Sometimes I forget what all this bullcrap is about. You see, the UFO biz can be fraught with broken, shriveled up egos. Tarnished reputations and generally freaky people. People who just might be like some of your relatives, you know the one’s I’m talking about. The one’s who get locked up in the attic most of the time. We bring them out neatly scrubbed for Thanksgiving dinner or Christmass and hope they don’t embarrass us too much. Then they are quietly spirited away while the grownups chat over snifters of brandy and cigars. These are the misbegotten of UFOlogy, the near-do-wells. The kids! They might have a crappy self published book to their name (that makes them authors!) They might have a web page full of ranting and silly self absorbed nonsense. You can tell some of these by counting how often you see the words “shameless plug” on her – I mean their web pages.
What’s with all this ego stuff anyway? And the less influence a UFOlogest has the bigger and meaner their egos see to get. Look at Lehmberg (I don’t very often but if you MUST!) That guy has lost every shred of decency and good humor (if he ever had any.) in its place is a tired old song of recrimination and regret. Regret! Why, he’s seen and survived more changes than most people dream of. He’s served his country, retired to a comfortable lifestyle. He’s got his health (mostly) and he gets mocked weekly on the radio. Why such a sourpuss? Life’s too short for all that anger Alfred.
And Regan? She’s turned over a new leaf don’t-ya-know. No regrets, no apologies. Unable to comprehend where she’s been and where she is probably headed, Reagan will most likely waddle along the way she always has. At the edge of complete catastrophe but never quite falling into the abyss. She seems to like it that way. Of course, I’ve been wrong before! (Hey, call me dear, you know the number. We need to talk!)
Arthur? He/she/it seems to have more than one person in there. I’m not sure how many, three perhaps? Sometimes this Arthur blog-sock (a block?) makes sense. Other times he seems a bit – .well nutty!
And the Odd Empire? Well we’ve been around for a while and I don’t see us vanishing in a puff of Alfred induced embarrassment any time soon. Perhaps this is a complete waste of time, perhaps it serves some strange kind of public interest. Perhaps it just relives an impulse for snarking. We look at each other and say, why the hell do we do this? And keep right on going.
So as I retire to my attic I sneak a snifter of brandy from the “grownups.” I raise it to all my misbegotten brethren– everywhere.
“May we all fight the good fight, whatever it may be! May we find it in our hearts to listen to each other every once and a while and may we always remember what it feels like to laugh – at ourselves!”
Skoal!
Emperor, you’re getting close to sounding a bit like cynical Arthur. Be careful about that. He’s descended into his own self-synthesized black hole, and the only info we will get from him is like the entangled radiation emitted by actual black holes–completely scrambled after shredding–be wary you don’t approach the event horizon too closely.
Yeah, I’ve been away for awhile. Decided to visit Mars while I was gone. Check out the face. Nothing there. Never was. But there are other…interesting…things on that planet. We should check closer to the interstitial region between the fringe of the polar ice caps and the deserts. That’s where the action was. Afraid I may have bumped into some orbiting satellite on the way back. Oops. My bad.
Just came back long enough to say something wonderful is going to happen. And it’s more than full of lonely stars. Much more. Can you guess what it is?
Hey! Welcome back!
It’s not the first time I’ve been accused of being cynical. 😉 Probably not the last either. The main thing is to never give up hope and keep plugging away. The message remains, over the heads of most people I think but it’s important to keep sending it out.
That’s the funny thing; something wonderful is discovered on Mars every day! It’s not alien junkyards or mile long monuments. Mars is a place that’s very much unlike the Earth. Dust storms that cover the whole planet. Supersonic winds, strange geology and the probability of plentiful water if not now than certainly in the far past. Mars is a place, a real place. It’s not going to be like Barsoom with fantastic flying ships and naked maidens. It won’t harbor some keen intelligence, cold and unsympathetic like the nightmares of H. G Wells. It will undoubtedly be a chest of wonders, well beyond the imagination of writer of speculator.
As for the œsomething wonderfulI see there’s lots of buzz with the pareidolia folks over the recent Terra Sirenum photos. There is something wonderful but it’s not scarab beetles and sculptures.
Take care dude! be good!