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The Truth Is No Laughing Matter (Classic Paranoid Repost)

19 Sep

September 19, 2012.

Wow, this is nearly five years old. And what lunacy! Paranoia abounds but don’t worry, I’m all better now, that’s what they keep telling me, I’m all better now, all better now…

from October 8, 2007

So I’m working on the yearbook and we have a Hollywood theme, and it seems to have carried over to my blog-slinging (and damn if I’m not sticking with that word ’til it hurts.) As I type this I am wearing cool shades, sitting in a director’s chair, and I refuse to talk directly to anyone, preferring to let my assistant do all that.

OK, you caught me in a lie. (Read any blog at random and you’ll catch me in anywhere from three to infinity lies.) I am not wearing shades, nor am I sitting in a director’s chair, nor do I have an assistant, though I do prefer communicating through emails rather than actually talking to people, so I guess there is a modicum of truth there.

And a modicum is enough nowadays. Who wants the truth? As a wise man once said; “You can’t handle the truth!” And no, we can’t.

Would you like to know the truth about such dangerous topics as “grave robbers from outer space”? While I won’t spill any secrets of NATIONAL SECURITY, I will merely point out that in 1959 a courageous young documentary filmmaker named Edward D. Wood Junior attempted to inform the public of an immediate crisis that endangered not just the citizens of Hollywood but the entire world. He had discovered, through long weeks of research in hidden national archives and secret military installations worldwide, that aliens were about to attempt a conquest of Earth, with our own dead as their invading army. Try as he might, Mr. Wood was thwarted at every attempt to rally the public into action, and for his efforts, the government poisoned his image in the eyes of the public. This once promising Harvard graduate with a PhD in Psychology and an MBA in Business Management from the Wharton School of Business, was ruined and became a laughingstock in an angora sweater.

Would you like to know the truth about atomic testing in the South Pacific?  For decades, the government has suppressed knowledge of the radiation-induced abnormal hyper-growth of certain reptiles, both prehistoric and contemporary, to gargantuan size. Similarly, the abnormal growth to epic proportions of common ants in the American mid-west due to atomic testing has been suppressed. Newsreel footage of fire-breathing dinosaurs have been leaked to the public from time to time by intrepid truth-seekers, but the government’s black-ops division has managed to convince the public that these actual films of dangerous creatures are really just Japanese movies with men in rubber suits, not monsters.

Would you like to know the truth about asbestos? It is a well-known fact that asbestos is NOT a carcinogen. It is totally harmless and may in fact cure acne. Asbestos was first used as a government cover-up in 1941 when the Air Force claimed that the area around Roswell New Mexico was contaminated to keep the public far away from what was really going on- a flying saucer crash. After the debris was moved to Area 51, the government continued to use the asbestos story for any operation they wanted to keep classified. To this day, CIA incursions into Hanoi during the Vietnam War are blamed on asbestos. Famously, when the Soviets captured Francis Gary Powers after his Blackbird spy plane crashed in the USSR, the US government claimed that he was not spying, and that his plane entered Soviet airspace because of asbestos in the cockpit.

Would you like to know the truth about the Yeti? The Yeti is not a hoax, nor is it a sort of prehistoric “ape-man” as the press (well-known as the propaganda arm of the government) would have you believe. The Yeti are in fact a well-organized and well-hidden militia created for the sole purpose of protecting the nation from a Soviet invasion in 1978. In the late 1970’s the Soviet Union prepared a full-scale invasion of The United States using mercenary Indian Monkey-Man soldiers. These soldiers had, among other futuristic technologies, invisibility-rendering pants. Facing a “primate-soldier gap,” the President authorized the creation of “an elite Yeti squadron,” capable of repelling the Soviet mercenary Indian Monkey-Men. These proved more than capable, and all knowledge of the Yeti had been suppressed, often violently. The Yeti remain America’s ever-vigilant first line of national defense.

Would you like to know the truth about the moon landing? The popular conspiracy theory states that we never landed men on the moon, and that the 1969 moon landing was filmed on a soundstage. That is just not true. We did land on the moon. In 1952. During world War Two, Germany was creating advanced V-2 rockets capable of reaching England. They also created, just as the war was ending, the first jet aircraft. Using German scientists and technology smuggled out of Germany after the war, America created the first lunar rocket in 1952 on a small hidden base in New Mexico. When we reached the moon, astronauts discovered a lunar base constructed on the dark side by aliens from Alpha Centauri. Soon after reaching an agreement, we received advanced alien technology (Did you really think we created Velcro?) in return for turning a blind eye to the mass abductions of humans.

I have been very careful, in the writing of this blog, not to name actual names or reveal too many specific details. It is not safe to do so. In fact, I was very careful to couch it in vague terms and even to write it as if I was being silly with all the “Hollywood” nonsense in the first paragraphs, in case this was being monitored. But it is all real and the truth must get out.

It’s funny. I’m sure I’m all alone. I know I locked the door. But I can swear I just heard footsteps and saw a shadow creeping along the wall. It is funny how the mind can play tri

This Is The Future, Right? (Classic Repost)

12 Sep

September 12, 2012

This has the distinction of being one of the very rare posts I’ve run a third time. Why? I like it.
At any rate, nothing much has changed since 2007 but I’ve pretty much given up my crush on Judy Jetson, she’s such a tease. Plus Sailor Moon is just so much hotter.

from May 12, 2007

This is the future, right? I mean, when we were little kids, the 21st century was it. IT. Flying cars, robots, atomic supermen, that sort of thing. Criswell said it best- “We are all interested in the future, for that is where we shall spend the rest of our lives.” And damn if he wasn’t right, ’cause I haven’t managed yet to live in the past, at least not for real.

I was reading an old Ray Bradbury story that was set in the far-off future year of 1978, and I hate to complain and pick on such a “legend,” but man, was he wrong. I’m sorry Mr. Sci-Fi Legend Guy, but I’m not living on a Mars colony. And my “atomic-powered short-wave radio” doesn’t exist. So what’s the deal?

I’m very well-read and I’ve seen tons of movies. I know what I’m talking about. I want my ray gun! I want my personal robot! I want my own jet pack, flying car, and combination space radio-slash-TV! My hat is supposed to protect me from atomic fallout and my food is supposed to be in pill form. I should commute to work by rocket and my personal computer should be about the size of my bedroom and have the computing power of thirteen abacuses.

But I know that old movies and TV shows can be somewhat unreliable when it comes to showing things as they are. You just have to be selective. For example, I don’t really take The Jetsons seriously. How can you? It is so phony. I think that show has the worst special effects I have ever seen. That car folding into a briefcase? I can see the CGI. And the actors? I don’t know who played George Jetson but he was so weird looking! He had a head that was about as big as his torso. I’ve tried reading the credits, but they don’t tell you who played any of the Jetsons. It may be for their safety- can you imagine how many stalkers Judy Jetson had? I must have written her thirty or forty letters when I was a kid and she never wrote back. I was so stupid back then- it took me until I was 23 to realize that she lives in the future! She hasn’t gotten the letters yet!

Movies do a little better job. I like Abbott and Costello Go to Mars. These two goofy delivery guys get mixed up for scientists and, somehow, end up piloting a ship to Mars, with two bumbling crooks along for the ride. Now it may sound silly, but the film has a rather complex inner-logic and the use of soft-focus cinematography is particularly effective, especially in the sublimely genius sequence when Costello is blasting people with his freeze ray. If any film could be held up as proof of the auteur theory of filmmaking, this is certainly it. Subtle in its satire and carefully nuanced in the use of pre-Marxist Soviet propaganda, my only problem is that how can these be the same guys who played janitors who met Frankenstein and Dracula in a previous film? That part I could never figure out- when did they change careers from janitors to delivery men?

At any rate, that future was clear- men would travel to Mars and meet a race of giant dogs, as well as mechanizing the Statue of Liberty so it can duck when a rocket flies too close overhead. We would all have freeze rays and we would wear spiffy space suits. I want my spiffy space suit!

So far the future is not all it was cracked up to be. I blame Congress. They keep holding up all those laws I want them to enact. Just last month I sent Congress my Bill For The Construction Of Lunar Radium Mines. And what did they do? Sent an FBI guy with a search warrant to my house. It’s like they don’t appreciate all my help.

I sent Congress my ideas for a Rocket-Man Brigade to protect us from Interstellar Plutonian Ice Hounds and all they did was pass some sort of dopey Iraq troop-funding bill.

So as I get older I’m resigning myself to the fact that maybe I won’t be getting that robot any time soon. I may not live on the moon or have a Martian space-dog as my pet, but at least I have my fifth-grade imagination. And maybe I don’t have a jet pack or own a space-yacht, but I know that I will someday. Flash Gordon said so!