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

 

 

Alfred's Odd Observations Series

 

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 #30  (Saturday ~~ March 15, 2003) 

They've started back in earnest, just this week! Predictably, their astonishing activities ape, even less, the attributes of the birds, bolides, and the conjectured rocket boosters cheerily proposed by pompous pelicanists and their smirking parent CSICOPians!  Yea and verily alien viewers (and other dog sister/brothers lurking)! 

...Rock your head back, truly, and look out (not up)!  They ~are~ there!  Verily!

...Objects of a type that remain unidentified as they fly... past, present, and future, they festoon the sky!  There's precious little hyperbole in that folks, just to let you know that I know the difference...

This series of "Odd Observation" articles (...forgetting 207 Alien Views, 386 Odd Odes, and around a hundred published articles of poetic commentary and critical prose of the last decade...) has tried to demonstrate with an unashamed sincerity, just that. 

This demonstration aspires to be largely unaffected  by the smirks and ridicule of the suspect, patently clueless, and thoroughly corrupted mainstream... (...despite its exclusion and prohibition!  In the face of its persecutions and discriminations!!  Without regard to its omissions, outright lies, and fatuous fabrications...)!!!

Moreover, I remain unconvinced, unmoved, and unmotivated by its too busy histrionics regarding "duty", "honor", and "sacrifice."  That only works when everyone is making the same sacrifice, respecting the same honor, and performing the similar duty.   Presently, we are, assuredly, not doing any of that...  I digress.

On to the latest sighting! 

When an individual spends a regular amount of time outside looking at the night sky it begins to assume a steady kind of predictability.  The same immutable stars (forgetting that some of these could have already ~exploded~ and we wouldn't know it for thousands of years...) ratchet forward about a degree every night, and the constant viewer assumes a certain comfort in this slow clockwise progression of the starfield to a patiently waiting west... 

To wit, when something *new* appears in this clockwork firmament, it is readily detected...

Upon a chance looking at the zenith directly over my head I noticed two unmoving (but hugely unfamiliar!) *stars* about the magnitude of Sirius (the brightest star in the sky) and about half a degree apart.  They were lined up North to South in an unmoving line.  I knew, immediately, that they were... something.

They stayed that way for approximately 30 seconds.  Abruptly and simultaneously the southernmost star began to dim slowly as the northernmost began to travel directly towards it!  It crossed over the south star's exact location (which flashed brightly as it was passed!), moved an additional three or four degrees, and then stopped again for about twenty seconds!  Turning 30 degrees easterly (!), it traveled another four degrees, and then it stopped once more for a similar length of time! 

My neck began to hurt.

...Again it began to move after a similar direction change and slowly traveled another four degrees!  It stopped abruptly (like all the other stoppages [or starts!] with no apparent acceleration) where it preceded to dim out slowly like its initial companion star... which had dimmed out to invisibility, already.  Both *stars* were now gone.  The starfield had remained bright and clear throughout this observation.  I would love to have had some night vision devises for this sighting, but I did not.  I put my chin down on my chest to rest aching neck muscles and thought about what I had just seen...

A very peculiar bird?  No.  A strangely acting meteor?  No.  A new kind of plane?  No.  It was an object in the skies over my head, and it remains, compellingly, non~identified.  The reader, at this point, can do the math...  To a grand total of aerodynamic capability, add a little apparent physicality, take the 'n' root of aggregate strangeness and exponentially factor a resultant enigmatic *condensation*... 

A UFO!  Math is a path...

 Has everyone heard of Fermi's Paradox?  It's a "we're alone in the universe" justification invented by Dr, Fermi based on the observation, and I paraphrase, that if *they* were there, at all, we would *know* it.  We don't know it.  Ergo...

What a clever close looped way (an excuse) to ~not~ think.  We would "know it" indeed.  Arrogance like that would be laughable but it's so tragic!

 Forgetting all the obvious canted holes, blithe illogics, and homo~centric assumptions of the preceding, the rubric is held up as a sacred shield by the fearful skepti~bunky ~~ a justification for continuing his chauvinistic, close-horizoned , and color de-saturated world view.  Verily!  Yea and verily!

 Additionally, other  half-baked proclamations indicate further "mainstream" assertions to support a "we're alone" hypothesis.  These point to an observation that any intelligence capable of invasion would have invaded us already; we have not been invaded.   Ergo... (...like a snake eating its tail, isn't it?).

 Again the same blithe assumptions, canted interpretations, and disintegrating logics, but a pattern emerges, good reader! A model is created ~~ a safe (but cowardly, reactionary, and digressive) ~mold~ is formed!  Such is the hurdle presented to us by the planned mediocrity of ardent sociopaths in jealously coveted *command* of our hijacked culture!

Additionally, here's another loss~leader *shield* that the garden variety skepti~bunky holds prevaricatingly aloft (the smart ones anyway, the ones practicing a more clever form of corrosive and back~stepping denial?).  They agree (!), almost to a man (few female skeptibunkies, not so oddly), that there must be ~some~ kind of intelligent life out there in the cosmos (...somewhere!), but they irrationally shove that intelligent life so far off into a universe (multi~verse!) of time and space it is guaranteed ~not~ to intrude on their coveted considerations of themselves as shining jewels in the crown of their God's (favored!) creation!  

Likely ~nothing~ could be further from the truth.  These slaves to *conventional wisdom* won't perceive that our overestimation of ourselves is most often ~punished~ and that our underestimation of ourselves is very often rewarded...  but I digress, again.

Consider Fermi's, "If they were here, we'd know it," and the additional baseless rubric "an intelligence capable of invasion would have already invaded."  Compare these with the skepti~bunky's parallel assertion that "of ~course~ intelligent life must exist out there... somewhere"!  Does the reader see the disconnect or dichotomy in these assertions made from a single and very debatable cognitive ethic? 

Forget for a moment that *they* really ~have~ *invaded* and that *we* really ~do~ know it! The historical record on film, in ink, and carved into stone, the massive anecdotal and considerable physical evidence (thousands of trace cases!), and finally, convincing evidence of a ~personal~ nature (if one has it... I do)... ...provides all the conviction one ~needs~ to believe that this is so!  Even if they ~weren't~ here and invading (which they ~are~, the data are very compelling), would it not make more sense to conduct ourselves with ~something~ of a sociological "out" that they ~were~ here (Everyone ~agrees~ they're out there somewhere; why ~not~ here)?

Of course it would.

The answer to why we do ~not~ is found in our lack of general criticism of corrupt social institutions,  a reactionary non~elected leadership with a tolerated nature that is ~decidedly~ sociopathic, and our own shameful desire to, individually, take the most traveled path to the then ~despairing~ ends of our too~short and largely miserable (in the aggregate!) little lives... heavy freaking sigh! 

What ~cowards~ we are as a summative species!  What ~craven~ non~bravery we display so collectively!  What ~profound~ ignorance we cultivate, together, so covetously!  And all of it while the universe yawns before us like the inescapable future (that it ~is~!) and towards which we shall ~continue~ to accelerate... regardless!  Can't you feel a hum from the tracks?  Train's a comin', boys and girls!

AlienViewGroup eschews our cowardly behavior!  AlienViewGroup ~detests~ our lack of bravery as a species!   AlienViewGroup is revolted by the planned and easy ignorance of our individuals and their complacent dependence on spurious conventional wisdoms that betray them, discount their individuality, and erode their quality of life! 

On the other hand, AlienViewGroup ~anticipates~ the acceleration to the inexorable future!  It ~welcomes~ the disclosures of the larger reality and it is ~optimistic~ about that reality as an intellectual multiplier (useful for every individual capable of making the inevitable transition to the  next quantum jump in perceivable reality)! We'd soar and cleave, fellow motes!  Soar with us! 

AlienViewGroup would rip the scales from our collective eyes like the Neo character in "Matrix".  We'd opt for the *reality* pill.  The contributing reader could be along for that ride.  A ride requiring belts, I add, and an eventual toll (more on ~that~ later)!

Omar Kyam wrote... "...the moving finger writes and have writ, moves on.  Nor your piety or wit can call back a single line to alter, nor all your tears wash a word of it."  Cogent advice from a master, a dead shoulder upon which we are still able to stand.  It's ~your~ finger does the writing, actually.  Last digression...

 We provide the shoulders on which those that come after us will stand.  Do we owe them more than intellectual suicide, cognitive dissonance, and mental masturbation?  Do we owe them a solid place to stand... a firm place to build?

 Of course we do... all those things and more.  They are ~us~ after all.  They are ~you~.

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

 

 
 

Alfred's Odd Observation #29 (Saturday ~~ January 4, 2003)

 Discord, Disharmony, and insentient Dispute... And just ~now~ when everything was busting loose! 

 Facilitated by the most dazzling piece of visual enhancement technology this old aviator has ever hung on his hairy face, I was treated, just ~this~ morning to a detailed array of otherworldly fluctuating lights and glowing orbs!  These observations included ~searing~ instant zippers and slowly crumbling flashing dimmers! Thoughtfully slow, ponderous movers of varying magnitude were brilliantly represented! Exploding stationary "bloomers" dimmed abruptly and then began to transition left or right several degrees and then blink out like failing light bulbs!  "Camera flashers" flitted like fireflies within specific fist~sized regions of the enhanced sky!  Verily!

 No magic is involved; one will not see what is ~not~ there.  Only the light that's (remotely!) available, magnified millions of times... is made accessible to the otherwise inadequate human eyeball.  Even without the strange stuff otherwise cluttering it, it is a stellar show without visual parallel! The starry, starry skies through military TYPE II NVG's are the BOMB!

 It is a show that is not easily explainable.  Most living in and around towns and cities can go out at night and see dozens of bright stars ~~ perhaps even make out a few constellations with their unaided eyes.  Others, blessed with less light pollution in rural areas, can see HUNDREDS of stars, all the constellations and a hint of the milky way.  Those fortunate enough to have access to cold dry desert air can see with their naked eyes a stirring star~show of THOUSANDS of stars that quickens imaginations as it quickens and inspires the courageous heart...

 But slip on a pair of TYPE~II aviator night~vision goggles and leapfrog, blithely, over ~millions~ of stars to see ~Billions~... <gasp!> of individual stars and feel like one who sees the sky as a god must... with clarity, totality, and entirety!

 I got my mother (75) out in the back to look through them and she was ~completely~ astonished and overwhelmed with their visual impact, snatching them from my fingers so she could take possession, however fleetingly, of what amounts to a *real* superpower of enhanced visual capability and capacity.  A similar power transferred to the "physical" would have the individual swinging buses around her head ~~ transferred to the "ear" is to hear a butterfly's wings in an adjacent State hundreds of miles away... it is an awesome power ~~ an intellectual force multiplier!  Truly ~~ anyone who looks through these vision enhancing devices is reminded, forever, of what is REALLY up there...  Time and Space and Dimensions non~conceived...

 EMPTY of the non prosaic, and merely composed of previously undetected ~emerald galaxies~ and billions of ~spilled green diamonds~ (of divergent size and intensity on a dark green felt background), it QUALIFIES the very IDEA of the non~prosaic and QUANTIFIES the excuses one can have for it!  *They* ~are~ real, there ~are~ people across the *river*, and there ~are~ fewer reasons (one should even be ~able~ to grasp) that we would be ~isolated~ in our corner of the universe, much less *alone* in it... and that's the rub...

 "AlienViews," outside the general membership, is a small collection of earnest individuals who have known each other for several years, has watched each member in the collection grow and resolve over a period of time, and are individuals who have learned, with some pain, the value of rational toleration and its utility in creating an ~efficacious~ synergy.  We are about ~cooperation~, we are about ~synthesis~, we are about ~teamwork~ of contributing individuals ~~ we are about "inclusion."  With only the most ~minimal~ amount of divergence from that pointed imperative, that is all we have EVER demonstrated!  I welcome any challenge that would dispute that!  ANY challenge!

 Spin~offs from AlienViews are inevitable and are in the end appreciated!  We (even ~if~ reluctantly) ~welcome~ the divergence of these break~aways because if a friendly communication can still be made, extended, or maintained... it only widens the experiential base of our TOTAL effort ~~ an effort to understand what precipitated all these groups in the first place!

 When Alien Experiences (AE) split off from AlienViews we were depressed and disappointed that our effort was somewhat diluted, but we wished the owner well, the best of luck, and have private correspondence that supports that claim and contention (Virge is a classically trained librarian, remember, and a churlish confabulator is going to be very surprised at our ability to produce their duplicitous communications with all the attendant headings and subheadings if the points are pressed ~~ very surprised!). 

 Our collegiate support was made evident when I submitted without guile or hidden agenda for membership to AE and was excepted.  I got a very conciliatory note from the owner of AE [with all headings and subheadings] inviting me to join his new list. I was subsequently and abruptly dropped from his list [without cause and for arbitrary reasons]. He'd indicated in a subsequent posting that a mistake had been made and that I was to be made ~welcome~ at AE... Turns out?  It was just a talentless sociopath's sneering snowjob and not so artful DODGE! 

 Additionally, he ~moderated~ me on his allegedly un~moderated list while I was on it.  This was a hell of a note when I was personally invited to join the group in the first place! 

 Lately the owner of AE is canvassing select persons in the ufological community to inexplicably discredit ~us~ and make HIMSELF out as an injured party subject to ~OUR~ attacks and infidelities, accusing us of acts, attributes, and affectations that only he, himself, is guilty of...  I ask, stridently outright and unashamed, where's the BEEF?  Where is the proof of the scurrilous assertions and contrived accusations!  Where is the evidence that supports these contemptuous claims?

 Is the owner of AE (a now ~demonstrated~ confabulator who has petulantly and mindlessly defended ~other~ demonstrated confabulators) so insecure and addled a psychopath that he must create enemies where there ~were~ NONE, produce friction and turmoil where it was in ABSENCE, be in fact that ill wind that blows no good for purposes not his own?  Apparently so!  More's the pity.

 Well, surprise!  I ~forgive~ him for his personal transgressions and shine~ons, his distortions and misrepresentations, his casual and thoughtlessly busy attempts to sling mud on our combined characters and cloud our sincere sensibilities.  I ~forgive~ him his cloyingly emotive and preposterous falsifications.  I ~forgive~ him his inexplicable campaign of trying to destroy ~our~ passionate, serious, and singular effort! 

 I remind the members of his pathetic, splintered, and unfocused little *anti~endeavor* that we will STILL be here when he tires of his little "game" and deserts his membership, or is found out by his membership to be the churlish little sociopath that he handily paints ~himself~ to be, and they, understandably, abandon him.  We will weather his torpid little teapot turbulence because we ~are~ serious and steadfast.  We ~are~ honest, honorable, and honoring.  We ~are~ concerned, authentic, and passionate about our subject.  We ~are~, in short, all the positive things that he demonstrates that he is ~not~.  His "heavy heart" is a falsehood.  His angst, torment, and anguish are a self~aggrandizing fabrication.  His mawkish manipulation of his trusting membership is the real tragedy, a counterpoint to real progress, and a personal affront and betrayal to me.  I forgive him, still.  There are bigger fish to fry!

 Listen!

 The sky's alive at this moment, honored reader, with the objects of our intense interest, and is in no way effected by the inexplicable actions of even the most talented of intelligent sociopaths (which the owner of AE assuredly is ~not~).  The skies are crawling with life not admitted by the hijacked mainstream or the garden variety bush~league detractor.  I've seen UFOs with my own eyes, continue to see them, and have access to equipment that allows me to see them better still.  Given the time I have to look for them and the equipment I have available for use, the respected reader would see them, too! 

 Sorry, as there are folks on both lists... some things just needed to be ~plainly~ said...  I apologize for any wounded feelings or hurt sensibilities... 

 That's enough!  For AlienViews, I ~continue~ to watch the quickening skies. Read on!
 

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!
 

  Alfred's Odd Observation #23 (Saturday ~~ August 24, 2002 )
 
I've had some exciting observations since the last report. Some real puzzlers in the Southeast United States (converging and then diverging multiples, rate and direction changers, and super~slow movers creeping furtively along about one degree every ten seconds...), but nothing at my current location close to the west coast (I've traveled out to CA to get my mom; she's going to come back to Alabama to live with me) ~~ save one wispy 'indistinct' a few days ago. It's been nearly a week of clear moonless mornings, so far, virtually bereft of even the prosaic non~prosaic...
 
There ARE the usual good skies here in northern California to marvel at, despite some fires in the area, but the distinct absence of wandering stars is noted and they are auspiciously obvious with their absence. I've ALWAYS seen copious amounts of them out here. Where did they go? Another question, of many questions, with no answer readily forthcoming.
 
This iteration of the observation series, fortuitously then [g], can concern itself with observations on another matter entirely: my change of venue as it pertains to an ongoing theme and a continuing saga of the hard but honorable road of illusive truth and harsh consequences. Though my eyes are drawn to the sky, still (every morning), for a glimpse of the presumed larger reality I would convey back to you, I must confide that I find myself remarkably unaffected by the aforementioned *change*, disappointingly inexplicable as it was.
 
Briefly (?): valued individuals I'd thought respected peers (if not rare friends) made a pointed indication (from ambush) that that was not so and ejected me from their offended presence in unqualified irritation but with extreme prejudice. The charges as leveled included getting "in too deep" where it was not desired that I go, "rewriting history", and a tersely undefined "indecency". These are laughable charges.
 
I would have more properly described my unflaggingly consistent behavior as the continued support of a valued friend, telling it like (I perceive) it WAS, and turning over restless rocks in PUBLIC that were being busily undermined in PRIVATE. But that's the theme, it's what I do, I've discovered to my horror and chagrin over the last few months, when I put two and two together...
 
I am, and have always been, pretty much, a whistle~blower. I've tried to keep it real, and I know what the value of loyalty is (the first whistle blown is to the individual concerned, always, no ambushing), but I can't help bumping my gums if I feel something untoward is going down, be it individual or institutional. I'm at the end of a long line of scientists, teachers and Protestant ministers and when stuff ain't right, somebody ought'a SAY something about it! Lately, that little *character flaw* has gotten me removed from YOUR presence, even if that IS a good thing. [g].

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 #22 (Friday ~~ July 12, 2002)
 
Stationary periodic flashers of some brilliance.

Thought quick fast~walkers.

Slowly moving "foraging insect in and amongst the stellar
shrubbery" types.

A couple of 'due westers'... These are a few of the sky
observations I've had since the last report.

...And one startling observation here on Earth... a friend of
mine (a friend WELL within the realm of transparent innocence) is
being stalked, bugged, and otherwise harassed by agents of the
United States government, though that's not what I want to talk
about (...see A'sOO #368 for details on, by report, documented
men in black).

I just want to hang that out there (used later) to illustrate the
point of my contention regarding one Dr. Joe Nickells, a ranking
CSICOPian, and what he expressed a few weeks ago on SDI (Strange
Days Indeed) about ufologists "wasting their lives" in the
pursuit of a paranormal ephemera. He couldn't be more WRONG. He
couldn't be more wrong MINDED. He couldn't be more wrongly
MOTIVATED.

He couldn't be more wrong because he is the complete ANTITHESIS
of what he would otherwise give every indication that he must be,
and that is an educated man "going where the data leads." He is
not. Friedman, Hall, Clark, and Cohen, forgetting Rudiak and Van
Gemert give abundant argument that he (and the rest of his
imagination~less clan) is not, WHY he is not, and HOW he is not.

He is wrong because he says he does "science" but will do NO
science which requires him to rethink his shaky position (he has
to be right EVERY SINGLE TIME where I have to be right only
ONCE). He is loath to redo work ineffectively done (his
ufological research is canted, reactionary, and demonstrably
bogus). He is steadfast only in giving up on a wrong conviction
(UFOs are ~too~ real!). He is wrong because his philosophical
predilection is to a too rigid conservatism based on too many
steps laterally and too many steps BACK and a too conservative
(some would argue cowardly) reluctance to take a step forward. He
is wrong in spirit, he is wrong in letter, and he is wrong in
principal. Moreover, he IS the corrupted mainstream, and so a
ready symbol of all the wrong~ness that that implies.

Dr. Nickells is wrong~MINDED for similar reasons. His, too well,
entrenched position is soaked in the mire of intellectual rot and
the national decay of our traditional reflex authoritarianism.
He typifies the self aggrandizing conceit of the lettered with
broad proclamations as bereft of support but in lettered
vapidness as they are of consistent logic. He is repelled by
the open~minded authoritative and too forgiving of the gaffs of
his CSICOPian brethren. I'd suspect a Limbaugh republican bent
to his social politics, too ~~ "no love" masquerading as "tough
love" and "no research" masquerading as "concerned
investigation". He is thoughtless denial masquerading as
thoughtful apperception...

Finally, Dr. Nickells is wrongly MOTIVATED because his impetus
implies mindless support for a suspect status quo of the
stealthyly non~forthcoming. It facilitates blind acceptance of
professional (all but closed) institutions in medicine, law, and
science (that prey on the masses like wolves on wildebeast). It
empowers cold blooded institutions that have always had something
OTHER than the masses best interest at their cold dark hearts,
institutions that are hard wired to early, vociferous, and
strident dismissal for the contrary individual with a new idea ~~
ideas that ironically insure the continuing power of the (all but
closed) institutions (and the men by which they are perpetuated)
who would dismiss them. The devil of easy intellectual
complacency truly has Dr. Nickells (et. al.) by his officious
shirttails.

Along these lines (bear with me!) and about a month ago, the
Lists were abuzz with talk regarding Keel's "Mothman Prophesies"
and their relevance to ufology as a whole (as it presently exists
in a national if not global consciousness). With respect, I
think that everyone missed a point about that movie that I have
discovered once the brou~ha had died down and I actually rented
the film. Reflection on that motion picture indicates a
mechanism of society, as typified by Dr. Nickells, that gives
substance to the "waste of life" that someone might be blighted
with in pursuit of a very ephemeral and paranormal ufology, for
example. Which is to say that Dr. Nickells may be right,
ironically, but certainly not the way HE thinks, and only for
reasons which he and his spurious and back~stepping ilk are
pointedly responsible for!

Will Patten, a deceptively effective character actor, played the
part of a very simple man, Gordon Smallwood. Smallwood was
confronted with an anomalous manifestation that "apparently"
drove him to the loss of job and family, likely insanity, and,
finally, death. Richard Gere was able to escape a similar fate
by denying the anomaly, at last, when he would not take a call
from his dead wife and tore the phone out of the wall to throw it
(a symbol of what's out of the "box") across the room and away
from him. The lesson here would be one of denial then, to assure
continued normalcy, comfort in a contrived and insentient
invention of reality, and comfortable acceptance by ones peers,
subordinates, and superiors.

But WHY were the characters driven to insanity or close to it,
REALLY? Some would say that it was the enigmatic devil that made
them crazy or their flirtation with the unknowable that took them
to the brink or over it.

But there is 'something' underlying these phenomena more
insidious than its enigmatic scapegoat and more guileful than a
UFO stuffed with anomalous Mothmen. And what is THAT but the
reflexive and all too abject DENIAL of those things "outside the
box" by a shallowly cyclopean CSPCOPia or its equally effective
clones?

What if the Patten and Gere characters been able to consult an
enlightened consortium of lettered persons, a Bizarro CSICOP if
the reader allows (that didn't automatically presume their
insanity) regarding their highly unusual experiences? Quite
simply, they would not have had to shoulder the burden of it
ALONE and been driven to the excesses they were compelled to act
out! Had they been respected for their reports instead of
ostracized and marginalized, they wouldn't have been the
pathetic, tragic, and suicidal characters that they portrayed in
the film; they would have just been more DATA for the problem's
solution! Hell, the only lettered person in the picture's
equation was a Doctor that was HIMSELF ostracized and
marginalized for looking too deeply into the light that may "be."

Who is the cause of the OSTRACISM and MARGINALIZATION, the
reflexive ridicule, and the smirking sneers? Well ~~ that would
be what we reap as a result of the intrepid Dr. Nickells and his
intransigent clan of not~so~merry (or open~minded, scientific,
creative or even intelligent) men! What MAY have started out as
an efficacious device to root out charlatans and chicanery, and
was supported by such noted personalities (individuals I add) as
Allen and Sagan, becomes what we have today: the mainstream's
instrument of paranormal denial and intellectual backstepping.
It is the fraud THEY perpetrate... that people should be on their
guard for, FIRST, and NOT the wishful thinker or the crackpot
dreamer encountered in the unnecessary informational void. Oh
sure, be on guard for them, too, just FIRST be on guard for
CSICOP, a craven mouthpiece for a status quo unconcerned with the
greatest good for the greatest number, the efficacious individual
with a new twist or idea, or an individual person's right to
'know.'

...Proof that CSICOPs a fraud?

Well~~ remember my friend, good reader... the bugged, followed,
and otherwise transparently innocent man harassed by dark agents
of the government? Indications ARE that that's on the level.
Truly.

CSICOP, in its artless turn, would reflexively deny every aspect
of the odd, out of the box, experiences of my friend, experiences
which are (without doubt) the only thing that would lure the
interest of these agencies that, by report, stalk and threaten
him. The government MUST know facts and details about UFOs and
their appellate issues that it does not admit, hence the very
real and frightening harassment of my friend. CSICOP has strong
ties to the hijacked mainstream and its parent non~elected
government and knows at least some of the truth? Ipso? CSICOP's
a fraud! It's pretty plain when you go where the data leads.

That's enough... I remain watching sky. 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 "hear" veracity, honesty, and sincerity in the tone of one's voice.  I'll leave the reader to decide if this same writer is remotely competent to pronounce upon ~my~ character... as what kind of person takes a "dive" of ANY kind into the "deep end" of an "empty cement pool"?


>
> Since you mentioned (made wild accusations about) the 'abduction
> report' thread I'd like to point out the following:
>

 

The writer has a seeming (and on reflection completely understandable) difficulty in distinguishing between wild accusations and honest observations honestly expressed.  I point out that the exact same post provoking this corrosive and insulting exchange (#17) written a month ago, even a week ago, would not have elicited a peep from the responding writer.  What has changed in the interim but my active defense of a position of some demonstrated quality that the writer finds personally, and I suspect invalidly, objectionable. Let's continue on to see what the writer would "point out."  


> Mark Rodigheir of CUFOS made the statement that 'new' abduction
> reports to that organization were down for the last couple of
> years. I wrote a post that was in agreement with it. Will
> Beuche, the former Webmaster of PEER wrote in to corroborate my
> and Marks statements. Simple statements (or reporting) of fact.
> Nothing as 'sinister' as you imply ever transpired.

 

So the writer would "point out" an ~inexplicable~ defense of the scabrous bunch at CSICOP, the scurrilous bunch in a Bush/Ashcroft administration,  and bunches of other blighted psychopaths among us and around us, hindering disclosure? These were the identified groups earning an evaluation of 'sinister', not Mark Rodigheir of CUFOS. The writer, clearly conflicted and with a singular axe to grind, would interpret #17 as he has interpreted it here ~~ when the same post a week or a month ago may have even gotten a  public "right on" or a private "well done"!   What has changed in the interim?  The writer seems to have convenient sensibilities that change as the wind blows and seemingly apes the most mercurial of ufological vagaries, while I think it could be argued that the only one maintaining a rational consistency or even tone in this exchange is me.  I'll leave that call to the respected reader.

 

Moreover the short (and cited) discussion regarding ufological 'waves' and a "distracted population" in #17 as good reasons providing for only an ~appearance~ of reduced 'occurrence' falls on the predicted deaf ears of the writer, is ignored by the writer, and is seemingly discounted by the writer.  For some *reason* the writer has significant difficulty seeing a hand in front of his face and seems to prefer some weak literary razzle~dazzle (with no support) as opposed to ~real~ contribution… what I would aspire to.  I'll leave that to the reader, too. 


>
> You create a fantasy in your own head,

 

They weren't fantasies, and I had a ~celebrated~ 'head' as far as this writer was concerned a week ago... or a month ago.  What has changed but a false assumption or unsupported realization by the writer that if I'm not 'for' him then I must (of needs) be 'against' him, a pretty juvenile take on things after five years of professional cordiality if you ask me, demonstrating only the suspect provenance of his, perhaps, not so inexplicable irritation.  Fantasies? Indeed.


>
> your 'imaginings' piss you off,

 

LOL!  Like they don't piss off the writer!  That will become more clear as time goes on, I'd predict.  And finally ~~ no rational person would agree that there is not an awful lot to be ~righteously~ pissed about.  The writer seems to conveniently forget that.


>
> and then you express anger toward people in the *real world
> (*those who live their lives outside of your fantasy) as if they
> were ~actually~ responsible for their behavior in your somewhat
> fevered dreams.

 

The writer would pronounce NOW on the production of the same "fevered dreams" he found so satisfying last week or last month, label me delusional, and in the process say so much more about himself than he has the bare bones competency to say about me. The writer would have been ~much~ better served maintaining his lack of "desire" and "inclination" to communicate with me about ufological issues, I begin to suspect.


>
> How you manage to turn a simple series of posts into the
> convoluted and genuinely paranoid plot that you suggest above,
> boggles my mind.
>

 

Where was this writer's confusion, his accusations of paranoia, and his respect for CSICOP and a Bush/Ashcroft administration a week or month ago?  Indeed, it is the writer's own mercurial sensibilities and wind~blown awareness demonstrated here that are peculiar and not ~my~ expressions of conscience.

 
> Lately you've taken to attacking some of the 'good~guys' Alfred.

 

Who are the good guys that the writer refers to?  How is 'attack' defined?  How is consistent behavior (heretofore respected by the writer for many years) suddenly noticed just "Lately"?


> Maybe a short vacation from the fray is in order.

 

In as much as the writer has demonstrated the need of a nap for some time now, I would suggest same for the writer with some immediacy and with all deliberate speed.

 

>When you start
> to perceive plots and schemes everywhere, and you see 'spooks'
> lurking in every corner... it's time to do a Dave Brubeck and
> 'take five' bro.

 

~Again~ the writer insultingly indicates that I have just "started" behavior that has not changed substantively in half a decade…  How many of us ~don't~ perceive "plots and schemes", suspect "spooks" in "corners" darker than they need to be, or "wonder" what might be lurking around a future corner... Finally I'd suggest a review of Lennon/McCartney's "Blackbird" for the writer if he is truly interest in quality musical advice.

 

Like a ufological tonsil, this writer seems so corrupted with fickleness and lack of resolution that he's abdicated his community responsibilities and joined the other side vis a vis "nose to spite face" mentioned somewhere else.  I wonder how he can expect ~anyone~ to accept his pompous proclamations, imperious pronouncements, or insulting accusations, now.  


>
> Get a grip.

 

I think it may be that the writer makes this dismissive suggestion only because he suspects that he's losing his own.

 

>You've created a veritable soap~opera out of what
> was essentially a pretty dry, innocuous and short~lived series
> of posts. Check the archive and reread em. Nothing 'heavy' going
> on except inside your head. :)
>

 

I'll let the rank and file reader decide the veracity of the preceding statement, something the writer, by ~all~ reports, would seldom (if ever) do.

 

…At the end now, with no snippage on my part, that’s enough.  I continue to watch our skies.  Rock your own head back, when you can, good reader.  They continue to fly despite the carping, complaining, and confusion that goes on down here.  Read on.

 

Alfred's Odd Observation #17  (Saturday ~~ June 8, 2002)

 

Outside visibility has been as terrible as a dirty milk~glass, the humidity as oppressive as Nipple~napper Ashcroft's justice department, and all the effects of global warming are centered, seemingly, directly on my exact geographic coordinates!  The bugs are held in magical abeyance by the Bounce rag; however, or I would assuredly be driven indoors.

 

Still, they fly.

 

Oh admittedly, they don't fly grandly, conclusively, or even brilliantly of late...  Still, they fly.

 

And it's a taste ironic for me as, lately, there's a lot of impassioned discussion about UFOs all going "away", going "out", or going "beyond." "Abductions are decreasing," some pontificate.  "Sightings are down," others pronounce.  Forgetting for a moment that this gets the CSICOP Youngbob/Sheaffer  skeptibunkies capering around gladly like frolicking wood~nymphs, it really only apes some kind of sweaty bandwagon many seem to be jumping on... in some 'king~of~the~hill' attempt to be 'first' proclaiming some 'new reality' regarding UFOs?  Specious stuff and turgid nonsense.

 

I see it as chasing a false plausible in a furtive attempt to only 'appear' cutting edge.  I see it as playing into the hands of the transparently deceptive.  I see it as pandering to the misleading and embracing, too greedily, the flatulent ostensible.  I see it as courting the readily sophistical, incorporating the onerous captious, or being at best shallowly pretentious and at worst an 'evil' retrograde.  It favorably considers a falsehood, and it associates itself with the absolute weakest of what's too easily or  most conveniently presumable.

 

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 barrel of a terrorist's gun!  All part of the master plan (uneasily?) dismissed by Jerry Clark? 

 

Conscious or unconscious (and given less and less protection from already tolerated sociopaths by an authoritarian Bush/Ashcroft administration) it's not a ~completely~ unreasonable proposal.  It's only a relative few that inordinately gain as a result of our aggregate ignorance, after all.  Sociopaths ARE.  Socipathy IS.  Discount them and the conspiracies they busily precipitate at peril.

 

Let me assure the interested reader that sightings are not down, abductions are not decreasing in frequency, and the artless bunch over at CSICOP has no hint of vindication what~so~ever.  Youngbob and Robert Sheaffer  should cease their tiresome capering and return to their think~cloaks, nineteenth century runes, and outdated CSICOPian Newtonics.  The universe continues to resonate with a 'quality' of life undreamed by them as strange moving lights unsteadily traverse a steady starfield to MOCK the cast aspersions of those that would wish them away.  Rock the head back to a crisp night sky with a modicum of revealing patience and be rewarded with proof of the larger reality that ~will~ be there.

 

These occurrences that the mainstream will only trifle with come in 'WAVES' that even a conflicted mainstream cannot ignore without blowing its cover (its facade or thin veneer of pretended rationality or open~mindedness).  These waves are ~well~ referenced by Ruppelt, Hynek, and Vallee in decades of literature. They've been going on since time in memorial and are captured on non~faked film, recorded in credible historical ink, and chiseled into ancient and unyielding stone.   These waves are likely older than our DIRT!

 

The history of UFOs truly parallels our human history. Though it is decried, minimized, and derided by our suspicious social convention, the facts of their existence creep out around the edges of the coffin lid that the garden variety CSICOPian employs to contain them. This should give us all ~more~ than mere pause to entertain a suspicion that some larger reality is being denied every one of us.  ~Something~ certainly is.

 

UFOs are valid, it is our mainstream denial of them that is not.  Evidence of them abounds; verily, it gushes from founts.  It is photographic, historical, credibly anecdotal,  and very personal for many of us.  It flies in the face of the denial of it.  Only the irrational fear of a knee~jerk reactionary, culturally conflicted, and philosophically myopic leadership would deny the patently obvious.  UFO's are real.  They exist and have existed since before the first human being banged one rock against the other.  We are ~not~ alone.  Everything ~else~ is a fantasy, ironically ~~ a concoction, invention, or convenient illusion.

 

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

 
 
 

Alfred's Odd Observation #17  (Saturday ~~ June 8, 2002)

 

Outside visibility has been as terrible as a dirty milk~glass, the humidity as oppressive as Nipple~napper Ashcroft's justice department, and all the effects of global warming are centered, seemingly, directly on my exact geographic coordinates!  The bugs are held in magical abeyance by the Bounce rag; however, or I would assuredly be driven indoors.

 

Still, they fly.

 

Oh admittedly, they don't fly grandly, conclusively, or even brilliantly of late...  Still, they fly.

 

And it's a taste ironic for me as, lately, there's a lot of impassioned discussion about UFOs all going "away", going "out", or going "beyond." "Abductions are decreasing," some pontificate.  "Sightings are down," others pronounce.  Forgetting for a moment that this gets the CSICOP Youngbob/Sheaffer  skeptibunkies capering around gladly like frolicking wood~nymphs, it really only apes some kind of sweaty bandwagon many seem to be jumping on... in some 'king~of~the~hill' attempt to be 'first' proclaiming some 'new reality' regarding UFOs?  Specious stuff and turgid nonsense.

 

I see it as chasing a false plausible in a furtive attempt to only 'appear' cutting edge.  I see it as playing into the hands of the transparently deceptive.  I see it as pandering to the misleading and embracing, too greedily, the flatulent ostensible.  I see it as courting the readily sophistical, incorporating the onerous captious, or being at best shallowly pretentious and at worst an 'evil' retrograde.  It favorably considers a falsehood, and it associates itself with the absolute weakest of what's too easily or  most conveniently presumable.

 

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 barrel of a terrorist's gun!  All part of the master plan (uneasily?) dismissed by Jerry Clark? 

 

Conscious or unconscious (and given less and less protection from already tolerated sociopaths by an authoritarian Bush/Ashcroft administration) it's not a ~completely~ unreasonable proposal.  It's only a relative few that inordinately gain as a result of our aggregate ignorance, after all.  Sociopaths ARE.  Socipathy IS.  Discount them and the conspiracies they busily precipitate at peril.

 

Let me assure the interested reader that sightings are not down, abductions are not decreasing in frequency, and the artless bunch over at CSICOP has no hint of vindication what~so~ever.  Youngbob and Robert Sheaffer  should cease their tiresome capering and return to their think~cloaks, nineteenth century runes, and outdated CSICOPian Newtonics.  The universe continues to resonate with a 'quality' of life undreamed by them as strange moving lights unsteadily traverse a steady starfield to MOCK the cast aspersions of those that would wish them away.  Rock the head back to a crisp night sky with a modicum of revealing patience and be rewarded with proof of the larger reality that ~will~ be there.

 

These occurrences that the mainstream will only trifle with come in 'WAVES' that even a conflicted mainstream cannot ignore without blowing its cover (its facade or thin veneer of pretended rationality or open~mindedness).  These waves are ~well~ referenced by Ruppelt, Hynek, and Vallee in decades of literature. They've been going on since time in memorial and are captured on non~faked film, recorded in credible historical ink, and chiseled into ancient and unyielding stone.   These waves are likely older than our DIRT!

 

The history of UFOs truly parallels our human history. Though it is decried, minimized, and derided by our suspicious social convention, the facts of their existence creep out around the edges of the coffin lid that the garden variety CSICOPian employs to contain them. This should give us all ~more~ than mere pause to entertain a suspicion that some larger reality is being denied every one of us.  ~Something~ certainly is.

 

UFOs are valid, it is our mainstream denial of them that is not.  Evidence of them abounds; verily, it gushes from founts.  It is photographic, historical, credibly anecdotal,  and very personal for many of us.  It flies in the face of the denial of it.  Only the irrational fear of a knee~jerk reactionary, culturally conflicted, and philosophically myopic leadership would deny the patently obvious.  UFO's are real.  They exist and have existed since before the first human being banged one rock against the other.  We are ~not~ alone.  Everything ~else~ is a fantasy, ironically ~~ a concoction, invention, or convenient illusion.

 

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

 

Alfred's Odd Observation #16  (Saturday ~~ May 18, 2002)

 

 

I've gotten inquiries from folks wondering if I've been 'seeing' anything, lately.  The short answer is yes.  I've always said that all one has to do is go outside at night and rock the head back with just a smidgen of anticipating patience and a dash of rational open~mindedness.  There is stuff up there to see, good reader, and that stuff generally rocks the 'established' world with the sting of reality's bee.  That's a good thing.  "Why" is difficult to describe.

 

I'm back from the west, finally, and have been back since very early on the third ~~ returned to soupy southern skies of lower Alabama and the lights that flicker and crawl teasingly within them unheralded by NASA's J~PASS...

 

Somebody knows.

 

The morning of the second was especially clear and cool, disappointingly. A morning flight from Sacramento (to the south) five hours and some change later crowded the allotted time outside to watch our festooned sky.  But it should be no surprise, at this point, that 'they' were there as well, three at once, flying in formation, the trail object playing catch~up to the left echelon of silent objects that flew before it...

 

I first noticed them below and to the left of Polaris, about 40 degrees elevation, at 3:35 Pacific time traveling west to east.  All three lights were identical in color and brightness, about magnitude one, and were never closer than one degree (the objects in left echelon preceding) and never farther away from one another then three degrees (the object in trail, catching up).  The echelon traveled at a rate of 3 degrees a second and the trail object slightly faster.  The trail object was decidedly closing with the echelon.  The impression was that these three silent objects were in one another's vicinity. I watched them until they were obscured in the tree~line to the northeast. The silence was deliciously discomfiting.

 

About half the nights since I've been back from California (...my mother is ~painting~ again!) ...have been either obscured with morning fog, concealed by overcast, or shrouded by storm clouds. On those remaining mornings with good visibility the gnats, flies, and mosquitoes, refreshed  by all the wet weather, would like to have their head~banger's blood banquet in honor of my return... but I know the 'secret' of the Bounce™ anti~static dryer cloth.  I could sense their woeful disappointment as they moved off sullenly to look for dogs, squirrels, and birds (…thanks, Mom).

 

The strange objects were there, of course, every time I had the ceiling and visibility required to detect them, and I'm provoked once again to wonder where they come from when I see them... where they ~go~ when I don't, and how many facockta satellites am I ~supposed~ to be able to see, on a day to day basis, anyway?  Many objects of varying brightness, displaying colors of white through yellow to red, and moving at different speeds on different tracks (including due west!)... these graced the skies as I watched them... the prosaic non~prosaic.  God, but what are they?

 

I could go on about the magnitudes, elevations, and azimuths for all the sightings.  I could specify rates, specific times, and individual colors, but I think I've demonstrated my ability to count a measured bean (even an anomalous one!) in the previous fifteen of these odd observations, and there's no need for the reader to have to wade through all that.  Besides, my purpose here is to get the reader to go outside for awhile, themselves, ...measure their own rates, times and azimuths... so they can see for ~themselves~ what their conflicted mainstream would airily (and suspiciously!) deny.  The reader could have her own horizons vastly expanded, as has happened with me.

 

There's a strange comfort in those expanded horizons that is hard to define, reader,  as I said before, but it's like you can look out on these silent, tiny, and purposeful orbs with a cool morning breeze on your face and be reassured (in as much as the hijacked mainstream won't own up to them) that there is something really there… ~beyond~ the confines (and outside of the box!) of that jealously conflicted mainstream.  Something... further... I don't know... but something that does not dance to a skewed mainstream's tune. 

 

If that object can do that, stand solidly without the mainstream's (even grudging) support, perhaps each of us (who would want to) might find a way to do that too.  Think of the strides we will be able to take as a species then!  And that's worth all the money you have.  That's worth all the money that anybody has.

 

I remain watching our skies. 

 

Read on!

 
 
 

Alfred's Odd Observation #15  (Saturday ~~ April 20, 2002)

 

Sparse sightings, indeed, have been made through partly cloudy skies... when there was any visibility at all...  A few of the mornings were very good, cool and clear, but remained empty.  Empty is equally satisfying, anymore.

 

Where do they go?

 

All my sightings during the period were magnitude zero or more, save one. Most, eight total (spread out over the days since the last report), were so dim that they could only be seen using off center viewing.  All colors were reddish, speed was between three degrees a second and one degree a second, and they were in no evidence, at all, for ~many~ of the days I was able to observe.

 

All of the sightings would have been prosaic examples of the non~prosaic... but for a couple of 'odd' wrinkles.

 

Friday, the twelfth of April at 04:15 Pacific time, soundless fastwalkers clipped by, one after the other, at a ~hot~ three degrees a second and arrow straight!  The sky was crystal clear and the ~first~ silent yellow~red light, a little dimmer than Sirius, did not diminish in intensity as it flew, from the time it was noticed overhead to a point where it disappeared behind some trees at about 20 degrees elevation.  It was immediately followed by an identical fastwalker on the same track and heading, which also dove to disappear behind the same cut in the darker trees. 

 

Here's the wrinkle:  the course of both objects was the duest of due Wests...

 

That was ~due~ west, ladies and gentelbunkies, an artful track that your garden variety satellite of human manufacture is not supposed to be able to describe. This is according to an albeit inconstant and less than reliable (?) Jim Oberg... intrepid space historian, and arguably the noisier of our noisome noisy negativists… 

 

The other wrinkle concerns a good sighting on the 15th at 04:50 that I was able to call the attention of a ~witness~ to!  It was one of the more typical wandering stars, appearing as I watched the Northern sky, at about 350 degrees azimuth and 50 degrees elevation.  It traveled about 20 degrees in arc west~southwest, before it dimmed, abruptly, and went out.

 

My recently widowed brother was relaxing prior to a 10 hour shift of work (involving activity driving ~tunnel~ through ruined rock a quarter mile inside a small mountain northwest of Redding, California) and he was close by. When I called him over to see the object from beneath a covered porch where he was sitting, quietly consuming a cup of "morning ambition",  he was something less than thrilled.

 

He lumbered over to where I was, out in the open... ...mumbling bothered protests.

 

Looking up to where I pointed with what I knew to be an under~whelmed expression on his sharply planed miner's face, he acknowledged that it ~was~ weird, but after grudgingly watching for just a few seconds, he turned and went back to his coffee even ~before~ the damned thing blinked out!  He was something less than impressed, like I said, but my irritation was minimal.  I understood why.

 

It's not complacency, insentience, or having "bigger" fish to fry that explains his lack of interest.  It was the simple lack of a strong enough ~stimulus~ provided by the object we observed together that morning.  Tiny quiet lights moving in the night sky don't ~begin~ to approach his interest threshold, much less cross it. 

 

Why is that?

 

My brother and (his now deceased) wife saw an uncontestable UFO, for a period of ~many~ minutes, on a deserted California Coast Highway, so up~close and personal that it was the only thing they could see in the sky at all!  See, I wanted my brother to witness anomalous minnows flitting in a small pond when he had already seen Moby freakin' Dick leap clear of the Pacific ocean!  That's ~small~ hyperbole, reader.

 

Here's the story. 

 

In 1977, and after the end of the ~last~ incarnation of the endless war, my brother and his bride of a few years were traveling at night down the California  Pacific Coast Highway (from French Gulch to Oxnard) to spend time with our folks for Christmas ~~ about a twelve hour trip.  I was ufologically ~oblivious~ in what was then West Germany at the time, but I digress.

 

Both were well rested, not intoxicated, and looking forward to a quiet drive on a beautiful night down an uncluttered California highway listening to R&B on the '64 VW Window Van's cheesy little AM radio... One can almost hear tense music swelling on the soundtrack...

 

Kill the music.

 

As they drove, they would crest an occasional bluff and be able to see many miles out into the Pacific ocean.  Offshore oil rigs glittered deceptively like diamonds in the darkness of an untroubled sea.  It was a beautiful night and their spirits were high.  There were no children as yet, and their lives stretched out before them in a manner that seemed as optimistic and completely open ended as the ocean on their right.

 

...They would ~stay~ married ~~ forgive the digression...

 

Every time that they would get a shot of ocean they would fully appreciate the quiet beauty of the sea and sky.  The starry reaches would look like a glittering backdrop weighted at the bottom by the brighter lights of the sparkling offshore rigs. 

 

Highway One is a curling, winding snake of a road that takes the traveler in and away from periodic views of the ocean to points inland, and they became puzzled, as they drove along, that an "oil rig" seemed to be getting closer to shore every time they had an opportunity to see it.  They were still unsuspecting.

 

Driving through a stretch away from the ocean and down a valley between some hills, my brother's wife noticed what she took for a lighted billboard further down the road... ...that they didn't ~seem~ to be gaining on! 

 

Abruptly, they did gain on it... ...in the darkness, until it was adjacent to the car outside her passenger door about a hundred feet away!  It became obvious to them at last  that the "sign" was moving, so they upgraded their estimation of the object to a plane in trouble... or a helicopter.  The eerie silence confounded them. They pulled over to the side of the road to see... ...what was what.

 

My brother got out of the car and jogged around the front to see.  Before his slack~jawed eyes loomed a silent upside down Christmas tree as big as an office building, it seemed!  One racing heartbeat later all he could observe from horizon to horizon were billions of different sized bright lights hovering right down over the top of them, directly overhead, like a swarm of quiet multicolored bees!

 

My brother ran a few meters from the car in a heedless attempt to see more, immediately enchanted.  His wife screamed from the car, and he looked back.  She was begging him to return to her.  "They'll get us"! she shrieked. "They'll get us"!

 

A cold fear took him then, and he scrambled back to the van and piled inside with her, slamming the door! He looked up at the UFO through the top of the windscreen.  His wife was beside herself with fear!

 

...Just as abruptly, it was gone.  They quickly fired up the VW window van and left the area while the leaving was apparently good.  Both were ~highly~ freaked out!

 

Now, my brother's a merry trickster.  His totem animal would be the crow (he can reproduce, by the way, into ~living~ steel sculpture) ...if he was into native religions.  But like the crow, he's not wired for enduring obfuscation, he's a dyed in the wool sociophile, and he won't be a party to the short-sheeting egregious. Still ~~ it's not ~him~ that convinces me. 

 

It's her.

 

His wife was ever only a solid indication that it is only the good who die young. A serious (albeit canted) student of ardent Christianity, she was a grammar school teacher who inspired a permanent monument, festooned with rose bushes, to be raised in her memory at her school. On the monument is a metal plaque that reads her name and "Always gentle, always kind..."

 

An intelligent women, she was under the inculcated mainstream opinion that only feebs and losers saw UFOs!  She was not ~remotely~ comfortable or eager providing testimony to ~this~ kind of event.  She would never have brought it up on her own, but that my brother was eager to talk about it, and she was there with him... She was a most ~reluctant~ witness, forgetting she's never told a self-serving lie in her life. 

 

She feared hell's demons descending upon them in the form of a sky full of different colored silent lights ~that~ night, though.  She trembled as she related the story and looked haunted.  I knew her for almost 30 years; she's the real deal.

 

Later, I'd ask my brother about missing time, and whether he seemed to get down to Oxnard about when he thought he should have been down there.  He said he thought he did. I don't ~think~ there were abduction complications...

 

The reader can then, perhaps, understand my lack of irritation with this under~whelmed witness a little better!  He was party to lightning ~bolts~, after all; I was getting excited about lightning~bugs! 

 

I can dig the scale.

 

Still, he had to admit my "lightning bug" was weird, though he was ~still~ able to fake a yawn in a manner so huge that would break a normal man's jaw.  What a guy.

 

That's enough.  I remain, for now, watching the western skies.

 

Read on!

 

Alfred's Odd Observation #14  (Sunday ~~ April 7, 2002)

 

...Another of those auspicious Sundays!  The sky was, again, alive with ~them~, forgetting the stationary strobes of flashing white light and meteors that left glowing trails for breathtaking seconds. This is forgetting lights flashing from the southern sky behind me lighting outside walls to my front so I could see them reflected indirectly off the sides like the shadows off Plato's cave walls.  What were those?  Meteors or mother~ships, one or the other... It wasn't triple"K" flicking his ufological BIC; of that I am (reasonably) certain.

 

It was a little on the chilly side also, putting a break on any insect noise, still dense air making the sound of over~flying aircraft ~very~ plain.  There was one of those, too, but just one... everything else conformed to the unsettlingly exciting anomalous (!) ~~ silent glowing orbs in my field glasses or wandering stars with the unaided eye.  All were of varying warmer colors from dull red through golden cream to bright white.  All the objects maintained sundry speeds and only general tracks in their characteristic meander through the very clear and moonless night. …better than "Coast to Coast", forsaken this night for National Public Radio… as it happened.

 

How many satellites was I supposed to be able to see this Sunday morning?  Well, by NASA's prediction I was supposed to see exactly, uh... (let's see... add the first column, carry the one, divide by two, subtract the result... and final tally is...) none! Truly!  J~Pass predicted exactly ~none~ in the 24 hour period beginning 12 hours prior and ending 12 hours after the time of ~my~ observation.  Curious. The reader can begin to see what I mean about comparing data sets and finding them unsettlingly dissimilar, mentioned in a previous report.

 

What I am seeing should be  predicted ~easily~ by J~Pass given the magnitudes of their individual brightness ~~ one would think.  After all, NASA informs us straight out that we can use it for that purpose, and they're the 'scientists'… But, nothing is provided... which is predictable and typical of the contrived myopic mainstream science community. 

 

I had ~eight~ sightings this morning between 04:30 and 05:30.  To start I saw one of those stationary strobes I've seen infrequently over the years.  A single strobe light flashing once very brightly (or dimly) every fifteen to thirty seconds, or so.  It is stationary or makes random flitting movements in a single one or two degree area.  I've written about this variety previously.

 

The strobe flashes occur at varying intensities, too.  As bright as mag. ~6 (!) or as dim as mag. 2, or so.  This morning's strobe was high in the east, stationary, and flashed a similarly varying brightness.  Blink and you miss it.  An unblinking stare is required with one of this type, and it is, therefore, a mite uncomfortable to observe.

 

From then on I'd have a sighting every five or ten minutes, and on one occasion two of them together, though I don't think they ~were~ together (they were on dissimilar meanders).  At 04:40 the first headed south at a degree a second, about a magnitude zero and bright white in color.  It was followed by a subsequent similar light five minutes later which performed in the exact same manner and in the exact same place. A third light appeared while the second was still visible!  It was the same as the first two, but on a slightly different track. All lights reported were tiny orbs in my field~glasses.

 

At 04:55 a brighter, redder orb moved slowly from the south to the north, directly overhead (as all this morning's objects had) at about one degree in three seconds.  At 05:10 a dim red light appeared to the east as I watched, traveled very slowly to the left for 10 degrees of arc at one degree in six seconds, and then blinked out.

 

Turning to the East just after the previous sighting, I was rewarded with a meteor that split the sky in a brilliant flash about 15 degrees long and so bright that it made me wince.  In its silent wake a white~hot plasma lingered, churned, and glowed for several seconds.  I listened hard for several more seconds for a report, but heard nothing in the cool quietness.

 

At 05:15 a light of zero magnitude traversed the entire sky in a steady march to the north directly overhead.  It was followed at 05:25 by another of the exact same type.  I wonder, again, how many satellites I am supposed to be able to see?  How can I see so many at once?  Where do they go in the weeks when I ~don't~ see them?  What kind of craft crawls the uncovered sky like a tiny glowing insect, makes no sound, and continues to be so baffling?

 

Somebody knows.

 

So ends the litany of sightings for this iteration of the ongoing observation.  I would likely have seen more, but I had been outside since three and I was ready for some house time. Consider, even a whirling dervish speaking in tongues and spitting green fire should get an eventual ho~hum if I saw it every morning... but then it's been years, now, and I've yet to get tired of looking at these peculiar objects plainly visible in a guileless sky and writing about them.  Perhaps the odd reader is not getting tired reading about them, in a similar fashion.  What is there to be seen, truly, astonishes. 

 

I wish I could point them out to you.  I may yet!  ALTV from three to five live every morning I can sustain [g]!  I'll give you an earful.  The satisfaction is in the new knowing.  The perception that you're no longer being duped, priceless.

 

And that brings the conversation around to us... what about us, the patent and facilitating uniformed ?

 

We ~must~ be more than mere pond scum (if self~absorbed pond scum at that) to the conjectured ~watcher~ of our schizophrenic species ~~ Watchers that could be less than forthcoming with the masses (explaining their part in the obvious secrecy) only because the 'mass~drivers' of our culture are less than forthcoming with us, themselves?  They only follow, perhaps, the lead of our 'fearless' leaders?

 

Somebody knows. 

 

Understandably, I perceive a reluctance by these something less than altruistic 'mass drivers' to give in the greater reality only because it bumps them from their ill~got cat~bird seat.  That's the long short of it.  They're pond scum (make no mistake), but they're high ~class~ pond scum, damn it... those men and women allowed on the lifeboats ~first~ when the Titanic went down ~~ them and their psychological descendents.  Who's to miss the common rabble but more common rabble?  Who will miss you.  Who will miss me.  Them, when we are gone.

 

The greater reality ebbs and flows around me, honored reader, as I watch these enigmatic lights conduct busy errands in the infinite halls of space above my head... I am encouraged and inspired by them. I am instructed and enlivened by them.  I am galvanized, motivated and energized by them! I'd suggest that ~you~ can be, too.

 

Yet to be rattled from ~my~ lucky perch (I feel like I "know" stuff ~they~ ~get~ you for) I sense I can reach a little higher and grasp a little more of the firmer, more solid reality of a greater multi~verse populated with all manner of divergent ideas and the beings that have created them. Why not? Anything else courts hopelessness and the despair of eventual pointlessness.  Nothing else has art.  Nothing else has music.  Anything else is a flashily empty Pepsi Commercial or the recently reincarnated "war on terrorism."

 

Around me are trusted persons, moreover, convincing me that they are touched more directly than most are by that "larger reality." The immediacy of their position touches ~me~ with the derision, lack of concern, and ridicule that they must endure as a result of a convenient mainstream denial of that "larger reality."  More than touched I am irritated that so many have to be ground in the gears of a society that eats its young so a few gravid sociopaths can live out their canted destinies and the realization of selfish short term goals.  More than irritated I am angered that the mainstream can be so blithely indifferent to the continuing reoccurrence of the ufological (and therefore sociological!) obvious.  UFOs are REAL!  Don't we get it?

 

Moving back abruptly to the subject of "pond scum", we have the ultimate power of simple pond scum, presently, don't we? Like pond scum we are with regard to the whim of any errant asteroid or virulent bug; we are blown before our weather patterns and subject to the vagaries of shattering quake, rising flood and belching Earth. 

 

Are we but fragile insects dreaming that we have sentience, mere dust between the big winds of local chance and happenstance ~~ a fleeting pride before a sudden fall?  We are all of those things; we are none of those things? 

 

Still, we know enough to ask the question, and there lies the beginnings of our salvation!  It's ~never~ been about the answers!  It's the ~questions~ that resolve the face of God. That's all anybody or anything ~else~ is likely to have at the start.  The better questions… It's a ~great~ start...

 

...And I discover that at least ~one~ of those motes of presupposing consciousness would reach out to touch the face of God, embrace the larger reality, or accept the inevitable evolution.  At least ~one~ of the mice dreaming he's a man would presume the awful but liberating self awareness provoked by actualizing the idea that we are not alone (much less the best) in our backwoods corner of deep, deep space. At least ~one~ is self assured and confident enough to strike the sun if it offends him... Challenge faith! …shake righteous fists at God and demand an explanation?  I suspect that there are a few more with the efficacious temerity ~~ a temerity likely ~more~ respected by God.  Whiny supplicants piss ~me~ off! [g].

 

But, that's enough for now.  I remain watching the Pacific skies, presently, for the odd reportable.  Let it be ~my~ contribution to our Nation's civic duty. I couldn't be doing ~anything~ more important. Read on!

 
 
 

Alfred's Odd Observation #13  (Wednesday ~~ April 3, 2002)

 

On the fifth day of UpDates' hiatus, and besieged by copious amounts of unrequited Chinese porn advertisements (among spams of lesser quality), I am on "Pacific Time" at present and physically sick as a freaking dog.  Miserably, I fight waves of nausea as I key these words.  It is likely the fault of something I picked up on the plane~ride out to California or just the result of being in one of those positions in your life when you are standing on the lip of oblivion with another and confronting a suddenly very real and insistent sense of personal mortality.  Still, ~they~ fly.

 

I would of necessity blow off an insignificant summary of sightings (a mere prosaic report on the non~prosaic?) given my prevailing personal considerations, but this morning's multiple sighting was so noteworthy I'm compelled to get on it right away, regardless.  I had ~six~ separate sightings of these "aerial peculiarities" this morning between 04:20 and 04:50, and all centered on the 96007 zip~code of my mother's home.  Make of it what you will.

 

Each moved at speeds dissimilar to the others. Each had a unique appearance with regard to color and magnitude and the variance of those things.  Each (save one) was at least as bright as a star of zero magnitude. Each varied track as they progressed across a very bright star field, forgetting that the equally eminent waning moon (low in elevation to the south) detracted somewhat from the quality of the sky's "North California" clarity.  Finally, each of them raised the hair on the back of my neck despite my nagging illness, an aching head, and the seriousness of my personal situation... All in all a puzzling collection of peculiar crawling lights NOT explained by reference to NASA's "J~Pass", fellow travelers... not to put too fine a point on it.

 

To the details…

 

The first light blinked on one degree to the right of Arcturus (the guard of the great bear), in auspicious serendipity, as I was ~watching~ that star, and progressed to the south~east, briskly, at a speed of one degree a second.  It 'meandered' slightly to and fro (up and down?) on that track and was an unwavering "cream" color as bright as brightest Sirius.  After it traveled about 50 degrees, it blinked out.  So it began.

 

The second light, first noticed as it shambled through the Great Bear, headed generally South~southeast, was slightly brighter and whiter than the first sighting, and almost slowed to a stop, directly overhead, before continuing on!  At its fastest, it traveled about one degree every three seconds, but its speed wavered from dead slow (one degree in five or six seconds) to the aforementioned, predominate, speed.  It traveled about 60 degrees before it dimmed to a point where it could no longer be seen.  This sighting occurred at 04:25.

 

I was back from refilling my coffee cup about 04:35 when I noticed the third light, a bright and unwavering white 'blanch' as brilliantly challenging as Jupiter directly overhead, heading West south~west on an unwavering track, and travelling at a speed of one degree in two seconds.  Abruptly, ~another~ silent orb blinked on about five degrees to the right (north) of the initial light!  The newly appearing light paralleled the speed and track of the preceding light for about fifteen seconds, then (have I mentioned the dead quiet of this North California morning?) it astonishingly slowed (perhaps the lead object sped up?), and fell into a 'following' position in direct trail... They continued in this fashion until they both disappeared in the west about 30 degrees elevation.  The sighting would have fluttered even Phil Klass' ufological putter – gay~roan~teed!

 

The fifth light appeared at 04:40 as strident as an insulted Venus (just below Polaris), steamed along at a steady degree a second, and sailed, grandly imperious, on a track of due south until it got too dim to see. It blinked off, oddly, as it traveled in a very regular manner (for about five seconds) and reappeared where it would be predicted to appear by any, remotely trained, observer. This signifies the regularity of its flight (about 90 degrees total) while doing ~nothing~ to underline the oddness of the too, too long blink.  It performed this weird blinking regularity three times. The hue of the object was a rich cream color.  Field glasses, incidentally, yielded orbs in ~all~ cases, already mentioned on this report iteration and yet to be mentioned... not light points of focused stars in the star field back~dropping these objects... orbs.

 

The final sighting of the morning (at 04:50) was a dim Tinkerbell's dash of abrupt reddish quickness, about a magnitude of two, and was first noticed in the belly of the great bear on an azimuth of about 350 degrees and 45 degrees elevation while shooting easterly at a speed of three or four degrees a second.  It moved too quickly to get my glasses on it and feeling already quite well served with regard to the morning's cornucopia of sightings, I didn't even try… Summation: In the real world, if one "looks" (?), one "sees."

 

It ~was~ quite a morning for 'satellite' observation, fellow motes, ~forgetting~ that these objects were off the prediction schedule of NASA's "J~Pass", ~overlooking~ their described wavering magnitudes of speed, color, and direction, additionally ~dismissing~ that they were flying in apparent formation (on line through echelon right to trail, in at least one case...) ...Quite an invigorating morning, indeed...

 

...Wait a minute...

 

...Something has a more clever dominion of these clear California skies than we have, and that dominion is well off the beaten path of accepted mainstream experience... if one but takes the time to look up, reader!  Regardless, I can appreciate that one is hard pressed to find the time for such apparently fruitless activity. Though, how "fruitless" is the activity, really?

 

The activity is actually ~gravid~ with fruit! Not so astonishingly, the individual is best ~served~ by perception of a larger reality!  Our 21st century potentials of limitless clean power and unending efficacious life are testament to the realized perception of those 'larger' realities.  We live the lives of gods (~if~ a sub~lower case "g"), many of us (many that live in the first and second worlds anyway), to even the elite human beings (High Priests and Kings) of just a few hundred years ago ~~ truly.  We owe our boon of usefully expansive human experience to our courageous (individual) embrace of that very real larger reality ~~ a reality presently (and very suspiciously) denied by the conflicted mainstream.

 

That larger reality is, of necessity, outside the bounds of official comfort, external to the box of 'accepted' conjecture, and beyond the limit of an officious status quo.  It always has been. Nevertheless, just as always, one finds it necessary to move beyond the barriers, establish new frontiers ~~ set new limits.  Such is growth.

 

Besides, who is ~best~ served by adherence to the limitations of these suffocating comforts, convenient conjectures, and stunted status quos?  Who profits as the reader is distracted from the larger reality, actually in existence, by a well~orchestrated and contrived threat to personal survival, comfort, and happiness?  Not the harried reader, I would bet, borrowing against Peter to pay the ominous Paul, and actually sacrificing health and family to ~provide~ for suffering same, in many cases... as a function of the "trusted" cultural mechanism, ironically.

 

...But look up, good reader (on an abundance of different levels!), in an attempt to see these things that I describe (?), and the reader ~shall~ see these things, be reassured that there ~is~ a larger reality, and that that reality points to greater self worth, greater self respect, and greater self awareness than an individual has generally been privy to in all of recorded history!  Yes!

 

Out of these greater advances come self actualization, great personal satisfaction, and positive individual contribution ~beyond~ the jealous boundaries of the 'accepted' cultural box ~~ because stronger individuals are able to make ever greater contributions to the grander cultural team!  Additionally, this continues ~unabated~ as long as there is hope for synergy, or the elevating results of the strength and power always found beyond the sum of ones modest, though ~deceptively~ nonessential  parts...

 

Individuals, understand, ~transcend~ the essential! Individuals ~decide~ the essential. Individuals ~create~ the essential!  "Nothing or nobody" has power but that it has a pack of passionate ~individuals~ behind it. "Nothing or nobody…"  Ominously ~~ this includes that deity of ~any~ case.  Likely, merely an idea manufactured by the powerful to do the powerful's bidding.  The individual is always key.

 

...Still, ~something~ flies, while my Mom, asleep on her bed behind me, seems to be doing a little better today…

 

But ~~ that's enough.  I'll be watching California skies until further notice.  I expect to get an eye~full.  And as I can appreciate that the harried reader is hard pressed to find the necessary time to do the arduous watching (?), I'll gladly watch for both of us.  It's my job.

 

Read on!

 

 Alfred's Odd Observation #012 (Friday, March 29, 2002)


...and still they fly. Almost invisible, the dimmest of dim white stars, it took 15 seconds to travel three degrees around 04:20 central this morning in an unvarying track and speed. Noticed at about 60 degrees elevation due North, it was observed, with and without field glasses, to fly from the angered North to the troubled South, down to an elevation of about 30 degrees before it got too dim to see (even with off center viewing. It traveled about 90 degrees total, then, and passed directly overhead. It was seemingly oblivious to the teapot tempests occurring beneath it on the ground, short term affronts and petty jealousies carousing like plankton in a tepid tide pool ~~ beneath its concern, consideration, or even contempt. It would fly regardless. It would have other fish to fry.

The satellite tracking data I use via NASA in an attempt to separate ufological wheat from prosaic chaff (and already mentioned in this series) has some indeterminate language used, perhaps merely to suggest the employment of some very clever JAVA applications one's told one can use for sighting predictions. These applications give a God's eye view of hundreds of man~made objects in orbit around the Earth.

It asks: "...Ever see a light moving across the night sky and wonder if it's an airplane or a spacecraft (or even a UFO)?"

Words are the very fabric of our aggregate intellectual capacity and civilization, the reproducible stuff of dreams past and present, and equally employable as paintbrush, tool, and weapon. Mere words are, truly, the tap~root of ~real~ magic to come... But I digress... As an interested employer of words I wonder what is really being communicated in the, certainly, ~measured~ tones from NASA. Do the words ask the reader if they think they're seeing UFOs? Do they offer a more agreeable and parsimonious suggestion for what the observer must ~really~ be seeing?

Does NASA hide a tiny misdirecting smirk with its mention of UFOs, or does it leave the possibility open? Though NASA would be predicted (based on its observed past (questionable) performance) to employ the former, it is the ~latter~ which the reader can benefit from if the reader so chooses. NASA continues:

"Many people enjoy satellite watching as a fun hobby, and you can join them using J~Pass. Using your location and the latest available tracking data, J~Pass can predict the times a satellite will pass overhead, and even give you a chart showing the path of the craft through your sky. Whether you're interested in seeing the International Space Station, Mir, a favorite category of satellites such as Amateur craft, or just any manmade craft, J~Pass can help you plan your viewing."

What's going on here, really? Are we being protected by our 'doting' institutions or are they protecting themselves, insuring themselves, or profiting themselves at our expense... this goes as deep and as high as one wants to look, I suspect. Things are not as they appear. This becomes clearer as time goes on.

I have been using this "J~Pass" satellite data program for around 18 months now, and I have ~yet~ to see a predicted satellite, shuttle, or station fly~over. This is not to say that it is impossible, just that satellites, shuttles, and stations can be very difficult to see. On the flip side, this is how the reader can use the program to cut through some of the official smoke and fog (...that's "smog" isn't it...). The reader can pretty quickly survey the data and get an idea what they *could* be seeing, and then check that against what they ~have~ been seeing. Do the sets match? I'd bet NOT, more than so. Mine don't.

If the reader spends significant time outside trying to match these two data sets, two things are likely to happen. One, they are going to see some strange sh~t in the sky, guaranteed, and two, they are not going to be able to pronounce it ~all~ off as "object de' man~made"! That's the best use of NASA's program, ironically: to dismantle the ignorance that our institutions publicly decry but ~must~ privately foment. Data owes no allegiance. It is truly a sword that cuts both way. Data provided to ~dismiss~ can many times be turned, righteously, into data able to ~prove~.

Am I seeing UFOs? I'd have to say ~~ probably. Satellites, shuttles, and stations don't fly in formation. Satellites, shuttles, and stations don't vary their speed and track. Satellites, shuttles, and stations don't vary their color and brightness (not like ~I've~ witnessed) and shoot wide dim rays of colored light. Satellites, shuttles, and stations don't make 90 degree turns, spit red glitter, or flit and strobe in one location. Satellites, shuttles, and stations won't astonish my mouth incredulously open, pique my rational (even scientific) interest, or provoke these essays. No! UFOs are doing that.

That's enough. I know it's tough to swallow any of this when there are a thousand natural shocks contrived in our everyday lives and one specious distraction after another to muddle and confuse, but watch the skies if you've time and inclination. It's ongoing and nightly evidence of the ~certain~ wider reality, the reality we're being "protected from."

You might as well watch ~it~. It's watching you. That admission that it's watching changes ~everything~, and that's why it's so hard to admit. Still, ~every~ child must admit to growth and changing experience. No child expects to remain in an overcrowded crib... No child expects to be a child forever. Who would want to? Childhood ~sucked~ for the vast vast majority, and I say this assuring the reader that I had a passably good one. Do read on!

 

 

 

 Alfred's Odd Observation #011 (Tuesday, March 12, 2002)

 

 Not a bleedin' thing to report this iteration. The skies were overcast and blustery. The obligatory meteorological lion roared threateningly through the beginning of a traditionally inconstant month of March (... and with any luck it'll "go out like a lamb" just as proverbially).

Truly, more than once over the last few days was it a... "dark and stormy night," ...on a ~multitude~ of different levels. Other nights with acceptable visibility saw nothing outside the prosaic... but I was watchin'! [g].

Anyway, in as much as I've nothing to report (...but that I've put to sullen rest, once again, that usually sneering supposition that all I'm seeing during these nightly forays into inner and outer space is the 'prosaic' mundane), I thought I would share something that I observed here on Earth, or more to the point:

I want to tell you a story about the day Stanton Friedman made me cry.

Let me hasten to assure you that I am completely capable of ripping off ones head and crapping down ones neck given the appropriate motivation, but like any true sociophile ("I love humanity, it's people I can't stand"?) I can be ~profoundly~ moved by random acts of genuine kindness...

I went to my second three day UFO convention in 1996, and while mildly irritated by the cheesy (almost dirty movie?) merchandising of the concept generally, I did enjoy myself ~hugely~, still! The speakers were refreshingly out of the box. Many of the people were fascinating and all of them were interesting. Engagingly, the optimistic carnival atmosphere had an otherworldly edge one would naturally expect from a gathering of... largely intelligent people... unsettlingly concerned with potential alien space ships piloted, perhaps, by equally alien beings.

I went to four of these "Project Awareness" affairs in the Gulf Breeze, Florida area, and at each of them I saw this same intensely interested kid and his accommodating father. It was clear who, of the two, had the real interest in UFOs.

The kid was the engine on that train. The father was an innocent (though doting) bystander.

I've written about this kid before. I'd noticed him at the first conference. He was about twelve or thirteen, maybe he was as old as fifteen (or even older); it's hard to tell with kids like him, sometimes.

Very slender, he had dark hair, and I only saw him smile on one occasion. We were in and out of different spots at different times, going different directions, and never had the occasion to mingle, meet or even speak, really.

Good thing too, as getting an idea that my suspicions in his regard were true would have been much more difficult to bear. In other words. I'd likely have lost it sooner...

I guess I should mention that the kid was in a wheelchair and very nearly completely debilitated with cerebral palsy. He was, physically, just a twitching mass of drooling wretchedness, for ~most~ of *genteel* humanity. This too quick assessment is made all the more tragic by the fact that many (most?) of these kids with CP still have active and intelligent minds inside their ruined bodies (Stephen Hawking comes to mind), minds capable of the same kind of unrestricted imagination and ardent hero worship as any other young boy, and more.

As a trained educator of these physically challenged, I would know. The ~reader~ should know that their condition is likely caused by needlessly dumped toxins found within the world in which they must live... CP is likely a disease of the modern world... The reader will allow that small digression...

From what I was able to observe, and had written about years ago, the kid had moderate control of an arm and a leg. The arm was used to poke at a communication board reading out on a liquid crystal display, and the leg was used to reach out and touch the floor in front of him as his father rolled him along to the different exhibits and presentations. He'd reach out with the foot, set it down, and then let it return to him with the forward motion of the wheelchair. Then he'd pick it up and do it again like ~he~ was the one doing the walking and, though chair-bound, still had some part in his own transportation.

The foot was accelerator and brake for his father's facilitating engine. That's enough to jerk a few tears from the reader, right there.

Onward.

It was between presentations in the greater hall of the hotel... Amid a confusion of meandering people Stanton Friedman was standing in a small group, answering questions and making general conversation with the conference attendees... when the kid was rolled up his chair.

The kid would not take his eyes off Friedman. I could tell that this was no ho~hum drill for the kid. To the contrary. This was a seminal event... a singular moment... for him.

He was prepared. His dog~eared copies of Friedman's books were in the spring loaded autograph position on the chair tray before him, and he had a question already tapped out on his little communication board. One could see, plainly, that he was very excited.

What I mentioned about hero worship, earlier, obviously applied here. This kid was ~very~ impressed with Stanton Friedman. I saw him act in the same manner with no other conference speaker.

An opportunity presented itself, at last. The kid's father took a break in the conversation to introduce himself and his son and to ask if Mr. Friedman wouldn't sign his son's books. As Mr. Friedman graciously addressed that task, he and the father were speaking about how enjoyable the conference was and other obligatory book~signing chatter. Then the kid held out his communication board in a trembling hand for Friedman to read.

I'd sneaked a look at the device over the kid's shoulder so I already knew what the question was..."Have you ever seen a UFO," the device spelled out?

Finishing the last book, Mr. Friedman took the kid's device and read the question aloud. He shook his head and laughed in that chuckling old grandfatherly manner that is trademark with him. "No," he sighed, "I have not..."

Then he turned a little more serious and speaking directly to the kid, said, " ...But me seeing a UFO is not ~evidence~ of UFOs, and there is a LOT of convincing evidence for real UFOs." Then he paused for what ended up being a huge effect for the kid, and said. "UFOs are ~real~"!

The kid was transfixed. His eyes were shining, and his mouth carried the huge momentary grin I mentioned earlier. The kid obviously had something important validated for him, and I think I had a good idea what it was. It was an epiphany (...and not just for the kid. For everyone listening.).

It was the kind of epiphany one's just not going to get from a sports hero. Consider, all ~they~ are is running, hitting, and jumping in valueless exercise... a ready reminder of what cannot be. Stanton Friedman, on the other hand, "cleaved the heavens and soared to the [freaking] ~infinite~" for this kid, and the kid ~got~ it! Stanton Friedman was about what can be... See the difference?

The kid was reassured and encouraged, I think. The kid had hopes a little less hard to keep alive, perhaps. The kid was awash in a self~generated glow of new optimism... it was a "happiest moment" contender. I could go on to more finely grind this point.

Imagining, myself, what the kid must be feeling and knowing why, I suspected that the kid's wildest dreams could perhaps be realized if UFOs were as real as his bearded champion had just proclaimed! He'd heard it come from the "man" himself, and it was said directly to him. His "hero" looked right into his own unblinking eyes and was guileless.

Truth can never be as certain as when it is perceived by a small boy ~directly~ from the serious countenance of someone he admires. Babe Ruth pointing at the rafters for his next home run in sweet favor of a similar child approximates the actuality of Friedman's effect on the kid.

The sermon on the mount was supposed to be as captivating, as inspiring, and as reassuring... to ascend to a little hyperbole.

"UFOs are REAL"!

The future had ~endless~ potential...; it was confirmed! And maybe, just maybe, a Gene Roddenberry~like Star Trek universe could exist for the kid, too! Maybe ~he~ could see a UFO (go aboard?). Maybe he ~too~ could be part of this magically monumental thing so much larger than himself...

Why... he might even find a way to make himself a better kind of whole! The sky can be ~no~ limit to a boy's hopes and dreams... even (better, especially!) to one such as this thoroughly afflicted kid.

The bottom of my eyes began to fill up a little bit on the results of my too busy imagination, and I stepped away from the group, frankly, to surreptitiously wipe my eyes and compose myself... ...The reader should remember what I said earlier about ripping off ones head... ...poke fun at me and the reader can pull back a nub of ~whatever~ it was he was poking me with, sincerely...

...Besides, the sentiment in cameo ~here~ is a little more honestly drawn than the sentiment extracted from a lying "we like to make you smile" ~hamburger~ commercial on "family" television! These can provoke a tear, too.

This is forgetting entirely whether it was the kid, Stanton Friedman, or my own poignantly reinforced convictions that had made me cry, or a combination of the three? But weep I did, and, on the whole (?) I'm rather glad I can.

That's enough. I remain watching the skies.

Read on!

 

Alfred's Odd Observation #010 (Tuesday, February 5, 2002)

 

It was ~icy~ cold this morning.  It's been that way for a few days now. The frost would have "been on the pumpkin" had it been the middle of October, but it was the first few breaths of March and too late for pumpkins, so the frost was on a profundity of alternate locations. My whole back yard was frosted white, and the dormant grass crunched quietly beneath my shoes, almost like a light snow.  Additionally, the sky would have been truly spectacular through the cold dense air... but for the much too brilliant half moon hanging above me like a stark and smirking spoiler. I had only been outside for about 10 minutes this morning, thankfully... when I saw it.

 

It blinked on about five degrees Northeast of the smirking moon (as I was watching), roughly 70 degrees elevation, and on an azimuth of about 120 degrees.  It was a magnitude of brightness between Jupiter and Venus, a pale peach color for all its brilliance, and it traveled at a rate of five degrees in nine seconds on an East North~East heading. The rate of speed, track, magnitude of brightness, and color did not change during the sighting except with the distance. The time was around 4:35 central.  I watched until it was out of sight.

 

It was very quiet during the sighting. All the heating units in the local neighborhood were momentarily off, conveniently, and there was no appreciable sound from the boulevard close to my home.  Jets flying overhead on the Victor airway before and after the sighting were easily heard over a neighbors heater. The peach colored object made not a sound.

 

Through my field glasses (my wife was asked, carefully, to leave them where she finds them in the future), there was no sign of position lights, strobes, or anti~collision lights.  The object itself resolved to a tiny sphere or orb shape with no illumination evident except that which glowed from within, and was in front of a very crisp star~field... Aircraft, through the glasses, looked like aircraft, I add sarcastically.

 

Feeling well served after about ten more minutes of watching, I went back into the house to write this short piece.  Oh ~~ and if you feel that I'm likely making this stuff up, that I'm ignorantly credulous, or overly enamoured with my prosecution of what could only be an impossible fantasy?  Please read Odd Ode #359, and know that I ~especially~ want you to enjoy ~your~ sandwich.

 

I remain watching our skies.  Read on! 

 
 
 

Alfred's Odd Observation #009 (Monday, February 25, 2002)

 

Well, what is it about Sunday?  Angels airily flitting about in pursuit of their heavenly errands?  Ah... mmm... no... Demon's minions, or Satan's spawn busily prosecuting an unjustified hatred for God?  UFOs mysteriously engaged in activities all their own?

 

*BRAVE* positions of mutual exclusion given the vast, vast majority of individuals don't have a ~clue~what any of these 'ideas' are, really ~~ this writer included.  But ~I~ saw two "Manifestations of an Indeterminate Type" (MITs?) on Sunday morning during the routine night watch, and I was neither saved nor was I possessed.  I ~was~ transported, mind you, but that's an explainable result of getting a quick (albeit fuzzy) look at the larger reality and not the conflicting realties of pompous predigested pap we get from our corrupt institutions.  But whoa, friends and neighbors... that's a digression too fertile to look at right now.  I don't want to talk about that, and I'll get to my sightings (mere, but eerily performing, NLs) in a moment. But right now I want to talk about HYPNOSIS.

 

Hypnosis has a strange history shrouded in chicanery, humbuggery, and a little something extra one can't put a finger on. That little something extra is what keeps it around, makes it useful, and justifies a harder look by science...

 

...Sometimes it works.  Science says so.

 

One hears the word "hypnosis" and is overcome by images of stage personalities suggesting to people that they can be transformed into barnyard animals, dance a grand ballroom fandango, or be compelled to lose weight... but the program can be more insidious than that...

 

If two thirds of the population can be effected by phenomena that science can quantify (if not qualify), it  seems to be a ~ready~ mechanism for control by manipulative forces and their convenient programming suggestions... autocratic manipulations delivered via a daily sensory bombardment from a very tightly controlled media ~~ news print, radio, television and the internet.  

 

An individual buying in to the unceasing manipulations of this contrived, distorted, and corrupted mainstream might even take the next step in their own "control" by hypnotizing themselves with ~self~ suggestion!  In effect, rendering themselves incapable of perceiving what is there, plainly,  to be perceived, and NOT, conversely, seeing what is ~not~ there to be seen... It's all about suggestion, rationalization (rational lies), and the prepackaged excuse to avoid critical thinking...

 

A story...

 

While on active duty many years ago, and before I developed a ~keen~ interest in the ufological, I had a barbeque at my home, one evening, with five or six couples and a few singles in rowdy attendance.  I was standing away from the noisy group with two other men ~~ one AH~64 (Apache) instructor pilot, and the other a fixed~wing driver who was an Army candidate for the astronaut program. These were two quality guys, having to otherwise demonstrate a rare degree of intelligence, competence, and skill ~~ in the kick~back mode. The sun had just gone down and dusk was washing out to the blackness of the unappreciated night. 

 

There was a lull in the conversation, and one of the men looked up and said, "That's odd..." Pointing at the sky with his beer hand, we all looked up to see a black strip about as wide as a little fingernail held at arm's length and flying diagonally through the air ~~ left tip forward about 45 degrees, no hint of fuselage, nose, or tail!  As it flew, one of the men remarked that the craft had very peculiar position lights.  These lights were white strobes that ran from wing~tip to wing~tip, and then back again... additionally there was no evidence of the required red and green (left and right) tip lights, and no flashing anti~collision light...

 

"Well ~~ it's got to be something..." someone said... and, with that, the object was all but forgotten and otherwise erased from our short term memory. All three of us returned psychologically to the spirited party.  More beer was had by all, and the festivities continued into the usual drunken mini~brawl that Army aviators USED to be famous for...

 

I didn't remember this occurrence again for almost a decade, and was reminded of it later only by seeing a similarly baffling object in California after I had developed the aforementioned interest in UFOs. I would suggest that my two fellow aviators and I followed the programming hypnosis of "polite" society and ignored a sighting that should have been VERY interesting to two professional military instructor pilots and a candidate astronaut, one would have thought!  We reflexively and very neatly self~hypnotized ourselves with the calming mantra:  "It's got to be something... It's got to be something..."  Meaning of course, It's got to be something ~prosaic~.  I remember ~doing~ it.  At the time it made perfect sense... there were "bigger" (hah!) fish to fry.

 

So, we ~were~ less than interested, and we astonishingly ignored a genuine UFO as a non event ~~ behavior on this end that now seems inexplicable to me.  We hypnotized ourselves (followed our social programming) and rejected the unsettling enigmatic for the comforting mundane.  We ignored what our eyes were reporting to us and replaced it with an "accepted" pre~programmed routine.  We turned our back on the unexplained, likely occurring around us all the time (unseen), and made it fit into what we are trained to find culturally tolerable... Adjusting our cultural blinders, we returned our eyes to the ground.

 

I've watched this process of denial (through self hypnosis) at work twice now.  Another occurrence manifested itself at a rubber~powered model airplane flying meet in Northern California. Dozens of us watched a UFO fly by five times, over a period of a few hours, with fewer and fewer people looking up to watch it fly with each succeeding pass that it queerly made!  ...Tell yourself enough times that "something's" not there ~~ and it's ~not~ there!

 

Recent scientific research gives every indication that science believes the human brain is capable of convincing itself to perceive what is ~not~ there to be perceived.  I would suggest that it can also do the inverse of that.  It can also mask what is there to ~be~ seen, as plain as shining day.  We won't pay enough attention to that ~~ given that we have to overcome so much programming from our myopically conflicted and therefore ~suspect~ culture, but I hazard the same digression that I walked away from earlier...

 

 ...We MUST pay a 'new' attention, ultimately, if we ever expect to see anything really ~there~, at all. We stumble through our lives with social bags over our heads that we would ~not~ tolerate if we had a suspicion regarding that larger reality mentioned earlier. Look around under the lip of ~your~ bag and see if you can't agree.

 

I've looked beneath the lip of ~my~ bag and had sightings of my own like the ones I mentioned earlier. Sunday morning these fast moving nocturnal lights clipped by collectively overhead at over five degrees a second!  Also collectively, they were of equal brightness and color, a couple of magnitudes dimmer than Sirius and pearl blue in color.  No field glasses that morning (the wife had moved them). 

 

The first was noticed when it was due West at about 60 degrees in elevation, about 04:50 Central, before moving like a tracer round into the body of the great bear, tracking due North until it was lost in the distance.  The second occurred about 05:00 hours, was first noticed above and to the left of Polaris (about 70 degrees in elevation). It tracked due South until lost in the distance.  I don't know that they were the same object, but their appearance and speed were identical.  I have to allow that it is possible.  It's suggested by the larger reality, cited in the forbidden index, and proved in the heart of the individual.  It's "got to ~be~ something" for sure.  The "new" wrinkle is that I no longer self~hypnotize, or otherwise allow myself to be hypnotized,  that is ~has~ to be something... "prosaic."  But, it does have to be... something.  Something, indeed.

 

I remain watching our skies.  Read on! 

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 KAL K. KORFF reviewed...

 

Preface ~~ I've got a ~lot~ of respect for Jeff Rense, I think he's the Cadillac of what he does, and he's certainly convinced me that he is the journalistic real deal as it regards hearing the "twitchy" stuff that nobody wants to talk about, but probably should.  Even as a traditionalist, he's straight up.  So I was prepared to be as forgiving as I could given that I got a personal assurance that Mr. Korff was going to do something truly substantive on last night's show ~~ let Kal turn over a new ufological leaf, as it were, and provide some new kind of handle on the thing that has us all by the short and curly hairs...

 

It was not to be...

 

1st Segment

 

Anybody but Mr. Rense (?)~~ I'd look askance at 15 minutes of last weeks bee~mites (a much more interesting show by the way, as it turned out), time spent while trying to get Kal Korff on the phones he wasn't answering...  It may involve a 'conspiracy' to block significant communication from Yugoslavia (the Czech Republic)?  Although... we've only got Kal's testimony as to whether (or not) his phones were ~actually~ ringing.  Why would Kal lie?

 

Rense suggests ~someone~ might not want Korff on his show?  That bunch he alludes to would ~assuredly~ want Korff on the show, conversely, in my estimation, spreading the usual misdirection and ufological red herrings like effluvia from an old German honey~wagon ('human' manure spreader).

 

...Moreover, Korff is not Chamish, though Jeff makes the oblique comparison at similar problems with overseas communication.  Chamish ~is~ dangerous to the establishment, I suspect...  Korff is naught but a bland tool of same.

 

One phone Jeff understands... two phones? That someone is making a "special" effort? "Either/or" error... Jeff!  An easy fallacy.

 

A potential third choice is Kal providing false testimony about ringing phones to jazz an opportunity's intrigue, meanwhile duping a guileless and sincere Mr. Rense?  Moreover, did I hear a duplicitous hesitation when Jeff asked Mr. Korff if he had heard the phones ring on the hour?  Perhaps I'm overly sensitive, but "once burned..."

 

...Korff was saving his big guns for ~last~ on a previous UFO farewell show with Jeff many months ago?  He didn't say what he "could have" said ~then~ because he thought he had another hour?  ...Much time to dress out a more cogent story, is my suspicion.  I've been on the radio... a person ~knows~ how much time they've got.  And he had ~days~ to prepare.

 

But he wants to take ~this~ opportunity ~now~ to tell us that he gave up UFOs ~then~ to win a war on terrorism (?), a war patently hampered by a "product oriented America" but somehow facilitated by a doting eastern Europe?  Clearly he's enamoured with his new European home.

 

...Break time, and not much said!

 

 

2nd Segment

 

Korff proposes to reinvent himself as an investigative journalist, and return to his "roots" as he proclaimed. Then why won't he write a balancing story on the cases of the type that Ruppelt, Hynek and Vallee have indicated as significant?  His failure to ~provide~ balance  is proof of his canted imbalance.

 

His computer is his "canvas"?  In a pig's eye!  ~My~ computer is a canvas!  His computer is better described as an instrument of obfuscation, misdirection, and literary imbalance ~~ a propaganda mill.

 

How ~does~ Kal get involved with weapons of mass destruction?  It seems mysterious Arabs, over time, are endlessly pumping Mr. Korff for information on the production of nuclear weapons. Why? ...Because he let it 'slip' that he was involved with technologies associated with the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) ~~ laser applications department... He tells the FBI about his suspicions.

 

I digress: a quick look at Mr. Korff's background fails to find any evidence of the education that his claim would seem to suggest.  Could it be possible that the much maligned Jesse Marcel of Roswell fame has more college education than Mr. Korff has?

 

Anyway, After Mr. Korff threatens the FBI with public exposure for not taking his terrorist reports seriously, they welcome him into their clandestine confidence and brief him "extensively" on all aspects of world terrorism.  What an open and accommodating institution the FBI is! Meanwhile the aforementioned mysterious Arabs ALSO take Mr. Korff into their ~inexplicable~ confidence and allow him ~blithe~ access to their most sensitive and incriminating financial data files.  These files regard the flow of terrorist money... (wow!).  Mr. Korff (An obvious template now for Ian Fleming's series of James Bond novels) handily copies that information to an apparently incompetent FBI for a real (and as it turns out, vis a vis "911", prescient!) espionage coup! Surely those mysterious Arabs, upon hearing of Kal's ~easy~ treachery, must be taking out a contract on Mr. Korff's very LIFE as these words are written!  Let's face it!  By his own admission on the program, Korff's done more damage to Islam than Salmon Rushdie!

 

Mr. Rense uttered an incredulous "wow"... then proceeded to list the implications of Mr. Korff's claims:  That Mr. Korff was an underground agent, working stealthily deep undercover for a grateful nation and the FBI (he had a "case officer" even!), and whose life must ~assuredly~ be at GREAT risk!  This was the end of the segment... and I had to go take a bi~carb!  Thirty~eight minutes into the show, and already my stomach hurts!

 

3rd Segment

Kal Korff takes the opportunity to "set the record straight" and share that he "is NOT an agent of the CIA or a government agent, a paid disinformation guy, a skeptic, or a debunker"!  But wait!  Just last segment he claimed that he was working under cover for the FBI!  Imagine this listener's confusion!

 

Korff says that the public has a "right to know" when a hoax is perpetrated or when righteous ufological evidence is determined.  Again ~~ this would be acceptable until the listener remembers that Korff is all about alleged hoax identification and does not appear to credit any of the ufologically affirmative cases proposed by those he labels dismayingly, but conclusively, as "Believers".  Oh, to be ~sure~, this is evidence of REAL balance, fair~mindedness and even~handedness. Please pardon the sarcasm, but it makes my stomach feel better.

 

Some of Mr. Korff's presentation is broken and garbled electronically to this point, but his enmity to the ufologically affirmative is ~plain~.  Believers are "pinned down" by Korff's superior logic and research, and they must make the "admissions" Korff dictates, as it pertains to the weakness of their 'believer' positions...

 

While at Livermore Labs ~~ Mr Korff reports that he enjoyed his clearance (Clarence...) and was allowed the luxury of treating it as his own personal "multi~billion dollar playground."  What pretentious conceit!  I submit that if this were true we'd have heard a lot more from Mr. Korff in this country than a couple of whiney debunking screeds produced by canted publishing houses! 

 

He "designed weapons," worked directly with "people out of Dr. Tellers office" and once held Stanton Friedman as an esteemed idol (Funny, ~I~ never ~stopped~ [g])!  God, but this is laughable stuff... from Livermore he would dabble into a "real fascination" of his ~~ lasers! 

 

...Then abruptly, and inappropriately I believe, Korff ambled off to remind us of Bill and Monica and what a frustrating shame it was that the Nation was more captivated by ~that~ than the issues of the looming terrorist world (as if none of that was by design...).  I'd predict he won't mention "ENRON" in this broadcast.  We'll see. (...he didn't.)

 

Europe's American Ambassadors know Mr. Korff as "a man [who] can get things done", and a much revered United States was best served by a man selflessly expatriating himself to serve it outside its borders, Korff reports, where he did not have to be hindered by its perception of his credibility presumably.  He serves the US in a "driven, intense, and focused manner... when [he] can and when there are issues that he believes in..."  He "won't bother" when there are issues "he can't get into...".  Hrmpf...

 

A digression: ...The United States is ~many~ things.  What it is ~not~ is something one does "not bother with".  It's like a German peasant not bothering with Rome around 100 BCE...  What baseless arrogance! What monstrous presumption!  What irritating smugness!

 

...But he was no "spy", he says ...And he "did ~too~ work at Livermore (!!), despite what unnamed but famous UFO researchers have concluded in their own investigations"!  Korff has an official Livermore radiation badge (that the interested has to fly to ~Prague~ to see!) which "proves it"!  What ludicrous and juvenile buffoonery ~is~ this?

 

Why is Kal back ~in~ UFOs?  Kal got ~out~, he says, because he didn't have time for "'white' issues the uninformed were calling 'black'," and he is unmoved by individuals (such as myself [g]) that were going to "listen carefully to [his] presentation and write exposés" ... "Life's too short...," he whined...  Essentially (I'm trying to find signal in self congratulating noise), I think Kal indicated that he was able to get back into Ufology because, ~this~ time, he was going to ignore his critics!  That was as close as we ever got to a discernable answer... besides, his good friend Bob Kiviat was doing a series of his 'specials' on ghosts...!  Boo!

 

Looking for ghosts... Kal finds them!  No answer on why triple 'K' got back into UFO's before the break... (we never really ~do~ get an answer, though Jeff asked him a couple of times!)

 

4th Segment

How does the esteemed Mr. Korff perceive the United States, Jeff asks?  Korff's answer was no demonstration of his reflective patriotism... As a nation of unwholesome foods imbued with toxic chemicals?  As a place suitable for "visiting friends and family", only?  He cares about his country (he proclaims perhaps too loudly  that he's a patriot), but it is its brainwashed sensibility that "pisses him off", along with its dearth of critical thinkers, the rich rich and the poor poor, its propensity for violence, its superficiality and shallowness, and the apparent fact that it "doesn't appear to stand for anything..."  He had nothing good to say about the United States, at any rate. I wonder if Mr. Korff ~can~ as readily pronounce on why he is a patriot for such a pathetic and diseased national example.  Truly, just as critical of the US, and having spent a LOT more time overseas, ~I~ can!

 

Kal "breaks" the "Mohammed Ahtah" story?  A story which does not carry his byline anywhere I can find. A Google search on "Korff and terrorism" turned up ~nothing~ on that specific subject.  But that didn't stop Korff from drum beating for a war with Iraq!  He even intimates that had we availed ourselves of a Korffian wisdom early on (as regards his reasons for the "leakage" of his "story" to the media), we might have precluded "911" altogether!  Ah ~~ I see!  Korff didn't ~write~ the story!  He "leaked" the story about terrorist communications with Iraq to embarrass a complacent intelligence?  However ~~ it appears that the only one saying so is Korff himself!  Curious, but par!

 

What happened at the Hradcany Castle in the Czech Republic!  We're teased by Kal with some contrived sounding background material regarding elite events at a sumptuous castle and Korff's participation in them, a UFO, and a nameless Russian officer... Then the listener is admonished to download the usual inconclusive but intriguing pictures from Jeff's site... just before the break...

 

5th Segment

The "Russian officer" inexplicably begins the intrepid Kal on a mystery tour of files caches, film footage, photographs, and other what~not of the highly strange, stored in a bunker at a military base!  Yowza! Right out'a the X~files, except they're K~files, and therefore suspect.  (C'mon people! You wouldn't have forgiven me, and ~you~ wouldn't be forgiven.  Why does Kal get the princely papal indulgence?)

 

...But first we have to hear about all the occasions occurring in lands and cultures older and more sophisticated than a very young (immature?) United States regarding paranormal claims that just ~push~ themselves up into Korff's innocent and guileless face... He ~has~ to report on it!  He's "driven" as he said.  Anything else goes against his ~grain~!  And ...Gag me with that proverbial spoon!

 

Korff discovers old UFO literature in East European bookstores that is not known to him ~~ even considering his vast "knowledge" and "deep" intimacy with the subject (to paraphrase)... and he reasons that it was evil Communism that kept these books circulating freely around the different countries ~behind~ the iron curtain (?) ~~ while keeping them ~out~ of the west.  Oddly ~~ I'd always heard that there was "sharing of information" regarding UFOs between the east and west during the cold war even when nothing ELSE was shared, as will happen when neither camp has a clue, and is hoping for a useable clue from the other!  One remembers occasional sightings reports not infrequently arriving in the west (from the east) by way of the mainstream press... I do.  The point has been made in a couple of UFO documentaries I've seen, books I've read... the US even made hay discrediting the Soviets by virtue as what the Soviets had released.

 

And these alleged books Kal discovered were written in English presumably, given his admitted weakness in languages ~~ how did he know ~what~ their contents were, so conclusively, if they weren't?

 

Later ~~ In a secluded spot two guys say have the "stuff you want money for" in a seemingly unrelated incident (A Czech and a Pole go into a bar... Yowza!) and Korff videotapes the encounter... secretly. He's "...very anal about documenting things." We'll see if we can't hold him to that later on...

 

...Abruptly we're shunted to a weird digression regarding sending tapes to Bob Kiviat of individuals sticking fifty pound metal weights to their bodies with some sort of personal magnetism... Kal had never ~seen~ anything like that... ...huh?  What?  As we go into the break, I'm looking at another hour and a half of ... ~this~? ... And then I have to ~write~ about it?  Hey, maybe Mr. Korff will get abducted during the remainder of this tedious broadcast.  I feel sorry for Jeff.

 

 6th Segment

...Two guys out in the secluded field (the Czech and the Pole)... does Kal have the money!  He does! One of them pulls a knife (!)... Kal says "...there are a lot of wackos out there"!  One more than you think, Kal!

 

Kal proves it when he continues to relate how he whipped out his trusty 357 magnum 'Dirty Harry' pistol and fires off a ~shot~ in an Eastern European country a little more twitchy about concealed weapons than even Hillary's New York!  Concealed weapon (?) ~~ waving it around, communicating a threat with a firearm, a serious hand gun, in an eastern European land?  How did he get it into the country? All this seems a trifle unlikely, to ~this~ listener.  Moreover, he extorts ufological information from these men at the point of this gun (!), confiscates their passports with threats about going to the police if their ufological booty doesn't measure up... and it's all on tape he ~says~.  Roger ~Corman~ wouldn't touch this moronic script! Come on!

 

Kal gets a 'map' and some UFO publications unknown to him... unnamed and unknown events occurred at locations ~burned~ (burned?) into the map's surface...! ( I have to pause to laugh out loud) It bears a striking resemblance to another map that Kal "found in another publication somewhere,"... and the locations are virtually identical"! I'm not making this up!

 

Kal continues his investigation, where he is "making headway".  What headway?  Where?  In what way? We slide gratefully into the break... 90 minutes down. 90 to go!

 

7th Segment

Jeff asks, "What about the Hungarian Pilot UFO Photos"?

 

...But first, recalling the knife wielding Czech and the Pole under the threat of Kal's mighty 357 heater with their trembling hands behind their apparently dim~bulbed little heads, the men admit to knowing the almost forgotten Russian officer and the book store clerk where Korff has gotten the never before seen ufological publications and the "map"! The Czech and the Pole "knife" men are forgotten (I guess they get away with their on~tape affront to Kal) as Kal hustles on down to the bookstore to see if the clerk knows the Russian officer and the two muggers.  It's no surprise that everybody know everybody. One can feel the plot congeal!

 

Korff sets up a cloak and dagger meet with the Russian Officer through the bookstore clerk ~~ in Moscow!

Off to the land of the Rus, via secret train rides with cryptic notes folded into Kal's passport to cut through the red tape (no pun intended), but Kal was worried!  Western Journalists are used as pawns in Russia!  Would the man that met him at the station try to use him in some nefarious political intrigue?  He couldn't be sure.

 

On a subsequent second visit where Kal felt more secure (what a Nancy!), they ... entered the ufological bunker!  Kal leaves the bunker with two memos that can be read about in Kal's "new" book. Surprise! UFOs: The KGBs Secret Evidence revealed..." or some such bionic buffoonery.  Both memos have been checked by experts!!!  In the bunker Korff saw images on film ~~ disk shapes flying with MIGs.  I find it difficult to maintain my excitement as I type through a yawn that nearly breaks my jaw...

 

Kal begins to read from one of the memos ~~ but then we must pause for station identification... 

 

8th Segment

I continue with some reluctance.  I've never ~had~ to force myself through to the end of one of Jeff's shows before.  I really feel for him.  Rense is a consummate professional that lets his guests go where they will with very little editorial comment from the host.  In his place I'm sure I would have had to verbally bitch~slap Mr. Korff on several occasions during the interminable three hours for his intellectual effrontery and apparent childish invention, but, on we'd go...

 

Kal reads from the menu, I'm sorry, ...from the "memo"... It's from a real live spy! A Russian one!  He's writing to his fellow spy, Sasha.  The memo is all about man~made aircraft, in the forties (!), made by the Nazis, that could ~easily~ be taken for UFOs.  Why do I find ~that~ less than completely surprising? ...See what's coming (?) ~~ Non~silent Kal's patented bait and switch!  You heard it first, here!

 

Our intrepid Korff took these memos to a magnanimous National Security Agency, and in an apparent sit~down meeting of ~little~ duration, concluded, with the ~ready~ help of the NSA, that the documents were authentic, and that there was secret corroboration contained within them that lent real credence to Korff's man~made UFO hypothesis...  which he seems to be busily building his contrived case for...

 

Forgetting the lack of surprise at ~that~ revelation, I want to convey how relieved I am that the NSA, just ~like~ the FBI, is so readily assessable to any UFO nut that walks in off the street (remembering that Korff's position grinds a convenient ax for them). Consider the expedited FOIA requests it must have taken, hustled through the complacent bureaucracies in our ponderous system of black cryptic agencies... for Kal to have his corroboration so ~quickly~.   The NSA is evidently a gang of good old boys (but conflicted girls) that will bend over backwards for our dauntless ufological researcher (and Kal ~is~ wondering where his "Daunt" is) to serve up his convenient corroboratia, tout suite!

 

A digression: Any film we will eventually see will be portrayed obliquely as Kal's German/Polish made UFO.  That's a prediction. This is a great way to mask new footage that may be extremely suggestive of the extraterrestrial... perhaps, possibly ~~ perchance.  It's not out of the question.  Once burned... remember.

 

The still photographs are to be discussed, but first we have to sit through Mr. Korff's admonitions about the quality of his evidence as regards his "new book" on the subject of tonight's program...  and a little bit of the teaser stuff regarding awesome maneuvers that the alleged UFOs in the film (he has) were performing.  We gratefully slide into the next break ...

 

9th Segment

 

Jeff says he's going to have to have Kal back... there wasn't enough time to get through all the material. I would truly rather have a sharp stick in my eye... Onward... wearily...

 

The stills on Jeff's site are clips from Footage that Kal says he has in his possession, and Kiviat's name was mentioned as an interested party, so I'm sure they will be displayed in some fashion assuring the most discredit and untoward spin... perhaps on one of those cheesy little Fox ("we report you decide") specials we've come to know and love...

 

Kal takes the time for more self congratulation... a weary Rense drags a reluctant Kal away from his personal drum banging, BACK to the subject of UFO's.

 

Kal is to be back on the 5th of March to finish up on what he was supposed to be finished on the show tonight for three freaking hours!  I'll be ~missing~ that show, I fear; there's a "Johnny Bravo" marathon on... 

 

A cheer goes up!  The bumper music indicates the last break before completion!

 

10th Segment

UFO's are photographed with new NATO cameras, and Kal has the footage! I'm hazy (as I'm sure everyone ~is~) how he got his hands on it (I guess I'll have to buy the book... not!), but he and Kiviat have it in their possession.

 

More bumptious and incoherent razzle~dazzle on where it was, where it is (in "cities no one has ever heard of before") and how the stouthearted Kal is ferreting it all out.  It's all in the book!  Moreover, Bigfoot is solved, ghosts walk among us ~~ and it's a shame we didn't have time to clean up JFK...

 

No ~~ I don't believe Kal saw a UFO.  That's just another of his ubiquitous loss leaders to facilitate an ongoing agenda of convenient denial.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Conclusion:

 

Kal K. Korff came on the show tonight to demonstrate his ufological resurrection, hawk an upcoming show for Bob Kiviat, and perform his usual self~congratulation.  He added nothing to the general evidence, insinuated conjecture for an ~old~ axe that he only grinds in a ~new~ way, and only promoted his new book.  I wonder who the publisher is?

 

Korff's whiney petulance did not track with the Clint Eastwood manner he attempted to portray, was laughable in his presentation, and non~credible regarding his claims (which were painfully ludicrous).  If this is the best we have in the area of mainstream ufological research we might as well return to the three field system of agriculture, otherwise submit to an elitist 13th Century manor lord, or do nothing but watch "Survivor" re~runs.

 

I resent the time spent covering him, regret my promise to listen and report, and lament the world stage access he so readily enjoys.  There is no new Kal, there is only the old Kal with a new book.  His assumptions are suspect, his conclusions are unclear, and his interpretations are convenient.  I'm not buying. I'd suggest no one should. 

 

Finally ~~ I was in no way edified, uplifted, inspired or enlightened.  It was a huge waste of my time, as Mr. Korff has unstintingly proved to be, lo these many years... so I'll just chalk it off to history made more meaningless, and continue to march... Read on!

 

Alfred's Odd Observation #008 (Monday, February 18, 2002)

 

 

I had a sighting Sunday morning.  Sure, and it was hardly anything to write home to 'Mom' about, as sightings of the tres weird go, and I wouldn't call it a "wave" exactly [g]... but I'm pleased to have something strange to ~finally~ report [g]. I'll get to those short details in a moment, but let me tell you about something else first.

 

I'd been out the Saturday night before to a cook~out at an old friend's home, and I'd had one more beer (or three) than was entirely good for me.  I'm sure that's happened to you from time to time.  If it hasn't, it should (assuming informed consent).  Moderation in all things ~includes~ moderation.  And thank god the Australians weren't there, or I might have been well and truly lost [g]!

 

Be that as it may, I was a little worse for wear the next morning when I blew off the alarm set for usual 2:45 Central and slept in 'till four.  To me it felt like ~noon~.

 

I looked outside, blearily, that following Sunday morning and was almost ~disappointed~ to discover the best visibility I'd seen in about two weeks!  Rats!  I ~had~ to go outside now... A little disgusted with myself that I had blown off the lion's share of an opportunity, I made my steamy cup o' ritual java ("Al's liquid quickening" I call it) and stumbled out the back door, making my way to the usual spot next to a waist high retaining wall.

 

I looked up into the sky miserably with a dull headache for company, and was just depressed enough to wonder what the bleedin' point was... when I remembered a conversation I'd had with a fellow aviator at the party the night before. He'd caught me looking up into the sky over the fire and, knowing something of my interests, said quietly,  "I... ah... I saw something weird under goggles on Guard drill last weekend..."  He was apologetic, as many are, when he related the rest of his, obviously uncomfortable, tale.  A small digression... where, when, and why did we learn to feel shame at having a truth to tell?

 

...but back at the ranch, *Mike's* story, and the subject at hand...

 

He and another UH~60 (Blackhawk) driver were parked out on the military reservation waiting for a night training mission to kick off while flying simulated combat sorties for the Alabama National Guard.  "Mike" (not his real name, he can't afford to associate himself with this twitchy UFO business, like ~most~ professional people...) is a highly experienced military aviator and civilian GS~13 working as an instructor pilot at Fort Rucker, the sun source of  the World's professional helicopter flying effort.  Like most of his ilk, he is not given to wild blueberry horse feathers, and besides, no one who remotely ~knows~ ME is going to rattle my chain on the subject of UFOs.  They know I'll eat them.  Sincerely. [...no little grinny thing...]

 

Anyway, while he was out there in the darkness under the strictest 'light' discipline (it means lives) he used his night vision goggles as I have used them when I can infrequently get my hands on them.  He looked (perhaps "too" deeply?) into the near moonless but otherwise unbridled potential of the night sky.  Even ~without~ the UFOs, it's ~still~ a dazzler and quite a "show"!

 

It was also very quiet out in the "field"; the colder temperatures silenced the insects and the middle of the reservation is a marvelous buffer from the road noise of  even distant highways.  As I said, it was very quiet ~ a 'quiet' so deep one can cut it with a knife.

 

Around midnight, abruptly, he noticed a "V" formation of seven or eight lights moving across his field of vision overhead. He flipped up his goggles to see if the highly strange lights were visible without them.  They were not.  Puzzled that there would be an unplanned formation of "mystery" aircraft (running without position lights!) flying over the military training area in the middle of this highly canned and orchestrated exercise, he alerted his co~pilot to have a look!  Both pilots were goggle equipped.  With perhaps thirty years of piloting experience between them they watched, mouths hanging open, as the puzzling lights traversed the sky.

 

"Why don't we hear anything," the astonished co~pilot whispered.  That seven or eight aircraft flying overhead in formation at ~any~ altitude is going to make a significant "sound" is a laughing understatement. There was ~no~ sound from the formation of lights overhead...

 

As Mike and his co~pilot watched these highly peculiar bogeys, both men saw the lead craft break off from the formation, abruptly, and dangerously fly the "long way around" the formation into a trail position on one of the wings of the "V", instead of falling back and sliding over from the inside, which would be safer and more appropriate change of the lead aircraft... The manner in which this maneuver was accomplished raised the hair on the backs of their necks. 

 

The procedure just described would take 45 seconds to a minute if the pilot was ~hurrying~, and even then he might get a reprimand from the ASO (aviation safety officer) for cowboying the aircraft!  Turns at night in training are kept to standard rate (three degrees per second) or less, as a safety measure insuring lives and millions of dollars worth of high tech equipment (not ~necessarily~ in that order), especially aircraft in formation.  But this craft made the transition from lead to trail, around the ~outside~ of the flight in under ~three~ seconds...!  That's just not done! It's negligent and irresponsible! Moreover, it's impossible! Mike and his co~pilot then watched the formation of lights continue on their way until they were too far away to be seen, even with the goggles.

 

He asked me, then, what I thought he had seen.  I told him that he had likely seen just what he had ~thought~ he had seen, and welcome to the beginning of highly "interesting" times... here~have~another~beer!

 

Fascinating, huh?  It's all in the looking up at what is ~there~ to be seen.  Of course, sixteen thousand dollars of high tech assisted vision between them helped, too.

 

As I considered Mike's strange story I was idly looking West, just to the south of Ursa Major (about five points to her left) when I had my ~own~ sighting.  About 35 degrees in elevation and almost due west, a bright ~amber~ colored light about the magnitude of Sirius blinked on as I was watching, and began to transition to the North at a steady rate of one degree in six seconds.  Tres slow!  There was no sound, and the rate of speed, color and magnitude of the light did not waver.  I watched until it moved behind a large pecan tree in my neighbor's yard...  I watched it travel for several minutes starting about 04:35 Central.

 

...Just a point of light in my field glasses, an ~amber~ star that blinked on as I watched and then inexplicably began to move.  Real enigma on the half shell, boys and girls~~ dull throb of a lingering hangover or no, and finally, something newly ~substantive~ to report. 

 

I remain watching our skies.  Read on.

 
 

Alfred's Odd Observation #007 (Monday, February 11, 2002)

 

I feel like a bad skit on SNL (...is that show still on the air live?).  My intention with this "Odd Observation" series was to chronicle a little of what I've been seeing in the sky as it regards the aggregate and 'bionic' weird, and it seemed like a good bet when I started that I would frequently be able to report on "something".  They ~are~ up there quite a bit, or at least they ~had~ been... they are up there if you take the time to look, at any rate.  I've been looking.

 

But I've nothing to report ~~ I have no report... I am without report... [g]. This is, therefore, only a likely way to do nothing more than waste your time and otherwise distract you from a seeming panoply of  obscene, obsolescent, and obnoxiously inordinate (and certainly harmful) goods and services. [g]

 

I guess that's why I'm wasting your time with ~this~ narration.  I'm just letting you know that I'm still looking, have the capacity to look, and that I am still keenly ~interested~ in looking.  Forgetting my own personal enjoyment, I'm glad to be able do it for the interested who ~would~ "look" if they had the time ~~ you know, if they (like me) didn't have otherwise "productive" lives? [g]  [But, producing ~what~! [no little grinny thing]]

 

All kidding aside?  I never feel more alive than when I am looking out at the bright, bright sky in the early, early morning. The sleepy southern town is more or less shut down around me, and so no distraction to me as I enjoy my complete and uninterrupted "watching for what might be moving strangely in the night's perspicacious but unknowable vastness"...

 

But nothing (outside of the dreary prosaic) ~has~ been moving.  Dead calm.

 

...And that's pretty weird all by itself. It is, in some ways, every bit as weird as having a lot of "something" there to readily observe.

 

You see, if what I'm observing in the sky as "weird" ~is~ prosaic, where do they go?  How can I see them every day for a month (spectacular sightings!), and then go a month without seeing them?  Oh and by the way, what the hell are " they "?

 

How far ~is~ up?  Why is air?  Will you walk to work or carry your lunch?  When is now?  Where is when?  What must you?  Who would want? In other words... huh? 

 

But the 'funny' part about it is?  The universe (multi~verse!) is big enough to answer all those questions (and more) in a manner that would make ~eventual~ sense, forgetting, though, that it takes you to a place you ~never~ imagined... on a path where you thought a path could ~never~ be.  That aforementioned sense?  It'll be a new kind of sense.  We've done it before.  Don't worry about it. It's like death and taxes.  Run blithely through astonishment, denial, and rage's resignation into the arms of surprised acceptance!  It's the cut to the chase!  Babies resent their expulsion from the womb, too. Onward.

 

What are "they"?  ~I~ don't know!  I can only have ~ideas~ regarding what "they" can be.  I've read a lot from the forbidden index (indeed ~~ discovered why the forbidden index is forbidden!), and what is the "forbidden index"?  Simple.  Please allow this digression.

 

It is (very nearly ~~ don't waste time with the absurd) ~any~ book, film, or recording that the "authorities" tell the individual not to read, validate, or test.  You may be told vigorously that something, perhaps even something that you observe ~yourself~ is not happening or is dangerous... or is foolish... but know that it is the motive for your being ~told~ that are ulterior, likely shortsighted, or convenient. They are therefore, highly, suspect (an understatement). 

 

No, Virginia and Virgil, your society or culture does not have ~your~ best interests at heart.  ...Never ~has~!  It has, at its heart, only the best interests of that culture or society.  ...And most times that's measured pretty narrowly, too!  Forget that, in the round, the 'plan' of culture may facilitate the individual... remember, instead, that the individual is and always has been the ~enemy~ of that culture.  That is not, necessarily, a bad thing.  Yes V&V,  sometimes it's RIGHT to bite the hand that feeds you.

 

Why? Accept still a little more digression ...

 

The individual is the proponent of quality change, and quality change in culture is ~always~ resisted.  This resistance is not necessarily for the most efficacious of reasons, either!

 

It is not necessarily born out of the greatest good for the greatest number.  No, sometimes this 'resistance' comes, merely, from a minority of fiscally inconvenienced "officiators" of culture (elected and non~elected!).  In other words ~~ those ~most~ rewarded by society and culture and therefore the most loath to change an egregiously profitable (...you know the difference!) status quo... to what may jeopardize or lessen that reward!

 

To that end (and this can be effectively argued) a vast array of media implementations are mobilized and employed to manipulate the individual in support of that arguably corrupt mechanism of convenient culture... and by what can only be decried and identified as the institutions of the sociopathic elite (...they know who they are!) ~~ not to put too fine a point on it. [g].  Yes, V&V, a corrupt elite surely exists and has always existed.  Would you think that it has your best interests at heart?  That its pronoun is "it" should give you a gentle clue.

 

As I said before (and ending this digression), I don't know what ~they~ are.  But my ongoing study of the suggested forbidden index demonstrates a justifiable revision of a history... to ~include~ all sorts of reasons why they may be intelligently flown craft from places other than merely "here".  UFOs just... ~are~.

 

This is born out in a "brave" science (don't pretend that it's not), it is demanded by philosophy (always in search for an understanding, acceptance, and utilization of ideas from the "people from across the river"), and it is suggested by religion (as an ontological study of Earth's religions may ~readily~ demonstrate!). 

 

Moreover, it is recorded on too much film. It is seen by too many credible witnesses.  It is written down in too much ink and chiseled into too much stone.  It is too much old paint splashed on too many ancient canvasses.  It has the private interest of too many competent professional people afraid to step forward.  It is woven too finely into popular culture, reflected too readily in the obfuscating media, and it is vigorously implied by too much secret (black!) government chicanery.

 

Indeed, the only thing ~lacking~ is the admission by a ~contrived~ mainstream.  And if that *mainstream* is afraid of the ambiguous consequences of disclosure, what would they have us do?  Dump this problem on our children, or our children's children? What cowardice! What a humiliating lack of ~real~ courage!! How unbrave!!!

 

I'm filled with shame for us.

 

Enough.  I remain, watching our skies. If I see something (?), I'll tell you about it. Read on.

 

Alfred's Odd Observation #006 (Monday ~~ January 21, 2002)

 

Well ~~ just freaking nothing!  I was thinking that I would be able to share something strange from the skies every week, if not every day...  It seems that writing about it in its own format has driven the *peculiar* away. <g>.

 

The skies have been interesting only in the new stars that I find, the revealing histories I discover written about them, and the galaxies that come miraculously into stunning view with military style night vision devices I can get my hands on occasionally.  But, NO UFOs, mother~ships, gassy pelicans, or peculiar clouds.  Interestingly, I saw nothing with the goggles resembling a satellite, which I would have predicted a ~lot~ more of.  I've seen some with unaided vision. Tiny and almost imperceptible they are infrequent points of steadily moving "ho~hum"...

 

There are hundreds of satellites in the sky flying to all points of the compass, all points but the "duest of due Wests."  Free JAVA applications (the intrepid reader can download from the internet) paints them plainly in real time simulations that are easily time shifted, demonstrate their sometimes oblique and seemingly impossible movements over the ground, and point out at last what ~could~ actually BE there to be seen (...in so far as we are allowed to freely know...)!  It does NOT close the loop on my sightings, however.

 

I have not YET been able to see a computer predicted satellite! Moreover, none of my odder observations of peculiar articles in the sky have, in turn, been able to be explained by the same program. Curious!

 

Still, there have been, in the past, days~in~a~row of things to take note of in a clear morning sky, sometimes multiple occurrences of these things, so that their "drying up" all at ~once~... seems as queer as seeing so many of them at one time and for so many days in succession...  I'm not making this stuff up, forgetting I get a real kick out of telling the reader about it (Yes YOU, reaching for that cup of... is it green tea?  And YOU, scratching the inside of your nose... some might call it "picking" <g>).

 

But no UFOs to report...  I can't tell the reader they're there if they're not, but that's for purely selfish reasons.  I would just be too disappointed with myself ~~ have no respect for myself, no saving grace, and, consequently, no self~actualization. I'd be on that despair producing and well oiled path to a true personal hell on Earth. 

 

I'm hoping this "Odd Observation series" does not become the usual "albatross". 

 

What experience have I had with an albatross? 

 

The (highly regarded!) ~constant~ reader knows I collect them like the chains of Mr. "T", and for some of the same reasons as it turns out [g].  Oh, they are all ~very~ righteous, my (our) dead birds, and I don't regret a single one of them, forgetting they get difficult to bear... Truly, some things have to smell and be uncomfortably in sight until they see some justice... some healing resolution that serves us ALL! The well chosen albatross is necessary for personal growth. It's what Coleridge's albatross is all about. Anything else is to experience true cultural dissolution, intellectual dysfunction, and spiritual desolation.  Name one?

 

Easy.

 

John Ford. John Ford became a kind of albatross for me ~~ forgetting that I was abundantly confident that the BALDLY obvious injustice of the situation would win him a quick, or at least ~eventual~, release.  Wrong on both counts.  A horror ensues.

 

John Ford, the reader recalls, was the strident Suffolk county New York UFO nut, TOO many years ago now, who "tried to murder" a political rival, John Powell, by putting radium in his household tooth paste.  Forget for a moment that John Ford was very busily, very passionately, and also very diligently investigating John Powell pursuant to a righteous CORRUPTION DISCLOSURE involving ~key~ agencies of thoroughly corrupted local government.  Forget that John Ford's strident investigation was legal, ethical, and reflective of a man who was a retired officer of the Suffolk county court system and holder of a College Master's degree. Forget that after John Ford was thrown in a hole to rot and be forgotten, the right honorable John Powell pled "no contest" to CONSPIRACY and RACKETEERING CHARGES with links to organized crime, and, to my knowledge spent not one day in jail!

 

Doesn't anybody ~else~ smell the fetid fragrance of  that fulsome fishy flounder?  Do the *facts* of this strange case support anything else BESIDES the well told American fable of the "little guy" taking it squarely in the ass for the crass convenience of the "big guy", and all of this scurrilous activity in DIRECT contradiction to every precept, ideal, and ethic we're supposed to hold dear in this nation?  John Ford was, the reader can bet, foully hull~breached for investigating the activities of a man who could not bear that investigation!

 

John Ford, accused of conspiracy to murder, and then locked in an institution for the criminally insane for his belief in the ufological, is very likely  crazy ~now~, just under 10 years into this very likely criminal false imprisonment.  It doesn't ~help~ that he looks like Elmer Fudd, has a voice like Daffy Duck and was as stridently litigious as Yosemite Sam is angry and bellicose... it doesn't ~matter~~ either!  John was likely just one more easy victim of the criminally arbitrary, a pawn of an aristocratic elite, and just another crushed bug for the boss of a corrupt political machine.

 

That's enough this trip ~~ I remain, "...watching your skies."  There's something up there.  When I see it I'll tell you about it.  If I don't, I'll tell you about something else.  Read on!

 

Alfred's Odd Observation #005 (Monday ~~ January 21, 2002)

 

The only thing I can report on this iteration is that Jupiter is almost one twelfth of it's way around its current orbit... but the skies are otherwise dead. Oh, I've seen birds, bolides and balloons, airplanes and ancillaries, and other things that one suspects SHOULD be up there, but nothing like those things inspiring this current series of odd observations.  No strangely moving night lights crawling the night sky like glowing beetles on unknown errands...

 

Nothing...

 

So ~~ I've included in this issue the Brahms of Ufology, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, in a Foreword he wrote for another serious work exploring the reality of this *thing* that interests us so much.  Apparently we're not the only ones interested.  And given the facts?  The reader can bet that someone is interested ~~ somebody knows.

 

Allen Hynek, remember, maintained (throughout his association with this touchy subject) the highest caliber of respect, appreciation, and acknowledged integrity as is possible for a man of science to achieve.  His words are not to be taken lightly, shallowly considered, or disregarded.  He was in at the ground floor of the anomalous with few others and what he says today is every bit as important, factual and truthful as it was forty years ago... Read on!

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FOREWORD to Jacques and Janine Vallee's "Challenge to Science: The UFO Enigma"

 

By J.ALLEN HYNEK ~~ Chairman, Department of Astronomy, and Director, Dearborn Observatory, Northwestern University

 

 

WHAT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE Scientist confronted with observations that seem not only a challenge but sometimes also an affront to science? How does one discharge this responsibility? The UFO phenomenon presents us with such a problem. To most scientists who have no acquaintance with the subject, save that gained from scanning the popular press, it is an "untouchable" area. "Flying saucers" indeed ~~   the product of immature, imaginative, and even unbalanced, minds the playground of the pseudo~scientist and the quasi~mystic, the haven of the crackpot.

 

Is this really so? Obviously, if one is to apply the scientific principles we all staunchly defend, one must take the time to look into the subject carefully, to look, and to consider. But time is precisely what today's scientists, in some respects the world's busiest people   do not have! Who can take the time to wade through the seeming morass of stories, fanciful tales, chimera, and balderdash when so many pressing things demand the scientist's immediate attention? As an astronomer, I probably would never have approached the subject had I not been officially asked to do so. Over the past eighteen years I have acted as a scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force on the subject of flying objects not identified ~~ UFO's. As a consequence of my work on the voluminous air force files and, to a greater extent, of personal investigation of many puzzling cases and interviews with witnesses of good repute, I have long been aware that the subject of UFOs could not be dismissed as mere nonsense. Nonsense is present, to be sure, and misidentification of otherwise familiar objects that many sincere people report as UFO's. But is there not a "signal" in the "noise," a needle in the haystack? Is it not precisely our role to try to isolate the valid from the nonsensical. By carefully working through tons of pitchblende, Madame Curie isolated a tiny amount of radium, but the significance of that minute quantity was world~ shaking.

 

It is my conclusion (speaking now personally and not in an official capacity) after many years of working through "tons" of reports, that there is a signal, that there is "radium" in the "pitchblende," waiting to be extracted. The authors of this book have come to the same conclusion, by a somewhat different path. Whether the scientifically valid in the entire UFO phenomenon proves to be a physical signal or a psychological one   oz even a heretofore unknown phenomenon   it is in every respect a challenge to science.

 

Perhaps I should have spoken earlier; eighteen years is a long time. But it takes more evidence to get an idea accepted in a revolutionary field, be it biological evolution, relativity, or quantum mechanics, than it does to advance simply another step in an accepted scientific domain. Furthermore, astronomers are among the most conservative of scientists. Perhaps this is because their time scale is so great that they naturally bide their time in proposing or accepting revolutionary ideas, particularly if such ideas are subject to sensational treatment in the press and in the minds of the people.

 

Nonetheless, I have of late been rebuked, in my correspondence with people whose integrity I respect, with the charge that I failed to call the importance of the air force data on UFO's to the attention of my peers. If any defense is needed, in view of the controversial and explosive nature of the subject, it is that I did indeed on many occasions call guarded attention to the steadily growing mass of reports made by intelligent people from many countries. As early as 1952, before the Optical Society of America I pointed out the significant nature of some types of UFO reports (article published in the Journal of the Optical Society of America, April, 1953). Over and above that, there remains the fact that for years I have personally devoted a portion of my time to this subject, an action that would be unthinkable had I not felt it was worthy of examination. I have long been aware that the UFO phenomenon is a global one and that it has captured the attention of many rational people. Numerous scientists have privately told me of their interest and their willingness to look further into the problem.

 

Also, as a scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force, I carry a unique responsibility: any statement I make on the importance of the UFO phenomenon, unless backed by overwhelming evidence, carries the danger of "mobilizing the credulity of the world," as a university colleague of mine so aptly put it. I recognize that responsibility in accepting the invitation of the authors to write the Foreword to this book. It was only my respect for the authors as serious investigators and the continued and growing mass of unexplained UFO reports that prompted me to accept. I have over the years acquired something of a reputation as a "debunker" of UFO reports. If this arose from my honest desire to find a rational natural explanation for the stimuli that give rise to the reports, a procedure very frequently crowned with success, then I must bear with that reputation. If it stems, however, from a belief that I deliberately adopted a Procrustean approach, cutting down or stretching out evidence to make a forced fit, deliberately to "explain away" UFO reports at all cost, then it is a most unwarranted charge.

 

In my nearly two score years' association with the investigation of the reports, I have yet to write a book on the subject, primarily because there is no physical evidence in support of the phenomenon Were I to write such a book today, however, I probably would take much the same approach followed by the present authors. The Vallee's present a formidable amount of evidence for the global nature of the UFO phenomenon, but despite this they come to no firm conclusion. As they state: "We must realize that the observations we have reviewed... have no value in themselves. They are important, and deserve study, only because each one is an illustration of a phenomenon that has manifested itself since May, 1946, in every country in the world." Besides the fact that the reports bear striking similarities to each other, they continue to be made by people of good repute, which makes it imperative that a scientific investigation be undertaken. Because of the global nature of the total phenomenon this investigation might well be carried out under the auspices of the United Nations. The psychological implications of the UFO phenomenon on world affairs certainly make it worthy of study. It makes no difference, in this respect, what the physical truth of the matter is; it is the impact it has on the minds of people in many nations that makes it potentially important in the psycho~sociological balance of the world.

 

My own interest, as an astronomer, in the total phenomenon is, of course, purely scientific Some readers many well wonder whether this seemingly flamboyant subject is amenable to scientific inquiry. What constitutes scientific evidence in this field The authors present a convincing argument that the UFO phenomenon can be studied with the advanced methods of inquiry of the physical scientist and of the sociologist and psychologist. In all of these methods the electronic computer figures prominently.

 

Scientific inquiry becomes possible when the phenomenon under study exhibits patterns and regularities, when it is subject to classification. The authors have  shown that a classification system (the start of many branches of science) of UFO phenomena is possible and, indeed, that each type they have identified shows a different diurnal frequency pattern. In particular, their catalogue of five hundred cases should be of interest to scientists. I cannot help drawing a parallel with the first catalogues of celestial radio sources: the great majority of the entries were unidentified optically; only more advanced methods of analysis and observation revealed that some of these were distant radio galaxies and that some were the striking new puzzle, quasi~stellar sources. The present catalogue of UFO cases consists, with very few exceptions of unidentified items; one wonders whether the parallel with the catalogue of radio sources continues.

 

Certainly no progress can be made without scientific study. Unfortunately, as the authors point out, scientists, "draped with dignity," have often refused to study the reports. The fact of the matter is that many of my colleagues who have draped their dignity long enough to take a hard look at the reports have joined the growing ranks of the puzzled scientists: they privately indicate serious interest in the phenomenon but publicly they choose, like the subject itself, to remain unidentified; they are unwilling to expose themselves to the raillery and banter that go with it. It is to them in particular, and to all who faster the true Galilean spirit, that this book will be of greatest value. They grope and seek, examining even those ideas that seem fanciful and strange, for they know haw strange and fanciful the term "nuclear energy" would have been to a physicist one hundred years ago. They are ready to accept a new challenge to science.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Almost 40 years have passed since this was written, and sometimes I feel as if I'm the only one ready to accept that new challenge... you?  Read on!

 

Alfred's Odd Observation #004 (Monday ~~ January 14, 2002)

 

...Nothing visual to report this iteration.  The weather has not cooperated  with a sufficiently clear sky, and the days with the sky have not yielded anything other than the frustrating mundane...

 

...But what I have instead, by way of observation, is an excerpt from Jacques Vallee's "Anatomy of a Phenomenon" that seems prescient given its lucid warning regarding the consequences involved with the continuing lack of scientific courage...   

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 A NEW SYSTEM OF WORKING HYPOTHESIS

 

We should probably stop here, having shown that none of the present interpretations of the UFO phenomena is fully satisfactory; we would thus stay on the safe side of the fence. However, we feel we must complete this chapter by stating where our own system of ideas tends to stand between the various theories we have reviewed. We are assuming, of course, that it is understood that the system is purely speculative in nature. We would summarize it under the following seven points:

 

(1) It is scientifically permissible to work under the general hypothesis that UFOs are material objects, not excluding the possibility of their being non~human vehicles. There is no reason only theories based on the idea that the senses of all witnesses have been abused should bear the stamp of scientific consideration. On the contrary, the hypothesis that the authors of reports have indeed been in visual contact with physical objects, possibly behaving under intelligent control, leads to an analysis of the UFO phenomenon that lacks neither objectivity nor consistency.

 

(2) Under such a hypothesis, the fact that the "controlling intelligence" could not belong to any of the communities which are present today on our planet would be shown by the permanence of UFO activity through changing phases of our technology and even, possibly, through early phases of our historical development.

 

(3) Historically, it would be difficult to determine a starting point for this activity, even if considered artificial in nature. The only fact clearly visible from the data we have is that UFO activity almost ceased between 1914 and 1946 but was considerably renewed in May of 1946. It has been present ever since, with a significant decrease in amplitude since 1958.

 

(4) If the hypothesis that UFO phenomena are manifestations of a controlling intelligence finds serious confirmation in years to come, through research or otherwise, we feel that one should then accept the idea that UFO operators have been seen on the ground on several occasions.

 

(5) Under such circumstances, we would expect intellectual contact to be possible, owing to the fact that human concepts seem in our observation, to be applicable to UFO behavior But we would continue to reject the claim of particular individuals that they have been "contacted" and a1~ lowed to know the origin of the "visitors".

 

(6) In a discussion concerning the "purpose" of UFO activity we would point out:

 

a) that technological development on earth is now such that we are able, at least in theory, to reach any point in the universe which lies within our visual range, having thus overcome the handicap of creatures that can live only on the surface or very close to the surface of a planetary body;

 

b) that UFO activity was suddenly renewed after World War II, when both rocket and aircraft technology had reached a point where space travel could be realistically visualized;

 

c) that a particular peak of activity, quite unlike other waves, took place in 1957 when Sputniks I and II were launched into orbit.

 

(7) It is our opinion that a dispassionate, scientific debate could be established concerning the UFO phenomenon, and that such a discussion could well be conducted within the boundaries set by rationalism for the purpose of objective acquisition of knowledge. The various points involved in the present arguments over the nature of this phenomenon could then be checked by reference to a system of catalogues of observations, very often of high reliability, that falls within the competence of the professional scientist. The existing files, kept up~to~date by official services in this country and by a few reliable amateurs abroad, would provide a basis for the establishment of a general investigation of this type. If, however, these documents and the underlying phenomenon they manifest should be neglected by professional scientists, only obscurantism and charlatanism would be encouraged. Such an attitude would lead to the generation of myths that could constitute a danger when the sociological impact of space exploration reaches its full strength.

 

Through UFO activity, although no physical evidence has yet been found, some of us believe the contours of an amazingly complex intelligent life beyond the earth can already be discerned. The wakening spirit of man, and the horrified reaction of his too~

scrupulous theories: what do they matter?

 

Our minds now wander on planets our fathers ignored. Our senses, our dreams have reached across the night at last, and touched other universes. The sky will never be the same again.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It seems that Dr. Vallee might understand something about epiphany... this is especially obvious when one remembers that the preceding was written prior to 1965... Read on!

 

Alfred's Odd Observation #003 (Saturday December 29, 2001.)

 

My enthusiasm's boundless, and I'm soaring through the night in an early morning "cleaving" where the lights that move are bright, when Ursa, slowly rolling like the Gentle bear of lore, presented one new diamond that then moved across her floor.  The Gem was bright as Sirius, and so slowly did it groove, I'd count out fifteen seconds ~~ one degree was all it moved!  It rolled just under five degrees, due north I watched it fall, but lost it to bring glasses to my eyes to watch it crawl...

 

alienview@adelphia.net

 

It was about 04:15, and I was still high from some great mail I'd gotten yesterday from people who "got it" and had briefly celebrated the "getting it" with me in an exchange of some ~very~ satisfying E~mail <metaphoric cigarettes smoked all around>... a little slice of heaven... but... back at the ranch! 

 

It blinked on, just slightly below the big dipper, and started (immediately) to move to the north.  Movement was so slow I thought I might be confused by some optical illusion initially, but no, it moved against the star field, bright as Sirius, about one degree in fifteen seconds.  I watched it move for four or five degrees, then brought my field glasses to my eyes to see the obligatory but still anomalous point source of light (just bigger), when the light disappeared.  Not finding it in my glasses, it was gone, subsequently, for my unaided eyes, too. 

 

...And did it occur to any other sky watcher out there that Ursa was female?  If not, then where did the "little" bear come from? <g>.

 

And so it goes for the intrepid anomalous observer <g>. Read on! And thanks for the mail!


 

Alfred's Odd Observation #002 (Saturday December 26, 2001.)

 

A few mornings of miserable weather, one futile dry~run during excellent viewing conditions, and at least one iteration of liberal holiday libation ... (I guess that could be placed under temporary illness <g>) induced a complete lack of sighting opportunities. This explains the paucity of reports over the last couple of days.  This morning proved to be an auspicious break to the short ufological famine.  I would have two anomalous sightings between 03:45 and 05:15.

 

At 04:35 a dim greenish light appeared beneath the paws of Leo at about fifty five degrees elevation and traveled about 60 degrees of distance to the north.  It maintained a steady track, but seemed to vary it's apparent ground speed.  One 5 degree segment took 20 seconds to complete and another took 25 seconds... both in about 6 minutes of observation. 

 

Steady field glasses could resolve no further detail but the point source of light.  A typical moving star. No sign of aircraft position lights could be seen.  The "light" was dimmer than Polaris and maintained that degree of luminosity from "blink on" to "blink off. "

 

At 4:50 and due east a bright white strobe flashed that was brighter in magnitude than the star Sirius, chasing Orion to the horizon behind me and to the west.  I noted the azimuth and started counting seconds. Experience with these "flashers" demonstrates that continued observation of the area is usually rewarded with another flash some 20 to 40 seconds later. The second flash occurred 23 seconds later  two degrees to the left of the first flash and moving north.  Twenty~three seconds later another flash was observed to travel an additional

two degrees further north.  This pattern cycled six times before the apparent movement took the object out of view behind a tree.

 

The long frequency between strobes and absence of position lights precludes aircraft. There was no sound from either sighting. 

 

Prosaic explanations are, of course, not forthcoming, or you wouldn't be reading a report.  I'm only interested in reporting the anomalous articles I observe.  Read Shermer, Posner, Oberg, Korff, or Klass for prosaic explanations, as I'm not going to waste the reader's time with head~in~the~sand platitudes or transparent enigma denial.

 

Until next time then...

 

Alfred's Odd Observation #001 (Saturday December 22, 2001)

 

For years now I've been making reference to anomalous sightings I've been having down here in the southeast US.  I caution the reader that I've seen nothing conclusive; no mother ships, beam landers, or star ship shuttles, and I have only had encounters that exclusively (but strongly) suggest Hynek's close encounter of the first type.

That is:...Strangely moving point~source lights.  These, only, comprise the vast majority of my observations, though these lights have done enough of the enigmatic and unusual to remove them from the category of what is "supposed" to be up there.

I add that I'm a credible judge of what is supposed to be up there. I was a very highly trained and decorated career army aviator, an instructor pilot and team leader in both utility and attack branches, and, as a graduate of the *old* Instrument Flight Examiner course with more helicopter time, in peace and combat, than Oberg, Shermer, Posner, and Klass combined, I am more than just merely qualified to make that judgment! <g>. I digress.

Back at the ranch... bizarre and specifically significant "other" things are seen in the early morning skies as well, but not often. And only then because I am provided with... uh, let's call it ...inordinate TIME... to secure an opportunity to observe them. Frankly, these things are making ninety degree turns, expelling red glittery stuff, and flying random, senseless patterns while flashing strobes pulse at the snap~turned corners! They are coming to complete stops, flying in formation, and making vertiginous changes in magnitude with regard to speed... while generating rainbows of color. They are as bright as Venus cubed, dim as a star only visible with off center viewing, and they appear and disappear with what a child might perceive as wispy playfulness. I can only wonder what they must actually be...

I've discovered (forgive this small digression) that an idle mind is not so much the devil's tool that is the issue, but that it reamins a ~tool~ at all.  An unfettered tool.  An unrestrained tool.  A tool with lesser barriers regarding it's use. 

I've time to use that tool more in a fashion of what I perceive to be an efficacious loose cannon.  As regards the aforementioned (and hotly contested) "inordinate" time?

...Retired from the Army and shunned for suspect or carpet-bagging reasons (...not to put too fine a point on it...) by the public school teaching *professionals* of *polite* local *society* (civilian culture) ... I've found myself with a lot of unemployed hours on my hands to indulge a (seemingly rational) ufological interest with that tool of the otherwise and aforementioned idle mind.

The mind is a tool, decidedly, dangerous to an establishment.  I use some of those idle minutes that I have been graced with to rock my head back and actually look up into the sky for extended periods. That's the secret, you know... Really looking?

Sincerely, anybody spending time looking will actually see the things I'm seeing... if they just took the time to look. I understand most folks don't have time.

Young people have jobs or young families.  Frenetic governments provide more immediate fish for them to fretfully fry. Those who have the time?  These don't have the inclination, and those who have inclination don't have enough inclination to provide opportunity... you have to brave the bugs and bitter cold... or UFOs go unseen.

You've got to spend the time, you see, to see these things that fly so free... Sorry, that just slipped out... [g].

I go out every morning there's a clear sky and spend about an hour looking up, out, and INTO deep space. I've amassed hundreds of hours in the past several years peering into the sky, and I've seen the damnedest things, already spoken about. I've written about many of them on this site.

I see these things, I think, because I try not to presuppose or pronounce on what I'm seeing.  I don't self-hypnotize that all these sightings MUST have, exclusively, prosaic explanations. I don't ~know~ that they're flying saucers, that's forgetting it's what I suspect. ~My~ suspicions are not the issue. The fact that, among others I'm seeing... ..."something"..., is.

So...

I'm going to start reporting them here. Every time I have a significant sighting of the ubiquitous weird I'm going to report it in this forum, for the record ~~ date and number 'em. I'll give time, degree, and description with as much significant detail as I can or care to. I'm going to do this for two reasons.

One, I am genuinely (and I think very rationally) concerned about the general incompetence, neurotic behavior, and contrived clueless~ness of the sullen mainstream regarding its ignored responsibility to intelligently facilitate an informed public! Presently the mainstream programs the individual, manipulates the individual, and disrespects the individual. We're not getting the whole story, the complete story, or the true story about ANYTHING! September 11th has only signaled a turn for the egregious worse... regarding the *rest* of that story ~~ a story I'm convinced would be to the benefit of every individual on this planet!

Two... I had a sighting this morning so bizarre I'm busting to share it with someone out there that may be remotely simpatico, and not write me off too quickly as your garden variety net loon or web wacko... enough people going out to look for these things might energize a grass roots effort to get to the bottom of them. I would inspire that "going out to look."  I think that there's a reward in it. A satisfaction.

...Ok...

It was 4:50, and as it had been well over an hour (I was outside from 3:30 on this morning) and the coffee was gone, I thought it must be about time to mosey on back into the house to write... I'd just happened to glance over my left shoulder at the North Star for a final look~around before heading in when, as I watched, a bright cream colored light blinked on to the left of Polaris like an energized and pointed aircraft landing light! It was much brighter than Venus. It was perhaps Venus cubed. I thought it might be a helicopter making a precautionary landing, but the light remained stationary, briefly, about three degrees to the left of the star, and there was NO sound.

I put my glasses on it, and brought them down immediately; it was like looking into a truck headlamp from ten feet away. I continued the rest of the observation, mostly unaided, for about 30 remaining seconds. I had time to think that it might be a super nova... meteors, aircraft, satellites, ball lightning, fireworks, and gassy pelicans were considered... but discarded...

Abruptly, I was startled to see the object begin to move to the north, seemingly, and as it traveled a total of about 10 degrees on that track for 20 seconds of the remaining observation, it dimmed, steadily, to the point where I felt it worthwhile to get the binoculars back on it again. I was able to keep in view, but could discern no other details outside a slowly dimming creamy light moving steadily against the clear star field. Soon I was having to use off center viewing even in the glasses to keep it in view. Then it was gone.

It was a great sighting of the inexplicable, friends and neighbors, but also it was a bit of the "ho~freaking~hum"! I'd seen that kind of thing before. I'd seen one in California (with my Mom!) that was better than that!

At this point I've got my backside up against a low retaining wall in my back yard, arms shoved into my pockets ~~ just staring off to the east and wondering what the light I'd just seen ~really~ was... when I noticed a flock of light colored goose~sized birds, I thought, flying due west in a large uneven chevron, getting ready to make a pass directly over my home. Tres' Neat.

They were still about an apparent hundred meters away, or so, and maybe a hundred feet in the air when it began to seem that they were traveling awfully fast... too fast for birds. And I couldn't see any wings beating. I threw my field glasses up to my eyes for a closer look and was astonished to discover that they were ~not~ birds, at all, the wings were NOT flapping.  It was about 20 or 25 smaller chevrons flying in the single large uneven chevron streaking through the sky directly over my head! I followed them with my glasses.

Abruptly, I got confused regarding how high they were and wobbled in the view field as my knees kind of buckled with astonishment, I'm a little ashamed to report. I thought I was made of sterner stuff.

The field glasses came down as the flight of objects silently zipped away. Perhaps you had to have been there, but this sighting was a real breath~taker even for a guy that had gotten a little jaded watching peculiar stuff in his backyard sky!

...These birds weren't birds. They were too fast for birds. They didn't flap like birds. They didn't have the long necks of most formation flying birds. The field glasses were focused and in good working order, I was able to see a star field behind the objects. They looked, a little, like tiny B2 (flying wing) bombers in my binoculars, traversing about 90 degrees of clear sky in a little over ten seconds. Fast.  ...And they glowed.

I hung around until the sun started to come up, but the rest of the morning was uneventful. And that's the way it was. If you look you see; if you see you find; if you find... well, let's find out! That's enough. I'll watch the skies.  Read on.

Support AVGroup