New writing gig

It's been a few days since my last post, so I wanted to take an opportunity to give you readers an update on what I've been up to. Never fear I have a few projects in the pipeline that will return us to your regularly scheduled Forteania postings that you've all come to love so much. As many of you are already aware, in addition to blogging here at Forteania I also write a column for Tim Binnall at his Binnall Of America website that's entitled Fortean Ramblings. Well you can add another url to your list of places to find my writing. As of Monday August 6, I began writing for Disinfo.com. My first (and so far only) post went live Monday evening in celebration of Charles Fort's birthday. What better way to celebrate not only my new gig at Disinfo, but also Fort's birthday? Below I'll give you a snippet of that post, but you should really follow the link below to check out the whole thing.

Happy Birthday Mr. Fort!

August 6, 2012 marks the 138th birthday of the great cataloger of the strange and unusual Charles Fort. Writing in the early 20th century, Fort would pen a total of seven books in his lifetime. Two early works, X and Y, were sadly never published as the author burned them during one of his many bouts of depression. Another title, The Outcast Manufacturers, was a fiction book that enjoyed some moderate success. The works that have made him rather famous (or infamous depending upon who you ask) are The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo!, and Wild Talents. Through the use of the New York Public library, Fort set about to dig up the data he felt that science had too long neglected. Almost right from the beginning Fort laid out his intentions pretty clearly. In his first work, The Book of the Damned, Fort wrote:

“A Procession of the damned. By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded”

Follow this link in order to read the whole thing. Also be sure to keep checking back on Disinfo for more of my writing. That's all I have for now, tonight should see normal posting resume here. Until then, Stay Classy internets!

Napoleon; Politcal Figure, Military Leader, Alien Abductee?

It's probably telling of my age and generation that when I think of Napoleon Bonaparte I immediately think of him travelling along side Wyld Stallyns in their time travelling phone booth. 

Pictured above the cast of the greatest movie ever

If I think back hard enough I could remember some stuff about Waterloo and him dying of a stomach ulcer. But I can honestly say I don't remember hearing about this in history class.

Alien Chip Found in Napoleon’s Skull?

PARIS – Scientists examining the remains of Napoleon Bonaparte admit they are “deeply puzzled” by the discovery of a half-inch long microchip embedded in his skull.

They say the mysterious object could be an alien implant – suggesting that the French emperor was once abducted by a UFO!

“The possible ramifications of this discovery are almost too enormous to comprehend,” declared Dr. Andre Dubois, who made the astonishing revelation in a French medical journal.

“Until now, every indication has been that victims of alien abduction are ordinary people who play no role in world events.

“Now we have compelling evidence that extraterrestrials acted in the past to influence human history – and may continue to do so!”

Dr. Dubois made the amazing find while studying Napoleon’s exhumed skeleton on a $140,000 grant from the French government.

“I was hoping to learn whether he suffered from a pituitary disorder that contributed to his small stature,” he explained.

I'm willing to go out on a limb and assume this isn't real. The whole thing reads like a Weekly World News article. But who knows? Stranger things have happened. Anyway follow this link to read the story for yourself. Thanks to Disinfo for the bringing it to my attention. Let me know what your thoughts are, because I will tentatively call BS on this one.

Now if you'll excuse me I have this sudden urge to go watch Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Later.

A little bit of Bill Hicks for tonight

I'm dead tired, so unfortunately there will be no real post tonight. Hopefully I will be back up and running tomorrow night. But I don't want to leave you empty handed, so once again here are some words of wisdom from the esteemed Bill Hicks.

 

Words can't even describe

Credit to Disinfo for the find

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.

The First Church of Ufology

In many churches all over America, no matter the religion or denomination, you will likely see a similar scenario play out. A speaker is at the front of a group of people, he is passionately waxing philosophical about some topic that is pertinent to the believers. Perhaps he is admonishing them that the end of days is upon them, or that they are all sinful and in need of salvation. But whatever the message is about, if you were to look out amongst the crowd of faithful you would see heads nodding in solemn agreement. Whatever the particulars of the talk may be, all of the members of the audience likely already believe what is being spoken is 100 % valid and true. For many it is a confirmation of their beliefs.

I bring this up because earlier today I was listening to the Paracast while at work. (I fortunately have the good luck to work at a company that allows us cubicle zombies to at least listen to music in order to pass the otherwise monotonous hours away). I was listening to the episode from about two weeks ago, when Gene and Chris had on Grant Cameron a Ufologist that operates Presidential UFOs. Cameron is definitely what I would consider a 'mainstream' member of ufology, as ironic as something like that is to say. Even so Cameron accepts as fact that the Earth is being visited by Extraterrestrials and that the Government is not only covering it up, but somehow is simultaneously letting some information out as a means of allowing for the gradual disclosure of the 'Other' to your average Joe Shmoe on the street.

A little over two years ago I would have been sitting down listening to that podcast (which I recommend you taking a listen to by the way), and just like the people from my earlier example I would have sat nodding my head at some of the things discussed. Majestic 12 was a secret group set up to liaison with the Extraterrestrials or other assorted activities. The Government was keeping the secret from the people because it would only cause panic. The best way to avoid the panic, it was thought, would be to gradually disclose the reality of the ET's to mankind.

After having read such classic Fortean writers like Jacques Vallee and John Keel, reading all of Mac Tonnies work, and listening to people such as Greg Bishop, Paul Kimball, and Nick Redfern, I slowly came out of my 'believer' paradigm that I had been trapped in. Up until I was introduced to these great thinkers, I was just like the attendants at the church. I just nodded in solemn agreement with what was said. Whenever someone spoke of Roswell, I knew automatically they were talking about the recovery of a flying disc that was piloted by diminutive Greys from Zeta Reticuli. Now however I let my mind wander and realize that the possibilities are endless for what may, or may not, have occurred that summer night in July back in 1947.

Cameron on the other hand sounded to me like a 'true believer'. He was still like one of those attendants at the religious meetings. From the interview it sounded to me like Cameron already knows the reality that is attendant with the UFO phenomena, but as those Fortean writers/thinkers have pointed out in their work we still don't really have any idea what is going on. If we already 'know' the answer's to what is behind the phenomena, why keep asking questions?

I did it for the lulz part deux

As a follow up to my post from the other night about Anonymous and their Operation UFO, I wanted to point out just how funny some people in Ufology can be. Not long after word broke that the hacktivist group may be trying to pull a fast one over on the 'True Believers' and other assorted gullible types, many online disucssion groups were all a buzz at how this was most likely a military psy-op.

The logic being that this Operation UFO was being set up because, ostensibly, the military must have known that a real event is likely to occur that night and they wished to cover it up. Lots of people online were echoing this same sentement. Now dont get me wrong I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, hell my personal motto is 'just becasue you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you', but come on be a little reasonable please. 

Sometimes things really are or can be taken at face value. In this case I think that it is entirely likely that Anonymous really is just trying to hoax or pull a prank on people for the lulz. While it's true that I can't rule out the possibility that the first person that suggested this prank was some person who had inside information about an event due to occur on Sunday. I can be willing to bet a lot of money that this is not the case.

I said in that same previous post that I thought one of the main issues with Ufology is that many young people  don't really wish to get involved in the field. Though I do believe that this is still an issue I would like to add an addendum to that posting. The main problem with this field is the amount of sheer ignorance that comes to play in it. I mean be reasonable, have there been psy-ops? Yes of course there have. Have some of them in some way been involved with Ufology? Sure I don't see why not, but surely not everything is a psy-op/disinfo project. 

It seems to me that it is high time this field grew up in a lot of ways. I mean if we ever expect to move beyond just reports of lights in skies or 'abduction' reports and get to some actual information, we will need to stop entertaining these very silly notions. Will doing this fix Ufology completely? No of course not, after all there is still the issue of some Sacred Cow's that need to be dealt with by discarding them for the old useless relics that they are. But I really think it would be a step in the right direction.