G. Frink's

Fayetteville Observer photo editor and well-known amateur astronomer Johnny Horn set the professional standard for images of extraterrestrials. Although he isn't responsible for any of the grainy, out-of-focus stills and footage you may have seen, he knows what good photojournalism requires: "Get the names of the aliens. They've come a long way, and we owe it to them to get their names right."

Denver resident Jeff Peckman failed to meet that standard last week, and thus far has permitted only a select few dozen people to view his video of the alleged visitation by an identified star traveler.

Second-hand accounts are available, however. A Rocky Mountain News blogger who viewed the video on Friday wrote that it showed:

A classic E.T.-like creature, about 4 feet tall, with a narrow chin, a broad forehead and almond eyes. ... Audience members wanted to know why the creature traveled all those light years just to peep in a window.

Peckman said he had a public purpose for his showing. As ABC news reported:

Jeff Peckman, a Denver resident and believer in alien life, has begun the work of putting a ballot initiative to the city's voters that would, if passed, establish an "extraterrestrial affairs commission" made up of 18 members appointed by the mayor to ensure public safety in the event that aliens -- or their vehicles, according to the ballot language -- were to arrive in the Mile High City.

All of this to promote formation of another commission of distinguished personages? Convinced? For those of us who after that explanation are still puzzled by Peckman's no-live-transmissions, no-recordings, by-invitation-only showing of his video, Peckman expained that "the general public will have to wait to see it because it's being included in a documentary by Stan Romanek."

We are invited to believe, then, that unimaginably obsessive voyeurs of extrasolar origin are lending themselves to the creation of yet another profitable if inconclusive "the extraterrestrials have come" documentary, and in our earth-bound rudeness we still have not bestirred ourselves to properly identify them. Or him/her.

Of our bad manners, I am so ashamed.