Ray's X-Blog

Ghost In My Machine I had a surprise today when I opened up my email. There was a message from Mac Tonnies. Mac unexpectedly died in October 2009. I check the message and noticed it was about a Tweet he made before he died. Thanks to Facebook, everyone is trying to get into social networking, including Yahoo email. Call it The Flavor-Of-The-Month Syndrome. Next month everyone will be jumping on to a different fad. Yahoo is pushing something called Updates, its variation on social networking. Here's the description: "Updates like little news bulletins about you and your friends that appear in Yahoo! Mail and elsewhere in Yahoo!. Through updates you can find out things like when a friend has posted photos to Flickr, rated a restaurant, 'buzzed up' a news item, and more. Updates help people stay in touch by effortlessly letting each other know what they’ve been up to on Yahoo! and the web." Updates can include profile pages and you can exchange messages, just lik...

Comet On The Curve I'm walking home the other evening. To the west is a crescent moon. Above it is another object, most likely Venus. Or is it? The bright spot above the moon is elongated. A comet? Not really. I stop and stare at the puzzling light, moving my head up and down. I've worn eyeglasses since I was a pre-teen (I'm nearsighted) and over the years my lenses have grown thicker to keep pace with my deteriorating vision. As I lower and raise my glass Coke-bottle-bottoms, I noticed that the trail changes into a point when the light is centered in my lenses. Obviously the elongation was distortion caused by the curvature of my glasses. One would think I would have noticed this sooner but apparently conditions weren't right until recently. Now I see why when a field investigator makes an UFO report he notes whether or not the observer wears corrective lenses.

Spiritual Placebo And The Truth Some people claim they can channel Jesus. For example, there is "Anne," a lay apostle of the Catholic faith who passes along messages from Heaven in a series of booklets published by Directions for Our Times. On the back cover of one booklet appears this statement: "Anne, a wife and mother of six, reveals her journey to the heart of Jesus. The messages she hears in her heart, which she believes are from Jesus and Mary, reveal the tender, solicitous love that our Saviour has for each one of us." I think of the Bible and its warning against false prophets and not allowing a witch to live. What if this "Anne" is in error? Apparently anticipating such concerns, Directions for Our Times includes a special statement in its booklets. The publisher acknowledges that the Holy See of Rome has to make the final decision about the validity of private revelations. Then Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini; 1568-1644) is quoted: "In...

Parallel Conversations Some people don't like Vern. I monitored some of the last Liberty Net get-together on its stickam.com site , both audio and text. While the ham radio superpatriots were exhanging their right-wing beliefs on air, some were also communicating in the Stickam chatroom. What was interesting was the contrast between what was being said on the air by a particular Lib Netter and the reaction by the listeners participating in the chatroom. For example: "n8wgm: If [Vern] was trained in propaganda, and admits it here, then why should we trust anything he says?" This is a response to an on-air statement by Lib Netter Vern Kaspar that he was trained in propaganda analysis during World War II. I must admit the same thought crossed my mind. Maybe he's working for Them. Seriously, I doubt Vern is an agent provocateur. But after seeing some of the chatroom comments, it's obvious that he's unintentionally provoking jealously. Vern sounds like a plea...

Gosh, I Didn't Know That Amazing what you can learn from listening to right-wing ham radio operators during their on-air discussions. Take the last meeting of the Liberty Net (June 5th, 2010). Some info is so startling that when you hear it live, you say to yourself: "Did he really say that?" Fortunately for me and future historians, a Website -- http://3950.net -- archives recordings of each Saturday-night-into-early-Sunday-morning discussions. That way I can play back the comment and verify to my boggled mind that I did hear what I thought I had heard, right down to the hour, minute, and second. For example, check out the June 5th recording (archived as Liberty Net - 2010-0605) around 1 hour, 39 minutes, 40 seconds [ 1:39:40 ]. Vic Misek, net coordinator, is talking about the Gulf Oil Spill, that the damaged rig should be examined to see if it had been hit by a torpedo. Then he makes this fascinating statement about the impact of the spill: "The disaster I bel...

XR #74 & Website Redesign If you prefer to read these blog posts in zine form, then check out my website, http://www.xrayer.com . Ray X X-Rayer #74 is now up to read on screen or print out and read on paper. I've simplified xrayer.com, dropped some old articles and deleted the Word format zine versions. The zine archives are only in PDF. I've checked all the links but if there's a problem, please let me know.

What Does It All Mean? Ask A Tree “In accepting this Conclave’s nomination as the 73rd Sorcha Faal of our Order, I express the gratitude of all the Sisters in thanking Sister Lyuha for her guidance as our Sorcha Faal these past 7 years, especially her efforts these past 5 years in re-orienting all of us towards the Western World. "Our Order has always striven to provide to this World that Light needed to dispel the myths inherent in Darkness, but which without we could never see the truest balance between the two.” Sorcha Faal, 3 February 2007 * * * It's like trying to dig a hole in a big pool of quicksand. The conspiracy theory: North Korea blew up the British Petroleum oil rig, the Deepwater Horizon, causing the great Gulf spill. After all, if NK could attack and sink a South Korean vessel, why not one of our oil platforms? OK, I'll do some Googling and take care of that topic in a few words. The story: a cargo vessel from North Korea deployed a mini submarine withi...

Papernet: Theme Zine Has Devil In The Details There must be a market for a zine about devil girls. Randy Robbins publishes a review zine called Narcolepsy Press Review that reviews – well, zines. And with his last snail mailing of NPN I found another surprise in the 6 X 9 envelope: You’re an Angel, You L’il Devil #4 . The small booklet is loaded with photos and drawings of horny – I mean horned – females. It’s amazing how such a niche zine can find so much material, including drawings contributed by readers with an artistic bent. If your interest is piqued, send two dollars (bills) to Randy Robbins, PO Box 17131, Anaheim, CA 92817-7131. Please mention Ray X sent you.