Word Press won't let me upload images!

This is a great magazine cover which I have referenced at another blog.

This Made Me Laugh So Much I Cried

I want this t-shirt, and the others on this site.

I Have A New Blog

It seems getting this blog off the ground somehow created a bump in the multiverse of causality and something we'd been kicking back and forth with a legitimate company for over a year finally came to fruition.

I don't know if this means that this blog will be defunct. Perhaps some sort of symbiosis can be run between the two, where I post things here that aren't allowed on the commercial site for reasons of taste, controversy, or politics. Already, I have something over there in edit mode that I'm not sure that I want to post. I will never refer to this site at the other one, so this can be our secret.

I am joined in this undertaking by Nick Redfern, a writer whom I share many of the same opinions about the UFO subject.

Seeya over at ufomystic.

The Fortean Name Game

Fortean researchers, most notably Loren Coleman, have written about the frequency of certain surnames in association with strange phenomena.

While reading an account of the travels of the remains of Snippy the Horse, the name game is irresistible. Snippy, if you don't know, was the first victim of livestock mutilation ascribed to UFO aliens, way back in 1967.

In the early 1970s, Snippy's bones were on display in the chamber of commerce at Alamosa, Colorado (the community where she was found.) When the city fathers wanted to throw the remains out, a man named Herman Doty was interested in the bones as the basis of a museum that never happened. As most of you know, RICHARD Doty was the AFOSI agent who ran a UFO disinfo operation against Paul Bennewitz in the early 1980s, as described in my book Project Beta. I wonder if there is any family relationship?

In the 1980s, Snippy passed into the hands of one Carl Heflin, described as a "local collector." As most of you also know, a fine fellow named REX Heflin snapped a series of pictures of a strange, disc-shaped craft in Santa Ana, California on August 3rd, 1965. Both Heflins have passed away in the last couple of years.

Perhaps if my surname was Doty or Heflin, I might have had more luck sighting UFOs, or at least led an even more interesting life up to now.

UFO Sightings of the 19th Century

Just as we suspected.

It's hard to know if any of these are true, or possibly true, or partly true. It does demonstrate that Americans were at least thinking of weird things flying through the skies long before 1947, or 1895, for that matter. It's also nice that someone besides a UFO researcher took the time to look into it.

Perhaps thinking about (or newspaper men making up) the flying things caused them to appear. Perhaps something was in the air that needed people to bring them into sharper focus in our reality. You know the drill.

Bill Moore on Radio Misterioso Again

If we are lucky, reclusive and retired UFO researcher Bill Moore will be joining me again on Radio Misterioso (www.killradio.org) from 8-10 PM this Sunday (12/10/06.) So far I don't have an agenda for the show, but what I am hoping is that readers of this blog will tell others and we will get a lot of call-ins to ask questions I haven't even thought of. The queries don't even have to be about Ufology, since Bill knows a about lot more than just saucers. Maybe you have read of (or heard of?) his book about the origins of the Mormon church.

Just trying to put some things on the table here. Please tune in.

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."

New Frontiers Symposium Diary - The Day After

Allowed to sleep until after noon, I did. When I rolled over and looked at the clock, it was 1:15PM. Still on west coast time, I guess. Lobby assembly time was 1:30. Will and Lisa Wise and Nick were already lounging about when I arrived. We had to call Mac's room to get him out the door.

Off to "The Triangle" for breakfast with the entire crew (except Stan and Rob Z. who were leaving or occupied or something.) Breakfast was at about 2:00PM, which is of course when all civilized people should be having their first meal of the day. The only request I had from home for a Canadian souvenir was a package of maple fudge. This would prove to be a quest of sorts. You would think that this would be easy in the fall in Canada, but not so. They have it for sale in the airport, but that's just too easy.

Mac ordered steamed mussels and the bowl was brought to the table with another bowl turned upside down on top. Perfect UFO! I took a picture which can be seen on my flickr page . Brunch took about two hours, what with all the hijinks and conversation. Paul had to go do some work, so Will and his wife, Nick, Mac and I took a stroll to the Citadel, an old British fort that dominates the skyline of Halifax. See pics of this adventure as well on the Flickr page.

We stopped in a friendly coffee shop for more talk before meeting up with Paul. There was a creative graffiti scrawled on the wall outside the door. I had no idea what it meant, but Nick made a face and I snapped his pic at just the right time. It looked like he was doing his level best to manifest a thoughtform, and came up with the image over his head.

Reunited with our host, we tramped upstairs to the inner sanctum of Paul's film company, Redstar Films. A few minutes of show and tell, and the group retired to a watering hole around the block known as "Maxwell's Plum." Paul ran upstairs to the men's room and snapped a picture of Mac in the urinal (when is he going to post that one?) Later, I tired to get him to take one of Nick washing his head in the sink, but he chickened. Again, everyone who was anyone was there, which meant Stan and Rob Z. were not. :) We were joined by Katie Martin, our new friend and big supporter of the cause. Veronica Reynolds showed up and just had to get pictures with all the speakers. See Paul's blog for photos.

Game #4 of the NLCS was on, and I stole glances at the bar TV once in awhile to see if we could possibly keep another New York team from making it to the World Series. The Cards lost that night, but went on to win the whole thing. Katie was the only one besides me who seemed to care. Props (what the hell are "props"?) to her!

Soon, it was 1AM (early still!) and we all went outside for the obligatory group shots. I spied a likely place for breakfast on the walk back to the hotel. When I went in in the morning, they had some good stuff, but no Canadian bacon! What's up with that? Maple fudge mission was accomplished before Paul arrived to take the Wises and myself to the airport.

If there is even half the fun to be had at next year's symposium, I'll gladly ride in the wheel-well of the plane on the way over. The people who attended this first New Frontiers Symposium probably don't know how lucky they were to see what a "UFO conference" can be. The speakers may have disagreed on some points, but they were all smart enough to realize that being "right" does not mean much in the UFO arena. Agreeing to disagree is in my opinion one of the hallmarks of an intelligent and civilized person, and we have far too few of them nowadays. Not once did I hear a poisoned aside or whispered note of avarice, which seems to be the norm at other conferences. Smackdowns can be fun, but we're trying to solve a mystery, not find out who has the biggest balls. Big egos encase small minds in a sub-zero state of suspended animation.

Big thanks are due to Paul Kimball, the speakers, and everyone who attended. Hope to see you all next year!

2006 New Frontiers Symposium Diary - The Conference

Nick Redfern, Will Wise and Will's totally cool wife Lisa were already in the lobby at 8:30 when I stumbled down for our ride to St. Mary's University. Paul chauffeued us in his leather-upholstered transport. The skies were threatening, with a hint of the deluge to come.

The gloomy weather, added to the fact that Nova Scotia was a British colony more recently than the U.S. probably made Nick feel right at home. St. Mary's looks like it was transported block by rough-hewn block from the motherland.

Stan Friedman, an old hand at this, was already set up with his table of wares. He worked the passing crowd like the pro he is. He even tried to put the finger on the other speakers to buy some of his books, pamphlets, and reprints. I regret that Paul Kimball has decided to retreat to the normal convention-in-the-hotel format for next year. The lecture hall at St. Mary's makes things look official, whether you're in the audience or up front at the microphone.


Batting leadoff was Will. As instigator and proprietor of the Project Blue Book Archive (http://www.bluebookarchive.org), he and his staff have painstakingly scanned and posted about 38,000 pages of Blue Book reports from microfilm. Will said that there are approximately 60,000 to go, and the site will eventually have them all available for free. Words cannot describe the monumental nature of this project, or the incalculable value it will be for future research. Everyone seems to be interested only in new UFO cases and the classics (Roswell, Thomas Mantell, Rendlesham, etc.) but some of the best research is turning out to be new looks at old events languishing in the files of the government and civilian organizations. The recent re-assessment of the Rex Heflin photos is one example of using new info and massaging old data to come to new conclusions.

Introductions of the speakers were done by Paul's friend, beautiful actress Veronica Reynolds. She talked up Nick Redfern, who began his spiel a little after 10AM. I suspect Nick is not asked to speak on his cryptozoological adventures very much, and he relished the chance to tell us about his hunt for the Chupacabras, Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, and some lesser-known beasties like giant devil-dogs and my personal favorite, the MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM! It might have been the first time many in the lecture hall had heard about this strange creature, which the natives say hides in the sand dunes and stuns its victims with a bolt of electric death from seven feet away. It sounds like some sort of joke, or the plot of a great cheapo sci-fi movie, but who knows? Perhaps certain Mongolian tribes are having a good laugh behind our backs, but Nick takes it all in stride, and concluded that the cryptids he studies may not exist in our reality all the time, which would of course make them hard to pin down. On this point, as in many others, Nick and I are on the same wavelength.


What is the "post-human future?" Mac Tonnies (yes, that's his real name--I demanded to see his I.D.) took the podium at 11:15 to tell us. In a few years, we should be able to upload our entire mind and personality into some as-yet unimagined hardware and essentially become immortal, as long as the software can be transferred about (or, since we were in Canada, "aboot.") Given the nature of the internet, this may not be a problem. Mac suggested that this might be a good way to explore the universe, broadcasting ourselves around the stars, or sending hardware up containing our data rather than our bodies. Cameras, robot arms, and the craft itself would temporarily house the "person." Actually, the being, or whatever it was wouldn't have to limit itself to the confines of a spaceship; it would be omnipresent in infospace. Later, I asked Mac how consciousness could arise out of a mass of data. His reply was brilliant: "How does it arise out of a bunch of meat?" Exactly. This might also be a fruitful area for speculation with regards to the UFO subject. Mac says the mainstream trans-human and post-human movement likes his ideas, but recoils in horror at his UFO musings. Iconoclasts show the way where others fear to tread. He's a new friend for sure.

I was cornered by a few college students after my talk and we spoke about contactees, alien writing, psychedelic drugs, and psychic phenomena, as well as avant-garde art. These moments are the ones I remember for a long time. Who knows, we may see one of them speaking at the conference within a few years.

Under threatening skies, Paul and Victoria shuttled us to lunch at "Freeman's of New York," apparently some temple of "New York cuisine." I had a couple of slices of pizza, which although not anything like I've had in NYC proper, was good. I noticed that Stan ordered the reuben.

A quick trip back to St. Mary's, and according to the lineup card, I got to bat cleanup. At his blog (http://redstarfilms.blogspot.com/) Paul suggested that I had done this talk many times before, but it was only the second occasion I have had to speak on this interest that predates my "evil government" investigations. It was actually the first for this particular talk, wherein I compared the 1950s Contactees to an unrecognized and unorganized art movement. Using the surrealists as a touchstone, I argued that the Contactees were creating in the same spirit, even though many of them were simply trying to keep their stars on the rise by concocting new stories to keep their flocks interested. I also carefully suggested that some of them may have had some sort of contact with extra-
human intelligence, at least in the beginning.

The Master of Ceremonies followed me with a look at his project to find the best objective evidence for UFOs as a real phenomenon. Of course I think they are, although Paul and I may slightly disagree on their origin and how to look at them. What Paul is concerned with is convincing the scientific establishment and the skeptical segment of the public that some UFOs are not imaginary or a byproduct of misidentifications of natural or man-made objects. His "best cases" concentrate on multiple witnesses (separated geographically and who don't know each other) and other evidence, such as radar tracking. To his credit, he is attempting one of the toughest jobs in the field. He is out for the big fish, while many are content with the daily catch, and he spiced up the proceedings with pantomimes and other antics.



Stan the Man Friedman stood out from the rest of the speakers with his slide presentation (everyone else used powerpoint or jpegs.) He's been at this for almost 40 years and his ease on the stage, and professor-like delivery made me feel like I was in class. I'd be thankful to be in a class with Stan's first slide--a color picture of Betty and Barney Hill and their dachsund. I asked Mac the game show trivia question: "What was the Hill's dog's name?" (Answer somewhere else in this post.) What was refreshing about Stan's talk was that there was not a blacked-out document in sight. Paul convinced him to speak on his work with nuclear rockets and the physics of space travel. What he proved, at least to the layman, was that the reported movements and accelerations of UFOs do not violate any physical laws, and the beings who supposedly operate them would have no trouble withstanding the forces involved. Years ago, someone told me about an experimental craft in which the pilot breathed some oxygen-rich liquid that surrounded him. The idea was that the liquid and the pilot's body moved together and shielded him from crushing g-forces. Interesting, if unproven.

A ride through the after-dark downpour took us to something that looked like a converted mansion, but is in fact the Henry House restaurant. I really wasn't hungry, so I had gingerbread smothered in caramel sauce and candied pistachios, washed down with a couple of shots of single malt scotch. It was so damned civilized. Before we left, I discovered that I had the drinking munchies, and Veronica begged Lisa Wise's fries (or "chips" since we were in a Brit restaurant) and we made quick work of them. I talked with "Uncle" Don Ledger about Bill Moore's 1989 MUFON speech. He thinks he has a connection to locate a video of that dramatic event. We weren't that late getting back to the hall.

Space historian Robert Zimmerman was the last and keynote speaker at 7PM. What a relief to hear about actual space exploration at a supposed "UFO conference." Zimmerman has authored a comprehensive encyclopedia of the history of space travel. What is surprising for us in the west is that not only Russia but also China have had active space programs for years. Zimmerman concentrated on the Soviet program and described in detail things most of us have never known, such as the story of 2 cosmonauts that nearly died in space. They had no training in spacewalks, but had to do it with one suit that had a hole in it. They fixed it with a section of aluminum tubing, silk thread, and--you guessed it--DUCT TAPE! The infuriating and frustrating part of Zimmerman's story is that NASA invited representatives from the former Soviet Union to the U.S. to see our operations and ignored their advice, even with almost 30 years of experience behind them. This has apparently changed somewhat as a new generation moves into the ranks.

One of the bugaboos of any convention is the Q&A session, when everyone who has paid good money to hear the speakers sometimes has to listen to another attendee give a speech rather than ask a question. This is not only annoying to the speakers and organizer, but rude to others in line for the "Q" of the Q and A. We had one of those. He wasn't so bad, but I challenged him when he got off the subject. I like doing that. He was polite enough to realize what was going on, and I usually ask this type to talk to me after the presentation so that others can step up to the mic and ask questions.

During the questions, we found some minor disagreements among the speakers, (all seated up front for this) such as who was willing to accept the phenomemon of remote viewing. Paul said that he had seen no evidence that it worked. This depends on what sort of evidence you look at and what you accept, which in this field tends to be quite individualized. To his credit, he said he would look into it further, or at least reserve judgment. Having experienced it myself and interviewed some of the Army RV people from Stargate/ Grillflame etc. programs of the 1970s and '80s, I have a different perspective. I suppose I'm a "believer." That's a limiting and stupid term for what people go through to come to conclusions. Perhaps an "accepter" might be better. I don't know. Believers need no proof.

The conference adjourned at about 9:30PM.

Everyone met at the hotel bar for a wind-down round and we all talked until a little after midnight. I changed into my Marshall Applewhite t-shirt, which was a hit. I was hungry again, but just about everything nearby was closed and I passed out after everyone else in the hotel was already asleep. I could tell becuase I couldn't hear the elevators any more. The Hill's dachsund was named "Delsey."

2006 New Frontiers Symposium Diary - Arrival Day

Since everyone and his brother have been posting blogs for the last decade, I am dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Actually, it's just laziness, so don't expect daily posts!

Here's a diary of last weekend, when I was in Canada for the 2nd time in a year, and the 2nd time in my life.

The reason for this was that I was invited to speak at the 2006 New Frontiers Symposium. If we're not caught in some sort of post-apocalyptic nightmare in the next year, the organizers have assured the public that there will be more. It was one of the best conferences I've ever had the pleasure to contribute to and experience. The speakers all gave talks that were zero B.S., information rich, and thought provoking. The next one will be even better, I wager. I'll be at the 50th one too. The super secret, life-prolonging miracle drugs should be out of the hands of the ruling elite by the time I need them.

Arrival was on the evening of Friday the 13th (thanks to Paul Kimball, the host) but fortunately, I am not a superstitious person. Air Canada seems to be no-frills, no problems. No complaints. The point is to get there, right? Also, what terrorist in his right mind would want to blow up a plane from CANADA, fercrissake? Very bad P.R.

Wandering around the Halifax airport, I met up with my good friend Nick Redfern, (another speaker that weekend) oufitted in his usual habillement: black leather jacket, jeans and Converse high-tops--the standard uniform of his heroes, the Ramones. Paul showed up moments later and drove us into town.

Waiting in the lobby of our opulent hotel was legendary Ufologist Stanton Friedman. He introduced me to his wife and then promptly forgot my name. Gesturing at me, he was smooth: "What are they calling you these days?" Replying with "Your Lordship" would not have been polite, but it would have been damned funny. Have to use that next time. I'm not a UFO bigwig, and I don't know if I want to be one. Maybe just enough to sell books and get invited to conferences to see friends and spurt my weird ideas. I forgave Stan, though. He knows me by name, but not by sight.

Paul had an interview with the "X-Zone" radio show scheduled in a couple of hours, but he lost the key to his office sometime earlier in the day. We went over to the house and he found it in his girlfriend's purse. The last meal I had was a roast beef and brie sandwich at the Montreal airport--strange, but not unpleasant, and Paul handed me a few Canadian dollars to get myself a pizza slice from across the street. When I returned to the office, I had to stifle the desire to shout rude corrections and obscenities in the background during the balance of his phone interview.

Tomorrow: Day 2.