Monday, May 11, 2009

well, who coulda known?

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"I can assure you that, given they exist, these flying saucers are made by no power on this Earth."

- President Harry S. Truman, 4 April 1950
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[ae note to readers: none of these photos are mine... the milky way shot is from Astronomy Picture of the Day, taken - and copyrighted! - by Larry Landolfi. The photo is a composite... but very, very nicely done...]

I mean seriously... I've been a pretty pragmatic fella throughout my life. I'm hard to convince but I'm easy to get to listen to ideas because I am continuously curious. It's the cat in me...

Now I don't know if you've ever seen things in the sky you couldn't identify or that you identified as a flying saucer (or a UFO). I've had 3 encounters (and a few outstanding dreams) with unidentified moving objects in the sky. I'm also a big fan of science fiction and speculative fiction. So, while I'm very earthbound I also keep an eye on the sky.

Grampa Semu used to talk about the star people. He said they were regular visitors and that the old ones could call them...

When we lived at The Nature Conservancy's Crump Lake Preserve in southern Oregon I discovered Art Bell. And say what you will about his show but Art had many outstanding guests. I'm a fan of Michio Kaku from my hearing his interviews with Art. Living out in the middle of that vast high desert with its starry night-time vistas made it interesting hearing the Art Bell show, because I'd sit in the truck and fiddle with the AM dial at night, picking up stations from all across the country while above me, in a desert sky, clear and free from light pollution, the Milky Way blazes and can be seen as 3 dimensional...



That night-time AM listening started when I was a kid and got my first portable(!) transistor(!) radio. I would keep it under my pillow and listen to the Lakers' games broadcast by Chick Hearn or surf the music stations when I should be sleeping. Sometimes I could pick up Wolfman Jack on "the BIG X E R B baby!" It was Wolfman who turned me on to James Brown and a lot of soul and R&B music never heard on big-hit, popular radio.

But... there was a night when my little sister, Lori, and I were home alone. There was a high window that faced south. And this particluar night we looked up and through that window we could see a light travelling amazingly fast over the L.A. harbor, heading east. We ran outside and the light suddenly stopped, took a right turn, sped forward, made another 90ยบ right turn and flew back out over the Pacific. I think I was probably about 11.



When I returned to the states from Thailand in 1974 (that's another story... and it has all the critical elements to a good tale - sex, drugs and Rock&Roll) I bought a VW van (yep). A buddy of mine that came back from the same base close to the same time flew into L.A. and travelled east to Denver with me on my roundabout journey to my next duty station down in Texas. When we got to the west face of the Rocky Mountains in Utah and headed over them towards Denver, we stopped and picked up a hitchhiker at about sunset. Well, this hitchhiker proceeded to tell us how he had been watching a light moving up and down the face of this mountain off to the southeast. Well, we could see the light, but... you know... anyway we drove on into the dark, up the face of the Rockies, with me behind the wheel.

I came to a place that I could see the hitchhiker's light. My friend Jeff and the hitchhiker were now asleep. I saw a turnout and pulled over and parked so I could see the light over on the other mountain out my windshield. I flashed my headlights (headlights! headLIGHTS! not head lice...) and not noticing any change in the light I pulled back onto the highway.

It was cold and dark outside and not much traffic. My passengers asleep, my instrument lights bright and reflecting in my windshield... I noticed a light out the driver's side window. And the light was travelling at a speed that kept it even with me. I thought there was a light in the cab reflecting off the window. But no... this light disappeared when we'd pass through a cut in in the hillside only to appear once we passed that highway cut. It would flicker as it passed behind trees. I had to wake my guests for this!

So I turned to them and yelled "Wake up! You gotta see this." When I turned back, no light... so...? What was it?

There is another UFO encounter that I'll share sometime, but right now it will detract from this tale.

Because... I'm moving on to another aspect of flying saucers that shocked me! Aghast I was! Simply stated... I witnessed a program that proved once and for all that flying saucers are real. And I know it is true because I saw it on PBS! Are you ready for this shocking revelation?

Flying saucers are real and they were developed by the Nazis:



I didn't know? Did you? If you did... why the heck didn't any of you tell me? All those hours listening to Art Bell and never once did I hear flying saucers were a Nazi product... but what about Area 51? And Roswell? Well... consider that our government has been known to lie to us. You know, nothing big... just little white lies.

Of course... and neither do they ever use us for guinea pigs (never mind the Tuskegee Airmen), or operate hypocritically like they are (and have been for decades) with the drug war and medical cannabis.

So here is the only PBS link on the Nazi flying saucer story:

History Project: UFOs: The Real History

But it was popular enough that you can view it from several sources, via a streaming torrent (whatever that is) from several links on Google

Aye lads and lassies, we don't get the real scoop often enough. And when a government (not just on UFOs and flying saucers) deliberately lies, obfuscates and acts to deceive those from which it derives its power... surely we must take that as a sign that an overhaul is required...

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After I give lectures—on almost any subject—I am often asked, "Do you believe in UFOs?". I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence. I'm almost never asked, "How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?"

- Carl Sagan, 'The Demon Haunted World,' 1996.

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