(In REVERSE order...for the CONSTANT reader...)

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30

Alfred's Odd Observation #28  (Sunday ~~ December 15, 2002) [on the conclusion of "Taken"]

It's just not going to go away, is it?  Dread for some. Expectancy for others.  Anticipation for others, still?

The clear winter skies have begun to quicken (in the traditional sense).  Vague shapes flit in peripheral vision in the night sky. Silent glowing orbs traverse the skies on busy errands and at divergent speeds.  I sense a realized propensity.  An actualization of the idea that if something ~can~ happen (?), it ~will~ happen.

The expectancy ~I~ feel is real, the premonition ~I~ sense is valid, and my anticipation for a perceived cosmic denouement is genuine.  A secular kingdom is at hand, I'm feeling, and as real as any postulated divine one (... in fact the singular fountain of energy for that supposed divinity).  There is no dread, there is only change.  There is no fear.  There is only empowerment.

~We~ are that which we seek.  ~We~ are what we'll draw strength from in the future.  ~We~ (You, I) are key! 

I expected betrayal in the final episode of "Taken." ~~ some phony plot splice, or an intervention of some *God* to tie everything up in the usual warm 'n fuzzy ball, and was happily disappointed.  Struggle, loss and hope in equal parts is ~still~ better than happy Hollywood endings of hammered bovine fecal matter.

I kept thinking though, that there had to be some kind of *dovetail* back to hijacked mainstream sensibility so the watching audience wouldn't be left with the impression that their institutions of government and their agencies of law enforcement were a duplicitous concoction of dark agendas and arbitrary judgments ~completely~ disconnected and apart from that which they are supposed to have faithfully served... Institutions and agencies actually preying upon powerless (and largely innocent) individuals, disqualifying them, deriding them, and dismissing them.  But no.  I was happily disappointed there also.  Truth is better than fiction if you prefer a useful history and not a prevaricating fable.

You can't steer a cultural ship with a fable for very long.  With history, a cultural course is clear.

Oh sure... there were good guys in the legion of darkness (even the worst had 'moments') ~~ but notice that that only worked on an individual level.  The interests these fronted were still completely corrupted, I mean ~~ they tolerated people who blew up hamsters in microwaves to make a casual point!  Corruption is as corruption does.  Who is served?  Who is penalized?

I wept openly a few times at the conclusion of the film, gratified that so much of what I suspect about this "thing" that interests so many of us was even ~inconclusively~ validated.  That we would have value to conjectured extraterrestrials; that they could have value to us; that together we might be greater than the sum of our parts... that they ARE!  That individual responsibility was key to efficacious individual satisfaction and that all sentience (wherever it is found!) is united in a grand creation that strives so passionately to know itself, recapture what had been lost, and further work the efficacious gain...

Reinforced for me was my contention that we have (we ARE!) power we don't use, knowledge we can seek... happiness and fulfillment we can achieve.  I have full awareness that Spielberg's epic was just a play, a show, and a clever vehicle to sell *soap* that won't get any one of us *clean* ironically (I'm not a child), but I am also encouraged that the story could be told at all (the WAY it was told) and could so completely capture the optimism ~I~ sustain as a result of a personal investigation... into this "thing" that just ~is~.  Verily. [g] 

We'll get the answers we demand, articulate the questions we would seek, and solve the puzzles these present because it is our nature to challenge a "conventional wisdom" that plainly betrays us.  This search for better questions is beyond mere love of country, love of family, and love for self because it is the DISTILLATION of all those things... and more things beyond our present understanding.  Our will to understand is ~fueled~, and NOT fooled by that distillate.

Here at Alienviews is a guileless desire to achieve that synergy, a synergy that is required to break on through to the next level of human evolution we all sense approaching... uncorrupted by self~serving institutions, conflicted sociopaths and the misinformed unfortunates who support them.  We're poised to advantage ourselves in a ~new~ reality that invalidates the short~sighted concerns of that which has gone before... looking forward with informed confidence as we gain a new ~appreciation~ for an unvarnished history and new ~comprehension~ facilitated by an open minded and genuine science that actually goes where the data goes!  Heaven on Earth!  The kingdom at hand!

Having left the cribs of our self~imposed confinement at last, we ~will~ stumble and skin our knees on the grounds outside it, we ~will~ burn our hands on the cosmic stove... we ~will~ cut our fingers on knives of a greater reality outside that self~inflicted gulag we presently endure, and we assuredly ~will~ suffer updated shocks that that new flesh will be heir to...

 ...But we'll learn from our mistakes too, this time, ~~ remember our past accurately, this time, and so have a solid rudder with which to steer to a future star.  I can feel it.

"Taken" was the most significant thing on television in my memory, is my considered estimation, and I think it is the beginning of a new approach to our place in open ended time and space... in the new reality.  Sometimes art is the lie that tells the truth, sometimes fiction will reflect the actuality, sometimes what could be, ~is~.  My optimism is emboldened.

That's enough. I remain watching the skies.  Read on.

Alfred's Odd Observation #27  (Sunday ~~ December 8, 2002)

 Only the most prosaic of the non prosaic has been sighted ~~ which is not to say that *they* have returned in any force or at all.  To wit: All the observations since the last report (two actually) have been dim, of short duration, and unremarkable.  They only thing I can say is *something* is up there.  They are quiet, oddly moving, and strange ~~ but they are few, even if the drought ~has~ ended..

 Here on Earth, Spielberg's "Taken" has been running for five days, and taped the night before, I've watched it the next morning sans the evil Celebrex and cheese advertisements or other cognitive insults of commercial TV, to report as observation that it is certainly watch~able, classic Spielberg, and actually pretty astonishing.  It's also pretty unsettling.

 From the opening scene I've been gratified by how closely it stays within a factual ufological lexicon, despite the plot distortions it employs to be an exciting television program.  Something ~unusual~ seems to be trying to be communicated (NOT par for a conflicted mainstream) certainly considering the number of times it has been replayed in just the first five days, forgetting the virtual carpet bombing of it for Saturday and Sunday, but remembering that it ~is~ exposure from the mainstream, so suspect even if it IS intriguing...  *Everyone* is being given an opportunity to see this "thing" in a manner that just hasn't been done before.  What's up with that?

 Spielberg is also using a lot of (seriously employed) children to tell this story, too.  And he's doing that, I think, to reassure the audience regarding some kind of *truth* to this tale ~~ a *truth* (or set of *truths*) that he is ardently trying to communicate.  I mean, that's why an artist uses kids, isn't it?  Kids don't have guile.  Kids aren't easily duplicitous.  Kids aren't usually *talented* liars.  Kids can still be innocent simply because they haven't had the time and experience to become jaded yet...  ...What that old saw about the "child being father to the man" might mean...? Kids ~are~ innocence and truth or can be.

 What exactly IS being communicated, assuming (as many of us do) that this is not ~just~ an amusing yarn to distract the masses?  Too much (even arguable) fact is being employed, from foo fighters through alien abduction to implants, to do that.  If they just wanted a soap~selling yarn they could have any number of "Buffy the Vampire Slayers", and remember... *they* set this whole thing up with slick film documentaries painting the Roswell and Abduction ufological reportages as potentially factual!    Many of the people watching are plainly encouraged to take the whole saga as a dramatization of verity...  What are the *facts* communicated?

 Clearly, local and federal Governments are evil, out of control, and corrupted entities so impossibly beyond rational oversight that they have become enemies of the people they would be sworn to protect, Spielberg says. Black~box agencies, "ranches" and "shops" run disconcertingly amuck keeping secrets from the lay rank and file for inexplicable and arbitrary reasons and make no pretence about having any respect for the individual human being, we see.  Ironically, these egregious human agencies  perform abductions of their own and are ~nowhere~ near as concerned about bringing the abductees back as the aliens apparently are.  WE are what we fear!  Aliens are ancillary!

 Secondly, Human beings are more stridently psychopathic than the aliens or their clones and hybrids.  It's the obsessively passive~aggressive faithlessness and disloyalty of ~human~ beings that is at the root of the problem between humans and aliens or humans and other humans.  "You don't see THEM f~~king each other over for a percentage."

 Truly, consider our behavior as ~they~ see it, and wonder that it MUST be that we scare the hell out of 'em with our shortsighted and irrational, not to mention immature, behaviors.  Indeed, it could be argued that they show remarkable restraint and patience with us.  Aliens are old.  Older than the pyramids, by a long shot. We, on the other hand, are new.

 Third, Doctors readily abandon ethics and oaths "to do no harm" to do REAL harm facilitating the agendas of projects so horrific they'd make the evil Nazi doctor Mengele gag... (well, maybe not).  I'm sure some of the antagonists are lawyers, Politicos are in evidence, and perhaps some priests will be introduced later to the core psychopathic elite of harm~doers.  Human institutions are more corrupt than the individuals they prey upon, and closed institutions are the worst offenders.  Trust is impossible.

 Four, pervasive secrecy and convenient classification facilitates a culture of rampant sociopathy allowing craven psychopaths a full range of authoritarian autocracies to pursue arbitrary, illegal, and conspiratorial ends that too plainly benefit the few at the expense of the many.  Secrecy becomes its own justification and a culture around it evolves into the hands of those that transfer power along hereditary lines as it was done before the renaissance.  There is no review, revision, evolution, or reform possible within it.  Autocracy reigns supreme.

 What is being communicated to the reader by "Taken," not enumerated here.  Does the reader have anything to add?

 Transparently, endless characters in Spielberg's saga are great examples of my "Mothman futility syndrome,"  or the deliberate steps taken by a cowardly society to implode or destroy the individual human being who would have the effrontery to report their paranormal experiences to the rest of us.  Endless examples of persons who would prey upon them exist in the play also.

The person watching is left with the impression that there is going to be some kind of payoff as a result of disclosure with this event.  Like the event, itself, is a preface for disclosure, a little heat applied to the water so as to warm us up for some subsequent disclosure.  It is aired as science fiction to provide an escape hatch for the usual plausible deniability in the event of the suggested panic (Bollix that!  Let implode that which implodes! We'll all be better for it in the long run!), but the intimations of *fact* are strongly, even if teasingly, suggested. 

 Bad news won't get better with age, friends and fellow motes, and even if good news can wait, should it?

 That's enough.  I remain watching the skies.  Read on!

Alfred's Odd Observation #26  (Friday ~~ November 15, 2002)

 The skies remain empty since last report and though I find the absence inexplicable (where are even "skeptibunky dilettante extradinaire" Bobby Young's ubiquitous iridium satellites?!?), I've got bigger fish to fry this iteration.  With astonishment, I find I've been personally boycotted (in spirit if not in fact) over a charge of alleged support of anti~Semitism and hate~mongering, social bigotry of the most scurrilous type, and hate expression.  No one could be more surprised and disappointed than me.

 What precipitated this very repellently egregious turn of events?

 "AlienViews" ~~ the list, show, and virtual world has a (very much appreciated) tangential association with the Jeff Rense Web site and radio show.  Mr. Rense, a man who understands ~me~ to be an ardent booster for Jewish sensibility and who has published my pro~Jewish pieces many, many times, has himself been accused of anti~Semitism and hate mongering for what has appeared on his web~site with regards to those inarguably critical of that same sensibility.  These persons (these 'boycotters') succumb to the time worn and tiresome philosophy of "book judgment by the cover" and "guilt by the fallacy of inept association..." and could not have missed the broad side of a paranormal barn more plainly.

 Jeff Rense is NOT an anti~Semite, dammit!  Jeff Rense is NOT a homophobe.  Jeff Rense is NOT a right~wing conservative wacko.  Jeff Rense (a ~very~ bright guy) IS critical,  Jeff Rense DOES have an inordinate amount of courage and compassion, and Jeff Rense is a TRUE journalist who reports from both sides of the increasingly more turbulent and accelerating aisle. 

 No, he does not buy into everything he reports.  No, he does not grind an axe of personal agenda.  No, he is not a skinhead or an Aryan supremacist masquerading as a radio personality. 

 He is a reporter.  He reports the news not read anywhere else.  He pokes his camera or his microphone smack dab into the drooling maw of the real world and what he turns up is not often pretty or "G" rated but only gets that way by not seeing the light of day.  Jeff Rense, conversely (and a large part of the vituperation leveled at him), is more the light of day than its antithesis!

 Rense is a strange agent and impossible to categorize or package.  From another planet, frankly, his personal thoughts are out of the box and he's not easy to pin down or objectify into the usual categories of easy labeling and smarmy derision. He's a ~true~ American individual, concerned about what's more right, getting the light in the shadows, and exposing the pervasive hypocrisy.

 We have been acquainted for many years.

 So.

  I find these nebulous charges insultingly repellant, much too convenient, and without any critical foundation.  Jeff Rense has called me his friend, has given support to me unasked when it was needed, and has been my non~editing publisher. I don't function in this manner with anti~Semites or any OTHER bigoted functionary, regardless of their star power.  I resent the implication that I do.  That's enough.  Read on.

Alfred's Odd Observation #25  (Sunday ~~ November 5, 2002)

This is becoming bothersome. It's like a ufological "silent spring," out there for me. The inexplicable dearth of strangely moving objects in the night sky is that, unsettlingly, peculiar. Where do they go? Where DO they go?

Truly, they ARE conspicuous in their absence, and (as we can all extrapolate and I paraphrase!) evidence of absence (my own) is NOT absence of evidence (sic). Where ARE all the objects that the stridently pompous skeptibunky has said SHOULD be up there. The satellites, stations, and shuttles ~~ the birds, bolides and boosters... are not to be found at all considering the frequency with which I used to see *them*, and which the aforementioned skeptibunky always maintained they were...

Where do they go? If what I am seeing is the prosaic mundane, where does the "prosaic mundane" go?

They ARE out there, of course. To much about them has been written in stone, penned in ancient ink and pushed into old paint for them to be anything BUT real. Indeed, Jacques Vallee (among significant others) has written extensively and convincingly about them. Many years ago now, he even told us (~this~ writer anyway) what they are called. Fastwalkers. That's a word that just drips incongruity and high strangeness, isn't it?

"Fastwalker" is a term NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) invented to categorize objects that approach from space, enter our atmosphere, maneuver strangely about, and then leave the atmosphere again in a manner that is not consistent with the aforementioned boosters, birds, and bolides! It is a word also used to describe trans~lunar phenomena (tlp's): anomalous objects with the particularly peculiar flavor of *things* ufological... moving quickly across the face of the full moon and filmed through quality telescopes on Earth... or on shuttle flights...

The Air Force NORAD facility, it has been convincingly reported, observes these "fastwalkers" from its subterranean facility deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, and tracks a rough average of 500 of them (UFOs for the uninitiated) each YEAR as they enter the Earth's atmosphere from deep space, maneuver around, and then leave again. This is not a fiction. It corroborates a similar report from AeroJet General engineers Lee Graham and Ron Regehr, who have revealed to the well respected UFO researcher Don Ecker documents revealing that AeroJet's DSP satellite system, alone, routinely detects UFOs flying into Earth's atmosphere from deep space... up to two to three times per month.

But these ironically well cited stories can be dismissed as fatuous fluff from Philip's fabled foggy fringe of facile fools... until one stumbles, quite inadvertently (you understand), upon corroborating evidence from an unlikely source in an unlikely place and at an unlikely time. MY corroborating evidence was picked up like a winning lottery ticket found in the commode stall of a Baptist Church lavatory...

Here are the details.

As a function of my long military experience at Fort Rucker, Alabama, I have a few enjoyable privileges left that come as a result of it. One of these privileges is an invitation to the annual "October Fest" that the German aviation Officers put on every year (towards the end of September, oddly), for their American allies, et al. At this fest (gonzo party, actually) there is polka music, traditional German fare, and the best beer in the known universe imported unpasteurized (YUM!) from the genuine breweries of the fatherland… FREE! Life is indeed GOOD at these (by invitation only) Teutonic soirees... but I digress...

Towards the midpoint of the party my wife (a German) and I sat down at a table with a woman she knew from the Fort Rucker German club. The conversation got very lively, all the male participants were abundantly sloshed and feeling expansive while expressing themselves similarly with all guards ~well~ down… The females graciously indulged us that ~~ given how messy we are to both tolerate AND clean up after, subsequent to an abundant sloshing ... anyway...

One of the participants at this little ad hoc collection of retired and active duty aviation officers was a very senior Army lieutenant colonel who was just ~coming~ from a very interesting, on topic, and unusual military assignment. He was a senior Army liaison officer to the Air Force's facility at Cheyenne mountain, NORAD, mentioned earlier. I sobered up pretty fast.

"How about those fastwalkers," I asked him in a lull of his oration regarding NORAD.

The broad smile came off his face like I'd slapped him. UFOs ARE serious business, it seems.

"NORAD is not set up to see things like that," he said with a focused and too narrow tightness.

"Like... what exactly"? I asked with an evil grin.

"That's classified," he said frostily, all expansiveness in retreat and guards coming up like fists. The other guys and their wives noticed the frost and fell silent. What's the matter? Someone asked.

The good colonel just gave me an indication how weird things really are... without violating any security oaths, I thought to myself, but allowed, OUT loud, to the beleaguered colonel that I didn't mean to put him on the spot about security issues, just that I found the subject very interesting myself (and shouldn't everyone?). The conversation went (too gratefully) back to party talk, and the colonel ...and his wife were the first to leave.

Does anyone else see the veiled admission here? Does anyone else see the incongruity of the exchange between the colonel and I? Why the quick frost; why the terse (and blundering) reminder of top level classification; why WAS he so put off? Maybe if he told me he'd have to kill me, not as funny as it sounds ...and what's up with THAT?

Fastwalker... It's just a word, isn't it? That aforementioned fascination of facile fools mentioned earlier? Be that as it may, it was a word that one very slightly ambushed colonel knew and apparently knew, very well. It was also a word that held a lot of jaw clenching import for him ~~ forgetting that it was enough of a word for one stranger to be reflexively terse, tensed up and tight~mouthed with another. It was certainly enough of a word to inject ill will into the encounter ~~ when seconds prior good will flowed from fountains and a good time was being had by all! Perhaps it's more than just a word at the denouement. Nest ce' pas?

As regards the absence of my own observed fastwalkers? They've been absent for so long now that I could begin to wonder if I had ever seen them at all... but that I can review the previous twenty~four pieces in this series (you're presently reading) for evidence (and a personal record) of something indeed seen in starry skies all over North America, points north AND south, and overseas. But for this series I wouldn't (couldn't!) be so sure. They've been veritably squeegeed from the after~midnight sky THAT well of late.

So I did see something, my testimony is a matter of public record, and "fastwalker" IS a real word... indirectly, but convincingly confirmed by one of the *players*. UFOs are real.

That's enough. Read on!

Alfred's Odd Observation #24 (Tuesday ~~ September 23, 2002)
 
The skies have been empty since the last report, and it's been over a month. The change was sudden ~~ multiple sightings nightly of strangely moving luminous objects, for weeks, all over the United States (both coasts, anyway), ...to *nothing* overnight. There've been no satellites, no boosters, no shuttles or space stations? No top secret aircraft, stealth blimps, temperature inversions, or earth lights? No swamp wraiths, planetary alignments, gassy pelicans or sociopathic pranks?
 
Where did they go? Where DO they go?
 
I'm very conscientious about going out to sky~watch first thing every day as a long suffering wife can attest. If there was something out there to be seen I'd likely see it. My mother Twyla (she's moved in with me completely now) wonders that my eyes are going bad in that too effortless disintegration of advancing age, but that's unlikely (to date anyway). I can still pick out known stars of low magnitudes, detect the double star in the Great Bear, and other feats of visual acuity of that sort and in that vein. I have less light pollution at our current location and the skies are clearer.
 
It's like something has come along and sprayed for them. They are gone.
 
Where? Reports are that there's a "world UFO flap" in progress (if you read George Filer or visit the archives at UpDates <...where ebk is being accused, albeit unconvincingly, of covert activities and duplicitous behaviors by suspect characters... still, I had advance information on that weeks ago and discounted it as a result of its synchronicity with other... ah, more complicated events ~~ but it makes you go "hmmm…" though, in spite of yourself…. And who's to tell, now, GIVEN those events…>) but I see no evidence of that flap here around me.
 
Lately, based on news of the flap (apart from the mainstream press), I'll take the odd opportunity to bring it up publicly in polite conversation to gauge a reaction. Mostly it's feet shuffling glances away from me and pained embarrassment ~~ seemingly for moi. My take is that they only think that that embarrassment is for me… actually it is small solace, a reassuring device, or a mask for their own suspicion, self~loathing, and irrational fear. There's a quick and illogical segue to another subject, always ~~ toaster cozies or sports contests (the only intimation of truth allowed them and they don't even know it) and their invented equilibrium is established once more.
 
If I press? Agitation and Irritation. Questions are a challenge to the garden variety white~bread of contrived invention. The hijacked mainstream does its work too well. Folks don't want to entertain the possibility of having bought, heavily, into a steaming load of complete bullshit or ufological denial, and the level of their hostility goes sharply up in proportion to how right THEY think I am, I suspect.
 
Still ~~ something is going on, going down, going awry as we fret about *savings* that currently melt away to the busy ministrations of greater sociopaths than ourselves. Our kids diverge even further from our course than we did from our parents, just another curve in an exponential climb or descent. What's mashed down "here" just pops up "there" ~~ only meaner! Seemingly benign Hamburger stands take on the evil aspects of corporate monsters that pollute the environment, gerrymander the government, marginalize their employees with low respect and even lower pay, degrade food safety, and pervert the food supply while they bill the wounded taxpayer for the privilege (in the most egregious of disgusting ironies). Real people, otherwise sane and rational, report that they are abducted, periodically, by alien beings not of this Earth...
 
Tilt! TILT!
 
Something is going on, and we are being done the discourtesy of not being clued in about it. We are slaves to a tyranny of letters and professional politicians who would continue our path (as they would proscribe) in a busy process of skilled propaganda, deliberate misdirection, and unreasoning emotion... AKA: the nightly news, closed and so~called "unclosed" institutions (jurist, medical, and educational) and fervid emotional distractions of "the flag burning" or "semen staining" caliber. It's all a show, a production, a display, and a presentation to hide the truth! It is in no way real, except that we make it real, as individuals. Individually, we buy in! Enough buy in and a lie is the truth. Always, if history is ANY judge.
 
We could make other realities, good reader. This is just as sure as God makes his little green apples... but this has been some wild digression, eh?
 
I've just been back from North Cal a few weeks now, but the dearth of observed objects in the sky began there as I mentioned in the last report. I'd had one indistinct observation over the three weeks I was there packing up for my mother. The next night produced nothing. North Cal is where I'd traditionally had the BEST observations… but it's been the same, over the last six weeks, here in Alabama as it was in California. The skies are empty… I'm amazed that a terse dismissal from UFO UpDates could be so inclusive and encompassing. [g].
 
Not so regarding the affairs of fellow human beings ALSO interested in what's behind the fluttering Ozian curtain, thankfully! We've seventy~odd women and men interested in AlienViews so far, though that's not as valuable as the ONE interested (you, honored reader), but better than seventeen or seven, even if it's not as good as seven hundred, or seven thousand, or the anticipated seven million AlienViewers of an inevitable future (if we <you> but will it).
 
Seven million AlienViewers produce a lot of power to project an individual will. But which individual? Projecting which will? Easily answered!
 
All!
 
Yes, all! Each of us, the reader sees, can be in agreement on a *point*, certainly, and on that *point* our power is employed. Individual power, personally applied and actually changing reality! We're not going to agree on all points assuredly, but we may agree on ~some~ ~~ JUST as assuredly! Can we AlienViewers agree on full disclosure, forthcoming information, and a mainstream we can trust? We (the folk at AlienViews) think we CAN. There's power there folks.
 
Now seven, seventy, seven hundred, or seven thousand can employ that sliding scale of power and influence. Seven million can command the will of a nation! The fundamentalist corporate monsters Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have tapped into that power very handily, by way of READY example, to prosecute VERY suspicious agendas (given who they so shamelessly front for and shall not criticize) though these agendas are the source of ALL human misery, ignorance, and despair. We're very close to having Christian prayers in school as a projection of power by authoritarian individuals (by definition not AlienViewers!) that Falwell and Robertson, richly authoritarian (et al) can too easily tap! That's an OUTRAGE!
 
We can tap our own power! The internet (and EXPECT an eventual attempt to shut it down!) allows us ready access to alternate information that common people just didn't get their hands on before this DECADE. The informational kingdom is AT HAND, ladies and skeptibunkies! It is ours to reach out and take, collate, and employ as we will!
 
We have power we never knew we had in new cooperations (Like AlienViews oddly enough) that defy outdated paradigms (rewarding the few while they despoil and invalidate the many)... for what may WELL precipitate the next step in human evolution! Boldly step beyond the imposed limitations of our too privileged and autocratic "culture contrivers" and their eager lieutenants! Leave the crib of yesterday's dreams (which were never very real anyway and had the reader always hanging by a thread!) and embrace a larger reality, be more powerful and autonomous individuals!
 
All we need to do upon willfully stepping over the limitations of a non elected leadership is be careful around the stove in the cosmic kitchen and use caution in the knife drawers of those larger realities. Yeah, we're going to get burned... and yeah, we're going to cut ourselves. But seriously, those are hazards expected as one leaves the womb! Growing up is finally preferable, after all.
 
…And I'm convinced, provides the greater good. That's enough. Read on!
 

I've brought it on myself, undeniably, and perhaps I sometimes (too many times) elect myself to sound an alarm, but I like an occasional glimpse of myself in a mirror (Gotta do those nose hairs!), so keeping silent about obtuse non~equity is not a comfortable option for me... Moreover, on those occasions when I failed to blow the whistle, folks around me got needlessly hurt (on one level or another) or a substantive chunk would come out of my own rear... The wage of inaction is oftentimes more arduous than the painful wage of the whistle blown.
 
My whistle~blowing outlook served me well in military aviation (though it kept me at company level), where what one does pretty much has to *work*. Nothing has to *work* in civilian life... I've come to find; it just has to FIT, and that *fit* is trending back to one of rigid inflexibility, more and more, over time, for horrendous times ahead if we let it...
 
...Some irony there.
 
An alien view of the entire tedious situation forecasts only appreciation for an efficacious behavioral consistency, as a matter of definition. In other words, one might think that behavior that had achieved some celebration mere days before... becoming, suddenly, almost over night, "indecent and disappointing", would strain garden variety credulity a little bit. It strained mine.
 
I was stunned personally. There was no appeal, no discussion, and no debate. After six years of smooth sailing there was no explanation, no expression, and no introspection. My WEB site is ejected into null space for ten days of needless inactivity, and I, with no warning of any kind (in fact counter to other more seemingly reliable indications!) suddenly have the deadest of dead microphones.
 
Well ~~ Ok. I'm not Martha Stewart, I don't have to be "on". But I kind of got the immediate impression that it wasn't so much ME that was getting bumped from a ufological round table as you, good reader. All of a sudden, for the most arbitrary of arbitrary reasons... I don't get out to you the way I did before... The way that seemed as natural as breathing. It doesn't feel like a good thing. It doesn't feel like the right thing.
 
I don't know why I felt that way, really (though I have my suspicions), but I did. I felt I had a valid connection with you too easily severed as if by the petty and arbitrary pique of a wounded teen~ager. There are a few of you out there, reading, for all the admonitions regarding pretentiousness, warnings about unusual words, or the pointed questioning and potential shredding of your untested faith! It's all paint from the paint box, good reader. True enough, you've read this far... There is more to read.
 
Had the reader noticed, for instance, that for all the strident acknowledgment of the UFO phenomenon (multiple daily reminders in all media from a suspect mainstream), ZERO progression has been made regarding that key concern in over fifty years! I have! That's part of the problem. The ufological principals (from opponent CSICOPian to proponent "Two Percenter") don't like to discuss their part in the general cover~up and mainstream obfuscation as it pertains to that nondisclosure.
 
Well I DO like it. I suspect that most DO. Is that a good reason to lose our connection? I don't think so.
 
Additionally, treat UFOs as anything more than an entertainment or a moments fanciful digression and you risk (as a result of the 'Mothman Futility Syndrome') your livelihood, control, family and sanity ~~ plus the concern, consideration, and respect of those that proclaimed that they were your fellows. Is that rational? Look at, the all but forgotten, John Ford. Be a truth seeker only at your peril.
 
The reader can only imagine the quandary that that put THIS writer in at the end of that line of truth seeking scientists, teachers, and ministers. What ABOUT those nose hairs?
 
Step away from an accepted party~line and incur the wrath of the hard~liners. Suggest the existence of a hidden agenda they entertain and be summarily banished and whisper campaigned. Become the hated enemy as a result of rational disagreement. Think outside the accepted box to be shoved outside that box. Think on your own and be socially disowned.
 
Somethin' ain't right! The stress of NOT banging my literary gums about it is too much to bear. I have to report on it! Like any serious journalist/artist, I'm driven. ...Sounds a little pretentious? ...Not a whole lot I can do, or want to do, about it. The satisfactions found in producing this critical prose and poetic commentary are huge, with you or without you, forgetting for a moment that the joy that is shared is always increased. That's the nature of a conscientious expression. It's also an indication that I might be on the level.
 
The much appreciated constant reader understands that my behavior is constant and has remained constant over the past five years (anyway!) and would gleefully remain so, despite the discomfort of a few that find me cutting a little too close to the rational bone (?), but prosecuting rational convictions, generally soaring and cleaving to the maximum extent possible, and reporting it all back in as optimistic and respectful manner as I can... Would the reader have me do anything less?
 
All this, AND I would admit error when it's presented to me. It's a step up. Every opportunity to have more information should always be busily explored. ...Ever moving forward to where the data appears to lead... Though heaven falls.
 
Still ~~ I haven't had to back off a single major position I've taken, save one, in the last ten years. Show me new evidence. I LIVE to change. The future, as it has always been. Anything else is death. Death, reader!
 
What do I observe as a result of this (my/your) expulsion from a conflicted corner of Internet ufology?
 
That new ideas are not easily tolerated anywhere, even in a bastion of the newest of new ideas (that being we are not alone in even this little sector of backwater space), and we ought to stamp out that reflexive intolerance wherever it raises its pointy little head.
 
That officious authoritarianism is everywhere in a serious ufology and it is used as it always is anywhere else: to avoid rethinking positions, redoing work thought done, and upsetting a status quo comfortable only to its too comfortable facilitator.
 
That no good deed shall go unpunished, and that the good a man may do is usually interred with his bones but his evil is almost guaranteed to live on and on? Plenty of evidence exists in our community of both of those.
 
...That I'm not dead, so I must be stronger?
 
Finally ~~ that I am on to something important and consciousness changing (with some significant like~minded others) that I'll be able to bring back *alive*, provide some explanation for, or materialize in the so~called real world? The will is there and it costs nothing to watch.
 
Frankly? The only person I have left in this world to impress is myself, anyone with an Alien View, or any general entity visiting from off planet, so check in with the AlienView once in a while and see what's been explored, observations made, or stuff discovered. It's sure to curl hair, gratify a few and astonish the rest. The AlienView is real. That's enough, read on.

 

Alfred's Odd Observation #20  (Thursday ~~ June 20, 2002)

 What do you want from me, oh scurrilous and whiny CSICOPian? I ~see~ stuff. I say that with respect, also, to 'stuff' on more than one level. Every morning of decent visibility I go ~out~... will generally provide me with an opportunity to make the substantive report you read here. There have been many sightings since the last accounting in #19 which would have been seen by anyone with me (that is, anyone with the willingness to actually go out and ~look~. anyone one with the most minimal courage to ~see~ ... anyone desiring that reality LARGER than the one metered out to them from their stingy mainstream's homogenizing info~nipples).  

I saw weird stuff, again, this morning...

When a certain kind of guy has an inordinate amount of time with which to 'look', he ~will~ look, I think. I've been blessed (or cursed depending on outlook) with just that kind of 'inordinate' time, and I ~am~ that certain kind of guy I'll later (and ~most~ self~indulgently [g].) try to describe in this piece. It all adds up to a genuine desire to find out just "what the hell is  going on." This is a desire that more of us have than not, I believe, and I am in a position and have the time to have a really good look for it, try to digest what I'm seeing, and then report it to the contrarily involved, distracted and otherwise employed in a useful, periodic, and entertaining kind of way. No fiction here.

On reflection (?), just coming up on my first, more or less, dedicated 'decade' of looking for the 'ufological' and trying to develop some inclusive kind of knowledge base and general sensitivity for it, I find I'm still able to pay the continued price of its prosecution ~~ ~be~ that kind of guy I will describe... continue a ~protracted~ period of personal investigation, and provide a good report on my, continuing, wide~field exploration! This is forgetting that it doesn't have to mean a damned thing to you, respected reader. The heartfelt expression is going to be there, regardless. It's a record, and a truthful one at that. It'll get read someday. [g].

...And let me make a quick digression with regard to the reader wading through my "affected" writing style...

 It is done, simply, the way it is done out of respect for the language, and in extension, the reader. I'm not going to talk down to the reader, no, or poke teasingly at the reader's lowest common denominator! NO! Expect an intelligence, and many times ~get~ an intelligence. Expect Homer Simpson and get him ~every~ time.

I am going to use, arguably, the best word available, in my estimation, ~regardless~, laddies and skepti~lassies! They aren't words that will be used only one time, good reader, they will be used again and again, in all my pieces fore and aft, for good reason.

 They are words that open up new dimensions in time and space for the individual that goes to the trouble of finding out what they mean that ~first~ time... a simple cut and paste into "Google" on the internet for instant gratification (and an expansion to the interior of a reader's intellectual bubble)! Grasp closer to reach! Take a step up on a new definition and see farther than you did before! Finally, I write the best, most considered, and most respectful kind of language I am  capable of producing.

I can do ~no~ less in as much as you are reading it! I ~must~ respect that. Besides, different words put the reader's head in different places, and with the fact of that dwindling commodity (of diversity) evaporating rapidly in a contrived global homogenization of slothful mediocrity (as we speak), the reader needs all the difference she can get her sweaty little cognitive hands on, whether he knows it or not!

The kind of language I'm talking about (and trying to employ here) has an appreciation imbued by the user to treat the language as if it were a box of verbal paint. In it are aspirations to make every word a picture, every sentence a portrait, and every collection of sentences a virtual holograph. All things being equal I'd write in a language that begs to be revisited, like a song, or like classic words of yore. That's what I aspire to here, with no shame, no embarrassment, and no guile. I would be of respected service, as would any sociophile.

Words ~are~ paints and magics and tools and weapons! They travel in time, and are as eternal as they are made and preserved. They are teachers, leaders, and entertainers. They are efficiency. They are efficacy. They are immortality!

They are the very COIN and FABRIC of cultural memory! In as much as they paint better, more durable and longer lasting pictures, they are the ART of primary expression! Our culture will survive much, much longer than those of antiquity because (outside the threat of idea [and therefore book!] burning  CSICOPians, or the electricity stops working), the consolidation of it is going to be very hard to forget. Believe it!

What kind of person am ~I~? Why should the reader ~remotely~ care? I'm not suggesting that the reader should, really, but that I ~am~ in the process of telling her about some pretty 'twitchy' stuff, so I feel obligated to qualify my inquisitiveness, justify my conscientiousness, and predicate my truthfulness for her ~~ if I can. Someone's going to write this stuff, I've a premonition, and as I have the means, the desire, and the attitude to write it myself, I will. Read or not. It's ~almost~ the same to me. [g].

I'm the kind of person who ~will~ blow his own horn once in a while... because if we don't it's not too long before a ~funnel~ is made of it, and it loses its ability to even ~be~ a horn. Pretty soon, there is NOTHING around but "funnels" (the Bush/Ashcroft master plan?), too hesitant to contribute to the... efficaciously fertile sonic cacophony! That's part of the present problem, ladies and gentlebunkies! Give me the "Rebel Alliance" over the "Empire" anytime, if the reader will forgive the George Lucas reference.

Who would I aspire to be eventually? Consider the rapidly depressurizing airliner. All the yellow oxygen masks drop down in the emergency, and you put your neighbor's on him before you put your own on yourself. You've been admonished by the flight crew to put your own mask on ~first~ so you will be ~around~ to help a struggling fellow passenger. It's like that. I've got my mask on in the time allowed me, and I might be able to offer suggestions facilitating a better seal on yours... I would aspire to be around to serve, indeed, I've volunteered for service all my life, doing all sorts of jobs no one else wanted to do.

 That's over! I have a new cognitive sheriff in town.

I'm an artist. I'm not the only one who thinks so. I say that straight out and without pretension. An 'outsider' discovered by Dr. Faye Earnest of Enterprise State College (who produced a one man show of my decidedly award winning work), I represent the art community with no formal training in it. I push the materials or media around in ways that satisfy me, without regard to convention or tradition and so I am unhindered by the "conventional wisdom" of what "does" and "does not" work. Words are just another box of paint to me ~~ another art to reflect what is perceived as truth. I do what an artist does. I don't ~know~ any better.

I'm a whistle blower. This is a quality that I didn't realize I had until very recent reflection, years after the fact, demonstrated it to be true. In the military I would flirt with disloyalty to my superiors when they would operate in arbitrary manners that, knowingly and thoughtlessly, abused the troops. I blew the whistle on them. I was instrumental in getting more than a few of my superiors relieved. This cost me, generally, a career above the company level despite being awarded four times the recognition for meritorious service as the usual officer in my grade. I turned down my ~last~ promotion, awarded on the ~second~ consideration when it was discovered by the promotion board that my failure to get picked up 'first look' was a result of one of those 'superior' officers I ~should~ have helped torpedo (very justifiably... he lied, cheated , and stole... nearly killed a guy thoughtlessly in a field training exercise), to leave the Army at last after 23  years.

I'm paying a whistle blower's freight, still, with pride and satisfaction! I've been denied friends (such as ~they~ were), opportunities, and about a hundred thousand dollars in lost income to prosecute what, I have strong convictions, is rightness to a ~high~ degree!

Continuing on the thread of "whistle blowing," One can only imagine what my experience was like in my subsequent career as a Public School teacher... oil and water does not begin to provide an adequate metaphor, but upon coming from a military operation that had to work by definition, my sagacity was by no means appreciated in an operation that does NOT have to work, also by definition. I was treated generally (and from the beginning) as a pariah despite the fact that I was on my very best, appropriately subordinate, behavior. Though I could not ignore hypocrisy and malpractice without at least asking probative questions about it. Anything else makes my stomach hurt, and why should ~my~ stomach hurt when it's not my problem and a result of the unethical actions of others? Why should yours? The reader will just have to take my word for that, but it applies in the ufological arena as well.

I am a "Boy Scout", philosophically. I believe all the stuff I learned in school about honor, truthfulness, and fidelity, and I was nonplussed, to say the bleeding ~least~, upon discovering that that was, decidedly, nothing but an artful dodge, mostly, used by otherwise unrestricted psychopaths to secure unethical
advantage because, honored reader, they were not compelled by a society (they controlled) to follow the same rules that you and I are compelled to follow. Honor, truthfulness, and fidelity have earned sneers were there should have been citation, loss where there should have been efficacious gain, and rejection where there should have been ready acceptance. I would ram those easy sneers back up some of those sociopathic noses (or alternate avenues to where the sun doesn't shine) and ~will~, given the attention of an interested reader. Who are "they", the aforementioned psychopaths? Already asked and answered. Check the archives.

I'm a trained military observer (I used to teach observation techniques as a flight standardization officer in the Army) as I hope this series has demonstrated. I'm not given to taking apples for oranges, pelicans for costumed super heroes, or UFOs for thrown pie plates and satellites outside their forecast. I'm ~not~ a believer, but at the same time I am ~not~ a reflexive ~disbeliever~. I cannot accept; however, especially given even a clouded history of our own species, that we are the center of the universe, the crown of creation, or even the shining buckle on God's three corner HAT! I don't believe in gods made in the image of those who would have me do their unctuous bidding. Like George Santayana, I am an ATHEIST in that regard.

I'm a writer. I write nonfiction that takes what I would think is an enthusiastic and creative delight in the craft. I want to inspire a reader, enliven a reader, stimulate a reader. I would encourage a reader, revitalize a reader as I have been revitalized by reading, and, finally, I would challenge the reader as I have been challenged.

I am eyes with the TIME to look. Look ~with~ me! I am ears with the MOTIVATION to hear. It is there to listen to. I am voice with the OPPORTUNITY to speak. I'm speaking now. Like eating and breathing, I am compelled to produce these ufological reports and expressions because I sense in them (or more, in what provokes them) a 'truth' that will likely not be forthcoming from any other quarter. Call me self absorbed, I've earned it.

The aforementioned truth is detected between lines of cross purposed communication everywhere else, between the very stars I observe at night, and I suspect that it is a truth that is at the base of many other, subordinate, truths. Know this ~one~ truth to know many more. UFOs are real, by way of example, and I think everyone intrinsically knows that, even the most gravid CSICOPian skeptibunky at ~some~ dank level or in ~some~ dark recess or cavity.

I see stuff in the night sky, at any rate, that is not remotely addressed in the wan pontifications of those with a CSICOPian cant, and I shall not hesitate to point that out to same. Individuals of the aforementioned bent (individuals and collections of these individuals who continue to pound straw into their nineteenth century sensibilities, fifteenth century mores, and first century philosophies) can just bloody well get ~used~ to my earnest dissection of them as long as I am able to stab a key with an index finger. I ~enthusiastically~ encourage others to do the same!

It's only what I have been allowed the time to do. The lap~dog mainstream should have allowed a more consuming employment for me. I was just fine (and performed splendidly) as cannon fodder. ...Sorry that an employment of that same capability (in the interests of the rout and general destruction of CSICOPia?) scorches CSICOPian prairie oysters, but that's the way the saucer crashes! <Big Smile>

I just can't feel ~very~ sorry for him. He's the mainstream
himself and so has his reflexive support built right in.
Ironically lonely, he is never ~alone~, our intrepid CSICOPian...
Isn't that right, Mr. Novak? Isn't that correct, Mr. Thompson?
Buckle up... enjoy the dying thrashings of elitist Empire,
something better is ~sure~ to rise from the dust and ashes. [g].

That's enough. I remain watching the skies. Read on!

Alfred's Odd Observation #19  (Saturday ~~ June 15, 2002)

Monday the tenth saw multiple oddities in reasonably clear skies.  The following Tuesday morning recorded oddities that numbered in the double digits.  On the strength of the previous two days, Wednesday morning was an early expedition with a friend (and fellow former professional aviator) to a prime observation spot out of town where silent sky crawlers, solitary hovering flashers, and thought quick star streakers punctuated discussions on Type II Novas, evaporating black holes, the nature of conspiracy, and the unimaginable hugeness of everything else when compared to ~our~ tiny and near insignificant artifice.  By Thursday the experience began to become almost mundane as many objects were seen once again.  Friday evening, with brilliant planets in the sky behind peek~a~boo clouds, I was pointing them out to astonished dinner guests who admitted to me that they were indeed puzzling… "…but how about those Mets"!  Finally, There were two now unremarkable sightings of the bizarre this Saturday morning...  

Heavy sigh.

Additionally, the ufologically under~endowed continue to whine naggingly, insultingly, and incessantly their pompous projections, too proud prosecutions, and puling pontifications, inexorably... testing my endurance to confront them (and their shallow 19th Century philosophies, tired memes, and outdated world views) via this, now nineteen part, series.  Would that I could point them to just one place, one research point, one concerted effort of ufological balance and intelligence that meets these nastily noisome negativists on their own ground, counters their arguments with arguments based on superior citation, reasoning, and validity, and hoists the hijacked mainstream by its own scientific petard...

I've found it!  Additionally, I've found a new minor god for my personal pantheon, as well. [g].

As a result of frequently reading UFO UpDates at the very understated VSI site (www.virtuallystrange.net) and swinging by the SDI (Strange Days Indeed) page to get a spin up of what was going to be on Errol's show tonight, I was reintroduced to one of the more serious ufologists, a Mr. Jerry Cohen.

I'd seen the name, even visited his (older) site.  Ashamed, I just didn't get it, then.  I do now.

I'd always thought that Jerome Clark was the skeptibunky's most auspicious and able nightmare.  I discover that I have to move Mr. Clark, respectfully, to the second chair!  My review of Mr. Cohen's site suggests that he has a degree of investigative meticulousness so precise and complete it must have your garden variety debunker's voodoo beads flying through his terrified fingers like a slick mechanical snake (spewing its obligatory dark and steady stream of myopic oaths and self~absorbed prayers...) to put an impotent and artless whammy on him!  It's ~quite~ a site!

Mr.  Cohen confronts the CSICOPian directly and on the skeptibunkies home turf, exposing the fallacies of its reasoning, the emptiness of its proclamations, and the liberty it takes with the facts.  Additionally, Cohen gives the ranking CSICOPian adequate room on his site to rebuke his well supported contentions, though rebukes, debates or defenses are not provided in turn by the skeptibunky and are not forthcoming. 

Mr. Cohen has been around for a ~long~ time so one would think (especially given the effectiveness and competence of Mr. Cohen's assertions regarding CSICOPian interests) that there would be at least some reference to Mr. Cohen on the CSICOPian web site; however, a search for "Jerry Cohen" on CSICOP's web site turns up exactly bupkis ~~ no mention of him what~so~ever, rather predictably.  Indeed, Mr. Cohen appears especially OBVIOUS in his perfectly explicable absence….

Mr. Cohen's site is a hyper~text history of the ufological and is an excellent single source repository for detailed and balanced work so complete and detailed that one could spend absorbed ~days~ in it.  It is tabbed, indexed, collated, explained, and referenced so well that it will be difficult for the interested and openminded individual NOT to be well informed by the most fascinating and full featured approach to ufological history this writer has EVER seen. 

Errol Bruce~Knapp is to be commended once again for providing a solid platform for the competently expressed ufological, and a button goes up to Mr. Cohen's site from my own as soon as possible and with all deliberate speed.

That's enough.  I remain watching the skies.  Read ~on~! 

Alfred's Odd Observation #18  (Monday ~~ June 10, 2002)

…Like I said, ladies and gentlebunkies, just rock the freaking head back!  Visibility was about 80% of "as good as it gets" around here this Monday morning... wash the dirty buttermilk glass from #17 and you get an approximation of it.  There was a perceptible starfield all around which is a great aid in rate detection of these 'things' that go over, bumpless, in the night... hmmmm... 

Forgive a short digression...: the observer can easily use finger/fist/double~fist (1, 5, and 10 degrees respectively) to gauge the distances between stars in the view field and count seconds (one~thousand~two~thousand~three~thousand... etc.) as 'objects' race or creep across that measured distance.  As one continues to do this over a period of time one begins to appreciate the diverse rate of speeds that these 'things' display and the 'strange' component that this gives them.  It implies different orbital altitudes or objects moving at the same altitude at dissimilar speeds et al, stuff that lends quality to ones observations...

Three objects were observed this morning between 03:15 and 03:45 Central, flying nearly one right after the other. All were the same pale peach color.  All maintained a steady one degree every five seconds rate.  All were observable over about 45 degrees of arc along their different tracks.  The first flew north.  The second flew south.  The third flew a couple of degrees to the left of due east, and was the oddest of the three. 

The first two shared a magnitude of about zero (so, dimmer than Sirius) and maintained that bright component throughout their observation.  The third slowly increased its brilliance to as bright as Jupiter (as seen the night before) and then abruptly dimmed to about magnitude three, barely visible and requiring off center viewing to keep it in sight.

I checked with NASA via J~PASS for a forecast of traffic that 'should' be seen for the time period concerned (they make it ~so~ easy), and was not surprised to discover no record of it...

All in all a vindication of a growing suspicion that things are not as they appear, good friends and gentlebunkies... and it gets even weirder than that.  As the ufological 'field' gets even more obscured in our trying times, one can't even see what the players are doing on that "gridiron", ~forgetting~ a useless scorecard with names that jump from side to side as individual convenience suits them (and the non~admitted agendas that are being) met...

...But you know what really steams me, respected reader?  It's when these shape~shifting and self~admitted authoritarian sociopaths forget these "things that fly" to pursue self~involved personal agendas, marching the rest of us (in my HUMBLE estimation) ~back~ to the wishful thinking of some earlier time which has already demonstrated how well it ~does not~ work (or where have we really ~gotten~ ufologically since 1947?).

Discussion on the arguments, conscientious expressions of conscience, and perceptions and insights shared between rational individuals about the subject ~~ ~threatens~ these seeming psychopaths who use guile, innuendo, and fallacy to prosecute their less than transparent ends.  Ironically, it is these individuals who are first to desert their suspicious positions to pule the predictable protestation that they no longer have the "time" nor would they desire the "inclination" to continue the debate... so these will get their wish. 

I'll talk to them in mass (refer to them) and not individually as it was them that recused conveniently, them that turned their artless backs, and them that are apparently reluctant to discuss (or even support) their flawed, destructive, and convenient convictions.

I was greeted this morning with reactive evidence of this artless authoritarianism, and though I won't ~deign~  to identify the writer of this public message, I'll share it, and my response to it with the appreciated reader here because it's all grist to ufological mill regarding real reasons why, as a species, we can't look up into the sky to see what's there!

> Hello Alfred,
>
> You wrote:
>
> >Sightings are "down" friends and scabrous bunkies, not because
> >UFOs are going away, but because there are fewer people LOOKING
> >for them these days! Lately, people who might otherwise be
> >pondering the skies are, instead, only looking over worried
> >shoulders for 'enemies', real AND imagined. They have no TIME
> >for a puzzling enigma in the skies over their heads while
> >staring down the suggested barrel of a terrorist's gun! All
> >part of the master plan (uneasily?) dismissed by Jerry Clark?
>
> It's an amazing thing to watch someone take a leaping swan dive
> into the deep end of an empty cement pool. Oblivious to the fact
> that there is no water beneath to break the fall.

The writer is quick to proclaim awareness of where the "pool" is, what a "swan dive" looks like, if the pool even has a "shallow" end, and whether or not that pool is filled with "water."  Forgetting for a moment the limp attack on character that this string of empty cliches would convey, this is the same writer that indicated on the radio recently an ability to "he