I Can't Tell If This Guy Is Joking

...even though he steps back once in awhile to say that he is. Read it first so you can see where I'm coming from. It's short.

"Black Operations and Government Cover-Ups! The Catch-22 Of It All!" by Lyle Michel is full of so many exclamation points that I'm not sure if the guy has all of his ducks in a row. Maybe he's just getting into the subject. It sure reads like he's excited.

Michel takes it for granted that there have been many crashed UFOs and dead aliens retrieved by the government. He does not say that there is compelling evidence that this has happened, he states it as a fact. He says so numerous times.

Michel has probably not looked very far into the literature on "black ops" as he calls them. He assigns anything secret-government-wise that agrees with his preconceptions as truths and those that don't as disinfo. Strongly held beliefs translate into "facts," as he calls them. This is exactly what these shadowy people want him and other saucer enthusiasts to do. Actually, I do have a strong suspicion that some pretty strange hardware has fallen to Earth and that people have examined it. It might be non-human hardware. This sort of fence-sitting infuriates the hardcore, but I'm afraid I need to see something for myself in order to take more than a theoretical stock in its existence.

The lengths that counter-intelligence will go to to protect information, whether it has to do with UFOs or not, is almost beyond what most of us can imagine. Here's a simple example: The reason that supposed Area 51 physicist Bob Lazar saw caputred flying saucers might be that he was actually shown some sort of elaborate model with the idea that he would go and talk about it later. Maybe he knew he was supposed to talk about it. If it was so incredibly secret, we would probably never have heard from him. The whole affair stirs up the soup so that the intelligence people can see who sticks to whom and what floats and what doesn't.

Maybe we have perfected anti-gravity craft. The UFO/ aliens cover is just about as perfect a scenario to keep the press and serious academia away as you could imagine. I offer this as a suggestion, not a fact, becuase I have no idea if its true. Nick Cook's book The Hunt For Zero Point makes a compelling case that anti-gravity hardware was perfected decades ago, and to me this is more plausible than captured craft stored deep in caves or hangars. Maybe we captured something and back-engineered it, just as the believers say, but at this point I have more faith in humankind's ingenuity than in an unproven belief.

The argument that Roswell fans and others have used is that there has been enough witness evidence gathered from numerous cases to convince any jury that these events have actually happened. The trouble with this line of reasoning is that while everyone knows what a robbery or murder is, not many of us have seen or experienced a crashed flying saucer. That's one small step for a ufologist and one giant leap of faith for those they are trying to convince.

This tired game has gotten us nowhere, but some still continue to play it, and as a paranoid I once knew said "That's just what they want you to think!!"

They Don't Make 'em Like This Anymore

Will post another thought-provoking rant soon, but I had to share this old Max Fleischer/ Betty Boop cartoon featuring Cab Calloway. Oh dear, there's a reference to cocaine in the lyrics. If you want to look around youtube there's also other "soundie"-type Fleischer cartoons, one featuring Louis Armstrong!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q0Uf2_kUsM

Radio Misterioso Downloaded A Whole Lot

Just to make myself feel better, I added up all the downloads of Radio Misterioso over at radio4all.net since February of 2005. It added up to roughly 6000! If I charged for them, the total might be a lot less. I won't get rich at it, but I'm still having fun and still learning.

The Bill Moore interviews are popular of course. The ones with Chris O'Brien are listened to quite a bit as well. I have a sinking feeling that this was because I included the phrase "blood rituals" in the show title. The interview with Mac Tonnies and Paul Kimball was I think the genesis of Paul's idea for the New Frontiers Symposium, and for that I am most grateful.

It's A Done Deal

A few well-placed threats later, and I'm now on the speaker's schedule for the Roswell 60th anniversary hoe-down. I really wanted to go to this, if only for a sense of closure, since the last one I attended was 10 years ago. What a wacky weekend that was. It was the only time I was able to meet alien writing researcher Mario Pazzaglini in person, I cajoled Travis Walton into an impromptu phone interview, and best of all, my friends and I went to a rain-soaked dirt track race where we drank beer and smoked cigars.

The Raelians had a recruiting booth in the vendor's hall featuring hot babes in black leotards. Leah Ceto's New Friends Haley's husband sold me a copy of Trance Formation of America. The Roswell funeral home had one of their finest coffins on display for some reason, into which my friend Ralph Coon placed a few copies of his zine. I found a black t-shirt with Marshall Applewhite's head floating on a starry background and the words "FOLLOW ME" below it.

Hearing Whitley Strieber speak in the abandoned Roswell Army Airfield hangar was good too. I made a recording of that, which I should still have somewhere. Just as he took the podium, one of those wonderfully violent New Mexico summer thunderstorms kicked in, which seemed tailor-made for the occasion. Maybe old Whit made a deal with the aliens beforehand. Ear-splitting booms rattled the broken windows and rivers of water snaked along the floor. A lot of people stood on their chairs for fear of electrocution.

We also bought a LOT of fireworks and spent an hour or so in pyrotechnic bliss after the hangar talk.

I met Jim Moseley for the second time and took a picture of him partying with a couple of raver girls. He had a beer in one hand and was wearing a glow-in-the-dark tube around his head.

Does anyone know how to post audio files here? If I find the recording of Strieber I might put it up.

Was I Duped?

Now I find out that the idea of using breathable liquids I referred to in the Symposium post was used in the old Gerry (Thunderbirds) Anderson 1960s sci-fi series UFO (appropriately enough.) So the "military insider" who buzzed it to me may have been messing with me. On the other hand, the technology of oxygen-rich liquids has advanced quite a bit since the '60s, and as we all know, military tech is 10-20 years ahead of whatever is revealed publicly.

This concept was also used in The Abyss I believe, but I was told about the military use before the movie came out.

So I guess I'm still safe from ridicule, at least in this case.

Why do people lose interest?

As of 10PM Friday night, there are 63 downloads of part 1, and 36 of part 2 for the Richard Senate show. This pattern seems to repeat itself quite a bit. After listening to part 1, about half the listeners seem to have no interest in part 2. What am I supposed to do? Perhaps I should emulate Art Saint Bell and start mid-show breaks with a cliffhanger. Creeping commercialism rears its head.

Any suggestions?

Richard Senate the Ghost Hunter interview is up

Radio Misterioso interview with Richard Senate is now available for listening/ download.

This one was very enjoyable, since we not only discussed ghosts, but theories behind them, a little-known airship mystery from London in 1909, the Billiwack Monster, underground tunnels and a weird "ghost window" though which witnesses saw a century-old scene. Strange. And fascinating.

Funniest thing I've seen in months

In November of 2005, I was in Death Valley with a friend staying at the Furnace Creek Inn. We sat up 'til 2AM lying on our beds drinking vodka and cokes and channel surfing. We were stunned with laughter when this lit up the screen. It's a piece from The Animation Show, a collection of shorts produced by Mike Judge. The animator is Don Hertzfeldt, and I notice that half of the effect is the sound. It's anomalies research by cartoons! I want my 4-D glasses!

Using Your ipod As A Ouija Board

Yes! I use the blessed thing every day, why not every night? Unfortunately, I have a 3rd generation model without the alphabetic input feature, but perhaps I can use the songlist. These people got one possibly decent result, the name "Brad."

Via The Anomalist

Incidentally, tonight on Radio Misterioso, I will be interviewing Richard Senate, ghost hunter extraordinaire. Tune in from 8-10 PM PST or download here within the next couple of days.

Reading List

Here's a list of books that have most informed my opinions on the UFO subject and its connections to other paranormal phenomena, and warped me into the person I am today. Read these and we'll talk:

The New Inquisition by Robert Anton Wilson
The Rebirth of Pan by Jim Brandon
Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact Experience - Edited by Dennis Stillings
Messengers of Deception by Jacques Vallee
Angels and Aliens by Keith Thompson
Visionaries, Mystics, and Contactees by Salvador Freixedo
The Omega Project by Kenneth Ring
The Conscious Universe by Dean Radin
Flying Saucer Occupants by Coral Lorenzen
Mysterious America by Loren Coleman
People of the Web by Gregory Little
Saucers of the Illuminati by Jim Keith
Breakthrough by Whitley Strieber
The Humanoids - edited by Charles Bowen
Mind Trek by Joseph McMoneagle

What's an "Excluded Middle?"

...and why should I care?

If you look up "Excluded Middle" in Wikipedia, the definition is actually the exact opposite to the idea we had when we started the magazine of the same name. It stems from an Aristotilean premise that an idea must be either true or false--that there is no way that something can be both true and not true at the same time. This is an idea that I strongly disagree with when dealing with UFOs and other assorted anomalies. Somehow, this is a perfect reason to use it--turn a definition on it's head and use it against the inquisition.

In 1991, two friends of mine (Peter Stenshoel and Robert Larson) and I were at a party bemoaning the fact that we couldn't find any up-to-date info on the sort of Ufology/anomalies issues that excited us. We had weaned ourselves on Hynek, APRO, Keyhoe and the like, but then discovered researchers and thinkers like Jacques Vallee, Dennis Stillings, Robert Anton Wilson, Jim Brandon, John Keel, Jim Keith and Keith Thompson. Where were these voices in the contemporary literature, and why weren't the obvious connections between UFOs and the parnormal, "conspiracy theories," the psychedelic experience and western occultism and eastern thought being discussed? Being young and dumb, we thought we could change things, perhaps at least a little, by exposing some unpopular ideas to the world.

I don't know what changes happened to my partners over the course of the next decade, but the experience of producing "The Excluded Middle" as a magazine changed me forever. For the longest time, I didn't know what I was doing, but I find that that this is the method that produces some of the most interesting results in writing, music, and many other creative endeavours. Later, the magazine became a vehicle for discovery, and instead of merely informing others of our findings, the act of writing, editing, and running the zine became a second education. One of my partners later refused to talk to me for almost three years, and I had to find out the hard way that I needed to rethink the way that I interacted with my friends. The other part of my "second education" provided me with not only a platform for pontification, but more importantly an opportunity to speak personally with authors and thinkers who affected me deeply with their ideas.

The name came from an outstanding science fiction radio drama series that Peter wrote, acted in and produced entitled "Little City in Space." Look it up if you get a chance. Peter wrote a fake commercial directed at androids who wanted to become more human. "Discover the secrets of the excluded middle" was the tagline that ended the piece.

Perhaps the best way I can express how I feel about the term is with a quote from an alleged spaceman who showed Nebraska patrolman Herbert Schirmer around his ship in 1967 and left him with this piece of wisdom: "We want you to believe in us, but not too much."