Ray's X-Blog

I just returned from a brisk nighttime walk to the post office to drop off the latest edition of my paper zine, Ray X X-Rayer #100 .  My walk was brisk not because of excessive energy on my part: quick movement was required because it's freakin' 10 degrees F/-12 degrees C outside. Back in February 1994 – I don’t remember the eXact date – I launched my zine.  (I pick Groundhog Day as an arbitrary date for the first issue.)  Twenty years and 100 issues later and I’m wondering how I managed to keep it going for so long. Over time my writing shifted from zining to blogging this stuff first, then slapping together some posts into a paper format.  I’ve almost given up along the way – that’s why my output isn’t prolific.  I think what helped me was not deciding to published on a definite schedule; I decided to write when inspiration struck me.  Ergo the long gaps between zine editions and posts. The fun of zining – and even blogging – has faded.  Ma...

UFO researcher Curt Collins has been revamping and updating the web site, James W. Moseley, Remembered –  http://www.jimmoseley.com/ .  Jim Moseley was there at the beginning of ufology and for decades published a personal, sometimes controversial, newsletter covering the scene.  His zine went under a few name changes until he settled on the title Saucer Smear.   The memorial site provides good sources of information for anyone researching ufology (and its related sub-domain, what Jim called ufoology. I still miss my nighttime phone conversations with Jim.

Orthon, where art thou?  (C) 2014 Ray X We've been waiting for a long time. Why haven't the benevolent space brothers revealed themselves and offered to directly help mankind?  Back in the 1950s contactees like George Adamski said that they met with benevolent ETs who looked like handsome godlike humans.  These space brothers passed along messages of great import like don't blow up your planet with a global nuclear war, ya morons. Orthon must have had second thoughts about helping us out.  Why? I think I've uncovered the answer.  The space brothers are miffed that we portray them so unfavorably in our media. I recalled an animated drive-in intermission spot from my childhood that featured an alien visiting the snack bar during intermission.  For you uninformed young 'uns out there a drive-in was once a popular medium for movies, an outdoor theater with a parking lot facing a towering screen that displayed the movies.  The spaces were a...

By Ray X Five decades ago Arthur C. Clark predicted the present decline of print publishing, books and newspapers.  This disruption would be caused by a new communications medium: satellites. Besides SF Arthur C. Clarke also wrote nonfiction, extrapolating about future inventions based upon scientific and technological developments at the time.  His book, Profiles of the Future (Bantam edition 1964), includes portions of articles  previously published in magazines like Science Digest during the late 1950s - early 1960s. Chapter 16, Voices from the Sky , discusses future changes in the delivery of media via satellites.  How far advanced was such technology when Clarke was extrapolating?  Check out this footnote: " This chapter was written before the launching of Telstar. "  (You young non-nerds will have to Google Telstar.) Relay satellites would bring the world together, he wrote.  Information could be transmitted to any spot on the glob...

Rick Hilberg, editor of the newsletter Flying Saucer Digest , has been covering the UFO scene for decades.  He jokingly refers to himself as an “old geezer, dinosaur ufologist.”  Responding to my previous blog article, “Kimball Empties Roswell Saucer,”  he sent his reactions via snail mail.  He wrote: The Kimball-Randle "feud" sounds so much like other disputes from the past years of "ufoology". The fact that it centers around the Roswell "crash" isn't surprising at all to me, as apparently there is still some milk left in that old cash cow. Hey, the rumor of some alleged photos can only breathe some new life into old Bossy, and maybe even warrant a new book or two and certainly some exposure on one of the insipid tabloid TV UFO programs on cable. Speaking of TV coverage of the UFO subject, I'm always amazed at how all of them (as well as countless articles in the press and on the Internet) proclaim that the whole flying saucer thing started w...