
-Read this article from The Hill



*This will be the only time that you will see Internet Slang on the Hyper Kitchen

I'm Not Afraid of Flying Saucers

According to the most recent radio reports, it appears that Vermont is in for the final snowstorm of the season and it's going to be a big one. The chefs of the Hyper Kitchen are understandably concerned that they will be snowed-in, and that uncontrollable madness and potential axe-murders will be the result of this isolation from civilized society. As such, we thought it prudent to get the Monster of the Month segment done as quickly as possible before the inevitable slide into barbarism occurs.

If asked to draw an alien, it's a safe bet that you would produce an illustration of some macrocephalic, bug-eyed dwarf with gray-green skin and a smug expression. This image has become the archetype of extraterrestrials after being popularized by the X-Files, the Weekly World News, and various sci-fi flicks. These so-called "Grays" were based on descriptions of the otherworldly entities supposedly witnessed in actual alien abduction cases. In fact, the majority of these accounts include variations on the Little Gray Man. However, that isn't to say there aren't some exceptions and now and again a spectacular oddball will come along. The Flatwoods Monster springs immediately to mind, as do today's Monster of the Month: the Pascagoula Abductors.

On the night of October 11th, 1973 shipyard workers Calvin Parker and Charlie Hickson were fishing on the Pascagoula River when a UFO descended from the skies and deposited three truly unnatural humanoids. Standing at around five feet tall, they were described as having pale gray skin that was wrinkled like a rhino's hide. Their hands were fleshy "mittens" or "claws," and their stumpy legs remained motionless as they hovered through the air. Their faces consisted of little else than dour, slit-like mouths and several carrot-like shapes erupted from each side of the head. Moving in a clumsy, robotic fashion, these three strangers from beyond proceeded to levitate Parker and Hickson into their spaceship, whereupon the terrified humans were monitored by a baseball-shaped camera.

Do the Pascagoula Abductors represent the genuine face of alien life; having come from some unknowable world to float around and study us with silver spheres? According to those involved, both Parker and Hickson were genuinely hysterical and did not behave like a couple of hoaxers. After world of the abduction spread like wildfire across the Mississippi media, others came forward to saw that they had noticed some unusual activity in the sky around the vicinity of the purported abduction. Despite this, workers at two 24-hour toll-booths that were in the full view of the river never saw any UFO and security cameras at a nearby shipyard showed nothing out of the ordinary. Additionally, twenty years down the road Parker has significantly elaborated upon his original story and also claims to have had subsequent alien encounters with a tiny alien woman who apparently reads the Bible.

But don't take my word for it!

-You can read about it in a book.

Or, if you don't have fifty bucks to burn,
listen to this interview of Charlie Hickson.

Secret of the Space Tyrant!

Kalmykia is a small Buddhist republic in the greater Russian Federation. For 17 years, the nation was ruled by President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a multi-millionaire who made his fortune in the privatization of the Russian auto industry after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ilyumzhinov is also the head of the World Chess Federation and introduced compulsory chess-education in Kalmykian schools. His time as president was marked by ostentatious displays and charges of corruption. The people of Kalmykia remain the poorest in all of Russia, despite numerous expensive construction projects; most notably a still yet-to-be-completed "Chess City" which was intended to house and celebrate chess champions and facilitate competitions. In 1998, opposition journalist Larisa Yudina was found stabbed and bludgeoned to death after publishing articles critical of Ilyumzhinov. Her murderers were two former government aides to Ilyumzhinov, who promptly banned the publication of Yudina's newspaper. The organization Reporters without Borders currently rate Kalmykia as being "among the most repressive towards the media in the entire Russian Federation." If this wasn't enough, Ilyumzhinov also described having a friendly relationship with Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi and former Iraqi-dictator Saddam Hussien.

Despite these little controversies, Vladimir Putin, then president of Russia, seemed to think well of Ilyumzhinov. In 2002, after Putin abolished the direct election of regional leaders (with this power being relocated to the Russian presidency), he selected Ilyumshinov for another seven-year term. Ilyumzhinov's political future was assured, until 2010 when the Kalmykian president made a very serious gaffe on a televised interview.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov announced that on September 17th, 1997, during a trip to Moscow, he was visited by aliens.

The abduction was a simple affair, really. As described by Ilyumzhinov, the aliens descended from the skies, took him from his apartment and brought him to "some star." Ilyumzhinov, fearing that he would be late for a meeting in Ukraine, asked the aliens if they could bring him back to Earth and they complied. During the voyage, Ilyumzhinov had the opportunity to talk at length with his newfound extraterrestrial friends and they implied that chess originated in outer space.

Shortly after the interview, Putin's successor President Dmitry Medvedev received a letter from an alarmed Russian MP Andre Lebedev, who asserted that Ilyumzhinov was unfit to rule Kalmykia. Rather than decrying Ilyumzhinov as delusional, Lebedev was primarily concerned that the Kalmykian president may have disclosed official secrets to the aliens and created a security risk for the Russian Federation. Lebedev went on to suggest that alien abduction protocol be drafted for government leaders to prevent breaches of sensitive information.

It was probably not a coincidence that after controlling Kalmykia since 1993, Ilyumzhinov announced that he would not run for another term. Medvedev's new appointed president of Kalmykia, Alexei Orlov, was installed into power on October 24th, 2010. Although he has lost his political power, Ilymzhinov continues to act as the president of the World Chess Federation. Chessplayers, it appears, are more familiar with insanity.

Would you like to know more?
-Read this article from the Guardian
-Read this article from the BBC
-Watch this interview with Illymzhinov

An inverted pup-tent affair

IT overcome its short stature! IT challenged the cruel heightism of the world!

Into Thin Air

On August 2nd, 1947, a British South American Airways airliner called "Star Dust" took off from Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a flight to Santiago, Chile. The plane (a civilian version of an RAF bomber) was just under two years old and in perfect condition. The crew were former RAF pilots, all veterans of World War II, and all highly experienced. Among the passengers were a Palestinian businessman carrying a diamond sewn into his suit, a German woman (suspected of having been a Nazi) transporting her husband's ashes, a Swiss millionaire playboy, and a British diplomat intending to deliver important documents to the British embassy in Chile.

Star Dust traveled at high altitude to avoid poor weather. The pilots did not observe any on-board mechanical problems. As they approached their destination, Star Dust radioed the airport in Santiago to say "ETA SANTIAGO 17.45." After a period of silence, Star Dust radioed again, this time with a Morse-code signal:

"STENDEC."

Star Dust never landed in Santiago.

An extensive search was made of the nearby Andes Mountains to look for wreckage and possible survivors. Nothing was found. There was no indication that anything had gone wrong during the flight, and the pilots made no mention of anything abnormal in their radio transmissions to Santiago. They hadn't even issued an SOS, which would've been standard operation procedure had they encountered trouble. Instead, there was only STENDEC, an enigmatic final message that no one could decipher. It didn't belong in conventional aviation shorthand and wasn't a recognized acronym.

Rumors of sabotage floated about, the focus of the blame shifting from one eccentric passenger to another. These notions were later eclipsed by an even more outlandish idea. The disappearance of Star Dust was a year before the famous Roswell incident launched flying saucers into the collective consciousness, and it wasn't long before people began building associations between the vanished aircraft and extraterrestrial visitors. In one of the first books published about the flying saucer phenomenon, Flying Saucers on the Moon, author Harold T. Wilkins postulated that Star Dust was abducted by some "vast interplanetary craft."

Naturally, no evidence was offered to support this fantastic claim, but aviation experts and researchers were having difficulty putting forward more serious theories. The nonsensical Morse-code message was baffling, and the apparent lack of wreckage made any sort of forensic examination impossible. They found themselves as unable to substantiate their theories as Wilkins. As years past, it became generally accepted that the mystery would never be solved. Star Dust had become somewhat like the aviation world's Mary Celeste. In the 70's, STENDEC would be used as the title of a Spanish UFO-enthusiast magazine. Later a truly awful experimental musician would start calling himself "Stendek," after the Star Dust incident. However, by and large, the event faded into obscurity.

Then, in 1998, some mountain climbers were astonished to discover a massive Rolls-Royce airplane engine half-covered in the snows of Tupungato, one of the highest mountains in the Andes. The site was over fifty miles away from Star Dust's destination of Santiago. Adverse conditions made it impossible to assemble a proper expedition team until 2000, when the Argentinian military dispatched a group to determine if the area was the resting place of Star Dust. Facing inclement weather and a treacherous climb, they ascended to the glacial top of Tupungato after four days travel. In the subsequent investigation, they discovered a second engine and a propeller. They authenticated the wreckage as belonging to Star Dust. The further discovery of severed hands and fractured torsos, fifty-three years frozen in the mountain ice, confirmed this.

The information gathered by the expedition suggests that Star Dust had crashed closer to the peak of the mountain, becoming covered in snow and eventually being frozen into the glacier itself. As the glacier gradually melted, the wreckage slid down the mountain and more parts became exposed. Still, the wreckage itself offered no clear cause for the crash. Experts hypothesized that Star Dust had been flying at a high enough altitude to enter the jet-stream (largely unknown in 1947), and had been blown off course by the high speed winds. Even with their experience, it's entirely possible that the pilots were unable to recognize how dramatically Star Dust had been blown off course, and attempted to make their landing without knowing that beneath them laid the Andes Mountains and not Santiago. However, if this was the case, then why did they never send out a radio transmission indicating that they were close to landing?

The last piece of the puzzle also has yet to be put into place.What did STENDEC mean and why was it transmitted? Barring any new discoveries, the answer will probably remain shrouded in mystery.


-You can read a BBC article detailing the discovery of the wreckage here.
-You can buy Harold T. Wilkin's crazy UFO book here.
-You can read a summary of the various theories as to what STENDEC might have meant right here