Rehash of the Regurgitated

So Steven Spielberg is making a new UFO-related movie, Disclosure Day, produced under the highest of all secrecies.  Of course, he did the same when Close Encounters of the Third Kind was in production in the 1970s.

If you've read this blog for a few years, you already know about My Tiny Obsession -- the one infatuated more or less with discovering that the motion picture includes one of my national magazine articles as a briefly seen prop.

Magazines and newspaper articles about the UFO subject remained quite popular in the seventies, as impressive UFO activity continued to enjoy media coverage.  Hardly surprising, then, was the emergence of Spielberg's carefully crafted UFO film.  (Unfortunately, its magnificence on screens around the country was dwarfed somewhat by another little motion picture entitled"Star Wars, which saw release at about the same time and captivated theater audiences incredibly.)

From the earliest days of motion pictures production crews usually printed their own mock-up (phony) articles, magazine covers and the like -- for the most part -- when the visualization of published material was necessary as background in various scenes.  However, in regard to Close Encounters it would be obvious to UFO article writers of the era that Spielberg's prop department actually used real UFO articles appearing at about the same time the movie was being shot, or inserted thereafter during post-production.

Of course. . .of course. . .authors' names did not appear in the brief scenes where said articles appeared.  In my case, the title page of my Argosy UFO magazine article, "How to Conduct Yourself Inside a UFO" appeared upside-down, the large white circled UFO term readily visualized.  My name appeared at the bottom of the page, but of course that was not to show up in the movie.

The article was not my best, but the graphic created by Argosy's art department was apparently just what Spielberg's project needed. No residuals for me, no name listed, just a page cemented throughout cinematic eternity in a few frames of film.  Just call me Mr. Miscellaneous, along with the other writers whose names were obliterated for the sake of art.  Heck, we writers didn't even get as much as a "close encounter" on the casting couch:):):):)

Your All-Day Doom-Sucker Lollipop, Fresh From the Shelves of the Candied Rat Poison Store

I, No-Bot promise you that today's entry is in no way created by artificial intelligence.  In fact, I can proudly assert that it IS being created by a human of far less intelligence than many other humans.  If this sounds nuts, just wait a few years when you'll be begging for anything still available with a human touch.

The barrage of happy, happy, happy TV and radio commercials surrounding Thanksgiving this year seem phonier than last year's crop, and I urge you to remember my advice:  If you like something advertised, find the same product produced by a less obvious competitor, because that item is probably cheaper, better and produced by well-paid employees whose paychecks won't be diminished by the high cost of media-drenched advertising.

But I, No-Bot digress.  As 2025 draws to a close, a cesspool of brain-damaged issues rattle around in my head, where plenty of vacant space remains to take in even more.  For instance -- why are we still here?  Why is our species not extinct?  We've had our time and what future remains for us consists of running out of landfills, poisoning every good water source on the planet, ruining food sources and a continuation of killing off animals and plants as we forge ahead to our own destruction.  I mean, sooner or later the only things left to decimate will be us, and that should be relatively easy the way weaponry, international tensions and basic human attachment to war exemplify us as a species.

The implications of artificial general intelligence and its truly dangerous successor, artificial super intelligence, currently fall on clusters of ears which will not hear the warnings.  We hope somebody is making a collection of news clips and TV videos where experts assure us that AI will always be our friend -- you know, a little something the next generation can play as its basics of life are commandeered or forbidden by the AI in charge of human existence and obliteration.  And who gets to use energy?  Why, AI of course.

Another thing bothering me about this whole AI business is these kids who suicide themselves on the advice of AI -- or, for that matter, at the urging of a girlfriend or boyfriend.  When these felo-de-se actions occur, instead of putting the blame (and, oh yes, the multi-million dollar lawsuits to kiss and make better something) on Internet AI companies, why not just acknowledge that the victim is a victim of his or her own troubled mind? In other words, there was already plenty of something wrong in that brain long before the Internet scooped it up.

Speaking of taking one's own life -- who wouldn't think it these days?  College students sign for debt they can never pay off and AI is already taking away a good share of the jobs young people are supposedly training for (joke's on you).  Social Security's future is far from certain and far beyond that should be the realization that the products AI will be making instead of previously fired humans won't be purchased because people without jobs can't buy anything.  It's no wonder that young people in uncomfortable numbers feel, albeit wrongly, that socialism is their ticket to freedom.

The holy book thumpers among us in particular scream panic because the international population is decreasing, unable to keep up the growing numbers.  I believe part of this event, in addition to Internet alternatives to baby-making, is related to people simply stepping back and realizing the cost and trouble as opposed to benefits just don't seem worthwhile.  Anybody still believing the world can be harnessed in layers of love, sex and proliferation of baby production is full of shit.  Consider the escalation of child abuse. With the world of high tech working overtime to keep every human alive forever while most religions and governments do their best to champion additions to the arsenal of babies, the enterprise of infant supplementation becomes meaningless to potential parents and modern society.  How many people is too many?  We understand why heterosexual relationships have taken such a dive.  Our ecosystem is trashed and there simply is no interest in actual romantic encounters which range from awkward to, yes, injurious or murderous.

If there's a bright spot -- and there isn't really -- there are people still making lots of babies every day:  Radical Islamists around the world and right here in the good old used-to-be USA.  That is, we don't seem very united as states anymore, but we do tend to agree and disagree a lot as Americans, which is our cherished right.

Nobody living faithfully under the American Constitution should want the slightest anything to do with radical Islam and Sharia Law.  Sharia is popping up around the U.S. as fast as mosques occupied by ??? and government officials need to make certain that Sharia never gets a foothold in the country (as it has in other nations devoid of a firewall constitution).  When Texas declared the organization C.A.I.R. essentially terrorists this year, of course the complicit media went wild with cries of unfairness.  Truth is, C.A.I.R is an American derivative of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared as criminals by Egypt years ago.  What does Egypt know that we do not?

Islamists get off rather easily in American society, as so many fear their wrath and will say nothing controversial.  Me?  I wish every high school, college, university, club and TV station in the USA would sponsor a "Draw the Prophet Mohammad" contest in which all participants throughout the country are encouraged to draw their impression of Mohammad's brutal, child-abusing pedophile face, the more insane looking the better so we may at least establish some modicum of reality.  It is, you see, against Islamic law to produce any image of Mohammad.  The man must remain absolutely invisible.  Is that because of his crimes, or is blind reverence so important that one must hide the object of one's crazed affections away from public scrutiny?  Don't, please, give me that old, old, old time religion!

I think we are in a kind of trouble that may not abate. Sunday night's "60 Minutes" (CBS-TV) showed us brilliant high school students using CRISPR (we have mentioned this previously) to produce cures for illness.  One student did mention something about the ethics which must be ascribed to such technology -- which is a valid point because any dog on the street should be smart enough by now to know that CRISPR will also be implemented by those who wish to produce viruses able to kill off segments of human society, if not all.

American society seems to believe all ills can be cured by flooding our lives with sports.  One can hardly get away from football alone on TV.  Then again, athletics have a long tradition of high school and college coaches steering players in the right direction and -- oops, until that coach who was downloading and trading child porn left his house with a gun after discovery by the cops. And then there's the sports gambling scandal with the Mafia.  Mafia?  They still around?

Not to forget UFOs.  Right now, government officials of merit are wrestling with "disclosure" of information indicating that yes, they are real.  I wish Trump would just come out and say it.  Get it over with.  We have plenty of other things to panic in the streets about.  Of course, the major problem here is that religion and UFOs don't always go hand in hand, to say the least.  Many among The Faithful won't cater kindly to being told a choice must be made based upon evidence.  God is this or God is that or God. . .may not be what they think or. . .may not have been.  Period.  This is the sort of thing to bring trouble in the streets of, especially, the Third World.  Or until religion's officials can prop up some absurd explanation that suits the revelations about these enigmas that claim the skies, lakes, rivers and oceans at will.

My final proof that we hover on the brink of annihilation?  The new season of NBC-TV's "Saturday Night Live."  Horrible writing, just infantile and unwatchable for the very most part.  Maybe they'll cancel it and substitute more football.  It really doesn't matter. Just keep on licking that lollipop and hope the next lick releases a calming sedative.

War Plus Sex Equals No War?

The U.S. Air Force has a proud tradition defending the country, though I wasn't necessarily at the top of the heap myself when I enlisted in the sixties and screwed up in basic training enough to set me back for two agonizing weeks of repeating absurd rituals that made no sense at all.  The training instructors seemed unwilling to accept the fact that I was only in the USAF because the wretched Vietnam military draft just about had me in its claws.  Anyway, after medical tech school the Air Force and nation got 110 percent out of me in hospitals, so that was that.  I saw some pretty crazy things whilst working in the military hospital atmosphere, and if I ever get around to rewriting and firming up an unpublished book manuscript I produced decades ago I'll lay out a chain of forgettable events designed to bore the reader to sleep.

However, few anecdotes about Air Force life and accomplishments can rival a serious consideration surfacing in the nineties to manufacture a "gay bomb."  What was it?  Apparently, it wasn't actually produced, but would have been a non-lethal weapon relying upon a spraying of sex pheromones intended to make enemy soldiers develop a sexual attraction to one another, thereby blowing military bearing and disciplined war efforts all to hell.

The ultimate conclusion after many studies indicated that such a bomb was unlikely to effect the desired results, and the whole project was shelved.  At least, we think it was.

But I have more confidence in the idea  than some, and I say to Secretary of War -- SOW?? of all things -- Pete Hegseth that he must remove the gay bomb idea from Air Force mothballs, perfect it with reckless abandon at all costs, and then use the weapon to make enemy military members all gay every time war erupts.  Can't you just imagine how we could go into Venezuela, bomb the fascist dictator's currently available 200,000 active duty soldiers into utter and total gayness, and then simply walk in as the Venezuelan troops busy themselves with one another?

I'm sure Hegseth and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other examples of hand-picked manly men and maybe manly women are already constrained by a hesitancy to embrace anything remotely gay, but the beauty of the gay bomb is its use on the enemy, not on our troops.  Well, unless some WANT to stand downwind from the explosion.

Obviously, the other advantage is clear:  The gay bomb is not designed to make one trans in any way.  If one is a heterosexual soldier turned temporarily homosexual, he won't simultaneously become transitioned to an opposite gender.  No men claiming to be little girls or stuff like that.  This will be a winner at the White House.

Talk about ingenuity!  Maybe you remember the neutron bomb, engineered to kill people but leave structures totally intact.  Wow, that was impressive enough -- but the gay bomb is the next step, where no lives will be lost and no buildings destroyed.  Which is great because gay-bombed troops will need those buildings for brief but private romantic encounters.  At least for a few hours, enemy troops will say thank you for bombing us, Secretary Hegseth, you've made our day.  And. . .President Trump did say, did he not, that he wanted to stop the killing?  With the gay bomb -- mission accomplished!


(If an administration headed up (supposedly) by one J. R. Biden could, with the able assistance of one A. J. Fauci, perpetrate upon the American people face masks that provided little to no protection against Covid -- as Americans were condemned merely for choosing not to wear them -- then the definition of impossible becomes murky.  If an administration can lie to us, make us stay three or six feet away from one another in consultation with no scientific basis whatsoever, and close schools, businesses and outside basketball courts for months merely because its near-fascist manipulators wielded an assumed power to deny established constitutional rights, then surely there's a gay bomb somewhere in our future.)

The Icemen Cometh

 

A Cosmic Joke?

As billions of dollars continue to be spent by superpowers on space travel and valiant efforts to get from here to someplace called Out There, it's interesting to note that more than a smattering of scientists are reconsidering the origin of life -- human life in particular -- and the very real possibility that life did not originate on Earth.

Decades of scientific studies involving asteroids, meteorites and comets have discovered what appear theoretically to be the "building block" chemicals necessary to create living matter.  The beginnings of human life may indeed have come from Mars via a meteorite impact which flung chemical substances into space and onto Earth -- but the basic chemicals and necessary interactions likely occurred billions of years ago far elsewhere, raising the obvious conclusion that pieces of space rock have always transported and likely continue to convey said building blocks of life throughout the universe.

If we came from someplace else (which I have long believed, circumstances unknown), isn't it funny how we labor and strive essentially to go back to where we started?  A place or places which likely don't even exist anymore?  Are we ultimately just shooting ourselves in the foot with the potential futility of space technology?  Wouldn't it be something if we really have nowhere "new" to go, despite the vastness of space?

Chip away:  As long as I'm in pursuit of a negative course today (if not always) -- what's with building all of these expensive digital chip plants and crushing perfectly good farmland and animal habitats, when based upon much of our technological experience it should only be another three or four years before we can produce the damned things at home in our basements?