The other day, a friend of mine was on vacation in Colorado. He stocked up on so much marijuana that he decided it was too risky to fly back to the East Coast, so he took a train instead. I'd be a lot younger if he was half my age but he asked me if I had ever done acid. "Dude," I said, "my nickname used to be 'Tripmaster.' Why?" He wanted to take some LSD on the long train ride home. "Would that be your first time?" As I suspected, it would have been. He's already somewhat psychotic and I talked him out of it. I in fact, had stopped taking acid on New Year's Eve, 1969-- or, more precisely on New Year's Day, after a massive New Years Eve trip. I have fond memories of my years as an acid-head... but not on a train. It was always a very spiritual and very powerful experience for me and one that has to be eased into with someone you totally trust so when you inevitably lose your mind, you don't freak out completely.Anyway, soon after my last-ever acid trip, I left America and started my nearly 7 year sojourn abroad. One of my first stops was in Catalonia, in a small hippie hang-out on the beach south of Barcelona. Full moon-- everyone was partying... on drugs. But I was very interested in not using drugs at all. So I left the cave and decided to walk back to someone's parents' villa where we were staying while the parents were in Paris. It was far and it was through a woods and the only light was the full moon. I heard something mechanical sort of accompanying me. Franco was still the dictator and my mind went right to paranoia about fascism.But, as it turns out, it wasn't fascism. It was... aliens, from another (unidentified) planet. I was scared. They asked me-- telepathically-- if I'd like to come for a ride on their space ship. By this time I was on the verandah of the villa, petrified, and quickly zipped up my sleeping bag with me in it. The aliens told me to cool it and they weren't going to hurt me and if I didn't want to go with them, I didn't have to. "Great," I telepathied back, "I don't. Buenos noches." I never told anyone about that. Who would believe me? Not even me!A few years later I was living in Amsterdam and my girlfriend's actual boyfriend was returning from 6 months in America and she and I were saying goodbye (forever) on a beach north of town. It was very late at night and no one was there but us. Until a little tiny spec of light in the sky started rapidly coming down towards us until it was as big as a barn over our heads. It was my old friends from Catalonia (or wherever they were from) and they set up a 3-way telepathic communication link. No words were spoken. But they invited us for a ride, a long one, forever. "Uhhh... no thanks," we both telepathed. "Goede nacht, heren," I said as they went back up into speck of light mode.Many years later-- and now many years from ever having used acid or pot or anything that makes one high-- I was living on the 6th floor of an apartment building on 25th Street in San Francisco, sort of just outside the Mission but not really in Noe Valley, when they were back. I was terrified. "Same deal," they assured me. "No force. Come with us though. There's nothing going on for you here and you'll love this." I should have asked them to define "this," but I was too panic-stricken. They said it was my last chance and if I didn't come this time I'd never hear from them again. I was willing to take that risk and went back to sleep.I never heard from them again. And, for medical reasons, I use pot every night now. But no Martians. I don't talk about it much. No one would believe it anyway and it's not like I have any proof or can even be sure myself that any of that ever happened (but it did). There were no self-phones with cameras back then. I do have a photo of the other guy's girlfriend I was seeing but I can't even remember her name.But you know what? A YouGov poll a couple years ago found that 56% of Germans, 54% of Americans and 52% of Brits believes that intelligent alien life exists. Only about one in 5 Americans say there is no extraterrestrials. And 30% believe that aliens have already contacted us but the government has covered it up. Nearly a quarter of respondents believe that aliens have contacted or visited Earth long before the development of human civilization. So... not so crazy? Well... people I know think it's crazy when you talk about it. Probably the ones who don't are... you know... Trump fans on opioids who read newspaper tabloids.OK, have you heard about Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera yet? She's a former Doral city council member and she's a Republican running for Congress in Miami-- FL-27, the district that has turned bright blue enough for Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to have decided to retire from representing it. There were a lot of headlines yesterday, locally and nationally about her own ride on a spaceship. Seems like a crazy thing for a politician to talk about, no? All of the media coverage makes fun of her and paints her as, well, mildly insane.
Three blond, big-bodied beings-- two females, one male-- visited her when she was 7 years old and have communicated telepathically with her several times in her life, she says. (Sen. Bill Nelson served as payload officer aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1986. All seven people aboard were from Earth. As far as is known.)
Maybe Bettina wouldn't have brought it up in the early states of a congressional campaign-- but in 2009 she did a TV interview about it. And that's following her around like a hungry dog she once fed.
She described “going up” inside the spaceship-- though whether it went into space or just hovered around town was left unclear.“I went in. There were some round seats that were there, and some quartz rocks that controlled the ship-- not like airplanes,” Rodriguez Aguilera said.In two separate videos posted to YouTube years ago, one by local Spanish-language station America TeVe and another by a political critic with the user name DoralGirl26, Rodriguez Aguilera spoke on television in detail about her extraterrestrial experiences. She said the alien beings reminded her of the famous statue in Rio de Janeiro, Christ the Redeemer, with arms outstretched.Among the things she said she found out from the aliens:• There are 30,000 skulls-- “different from humans”-- in a cave in the Mediterranean island of Malta.• The world’s “energy center” is in Africa.• The Coral Castle, a limestone tourist attraction South Miami-Dade, is actually an ancient Egyptian pyramid.• “God is a universal energy.”She also said that the aliens had mentioned Isis, though she didn’t clarify if they meant the terrorist organization or the ancient Egyptian goddess.
Yesterday she told the Washington Post that the article, quoted above, from the Miami Herald, "is clearly an attack piece. I’m a person who owns up to who I am. And this is just an experience that I had. It has nothing to do with who I am and what I have shown in the past 40 years and what a positive role model I’ve been to the community."
Rick Yabor, a Miami lawyer and political commentator, told The Post that Rodriguez Aguilera isn’t likely to win-- especially in light of revelations about her previous claims.“Why Bettina jumped in that race, I don’t know… Her views are not very mainstream,” Yabor said, referring to Rodriguez Aguilera’s stories about aliens. “There’s going to be people that believe her, and there’s going to be people that think she’s wacky.”And anyway, Yabor said, the district leaned Democratic in last year’s election.There are at least a dozen candidates vying to replace Ros-Lehtinen, the majority of them Democrats.Two of Rodriguez Aguilera’s Republican primary opponents, Bruno Barreiro and Raquel Regalado, are better known in Miami-Dade County than she is, Yabor said.Barreiro has been a county commissioner for nearly 20 years. Regalado is the daughter of Miami Mayor Tomás Pedro Regalado and is a former school board member in the county.And they have raised significantly more money than Rodriguez Aguilera.Barreiro has raised about $218,100, according to federal campaign records. Regalado is a distant second, with $15,050. Rodriguez Aguilera has raised less than $5,000.Rodriguez Aguilera said she has not raised much because she postponed her fundraising after Hurricane Irma hit to help Florida residents. She said she’s raised a total of $10,000, including “in-kind services” from the community.Rodriguez Aguilera was a member of the Doral City Council from 2012 to 2014. The city’s mayor nominated her to replace the vice mayor in 2013. She also said she helped boost Doral’s economic and population growth during her time as the city’s economic development coordinator, a position she held for four years.Rodriguez Aguilera’s daughter, Bettina Inclán Agen, is a former director of Hispanic outreach for the Republican National Committee. Agen is married to Jarrod Agen, Vice President Pence’s deputy chief of staff and communications director.
Miami's other big political news yesterday, at least in regard to FL-27, was that a former professional yo-yo player, Ken Russell, jumped into the race too. He a Democrat, the 8th in the race so far. 73% of the district is Hispanic and I have a feeling Russell isn't.