Lazy Sunday

    Boy it's definitely a lazy Sunday. I don't have a whole lot to talk about just yet, somehow surviving an apocalypse wasn't as life-affirming as I thought it would be. Although I suppose that we still had the whole Anonymous 'Operation UFO' thing to look forward to, but as of this writing nothing has happened. (Hang on and let me check just to make sure) Yeah just as I thought, nothing has happened yet.

    Oh well I suppose that there is always next time for a massive UFO hoax. Really this has been an extra disappointing weekend, first the Rapture didn't occur on Saturday clearly. And then today obviously the UFO hoax hasn't happened yet either. Although I really didn't expect either event to happen. Well I should say that the Anonymous hoax thing seemed much more likely to occur than the Rapture but still.
   
    Not surprisingly conspiracy websites have been a flutter today about how the May 21st  Rapture was in fact some kind of disinfo program to discredit the 'real' apocalypse set to occur on Dec 21st 2012. The logic being that TPTB (the powers that be) allowed/caused the whole May 21st Rapture thing reach such heights in the Mainstream media, so that as many people as possible could be exposed to it. Then when it didn't come to pass, anybody that believed in it would be proven a fool. I know this seems fairly sketchy here but stay with me. OK so once this apocalypse was seen to be false, naturally no one would thus accept the reality of the so called 'actual' apocalypse. That way only the elites would survive the coming apocalypse, because only they would know it was happening and thus prepare for it appropriately.
   
    I don't believe this is the reality of what was going on, but I must admit I have a soft spot in my heart for clearly stupid conspiracy theories. There is something comforting, perhaps in a bizarre way, about conspiracy theories. They allow us to believe that there is some kind of order in all of the chaos. I'm not arguing that conspiracies don't occur of course. They do on some level. But the ones I used to accept as true, but have since come to question are those about like overarching plans to rule the world. There are a lot of problems with theories such as this, for one thing the groups have supposedly been working towards these ends for centuries. Secondly, for a secret plot it sure has gotten a whole crap town of air time. And finally, why the hell have they waited so damn long? It's not as if the majority of the first world citizens would exactly stand up and demand they stop.
   
    Like I said today was kind of a slow day and we will return with regularly scheduled posting tomorrow night. Just some stuff to think about between now and then. So behave yourselves, and also be sure to look out for a 'triangular shaped craft with eight lights'. This is Tony, the Closet Anomalist, saying stay classy.

No Rapture talk here!

Originally I was going to write about how we are all still here and thus apparently no Rapture occurred. Then I realized that there would be a lot of that kind of talk going on and I didn't really want to delve into that arena. Instead I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you guys for sticking around with me for almost two weeks now.
    

Tomorrow (Sunday May 22)  will mark the second full week in a row that I have blogged everyday. I am really proud of myself for sticking to this. Some days it is much easier to post than others and especially now with my classes and everything, but I am going to continue giving it a try. I have been dreading completing my magazine article for some time now. I think that, much like when I first contacted Tim Binnall about writing an article for his site (see Fortean Ramblings), I am really nervous that the magazine will turn me down.
   

Like most people I am fairly critical of the work that I produce, but my blog seems to be getting a decent number of hits which is definitely a  positive thing. I have a lot of ideas and theories about all manner of Fortean phenomena, and it seems that in today's modern society you basically have two options to share your opinions.  You can either produce a Podcast (which I did for a very short time) or blog like I am doing now.
  

  I suppose that in a way I am hoping to help any young people that are interested in these topics to realize that they are not always as black and white as they are often portrayed. I know that, like I recounted yesterday, for me Fortean things used to be pretty simplistic. UFOs were alien spacecraft, ghosts were the 'spirits' of dead relatives back to see the living, and Bigfoot was just a large smelly ape that hadn't been discovered yet. But after a few more years intense research, I have come to a tentative conclusion that those models don't really seem to fit all of the data.
   

As a full disclosure thing I have only ever investigated in person one thing. My town has a road where, (and I'm sure you have heard this before), a school bus was stalled on train tracks and the train was unable to stop, so that all of the children died. Now, so the story goes, if you stall out on the tracks 'something' will push your vehicle out of the way. Well in order to test this theory we put talcum powder on the trunk of the car and 'stalled' out on the tracks. Sadly nothing happened. This may have been for a number of reasons, and not just that this whole is likely an urban legend. Perhaps the spirits realized that we were not in any real danger, as the car hadn't actually stalled out and I don't feel like the tracks are used all that much anymore either.
   

My point in telling that story was so that you the reader can realize that I am definitely not an investigator, nor am I an experiencer (though I certainly have tried see my entry entitled 'Be careful what you wish for') of any strange phenomena. What I am simply is a Fortean Philosopher and a bit of a Closet Anomalist. But that in no way invalidates my opinions on these topics.
    

After all I have read most of the books that have been written on this topic and seen the majority of the data. I really believe that this is enough to come up with some working models of what may be going on. On the same token of course there is nothing wrong with actual field investigations. Because we wouldn't have all of the data in those books that I have read if nobody did the actual legwork. But that doesn't make them any more or less important than those of us Closet Anomalists who sit on forums, or blogs, and try to come up with theories that we can work with.
  

  Well to keep this short and sweet, I would just like to say thank you to all of the readers out there that keep coming back day in and day out. Maybe you can learn something from me, and perhaps just as importantly I can learn something from you all as well.  This is your friendly neighborhood Close Anomalist Tony, saying have a good one.

Rapture?

Not that it is terribly surprising but it turns out that Harold Camping wasn't right after all. Although it hasn't passed 6pm, the time Camping said the event would begin, it has already later than 6pm in other time zones. Camping had told his followers that earthquakes would begin in each time zone along with the rapture of the chosen and progress each time zone. But that clearly didn't happen.

Oh well, better luck next time I suppose.