Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Clearing up some misunderstandings in ufology (2013 edition)
The last version of this was posted in 2008. After five years, it's about time for an update. (Newer stuff at end.)
(I'm terribly sorry.)
Just to
clear up some small misunderstandings...
Ladies and
gentlemen, it is time that I make a full confession. It seems that everyone in
ufology has been sweating and fighting it out over some naughty things that
I've done, so I'm going to come clean in the hope that everyone will make nice
and be as One again. Here goes:
It was I
who, in 1947, paid Kenneth Arnold to step forward from his Cessna 359 and speak
of having seen flying dishes dancing across the skies above Mt. Rainier. It was
I who, a short time later, took my slingshot and knocked several Army Air Force
pilots out of the sky at 80,000 feet. It
was I who ran about Washington in 1952 with 10,000 Marijuana cigarettes in my
mouth, flashing bright flashlight beams into the night sky above the Capitol
and making people think they were experiencing the Ultimate Saucer Wave. I was
the one who co‑wrote Ruppelt's book with him, and later added the three
debunking chapters. I threw one million frisbees with Christmas lights on them
in Great Falls, Montana, and asked a man named Marietta (or was it Martinette?)
to take pretty pictures of them and send them to the Air Force. I voted for
Gabriel Green and ran his campaign for him. I am responsible for the Ubatuba
magnesium, it was pure but I forgot to cover it up when it rained. I
built the android you called "E. U. Condon" and programmed his
actions from Day One of the Colorado Project to Day Last, including his bogus
conclusions. I modified the infamous Lowe Memorandum to read "trick";
it was originally "truck." I thought I had convinced Carl Sagan to
change his mind and start endorsing Kraft Margarine, but instead he turned against
flying saucers. I re‑edited the O'Brien report, the Robertson Panel report, the
Scientific Study of UFO's, and a little tract called "Saucers are from
Satan" (now known as Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in
The Sky). I invented the term "orthoteny." I kidnapped the Hills
and drove them around Montreal in my Volvo, all the time poking them with
safety pins and reading "The Friendly Stars" to them. I am
Betty Andreasson. Furthermore, I am “Dan,” and made whoopee with Linda on the
beach while I was playing hookey from my day gig as chauffeur for the prime
minister of Canada. I picked up Travis Walton and threw him against a tree in
1975, while shining a bright spotlight in his left ear. I was the one who
provoked the evil Carrot Men in Pascagoula, Mississippi with a dead tunafish
and an old pair of socks. The term "alien abduction" was created
solely by me, and I want the damned royalties now. I originally sold nose
implants at blue light specials at K‑Marts throughout the country in 1979. I
created Billy Meier out of parts from chicken giblets, and made him a Saucer
Nut for Christ. I fathered both Bob Lazar and Phillip J. Klass; God forgive me.
I own the model company that puts out the S‑4 saucer model (so real that
several USAF jets are scrambled each time one is thrown into the air). I
invented the name "Hector Quintinalla" for a new Taco Bell product
back in 1965. I gave the name "Area 51" to my living room, and
"Hangar 18" to my bathroom; I have no idea how these names became
public knowledge. (Don’t even ask about “Dreamland.”) "Aurora"
is the name of my favourite kite, not a secret government plane. I am the one
who folded the paper aeroplane that Jimmy Carter reported as a UFO and later
denied. It was I who gave Von Daniken his ancient astronaut ideas during one of
his indigestion attacks back in 1974, and he recently opened a roller coaster
at his theme park in Switzerland, dedicated to me. I own Japan Airlines and all
UFO reports made by that organization. I piloted several black helicopters in
the hope of exposing the existence of white helicopters. I am the one who cored
out Snippy's rectum, for later personal use. I am the one who negotiated the
venerable Dr. J. Allen Hynek's (God rest his soul, he was a great man and
probably the only sane one amongst us) contract to appear in Close
Encounters of the Third Kind. It was I who crashed my car in Aztec, New
Mexico, and made up the saucer story to escape a breathalyzer test. I am
responsible for all anomalous falling frog reports. I created the radio
telescope and SETI so that I could get MTV for free. I am the illegitimate
great grandson of one Dr. Donald Menzel, and I believe. I am Dr. James Oberg's
lesbian lover, and I can tell you that he believes, too (ooh, does he ever!). I
wrote the book Flying Saucers? Maybe which was, of course, censored. I
flung dinner plates and vomit bags out in front of the windows of Gemini's VII
and XI so the astronauts wouldn't get bored. Commander X is my Uncle Robert.
"Roswell," for all you Randle/Randles fans, is the name of the person
who took my virginity. And finally, I am he who placed prairie squid in the
atmosphere of mighty Jupiter, and later instructed America Online to spread the
news that there was, indeed, life on that world so that you would all laugh and
not see the terrible truth that those squid are even now lounging about in the
great red spot.
Oh, I
forgot to mention a few things...
Doug and
Dave are my mother and father (respectively), and taught me how to make snow
angels at an early age, but then we got carried away. You should see the
frequent flier points I have from zipping around the world to make all the crop
formations! (I really ought to fix the exhaust on my Lear jet. It keeps leaving
all those Chemtrails up there.) I drove Bob Lazar in a blacked-out school bus
into my own garage where I had been hitting together two rocks with pitchblende
in them to make Element 115. It turns out it’s only Element 114½. Back in the
1960s, I played pool with Jackie Gleason and won; when he lost the bet I made
him agree to buy my collection of UFO books. I made the face on Mars; it’s
supposed to be a bust of my grandfather, but the last nuclear bomb I sent there
with my slingshot messed up his nose. (Sorry, Hoagie.) When anyone files a FOIA
request about UFOs, it gets put in a UPS truck and brought directly to me. I am
paper training a new puppy. Flying Saucers May or May Not be Real, but
Stanton Friedman definitely does not exist. My bunion ached so much several
years ago, I paid Leir to dig it out for me. The corkscrew accidentally I
stepped on when I was a kid looks different in the photos now, though. My name,
translated into Portuguese, is ‘Chupacapra.’ I just happen to like fresh goat’s
milk. We had such wild parties at Harvard, John Mack and I both came home with
the wrong underwear on several times. (It was the backwards earrings that were
harder to explain.) I bagged eight deer when I was illegally jacklamping in
Rendlesham Forest. Using parts I bought from Radio Shack, I made my own
transmitter just like Art Bell, jammed his radio show every night and ran it
myself, based entirely on things I found in the Weekly World News and on
Fark.com. I told him it wouldn’t work the second time, too. The character of
weird guy driving the carny truck in Steven Spielberg’s Taken is based
on me. His lawyers have already been contacted. I shorted out Michael Persinger’s
helmet and now he hallucinates that he’s explained all the UFO sightings. Yes,
it=s true that Stonehenge is actually a
huge vagina. The aliens made it as a reminder that Earthlings have, after all,
really been screwed by the Cosmic Federation. It’s only a matter of time before
someone figures out that the Pyramids are actually giant bustiers in honor of
Madonna. Every word of the Urantia Book is true. Anything written by Robert
Sheaffer is false. Rap music is the intergalactic standard of excellence in
spiritual enlightenment. The government is in fact using the HAARP program to
modify the world’s weather, to make real the phrase “when Hell freezes over...”
Maitreya is my uncle on my mother’s side. While you were standing outside
looking up at Hale-Bopp, I picked your pockets and took your credit cards. I
was the “deformed human” those girls saw at Varginha. I got a different
chiropractor and look much better now. The British royalty are not green, scaly
reptiles. They are Anglicans. I get headaches whenever Steven Greer tries to “vector
me in.” I wish he’d stop it, already; why can’t he just leave me and my blimps
alone? I deliberately hire incompetent photo lab technicians at Wal-Mart so
that there are fuzzy smudges on all the prints they develop; that’s why there
are “rods” even in photos of your cousin’s bar mitzvah. I like to test my
remote-control model airplane kits at Gulf Breeze. Joe Firmage quit his Silicon
Valley job because I told him money can’t buy happiness. He now just rents it.
In 1970, a few of us held a 12th birthday party for Michael Jackson in Dulce,
New Mexico. Hence: MJ 12. The invitations got mixed up with some other
documents and letters I sent out. (Hey, I thought his singing was cute back
then. Everybody now: “A B C, it’s easy as 1 2 3...”). Ryan Wood was definitely
not on my invitation list. I trained a team of ultralight pilots to fly over Belgium,
Ohio and Phoenix at night. I hired a goon named Luigi to break the kneecaps of
the people who have been hanging onto the original APRO files, and now have
them myself. Unfortunately for you, I’m not going to let you see them, either.
Donald Keyhoe believed everything I told him, especially when I was wearing a
four-star general costume that I rented for our lunches together. The alien
autopsy film is real, and explains once and for all why no one ever found the
body of Jimmy Hoffa. I used a large box of K’Nex to build a robot that does
nothing else but receive people’s emails and post them to UFO UpDates. I call
it “Errol Bruce-Knapp.” Aliens do not like strawberry ice cream. It makes them
break out in hives. I invited Joe Simonton into my trailer and cooked him my
special pancakes for breakfast one morning. He had never tasted tofu before.
Phil Corso really did see the bodies and saw the experimental time machine, but
I went back in time and moved everything again so his story doesn’t check out
anymore.
Oh, yeah, a
few more things…
I was smoking
my Meershaum pipe blowing smoke rings near Chicago’s O’Hare airport and made
the hole in the cloud that everyone saw and thought was caused by a UFO. I was
test-flying my new saucer-shaped toy helicopter (that I bought at a shopping
mall kiosk) over Stephenville, Texas, and it got away from me in a high wind.
The Condign Report concluded that UFOs were balls of plasma because of a typo; the study’s authors actually meant asthma because the UFO witnesses were
often hyperventilating. The Pope really does think that aliens are on other
planets in the galaxy; at least that’s what he told me while having lunch with
me last week. He should know; you know that tall hat he wears? It’s actually
the shape of his alien cranium because he’s from the planet Zandar. Antonio
Villas-Boas really did have sex with an alien. She was my fifth ex-wife, and
let me tell you, the things she could do with those extra tentacles…
NASA is
right; there is water on Mars—of a sort. I let my dog out for a tinkle when we
stopped there on my way to Jupiter a few weeks ago. It was me who looked in
Stan Romanek’s window. I really am 16 feet tall and am a bit pale because I
don’t get out in the Sun much. I coached Bill Nye the Science Guy on what to
say before he went on Larry King Live on CNN. How was I to know he was actually
going to listen to me? Penn and Teller are both aliens, of course. (And don’t
get me started about that Nick Pope character—those Brits are all reptilians,
if you ask me.) Dennis Kucinich really saw a UFO and knows the truth about
alien visitation. The aliens knew he’d never get the nomination, anyway. The
Bigfoot in the freezer in Georgia that turned out to be a rubber gorilla suit
is a Bigfoot after all. They just get a bit rubbery in texture if they get
freezer burn. I was responsible for every one of the saucer sightings that made
Paul Kimball’s list of the Top Ten UFO cases. I’ll be more careful from now on.
Steven Spielberg almost had it right in his mostly factual Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. The skulls are busts of me
that a 3rd-year fine arts student made as part of her college
portfolio. Edgar Mitchell has inside knowledge that aliens exist and that NASA
knows all about it. How else do you think we have the technology today to get
the Caramilk inside the Caramilk Bar? The video of the alien spaceship over
Haiti isn’t a fake. I cloned the palm trees to look like they were identical.
Zecharia Sitchin is right; the Bible is wrong. And the baby cloned by the
Raelians is a copy of me.
Speaking of
babies, the tiny mummy that Greer hypes in his Sirius movie is what Cabbage
Patch Kids look like after they decompose a bit in a garbage dump. I miss it. When
Grant Cameron meditates on consciousness and has out-of-the-body experiences, I
pop into his body and go bowling. He can’t figure out why his arms are so sore
after sitting still when he wakes up. When I was in Jerusalem a few years ago I
hovered too long in my personal helicopter and everyone and their dog took a
video of me over the Dome of the Rock. All the MUFON UFO reports do go to
Bigelow, but they first go through me, and I snip out all the juicy parts. I
personally pay Kevin Randle’s Dream Team to shut up about Roswell. Enough,
already. The loud “booms” head across North America recently are Phil Klass
rolling over in his grave. Robert Bigelow is my first cousin twice removed on
my father’s side. That we had to remove him at all is a bit embarrassing, and I
won’t tell you the story. Comet ISON is a stray football that Peyton Manning
threw during practice a while ago. That guy’s got a really good arm, but lousy
aim. Paul Hellyer is a robot. A Canadian robot, mind you; that’s why he says
things that sound like he’s on crack. The meteor that exploded over Russia last
year was a drone I was shipping to troops in Afghanistan. I miscalculated its
trajectory.
Finally, I
should point out that not everything you see is an illusion. It only looks that
way.
Thank you
for this opportunity to clear a few things up.
My
sincerest apologies for any misunderstandings that have transpired from this.
You may now stop reading UFO newsgroups and listservs, and surfing to
sensational websites, forever, including Reddit and Rense.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
On a clear night, you can see Lakshmi Planum
(Okay, it's an astronomy joke.)
Anyway, tonight as I was driving home, I noticed that Venus was absolutely brilliant, low in the southwest sky. It was really clear out, and the air seemed quite still, which meant perfect observing weather.
It also means perfect UFO reporting weather. I bet myself that I would get reports of a UFO tonight.
On an impulse, as soon as I got home, I got out my tripod and camera and set it up facing southwest, pointing right at Venus. I shot 10 seconds of video, then zoomed in and shot 10 more seconds. Then I took the camera off the tripod and shot ten seconds of hand-held video. All three were taken around 5:30 pm CT, on November 26, 2013, at Winnipeg, Manitoba. Canada.
I went inside and uploaded all three videos to Youtube. Links are here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekcJ5b2FJog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLACugvHO8g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpRSt0ZNtfI
It took about an hour to get a UFO report.
My phone rang at about 6:30 pm. It was a guy who said he had been given my number as a place to report UFOs.
He said he and a friend had been watching a bright light in the sky for about an hour. We talked for a few minutes, and I encouraged him to send me an email to formally file the report.
From the report:
This is to report an strange light in the sky seen in the SW part of Winnipeg. As reported to you on the phone the light was hovering quite high in the sky and as i write it remains there. This has been over an hour since the first sighting and from what I could see it looked like more than one object that would intermittently move apart or, to the naked eye, get larger and then smaller. As well we could see blue lights as well as the white light emanating from the object[s]. Just wondering what it could be.
I told him that Venus was low in the southwest, and had asked him if the UFO he was watching was low in the southwest, too. He said no, it was actually high in the sky.
He added this part about 15 minutes later:
Just went out to look again and it is now much lower in the sky and more westerly than before. Initially when seen by my friend who is a professor at the UofM he reported that it was much higher in the sky and also very very bright.
So here's the ufologist's dilemma: Venus was definitely in the sky and brilliant, just begging to be reported as a UFO. If that's not what the two witnesses were seeing, what was their UFO? A star chart shows that Altair was bright and high in the southwest too. Would they have mistaken a star for a UFO?
The big tipoff for me is the duration of the sighting. Anything approaching an hour is definitely a star or planet, regardless of how much it appears to move around and change size.
Labels: Venus astronomy UFO IFO video planet ufology investigation report 2013
Saturday, November 02, 2013
Saucers and SF at C4 Comic Con
So C4 is, like, about 40,000 people and about half of them are dressed in costume. I saw several Doc Ock (males and females) and even a young girl dressed like Buzz Lightyear. There were zombies and ghouls galore, lots of Adventure Time characters and awesome displays of creatures and artefacts made by fans of Bioshock, Halo and both Trek and Star Wars.
And two floors of huckster booths, where vast amounts of money were exchanging hands. And not just a few dollars here and there. It was not unusual for collectors to be plunking down three figures for sought-after items, hour after hour.
So I was at the Manitoba Writers Guild table on the second floor, next to a makeup artist doing zombie stuff and not far from someone with a working 3D printer making toys. I was sitting with Melinda Friesen, a children and young adult writer whose blog on writing is an excellent reference (vastimaginations.wordpress.com).
Melinda was dressed as Wonder Woman, and told me that she was a bit creeped out by some guy on the bus she rode to get to C4. He had told her he loved her, apparently.
I was dressed as the dead Astronaut Clooney from Gravity. I was stopped about a dozen times by fans with cameras. Not sure if I'll ever see those. I know that tedsaliphoto.ca took a shot of me so I'll pop that in here if I find it. Ted was dressed as Jamie from Mythbusters, shaved head and all. Awesome.
[Found a photo of me by Carolyn Gray of the Guild:
We were giving out brochures about the Manitoba Writers Guild (www.mbwriter.mb.ca) and talking with aspiring writers about their passion for putting pen to paper. Or, I suppose, electrons to screen. We were selling the Guild's new "Writers Blocks" as a fundraiser. (Only $5 from the Guild office otherwise.) I was also trying to interest people in my book about Manitoba UFOs and paranormal phenomena.
My big scores this time round:
my new edition Marvin mug
And Donna bought me a real gem from comic dealer Mike Hoppensack, of Thosedamcomics, who had a prominent display on the third floor.
I didn't know that this even existed. It's a special issue EC comic from 1954, titled: "E.C. Challenges the U.S. Air Force with this illustrated, factual Flying Saucer Report." (Volume 1, No. 26, December 1954)
In effect, Weird Science Fantasy took a departure from its usual issues featuring SF by Ray Bradbury and Otto Binder (and Adam Link stories) to feature visual adaptations of actual USAF flying saucer case files. The comic included the Mantell case, La Paz, BOAC and other famous cases, ridiculing the Air Force at every turn for denying that flying saucers are real. "What about THIS, is THIS just Venus?"
After many pages of text-heavy panels detailing report after report, the special issue concludes with a remarkable challenge to the Air Force, asking a series of thoughtful questions about flying saucers, many of which have not been answered today.
I leave my readers to answer these questions, if desired.
