Wednesday, June 20, 2007


Turf Wars


Yes, beings from other worlds are visiting our planet. But the ETs (extraterrestrials) aren’t completely responsible for the myriad of UFO sightings.

Cryptoterrestrials, a hidden race native to this world, are also out and about in their machines, thanks to their superior technology. Sometimes they try to scare off the ETs. But the CTs get flummoxed when they’re duped by ultraterrestrial tricksters from another dimension.

The UTs like to play the ETs and CTs off each other. The tricksters might pretend to be members of either group, projecting illusions of ET or CT vessels. But the tricksters are sometimes blamed for the actions of the DTs.

Demon terrestrials live beneath the earth, apart from the CTs. They have physical form but are shape-shifters, giving rise to the legends of demons as portrayed by many religions, especially Christian. They find the OTs – ordinary terrestrials, i.e., humans – gullible, easy targets for mental torture and manipulation. Fortunately angelic terrestrials – ATs – also exist, dropping down from their invisible domain in the upper atmosphere to keep DTs at bay.

A few of the OTs have their own relatively crude vessels that are the source of UFO reports. The US military likes to keep top-secret experimental aircraft secret by allowing sightings of such craft to be misinterpreted as alien spacecraft. And as part of mind control experiments, the OTs fake alien abductions.

Meanwhile, future terrestrials, that is, our descendants from tomorrow, use their advanced tech to travel back to yesteryear and try to sort out the whole ET-CT-UT-DT-AT-OT mess for the historical record. The FTs also disguise their time machines as UFOs, annoying all the other UFOnauts who are confused by the plethora of disguised vessels flying around.

One day too many X (for unknown) terrestrials will crowd the sky. All of the XTs, from AT to UT, want their piece of terra firma. It just takes one to decide to grab it all. Then the heavens will erupt.

And if that happens?

Duck!




© 2007 Ray X


Wednesday, June 13, 2007


Loren Coleman Likes Women


“For years...women needed to just stay home and raise a family. Their hormones made them irrational and they needed a man around to tell them what to do.”

Obviously whoever wrote the preceding quote is a male chauvinist. But in this case the obvious is wrong.

A woman made that statement. I twisted its meaning around by pulling it out of context and then throwing in a key ellipse. The quote is from a recent Grey Matters essay by Lesley (June 5, 2007) entitled “Give Pheromones a Chance.” When you read the original statement in proper context, it’s obvious that her POV is 180 degrees opposite of how I’ve spun it.

Lesley and other bloggers have been defending cryptozoological researcher Loren Coleman who has been accused of making a chauvinistic statement during a radio program. On Coast To Coast Coleman said that Bigfoot, being so pheromone sensitive, would be more apt to make contact with a woman than a man. A couple of women bloggers played up that comment, interpreting it in a female chauvinistic way. Now Coleman has been offering essays at cryptomundo.com about distaff Bigfoot researchers to prove that he isn’t biased against women.

Selective quoting and interpretation is so easy. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to smear the innocent.

One time I read an article about a researcher who explained why women on average are shorter than men, the evolutionary factor involved. The researcher speculated that the difference in height placed women closer to male armpits, thus women would be more apt to detect male pheromones.

Now there’s some male chauvinism, huh? The man who said that was just reinforcing the stereotype of the strong male and the weak female.

Actually, a woman anthropologist made that observation.



rayxr@yahoo.com



Saturday, June 02, 2007


Print Ain’t Dead – It Just Mutated

© Copyright 2007 Ray X



Beware. The “Print is dead” meme is on the loose again.

Recently a bookstore owner in Kansas City, Missouri was suffering from a surfeit of used books. Since he couldn’t give them away, he decided to burn them. According to the news story about the incident, the owner said that people don’t read anymore. When someone dies, it was observed, they usually leave behind five TV sets and three books.

Well, I don’t print think is dead. I read more stuff than ever, but not packaged in the usual mainstream hardcopy formats. I still have piles of books and magazines around my apartment, but added to the mix are printouts, corner-stapled compilations produced from the Web.

Using my computer I put together my own news zine, selecting just articles I want -- “comping,” if you will. ThanX to Bloglines I can check on various blogs and other sources all in one spot. If an article grabs my attention, I copy and paste it into a wordprocessing file, reformatting it as needed. I might spend a couple of hours reviewing all sorts of stuff, winnowing what I really want to read. Then I print out my self-made compilation that sometimes runs to 20 pages or more.

I know I could save time and physical space by reading all the stuff on the Web, but I’m a pager, not a screener. I like to lie in bed and read; the squatting juggernaut that’s my desktop computer ain’t suitable for that activity.

Obviously, I’m not alone when it comes to comping. It’s no wonder why newspaper, magazine and book sales are declining. It’s not competition from TV because that medium has also been losing eyeballs. And it’s not only a cost factor, i.e., I’m cheap. If something is worth the price, I’ll pay for it. But I don’t think Fortean Times – a good publication – is worth $12 (US funds) or whatever it’s going for this month. It’s all about content. And I find articles online that are just as informative as what I can read in FT.

Some writers lament that all this free content on the Web is hurting their livelihoods. I can sympathize, but since I’m not an established writer, I “give away” my writing online. And while generating income from my wordsmithing would be great, I have one major goal as a writer: to be read. Since the gatekeepers in mainstream publishing have never been impressed with my efforts, here I am.

All I can hope is that people out there are comping my words and enjoying them as part of their perusals.



Comment via email: rayxr@yahoo.com


Friday, June 01, 2007


What’s Wrong With This Cover?


I’m reading the latest issue of Saucer Smear when I noticed a familiar image. Supreme Commander Jim Moseley reproduced the cover of a new tome, Karl Pflock’s Roswell book translated into French. Moseley commented how the aliens don’t resemble the entities reportedly found near Roswell after their flying saucer – or “disc” – crashed.




ThanX to Google and various combinations of key words I just found the original image online. (This scan can be found at http://linesonpaper.tripod.com/PULPMags.html ) It’s from the June 1952 edition of the SF pulp magazine, Startling Stories.





Hey, it’s a classic image, but isn’t it a bit deceptive using it for Pflock’s skeptical look at the Roswell incident? Like Jim Moseley mentions, that ain’t a crashed Mogul balloon in the background.

It makes one wonder: if they’re playing around with the cover to the French edition like that, how accurate is the translation?



Comment via email: rayxr@yahoo.com