Ray's X-Blog

The Way The Future Wasn't Back in the early days of the space age – the late 1950s – it seemed that the US had decided on a practical plan to conquer the frontier beyond the earth’s atmosphere. First: build a vessel that would launch on the top of a rocket but would return to the earth like a plane, gliding to a landing with its wings. Second: use the space plane to transport the materials needed to assemble a station orbiting the earth. Then, use the station to build ships that would take man to his nearest neighbor, the moon. That’s the plan laid out in the book, Space Flight: The Coming Exploration of the Universe, by Lester Del Rey (1958). Aimed at young readers, this book features illustrations by John Polgreen that originally looked futuristic, but nowadays look retro. There’s something about a “spaceman” in his protective suit, floating above the earth with mechanical claws attached to his gloves and boots, that says 1950s movie sci fi. I wonder why the plan laid out in th

Al Parker, LibertyNetter: A Sketch Every Saturday night at 10 PM Eastern Time, a group of concerned Americans take to the airwaves in the 75 meter band, usually in the vicinity of 3.950 MHz, in single sideband mode. Heard primarily on the US East Coast, these amateur radio operators – hams – are politically to the right of Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News TV channel. After listening to the Liberty Net over the years, allowing their voices into my home, I’ve noted the differences in personalities, even though they repeat the same mantras about the threat of the New World Order. One of the regulars is Al Parker, hailing from Long Island. Parker has talked about the good old days of TV, the 1950s, when respectable programming was the norm. From his reminiscences, one gets the impression that he grew up during those golden years of such programs as “Have Gun, Will Travel” and “The Donna Reed Show.” He pines for those wholesome diversions, the oldtime Westerns and light-hearted family co

Don’t Hesitate – Ugate! Looking for the perfect gift for someone you don’t really like? Are you fed up with the materialistic greed of the holiday season? Do you think Xmas is a load of dung? Then think ugation (yoo-gae-shun). It’s a word I’ve coined for a particular type of subversive art. Just hand someone one of these items as a gift and tell them it’s an ugation, an uber-genre creation (sometimes called by its less pretentious label, art wrecko). An ugation is easy to make. In fact, if you spend too much time and money on one, you’re working too hard. Just collect some items and with some glue and tape slap them together into abstract kitsch. The trick is to make it appear artsy. Think of something that could be an acceptable work, but push it too far, beyond the limits of good taste. Act like a six-year old tripping on LSD while recovering from a severe head injury. Find an empty jelly jar, fill it with marbles, and then shove a plastic flower into place. Then affix some