I downloaded a nifty thing on my Firefox home page. Well, I have about thirty "nifty things" and that's why it takes two minutes to load.

I can read my horoscope, match five words with their definitions, check the weather in Phoenix, gaze upon a Picture Of The Day, play one game of MasterMind (they call it something else), study an optical illusion, and see what's number one of the New York Times Bestseller list.

Then I'm on my way to a great day! Or not. We can't know how my day will be.

But this new thing I downloaded is a global map and I can center in anywhere. And here is the best part: it's a "Reported Sightings of UFOs" map! One day awhile back, fifty people in a small town in Pennsylvania called and reported triangular bright lights that hovered for two minutes and then, without seeming to move, the lights vanished.

Way cool!

You can click on any of the UFO icons to read the full report of that sighting. I like to make sure, in the event of twenty sightings in one area, that all the reporters are not nineteen-year old boys who have too much time on their hands. That's just me.

And by the way: ask someone if they "believe" in UFOs. Most people say "no", at least the ones I pose the question to, but I am not asking if they believe in extraterrestrial life, I'm only asking if they believe something can be in the sky that they themselves cannot identify. It could be an Airbus, it could be the Stealth, it could be Canadian snow geese (those Canadians!) but the fact is, it's pretty bold for one to think they can identify every single they see in the sky. Like that guy on this site who kindly informed me that the sun is a planet (although he said "plant" in his message).

We really don't need folks like that running the show, do we? An owl can be a UFO if you don't know what it is!

The sightings on my Foxfire map are reported to NASA and some other agencies. That's good.

But once again, the usual excuses are made. Remember "Men In Black"? Tommy Lee Jones does a very fast, very funny spiel at this women who actually saw a UFO (in the movie) and he mentions all the clichés: swamp gas, cloud formation, storm approaching, jet, private plane, possible mental illness and a weather balloon.

It could be any of those. Never mind if you live nowhere near a freaking swamp, perhaps the gas got all lit up and came and settled over your backyard.

But what really bugs me is this "weather balloon" thing.

How many weather balloons have you seen in your life? (This question assumes that you don't work in, say, a weather balloon factory.)

Are they like the recreational hot-air balloons that drive livestock crazy by hissing flame as they pass over fields? Are they like helium balloons with little radios in them?

I do not understand this preponderance of weather balloons. I've seen a lot of things in my life but never a weather balloon.

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Don't we use satellites for that? And aren't satellites that orbit the earth and use radar and cameras a bit more reliable than a damned balloon?

And these so-called weather balloons, do they all congregate right over Los Alamos, New Mexico, and just hang there, all lit up? Do they get together in groups of two dozen and linger over Phoenix? Do they then spin across the continent to New York where some thousand people witness them and report them, when all they're doing is taking weather readings?

Is it common for weather balloons to be loaded down with lights? And can they go at warp speed just in case a hurricane approaches Florida and we need the information?

Why do they need lights at all? Are these balloons manned? How do they transmit information back to the ground? Do they ever come down?

To whom do these weather balloons belong? Television news stations? Private individuals? Some governmental agency?

I see all too many hot-air balloons near where I live. They're not weather balloons! They are an expensive, dangerous and useless hobby, but so is sex, when you get right down to it. (Well, "useless", maybe not. Sex isn't useless.)

So, fine. Let those guys fly their balloons. But they can see no more of the weather than I can. And at least they aren't pretending to be weather balloon operators.

Here's how I check the weather: I step outside.

Apparently this is rare. I have been outside watching an approaching tornado when everyone else was inside, watching it on television's radar system and shouting, "Here it comes! It just touched down east of Plainville!"

Jeez.

It reminds me of people who take camcorders to their kindergartner's first play and then try to focus the whole thing through the lens instead of actually watching. I've never understood that, either. Because those people are not watching their kids, they're preparing some sort of videotape to watch over and over again (now that's mental illness) while missing the here-and-now.

If you see a UFO, which is anything YOU cannot identify, call the Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network (MUFON). Any search engine will give you the contact information and you need not identify yourself.

MUFON will take your report and they'll investigate. Unless you are crazy and wearing aluminum foil on your feet to avoid gamma rays and you happen to mention that fact. Or if you say, "And today of all days! When I forgot to take my medication!" Otherwise, they will notify law enforcement and they'll come and see it themselves. And they'll take a full report from you.

MUFON won't dismiss you with talk about weather balloons if you report. Everyone else will, though. Those crazy-ass weather balloons carrying tiny grey bald people with huge eyes and no mouth are everywhere, man.

But don't worry. They're just checking for rain.