Odd Observation #13

Somebody knows

…Like I said, ladies and gentlebunkies, just rock the freaking head back!  Look to see!

Visibility was about 80% of "as good as it got" around Chopper Town that Monday morning... One can wash the dirty buttermilk glass from the last "Odd Ob" to get an approximation of it.  There was a perceptible starfield all around which is a great aid in rate detection of those "things" that go over, bumpless, in the night... hmm... 

Forgive a short digression... but let's employ some craft. The observer can easily use finger/fist/double-fist (1, 5, and 10 degrees respectively), to gauge the distances between stars in the view field and count seconds with regard to a light passing between them... 

(one~thousand~two~thousand~three~thousand... etc.) ...as 'objects' race or creep across that now measured distance.  

As one continues to do this over a period of time, one begins to gain new appreciations for the diverse rate of speed that these 'things' display and the 'strange' affectation or component that eerie movement conveys to them.  It implies different orbital altitudes or objects moving at the same altitude but at dissimilar speeds et al, speeding up, slowing down, stopping... details that lend quality to one's observations...

Three such objects were observed this morning between 03:15 and 03:45 Central, flying nearly one right after the other. All were the same pale peach color.  All maintained a steady one degree every five seconds rate.  All were observable over about 45 degrees of arc along their different tracks.  

The first flew north.  The second flew south.  The third flew a couple of degrees to the left of due east and was the oddest of the three. 

The first two shared a magnitude of about "zero" (so, dimmer than Sirius) and maintained that bright component throughout their observation.  The third slowly increased its brilliance to as bright as Jupiter (as seen the night before) and then abruptly dimmed to about magnitude three, barely visible and requiring off center viewing just to keep it in sight.

I checked with NASA via J-PASS later for a forecast of traffic that "should" be seen for the time period concerned (they make it so easy), and was not surprised to discover no record predicting them...

All in all, then, a vindication of a growing suspicion that things are not as they appear, good friends and gentle-bunkies... and it gets even weirder than that!  As the ufological "field" gets even more obscured in our trying times, one can't even understand what the players are doing on that "gridiron," forgetting a useless scorecard with names blithely jumping from side to convicted side as individual convenience, or new found cant,  suits them and the non-admitted agendas prosecuted by them... I suppose such has always been so.

...But you know what really steams me, respected reader?  It's when these shape-shifting and self-admitted authoritarian agents of the "conventional wisdom" forget these "things that fly" to pursue self-involved personal agendas, marching the rest of us (in my HUMBLE estimation) back to the wishful thinking of some earlier time which has already demonstrated how well it does not work... or where have we really gotten ufologically since 1947?  We've but digressed in faith and spirit from times when Presidents admitted investigations into UFOs in support of the persons affected by them!

Discussion on the arguments—conscientious expressions of conscience, perceptions, and insights shared between rational individuals about the subject—threatens these seeming huffy martinets who use guile, innuendo, and fallacy to prosecute their less than transparent ends: the death of anything not accepted by their ill applied, and so suffocating, observational reductionism.   

Ironically, it is these individuals who are first to desert their reductionist positions to pule that "last refuge of a scoundrel" protestation that they "no longer have the 'time' nor would they desire the 'inclination' to continue the debate..." these can have it their way, I say true. 

I'll talk to them in mass (refer to them) and not individually as it was them who recused conveniently, them who turned their artless backs, and them who are apparently reluctant to discuss (or even support) their flawed, destructive, and too witheringly reduced Cartesian convictions.  Just another Fundamentalism by the numbers and succumbing to distorting measurement.  

Too much Aristotle.  Not enough Plato.

I was greeted one morning with reactive evidence of this artless authoritarianism. Though I won't identify the writer of this public message, I'll share it, and my response to it here in the hopes it's all grist for ufological mills regarding real reasons why, as a species, we can't look up into the sky to see what's there!

What follows was a response to all a single opposition, as stated above, but all persons like-minded who want to shake their hubris at me like a finger askance in a shallow-draft reductionist's fussy scolding can take a lesson: 

Hello Alfred, 

You wrote:

"Sightings are 'down' friends and scabrous bunkies, not because UFOs are going away, but because there are fewer people LOOKING for them these days! Lately, people who might otherwise be pondering the skies are, instead, only looking over worried shoulders for 'enemies', real AND imagined. They have no TIME for a puzzling enigma in the skies over their heads while staring down the suggested barrel of a terrorist's gun! All part of the master plan (uneasily?) dismissed by Jerry Clark?" 

It's an amazing thing to watch someone take a leaping swan dive into the deep end of an empty cement pool. Oblivious to the fact that there is no water beneath to break the fall.

Hubristic arrogance a result of prideful ego?  See, this writer was quick to proclaim his flawless awareness of where the "pool" was, what a "swan dive" looked like, if the pool even has a "shallow" end, and whether or not that pool is filled with "water." A momentary mote in an appalling vastness, he can't have a clue.  He only presumes to be able to perceive, evaluate, and adjudge, and based on bupkis.

Forgetting for a moment the limp attack on character that this string of empty cliches would convey, this is the same writer who indicated on the radio recently an ability to "hear" veracity, honesty, and sincerity in the tone of one's voice tones. That's scientific? No, that's scientistic.  ...A real Cartesian sage. 

 Moreover, that's a claim unquantified, eh? 

Since you mentioned (made wild accusations about) the 'abduction report' thread I'd like to point out the following:

Stop. The writer had a seeming (and on reflection completely astonishing) difficulty in distinguishing between "wild accusations" and honest observations honestly expressed.  I point out that my offending post, provoking what was to be a corrosive and insulting exchange, written a month passed? Even a week prior? It would not have elicited a peep from the offended writer.  What had changed in the interim but my active defense of an adjacent altogether unrelated position, of some demonstrated quality, at the time, that the writer found personally invalid and objectionable?  

See, all defense to the contrary aside, it's a personal thing, publically shared, when a private note would have been, perhaps, less embarrassing for everyone.  Now it's history.  Let's continue on to see what the writer would "point out."  

Mark Rodigheir of CUFOS made the statement that 'new' abduction reports to that organization were down for the last couple of years. I wrote a post that was in agreement with it. Will Beuche, the former Webmaster of PEER wrote in to corroborate my and Marks statements. Simple statements (or reporting) of fact. Nothing as 'sinister' as you imply ever transpired.

So, the writer, name dropping like a huffy poseur, would then "point out" what was actually an inexplicable defense of the scabrous bunch at CSIcop, the scurrilous bunch in the, at the time, Bush/Ashcroft administration, and too many other blighted psychopaths among us capering like imps around a book-burning hell-fire, hindering disclosure and discouraging even a provoked curiosity? These were the identified groups earning an evaluation of "sinister," not Mark Rodighheir of CUFOS. 

The writer, clearly conflicted and with a singular ax to grind, and failing to read to a reasonable period, would interpret my commentary as he has interpreted it here—when the same post a week or a month ago may have even gotten a  public "right on" or a private "well done"!   What had changed in the interim?

The writer seems to have convenient sensibilities that change as the wind blows!  Moreover, he seemingly apes the most mercurial of ufological vagaries, while I think it could be argued that the only one maintaining a rational consistency or even tone in this exchange is me.  I'll leave that call to a respected reader.

Moreover the short (and cited) discussion regarding ufological "waves" and a "distracted population" found in my "offensive" commentary as good reasons providing for only an "appearance" of reduced "occurrence of UFO sightings," a conjecture reasonable on its face, falls on the predicted deaf ears of the writer, is even ignored by the writer, and is, additionally, seemingly insulted  by the writer.  Someone get the writer's "blankie" out of the drier.


For some *reason* the writer has significant difficulty seeing a consistent hand in front of his face and seems to prefer some terse literary razzle-dazzle (with no support) as opposed to real contribution to the discussion… what I would aspire to.  I'll leave that to the reader, too. 

 You create a fantasy in your own head,

Ah!  They weren't fantasies, they were a provoked conjecture based on observation, and I had a celebrated "head" as far as this writer was concerned a week ago... or a month ago.  What has changed but a false assumption or unsupported realization by the writer that if I'm not "for" him, vis a vis his pompous scientistic (sic) presumptions and less than constructively pellucid positions, that I must (of needs) be "against" him. 

Resolved: a pretty juvenile take on things after five years of collegial cordiality, if you ask me, demonstrating only the suspect provenance of his, perhaps, not so inexplicable irritation.  

Fantasies?  Not likely.  We're likely wrong about everything that has always been much bigger than we ever knew...

...your 'imaginings' piss you off,

LOL!  Like they don't piss off the writer!  That would become clearer as time went on, I could have predicted.  And finally—no rational person would agree that there is not an awful lot to be righteously pissed about!  Why the anger? Well, there might be plenty about which to be angry? That's a start. The writer seems to conveniently forget that.

...and then you express anger toward people in the *real world (*those who live their lives outside of your fantasy) as if they were actually responsible for their behavior in your somewhat fevered dreams.

The writer would pronounce NOW on the production of the same "fevered dreams" he found so satisfying last week or last month, label me delusional, and then in the process say so much more about himself than he has the bare bones competency to say about me! The writer would have been much better served to maintain his lack of "desire" and "inclination" to communicate with me regarding ufological issues. He would learn this in well-deserved spades...

How you manage to turn a simple series of posts into the convoluted and genuinely paranoid plot that you suggest above, boggles my mind.

...Only, where was this writer's confusion, his accusations of paranoia, and his respect for CSICOP and a Bush/Ashcroft administration a week or month ago?  Indeed, it is the writer's own mercurial sensibilities, and too tightly boxed and occluded awareness demonstrated here, that are peculiar... not my expressions of conscience.  I say true. 

Lately you've taken to attacking some of the 'good-guys' Alfred.

Who are the "good guys" that the writer refers to?  How is 'attack' defined? How is consistent behavior (heretofore respected by the writer for many years) suddenly noticed just "Lately"?

Maybe a short vacation from the fray is in order.

"Lately," in as much as the writer had demonstrated a clear need for a nap of his own?  I suggested same to him... with some immediacy and all deliberate speed.

When you start to perceive plots and schemes everywhere, and you see 'spooks' lurking in every corner... it's time to do a Dave Brubeck and 'take five' bro.

~Again~ the writer insultingly indicates that I have just "started" behavior that has not changed substantively in half a decade…  Moreover, how many of us don't perceive "plots and schemes", suspect "spooks" in "corners" darker than they need to be, or "wonder" what might be lurking around a future corner? Finally, I'd suggested a review of McCartney's "Blackbird" for the writer if he is truly interested in quality musical advice.  Better to "wuff your wings" than forget that flight was possible at all.

Like a ufological tonsil, this writer seems so corrupted with fickleness and lack of resolution that he's abdicated his community responsibilities and joined the other side vis a vis a "nose spiting face" mentioned somewhere else.  I wonder how he can expect anyone to be intellectually moved, or remotely accept, his canted proclamations, imperious pronouncements, or insulting accusations, now. 

Get a grip.

Really? What are the mechanics of that exactly? What concessions are demanded and where's the writers reason for an expectation of my trust in the quality of the writer's admonitions? I think it may be that the writer makes this dismissive suggestion only because he suspects that he's losing his own.  Ironically, the writer needed to let go.

You've created a veritable soap-opera out of what was essentially a pretty dry, innocuous and short-lived series of posts. Check the archive and reread 'em. Nothing 'heavy' going on except inside your head. :)

Pause to laugh... "...Pretty dry, innocuous, and short-lived series of posts..." about ET, UFOs and human interaction with them.  Just the ho-hum highly strange.  I'll let the rank and file reader decide the veracity of the preceding statement, something the writer, by all reports, would seldom (if ever) do.

…At the end now, with no snippage on my part, that’s enough.  I continue to watch our skies.  Rock your own head back, when you can, good reader.  They continue to fly despite the social cousining, hubristic carping, arrogant complaining, and utter confusion going on down here.  

So, when confused missiles of attacking cant sail out from the inconstant and conflicted shadows from persons you'd thought simpatico, or pedant deniers alike, do as I try to do.  Are you required to accept their premises?  Do they expect your external validation of their personal faith?  Do they presume while they make their bland assumptions?  Are they reflexively reductionist proposing their fundamentalist scientism be the default arbiter of that which it refuses to investigate?  Do they patronize you?

Then unsheath your literary sword and see them driven before you like a decadent Cartesian hoard and hear the lamentations of their butt-hurt fanboys!

Read on.