Ray's X-Blog

This would be just another day in the week for me but most places were closed today and the few friends I have were busy with family and friends.  Sometimes an individual ends up as an outsider not by choice.   I decided to spend the day profitably and bang out another edition of my print zine, Ray X X-Rayer, albeit a short one, one sheet - two pages.  With that printed and out in the mail earlier in the afternoon, I'm using the quiet evening time to reformat the zine article and post them here.  Usually I do the opposite: blog posts first, then reformat them for a zine.  I don’t know how coherent my writing is today because I’m suffering from a one-two punch of allergies and a cold, sneezing and coughing.  The cold started last night.  How appropriate.  Like I say, timing is all about the comedy. At least the sun was out today.  My computer is near a window and the streaming light felt good while I was working on my zine, even though was around the freezing point outside. ...

While listening to the Liberty Net ( www.3950.net ) recently I’ve heard the term “civil disobedience” mentioned.  This was provoked by the re-election of President Obama, an event that produced consternation among the ultra-conservative ham radio operators. Here are some select comments from the chat room on 11/18/12 by one Rick “CAPS LOCK SHOUTER” Flynt : “OBAMA CAN SHUT DOWN ANY AND ALL RADIO AND TELEVISION BROADCASTS AND INSERT HIS DIRTY DICK WITH THE WAVE OF HIS HAND, LIKE GOD!! hE HAS BROADBAND GENERAL COVERAGE XMITTERS THAT HAVE BEEN TESTED TO IONIZE THE ENTIRE NORTHWAST STATES. THIS WAS TESTED AND WAS COMPLETELY EFECTIVE A COUPLE WEEKS AGO!” “OBAMA HAS POWER TO KILL THE INTERNET WITH A BUTTON! THE BILL PASSED! PASSED!!” “I TUNED INTO THE CHAT TO FIND HOPE FOR US. THERE IS NONE! NOT A WORD OF WHAT WE CAN DO AT ALL AFTER Nov 6th!! Not HOPE but HOPELESS! All freedoms, any way out have been sealed before we could save our country from slavery and confiscation of ALL of our...

“UFO lawyer” Peter Gersten waited for an interdimensional portal to open above Bell Rock in Sedona, Arizona after the magical hour of the winter solstice arrived on December 21, 2012.  With his Leap of Faith he said he was going to jump into the portal and save the world which he considers to be nothing more than a hologram. No portal, no Leap of Faith as advertised.  Gersten just went home. Apparently the authorities were concerned about him and anyone else showing up for the cosmic event who might be considering taking a leap.  Police and an emergency crew were nearby as seen in a news video posted online by the Fox 10 TV station in Phoenix*.  The video also shows some of the characters who showed up, including a couple of aluminum foil aliens, i.e., people wrapped in foil suits with springy antennas topped with silver balls attached to their heads. Speculation on why Gersten didn’t jump: Maybe he realized that even hologramic gravity can turn you into a splat all over some r...

For some of you the image of the cute cartoon flying saucer above looks familiar. I previously wrote about a movie serial from the 1950s based on the comic book character Blackhawk. The hero is in his plane when the bad guys attack with a remote-controlled flying saucer. The “Blackhawk” serial was made in 1952 with Kirk Alyn as “the fearless champion of justice.” Back in 1950 Alyn starred as the hero in a different serial based on Superman. I didn’t see “Atom Man vs. Superman” until recently and was surprised to spot a familiar cartoon flying saucer making its appearance, this time under the control of Supe’s arch enemy Lex Luthor. At one point newspaper reporter Clark Kent (Superman’s secret identity) and his co-worker Lois Lane are in the Daily Planet airplane when they encounter the animated weapon. Fortunately Lois faints so that Clark can change into Superman and save the day. The “Blackhawk” movie serial two years later did some recycling from this movie. It used the...

Zine Zaps: Fadeaway & Opuntia Quick looks at what has been popping up in my snail mail box. (The Web hasn't killed off paper zines yet.) * * * FADEAWAY – Robert Jennings, 29 Whiting Rd., Oxford, MA 01540-2035. “A fanzine devoted to science fiction and related fields of interest.” 8 ½ x 11,, side stapled, 30 pages + per issue. A mix of articles, art, and an active “Reader Reaction” department where topics like the high price of comic books, the death of paper books, and old SF fandom versus modern fandom are discussed. While Robert is open-minded about all sorts of POVs, I could tell he was writing from the perspective of an older fan (he revealed in #32 that he’s 69 years old, “a genuine geezer.”). Then again, you would be surprised how old some zinesters (ahem) are… Robert’s articles are well-written. Even though I’m not a fan of Tarzan or old time radio, I ended up reading an article about Edgar Rice Burroughs marketing his most famous...

Ronson & Jones: New Hit TV Series Created By Ray X It's a big hit even before it's on the air – or even before one episode has been produced. A slightly nebbish writer/documentary producer from England – Jon Ronson – teams up with a ranting right-wing radio commentator from Texas – Alex Jones – to investigate shadowy evil conspiracies around the world. High concept: "The Odd Couple" meets "The X-Files." My series is based upon Ronson's non-fiction book, "Them: Adventures with Extremists" (2002), detailing his travels about the US and Canada while looking into the world of conspiracy theories. In the book Ronson encounters Alex Jones, anti-Illuminati crusader, and works with him to penetrate the secrets of Bohemian Grove. The Grove is a vast California campground where some of the most powerful men in the world meet mid-summer for two weeks to piss on redwoods and watch a ceremony called Cremation of Care where a human effigy ...

Peter Gersten: Still Planning His Apocalyptic Leap? "If I'm wrong, everybody dies." So proclaims a 70-year-old freethinker in an online video (ebaumsworld.com) entitled "Apocalypse 2012 Hero Peter Gersten" about his plan to save the world by leaping off a towering rock at the moment the winter solstice arrives. Human beings, he believes, are part of a computer program, a hologram. Peter Gersten is known as "the UFO lawyer" for his legal efforts to find out what the US government really knows about strange things in the sky. He has announced that he will leap from Bell Rock in Sedona, Arizona at 11:11 UT (Universal Time) or 4:11 AM local time on December 21st, 2012. As one article has noted, the winter solstice doesn't really occur until 11:12 UT. Hopefully Gersten won't jump the gun. Maybe he needs a minute head start to achieve his goal: participating in a T-DE, Trans-Dimensional Event, that will allow him to enter a cosmic po...

Everyone Loves Vern But Not Everyone Loves Ray X Besides 3950.net another site, stickam.com/ thelibertynet, also streams the Liberty Net on-air discussions with a chat room. This image is from the second site. LibNetters claim that they are against Barack Obama but not because he is black. Then why do some of them use terms like "monkey" when referring to him? And the sisyphean Liberty Net keeps trying to roll their rock up Reality Hill, each time expecting a different result. Every Saturday night the Lib Netters take to the airwaves, ham radio operators of the ultra-conservative bent (think mega-conspiracies: Illuminati, New World Order, etc.). Simultaneously they also share their views via text in a chat room at 3950.net . Sometimes I copy and archive the chats. I found one session from three months ago to be particularly interesting. One person who joins the LN airwave discussions is Vern Kasper, an older man who is has been successful in business, ownin...