Maybe it's not much or maybe it's everything. In any case, names such as Leslie Kean, Luis Elizondo and Robert Bigelow and that guy from Blink One something or another have reinvigorated the lowly UFO's energy battery, and we're off and running either to unfamiliar corners or to a maze designed always to have us end up lost in the same spot. But no matter, the air crackles with excitement again, anxious minds lit up like fluorescent bulbs hand-held under a high voltage power line.
While all we can really surmise is that the U.S. government has confessed both by implication and via samples of the real animal that military UFO films and photos exist -- and that officials continue to follow and take the UFO subject more than just seriously -- that's enough to allow us our own current, to borrow a title, estimate of the situation.
Actually (we hate this word, yet using it provides a mind sedative to those who don't know how to initiate a sentence, so. . .), we've been here before, but now reinforcements have galloped in, giving license to UFO investigators, researchers, fans, and crackpots who, dead or alive, emerge from the shadows of ridicule like heroes in the mist.
Thing is, the reputations of a lengthy procession of UFO skeptics and especially debunkers from decades past look a little sallow these days. Menzel? Klass? The still undead? Well. . .
Some have written books and articles -- permanent historical records quite possibly sealing their doom, toppling any chances of the high esteem long desired. Notoriety be damned. Fate, you see.
Because UFOs now seem real in official terms, scientifically honorable. Confirmatory reports launched to the surprise of many. Films? Videos? Radar? Other evidence? Big yawn for those who know what they already knew.
But here's the head's-up: All those experts, authorities on everything, who wore their "scientific" or technological UFO debunking credentials on their sleeves like crosses warding off vampires, ready at the drop of a hat to go on a spirited, often illogical and rabid attack against UFO sightings and UFO observers, look pretty damned foolish today. Those expected to be champions of meticulously solving the unexplained instead branded themselves as explainers-away of things that just can't possibly be and therefore would not be allowed a scientific spotlight.
The personal damage some of these folks did by treating innocent truth-seeking UFO researchers as charlatans or deluded pinheads is and was no laughing matter. While healthy skepticism about UFOs is just fine, the debunking attitude is quite another matter.
However, there is a joke of sorts here, and the pie in the face really goes to that historical succession of debunkers in love with their diplomas and other credentials who COULD have and SHOULD have investigated the anomaly in a fair manner, but instead relinquished their role to onlookers of a scale ranging from honest inquirers to out-and-out frauds, opportunists and crackpots. Yes, history will record that even the worst of the worst in UFO land championed and addressed a subject of importance while science itself ignored and sat on its hands, and the least qualified, along with plain old folks of integrity, were the ones getting major publicity -- publicity often averse to facts, but publicity nonetheless. The crackpot-iest of the bunch will come out smelling like a rose, while so-called scientists may end up looking like vegetable fossils, nothing more or less.
On that note, we're showing here both hardcover volumes of George M. Eberhart's exhaustive 1986 release, UFOs and the Extraterrestrial Contact Movement: A Bibliography. Progressing from ancient times up to 1985, Eberhart's comprehensive project of now more than 30 years' vintage listed all manner of communication dealing with UFOs, possibilities and related topics, including (primarily in English but also with notable foreign language entries) books, journals, pamphlets, articles, dissertations, audiovisual materials, films, government documents and comics.
Whatever the UFO-related theme noted therein per Eberhart's labors, the evidence of longevity roamed far, the subject cried out for respect (even Dr. J. Allen Hynek wrote a Foreword), and the sum total of entries displayed hardly provided a cheering session for those choosing the debunking and ridicule street. So extensive were Eberhart's efforts, in fact, that when I reviewed these volumes for a journal some thirty years ago, I discovered even a few of my old articles listed, and R. Barrow is pretty low on the UFO literature totem pole (!).
So what more can be said? UFOs are back, though they never left, and this time -- one more time -- there's a ghost of a chance that. . .that. . .that. . .
Influenza on the march: We suspect not only the horrors of one or more flu viruses, but that human immune systems in general are beginning a long, systemic crash. Our lifestyle, foods and crops depleted of nutrition and chemicals increasingly invading our surroundings are not helpful. While society worries about the flu, new studies with rodents provide even more evidence that cell phones and required microwave radiation continue to open up the welcome mat for cancerous growths. Regarding the flu, authority figures tell us we're in an epidemic currently. We disagree, as epidemics of which we are familiar generally involve thousands of deaths. As we write this paragraph, there are 63 known child deaths from the flu, and while this is heartbreaking and devastating for individual families, numbers of this volume hardly constitute an epidemic, even when noting that one out of every 10 deaths in general last week allegedly occurred due to flu. Sadly, Dr. Death isn't quite finished as flu reports continue to rise.
Comfort animals: Airlines are apparently taking action to cut down on a proliferation of customers riding with alleged "comfort animals." What will they do when somebody demands to bring along their comfort horse? While we applaud the accommodations airlines make for military veterans, the blind and others who really do require service animals, we wish we could board airplanes with comfort rattlesnakes, after which we would have them inflict venomous wounds upon human phonies claiming they need comfort animals.
The Winter Olympics in South Korea: My question is, why? Oh well, who cares about my questions?
About that coin toss -- Next time, I guess we'll have to flip actual people according to race and see who lands first, since heads-or-tails seem to invoke racism among those born and raised with race at the root of every issue.
Anyway, I did take a second or two to take a look at the Kim sister, fearing a resemblance too ghastly to contemplate. However, she looked nothing like her demented, bloated brother, lucky for her -- but I did fret a bit over her hair, which I strongly suspected would be composed of Medusa's snakes. I know this is cruel, but I half-wished we could direct upon her the effects of a neutron bomb, then send her back to her insane brother with a note proclaiming, "This one's for Otto Warmbier."
White House follies of 2018: If they continue dumping aggressive men (I'm not sure if that would include Omarosa, good riddance by the way), who's gonna remain to run the place? Accusations are peachy keen, but didn't we used to require evidence before ruining people?
Remember a time when we used to hold each other close? Now we just hold each other accountable.
Meanwhile, the rat-bastard, self-proclaimed national TV journalists can't do enough every day to destroy Trump and associates, ignoring completely all the good things and actions he takes to revitalize the United States as they likewise ignore wrongdoing among the far left. With these jewels of broadcast media, every report has to involve a scandal, and if there isn't a scandal they'll create all the markings of scandal. Man oh man, years ago I spoke with college English professors bemoaning the fact that students indulged themselves in TV news reports rather than newspaper accounts, resulting in the greatest classes of know-nothings ever assembled in the classroom. NOW they've grown up and some work for the same hypnotic industry which helped make them ignorant, stupid and politically partisan in the first place. The vicious journo circle.
Congratulations Sen. Mark Warner: Oh oh. Looks like you have a Russia connection, too. Why is it we're discovering it's the Democrats, not the Republicans, who apparently entertain some kind of healthy vibes with Russia? So convince us otherwise.
