Last month, the Internet went up in arms when the penners of teenage angst anthems of yesteryear, Blink-182, apparently called it quits. There was no specific reason given for the split, except for a vaguely worded statement from Travis Barker and Mark Hoppus saying that their third memeber, Tom DeLonge, was leaving the band as he'd "rather work on his other, nonmusical endeavors."
As it turns out, those non-musical endeavors are straight out of The X-Files, as DeLonge is a tried and true alien hunter. This is not some new hobby DeLonge picked up thanks to an abundances of free time and "What's My Age Again?" residual checks. He's been dedicated to proving extraterrestrial existence and associated governmental coverups for two decades. He's even got a website devoted to his obsession!
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So when Paper decided to interview DeLonge about all things unearthly, things were bound to get weird and, hoo boy, did they ever.
On being wiretapped by the government:
"I've had my phone tapped. … For quite some time. Years ago, there was somebody who was gathering 150 hours of top secret testimony specifically for Congressional hearings on government projects and the US secret space program. People from NASA, Rome, the Vatican, you name it, they're all on there. The top 36 hours that summarized the best parts of all of that footage, I had it hidden in my house for a period of time, and during that time I was flying this person out along with somebody that was Wernher von Braun's right-hand assistant."
On his experience with mind control:
"At the time I didn't know it, but the person I was dealing with was being awoken in the middle of the night with clicking and buzzing noises and falling on the ground vomiting, every morning at 4 a.m. I know now that those are artifacts from mind-control experiments, where the same technology that we use to find oil underground, we can zap somebody at the same frequency that the brain operates on, and it can cause some really horrific things to happen."
On being a total Mulder:
"[O]ne time I remember bringing up a very specific craft that I believe we're building, in secret, to emulate the phenomenon that our government has been observing for decades. So I started talking about the craft, and its magnetic slide system and how it displaces over 89% of the mass of the ship, how it ionizes the engine, how it glows — I went through the whole thing, and this engineer looks at me, this guy is 70 years old, and he goes, 'You better be real f–king careful about what you're talking about.' And I go, 'Okay, so I'm close.' And he goes, 'I'm not f–king kidding with you. You better be really f–king careful.' And he calls me up the next day and he goes, 'I've had calls about you. If someone comes and asks you to get in their car, don't f–king get in the car.'"
In all honesty, not getting into a stranger's car is a pretty good all-around life rule for everyone and not just if you're going all Silkwood on some alien conspiracy government coverup.
And finally, on camping at Area 51:
"When we went out there the first night, we decided to run through this protocol where you project your thoughts. So we decided to do it, and we were up mad late, but nothing happened. I kept telling the guys: if anything was going to happen, it would happen at three in morning, because that's the time when things like this happen. Don't ask me why. We put about four logs on the fire, and everything is illuminated by the fire, and we fall asleep around one or two. I woke up right around 3 a.m. My whole body felt like it had static electricity, and I open my eyes and the fire is still going, and there's a conversation going on outside the tent. It sounded like there were about 20 people there, talking. And instantly my mind goes, OK, they're at our campsite, they're not here to hurt us, they're talking about sh-t, but I can't make out what they're saying. But they're working on something. Then I close my eyes and wake up, and the fire is out and I have about three hours of lost time.
Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing, you deserve it.
