If that headline and that picture above has taught me anything, it’s that Tom DeLonge is only a puke green suit and a can of extra-hold mousse away from becoming the Ancient Aliens guy.

Last year, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker of Blink-182 publicly slapped at former member Tom DeLonge during an interview with Rolling Stone for being a giant flake and headache of a human. Not long after, Tom gave some of us a headache when he took us on a crazy ride while talking to Paper magazine about his personal experience with aliens. And now, Tom is talking about aliens again.

Tom did an interview with Mic (via Spin) to promote the launch of Sekrek Machines, a multimedia project that will seek to investigate and expose “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.” So, aliens and their cars? No. According to Tom, they’re not called aliens. Tom says we only call them “aliens” because that’s what pop culture and the government have taught us. Tom says he got really interested in other forms of life and “unidentified aerial phenomena” – aka UFOs – in junior high, long before he joined Blink-182.

That’s when Mic brought up a press release they recently received from Blink-182. They claim it had informed them that Tom would not be touring with Blink-182 because he was too busy with aliens. They asked Tom if that was true, or if Mark and Travis were just being smart asses. Oh no, they were telling the truth.

Well it’s not so much about Blink. It’s about what I’m doing with my life now. When you’re an individual like me, dealing with something that’s a national security issue, and you’re being gifted with the opportunity to communicate something you’ve been passionate about your whole life — something that has the opportunity to change the world over time — being a small part of that is enormously important for my life path. But I can’t do everything.

As for the work that is keeping Tom away from touring, he’s publishing several books under the Sekret Machines name, as well a documentary and new music from his other band, Angels & Airwaves. Tom says his goal is “to have a conversation within reality, that’s very grounded…The whole UFO phenomenon is different than what people think it is.”

So there you have it. Tom gave Mark and Travis a hard pass on the touring thing because he is legitimately too busy watching the sky for UFOs. I don’t want to tell Tom how to perform his alien outreach work, but I feel like he would have educated a whole lot more people with his message if he had gone on tour with Blink-182. He could have set up a little trailer next to the merch table and charged $10 a pop for Professor Tom’s UFOh-Yes They Exist! Experience. Trust me, if they’re performing somewhere hot and the trailer has air conditioning, people won’t care how many songs about aliens they have to listen to.

Pic: Instagram