Musician Tom DeLonge of Blink-182 and Angels & Airwaves is a proud conspiracy theorist with respect to the existence of aliens, and governmental shadows that exist to cover up what humans know. It’s been a proud hobby of the alleged diva for 20 years—most notably explored on Blink cut “Aliens Exist,” and in the 2011 launch of his fringe news site Strange Times—but his conviction and transparency went from vague flicker to fluorescent madness Tuesday in an interview with Paper.

On his credentials for being so self-important:

People will be like “Oh, you believe in UFOs” [laughs], but I’m reading books on physics, I’m reading books on the secret space program, I’m talking to people that work underground for six months at a time, that are confiding in me about the national security initiatives. I’ve literally read 200 books on the subject, and I don’t spend my time looking at UFO reports or talking to little green men.

On how the U.S. government tapped his phone:

I’ve been involved in this for a long time. I have sources from the government. I’ve had my phone tapped. I’ve done a lot of weird stuff in this industry — people wouldn’t believe me if I told them. But this is what happens when you start getting on an email chains with hundreds of scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and different universities around the country, and you start outing seniors scientists from Lockheed Martin talking about the reality of this stuff, guys that hold 30 patents, guys that work underground out in the Nevada test sites in Area 51.

On alien 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. But I didn’t know this until 10 years later. I got caught in the middle of it, and this was the time when I was on the cover of Rolling Stone, so I think these guys, whoever was running this operation, were like, “What the fuck? How did this kid show up?”

On his TL;DR version of the global undertaking by elected officials to make the story disappear:

What people have to understand is the basic history of the UFO is very simple. The phenomenon has been around forever. All the ancient religions were written down based on witnessing this phenomenon in various forms. Governments of the world watched the phenomenon and tried to replicate the technology, but they did in secret. So the governments are fighting each other with these pieces of technology.

On startling a scientist with his deep knowledge of alien tech:

“You better be real fucking careful about what you’re talking about.” And I go, “Okay, so I’m close.” And he goes, “I’m not fucking kidding with you. You better be really fucking 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 fucking get in the car.”

On his camping trip to Area 51:

I get everyone up first thing in the morning and go, “Did anybody hear all the chatter last night? I couldn’t move my body, I was stuck there. I couldn’t hear anything.” And one of the guys I was with goes, “Yes! They were all around our tent, they were talking. I told you!” And the other guy slept right through it.

On an alien future we’ll likely experience in our lifetimes:

I think what’s gonna happen, mark my words, is that they’re going to find the microbial life that’s they’ve been talking about on Mars and then, it’s one planet over. We’re gonna send people up there, and we’re gonna find remnants of other types of life. But really, what’s going to be there are remnants of other civilizations: architecture, old monuments, machinery, things that have been fossilized, whatever, and then that will get dripped out for another 30 to 40 years.

All of this may very well be true. But Christ 11 years into Facebook and with billions of photos uploaded online, we can’t tag one convincing shred of evidence?

Photo via Kmeron/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)