It's UFO day

Retired Air Force officer Stanley A. Fulham predicts in his book that today, Oct 13 2010, there will be a large-scale visit of Earth by extra-terrestrials. [news article] [Fulham website]

It's actually an excellent choice for an alien invasion. Today is also the birthday of "X-Files" creator Chris Carter, and he deserves a toast for creating one of my favorites TV shows ever (even though it suffered painfully through its last season or two). It is also the birthday of the show's Fox Mulder. Carter called his company "Ten Thirteen Productions" (and included the show "Millennium") and the number 1013 crops up frequently in the X-Files.

I find this to be a good excuse to post this pic of Duchovny, Anderson and Carter as they appeared inside the Rolling Stone X-Files issue.


So, happy birthday to Carter and my favorite fictional FBI agent, Mulder. Keep watching the skies, and all hail our alien overlords.

Purrsday Night - UFOs

Unidentified Feline Ovals?

Tags and links: Friday Ark - Carnival of the Cats - This week's carnival is at Three Tabby Cats in Vienna - Cats - Catblogging

Ministry of Pie Plates

(Anyone know Latin? heh, heh...)

I've been offered the position of Minister of UFOs in DivaJood's administration, and I intend to do a heckuva job. I was born in the Air Force, the organization which was in charge of keeping UFO files for many years (known as Project Blue Book). Here's an actual UFO Detector which you can purchase here. If you are traveling with it, just tell the nice Homeland Security folks it's a UFO Detector, and you should be all clear for boarding.

I'm watching "They Came From Beyond Space" as I write this. Part of the research. I have also seen a UFO. More on that later. There are a couple of topics that I got very interested in when I was a lot younger, read a stack of books on the topic, just trying to find some truth, and came away with some background on the subjects but no answers - only a few loosely-formed opinions and lots of speculation. One subject is the JFK assassination and the other is UFOs. They are deep dark mysteries that will never be solved.

The X-Files was a great show partly because Chris Carter and the other writers were so versed in both the popular and obscure UFO mythology that they were able able to weave their own conglomerate out of it... which is just what happens in non-TV-land. I can see a lot of myself in Mulder, Scully, and the Lone Gunmen too. It's good to be able to laugh at yourself, isn't it? Unlike Mulder, I don't want to believe (or disbelieve either), and unlike Scully I no longer have beliefs I cannot leave behind.

I can hardly begin to scratch the surface of all the different UFO topics, but here's some great old historical stuff from my collection.

It starts with Roswell:

Maj. Donald Keyhoe was an Annapolis grad who became an aviator in the Marine Corp. After retirement he became a writer of articles for "True" magazine, and was appointed Chief of Information for the organization that became the FAA. He was one of the first UFO investigators. The first so-called flying saucers were reported in June of 1947 (with the fabled UFO crashes at Roswell NM), and he wrote an article called "Flying Saucers are Real", which was so popular it was expanded into this very book you see here, published in 1950. I believe it's the first book ever written about flying saucers. In 1957, Keyhoe became the first director of NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena), and ultimately became convinced that the CIA was covering up information. [Keyhoe bio]

The Harvest Has Begun:

This book, "The Interrupted Journey," (1966) as far as I know, was the first book that dealt with alien abduction. It's about Betty and Barney Hill, who experienced missing time and other phenomena while traveling on an isolated road in 1961. Eventually they went through hypnosis, and they recorded those sessions. I listened to them on cassette. It's fascinating. There was evidence, including eyewitnesses and a police report. There was even speculation that the aliens selected the Hills because they were a bi-racial couple, very rare in the year this happened, and that the aliens were wanting to examine 2 races and genders at the same time. I'll bet that the human population was a lot more concerned about what used to be called a "mixed marriage" than the space people would have been. It all still remains a mystery. Of course, after this there were more abduction stories than you can shake a stick at. Another author, Whitley Strieber, wrote about his own perceived abduction experiences in the book "Communion" (1987), and that's the book that really caught the public eye because of the popularity of UFO topics in the 1980s.

Was God an astronaut? Did space aliens help build the pyramids? What's up with Easter Island anyway?

Another popular UFO mythology has to do with "ancient astronauts" and feeding the flames of that was this work of Erich von Daniken, "The Chariots of the Gods." (1968) Lots of questions and no answers. Even the book's title is a question. I gotta respect that. This series of books will really give you a lot of stuff to think about. Did man become so advanced in the future that he could go back in time and help early man? Were there really an Atlantis? Did man spring from Martian seed? Some stuff to discuss over the campfire. Far out. No... really!

Space aliens can't exist so they must be demons or angels (bad ones):

This article in the Conservative Voice, UFOs, Aliens, and Christianity, written by someone whose name is Babu, (cool name) is a commentary on former Apollo 14 astronaut, Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who claims that aliens exist and that NASA officials have had contact with them. It goes on to debunk the idea of alien species existing because because the evolution needed to be able to live "out there" would have been too lengthy and drastic to have happened. (The writer accepts evolution as only possible on the scale that makes one dog breed different from another). It goes on to say that even though God could have created these beings, it's much more likely that they are fallen angels or demons of Satan. It's a much more logical and believable explanation because it's in the Bible, which doesn't mention space aliens. [graphic is a t-shirt of mine]

Well we didn't even get going on the alien bodies from Roswell, Magestic 12, the Bermuda Triangle, cattle mutilations, Area 51, black helicopters, crop circles, the UFO in the Mona Lisa, all the admitted hoaxes created with pie plates and such, and my own UFO sighting which will have to wait for another post.

That's it for this installment of The Ministry of UFOs fireside chat. Here's my favorite alien hybrid, David Bowie, with Starman to play us out.


As for the Latin on the patch, it says "tastes like chicken." More about those patches here. Always remember and don't be fooled, "To Serve Man" is a cookbook.

Tags: UFO - demons

Crazy crap you can buy online

Well, shopping season is here, and I've run across some truly weird items that you can buy online this week. First is a UFO detector, checks for magnetic and electromagnetic disturbances. There's a basic-looking one, but for the same price you can get one with the fancy case and the crop circle on top, an embellishment that's the equivalent of adding Cheez-Whiz. $65, build it yourself, $95 assembled, and there's another version that's elegant and stylish-looking, suitable for festive occasions or doubling as a sculpture for $250. I would hope that it would fit in your purse as well. I should add that although I take a skeptical view of all UFO reports as well as all other things, but I do, in fact, think there's something out there in the way of extra-terrestrial life... and I've had a sighting myself (a close encounter of the first kind). Another post, another day. Maybe.

Next product is a "Ghost Meter" as it says right there on the case. It's an EMF (electromagnetic frequency) detector, apparently essential for ghost detection, and it detects UFOs as well. There are some other products available, such as a little bag of dirt from the Roswell crash site. I have been to Roswell. My mother used to live there and I still have several relatives there. Also, MrB ended up stranded in Roswell for several hours at none other than the old Army/AF base where they supposedly took the alien bodies (there's a story there that's worth dredging up someday). There's nothing in that town that I want a bag of, unless it's chile peppers. However, I am looking for a bumper sticker that says "I crashed in Roswell". They exist!!! I've seen pictures of them. I may have to make my own. I love Cafepress. You can get yourself a UFO detector or a Ghost Meter at this link.

You can buy these little containers of radioactive stuff, in case you want to test your Geiger Counter or whip up a science project. This one, the Uranium Ore, looks like an old fashioned container of cold cream that grandma used to use. She would have rubbed this on her face in a heartbeat. I guarantee it.

Funny thing, all of the above products are available through Amazon.com (who I am still boycotting because they refuse to stop selling cockfighting and dogfighting mags and videos) BUT I simply have to provide a link to the user comments on this product, which are hilarious!!

Lastly, here's a wallet that looks like a gun holster, and there are lots of options for ways to wear it, whether as shoulder holster, on the hip, etc., and they ALL look like a gun. Let me say this, wearing on your person something that looks like a gun, but isn't, is major league stupid. Don't you always want to cry when someone gets shot because someone else thought they had a gun, but they didn't? Picture this: you are pulled over for speeding. The officer asked to see your license. Even if you try and explain 'officer, I'm reaching into my wallet, which looks like a gun, but it isn't, I promise'... you are going to get fucking shot when you reach for it and it will be considered justifiable circumstances by the powers-that-be. Tragic and stupid... BUT, although I think it's stupid to use that wallet, this company has a lot of VERY COOL STUFF that you should check out. I love those cognac glasses.

Tags: shopping - UFO - uranium

Another one for me

I was born on this day in 1953. Last year I assembled a list of things that happened on my birthday, and it is mostly a list of horrible disasters like Hurricane Andrew, Mt. Vesuvius, stuff like that. So this year I decided to list the stuff that happened in the year I was born. This is edited down from the entire list in wiki 1953. My comments are in italics.

January 7 - President Harry S. Truman announces the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. Ouch.

January 14 - CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon. Official results are to publicly "debunk" them and use the media to ridicule people. The CIA goes into the disinformation biz on UFOs. I have also read somewhere that 1953 was the year for the greatest number of UFO sightings. I just knew I was alien spawn.

February 13 - Transsexual Christine Jorgenson returns to New York after successful sexual reassignment surgery in Denmark.
Wow! This was a pretty big deal.

February 18 - The first 3D film, Bwana Devil opens.

March 5 - After 29 years of ruling the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin dies.

March 14 - Nikita Khruschev selected general secretary of the Soviet communist party

March 17 - Nuclear test in Nevada - with 1620 spectators at 3.4 km.

March 26 - Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine.
"Polio" was one of my nicknames as a kid. When I was just a few years old I told Grandpa's neighbor that I had polio (I didn't, and who knows why I said that), so he called me "Polio" for the rest of his life.

April 13 - Ian Fleming publishes his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale in the United Kingdom. I am stirred, but not shaken by that news.

April 25 - Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish their description of the double helix structure of DNA.

June 30 - The first Chevrolet Corvette is built at Flint (Michigan)
I helped to build Corvettes in St. Louis (before they moved to KY), but just for one day on loan from the boring old Impala/Caprice car line.

August 7 - Ohio admitted as a U. S. state, retroactive to 1803.
Helllooooo Cleveland!!!.

August 19 - Cold War: The CIA helps to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and retain Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the throne (see: Operation Ajax). Truman didn't know what kind of Pandora's Box he opened when he created the CIA.

October - The UNIVAC 1103 is the first commercial computer to use random access memory. When I was born, there was no RAM. Now look! We can't even live without it.

December 30 - The first color television sets go on sale for about $1,175 (American dollars). Three channels and not even all in color. I didn't get a color TV until sometime in the 1980s.

100 Things

I snagged the graphic from engrish.com. I finally got around to coming with a 100 things. Might be too-much-information. Sorry about that in advance, but here goes:

Why Blueberry?

1. The moniker Blueberry is inspired by my little Blueberry iBook, my first laptop...
2. ... I am a recovering Moody Blues fan, a fandom with lots of blue things...
3. ... my eyes are dark blue, same color as Elijah Wood...
4. ...and my mother's eyes were the same color, but I've only seen it a couple of other times.
5. It gets mistaken for a fake color. It's not.
6. ...and my car is blue and matches my eyes...
7. ...and my first post on this blog that refers to an article calling Austin a "blueberry in the ketchup".

Love-Hate Trivia

8. My favorite color is... PURPLE.
9. My favorite food is peppers.
10. My favorite drink is wine.
11. I hate yams, sweet potatoes, or whatever you want to call them, especially candied.
12. I hate maraschino cherries.
13. I hate the smell of cigars.
14. I cannot/will not live in the same house with a motorcycle... not again.
15. I hate engaging in sports and enjoy watching an extremely limited list of sports events.
16. I would never bungee-jump, but enjoy roller coasters.
17. The worst job I ever had was doing laundry in a nursing home.
18. I am a Leo-Virgo cusp, born on the full moon (also on the cusp).
19. I like chorale (or choir) music but not opera.

Who? What? Where? Why?

20. I was born on an Air Force Base in Arizona.
21. ...while my parents lived in a little red trailer.
22. One of their nicknames for me was Desert Rat.
23. One of my kid nicknames was Polio.
24. It's because I told Grandpa's neighbor that I had polio, but I didn't. So he started calling me that.
25. I am an only child.
26. My parents are both dead.
27. I didn't have children.
28. I am childfree by choice. Not everyone is meant to be a parent.
29. Besides Texas, I have lived in Hawaii,
30. Florida,
31. Colorado,
32. New Mexico,
33. Illinois,
34. Greece,
35. Missouri,
36. and Arizona.
37. I lived in some of those places 2 to 3 times.
38. I lived in Missouri for 27 years.
39. I was a High School dropout, but eventually went back and graduated.
40. I did not attend the graduation ceremony, but watched from a nearby burger joint.
41. This was mostly due to lack of funds required for the ceremony.
42. I got my Bachelor's Degree at 40.
43. I have never had a best friend who considered me to be his or her best friend. They always had at least one other person they were closer to.

Critters and Quirks

44. I love animals and have almost always had pets.
45. My weirdest pet ever was a de-scented skunk named Sweet William. Skunks should not be kept as pets, nor should they be de-scented.
46. I love grackles...
47. ...and no... not for dinner.
48. I am arachnophobic. Do not scare me with spiders. It won't be funny and I won't like you anymore.
49. I am a cat-person.
50. We have 4 clawed, male, 100% indoor previous alley/shelter cats.
51. I can't ride a bicycle, swim, roller skate, ice skate, water ski or snow ski.
52. This is due to an unnamed phobia that brings on episodes of panic when I try these things.
53. The phobia has something to do with not knowing how to use the brakes, and not being able to learn while panicking.

Cousins, Relatives and TMI

54. In High School, my male cousin and I went to see A Clockwork Orange dressed as droogs.
55. This same male cousin once used my picture ID to get into bars. They obviously didn't look closely at either one.
56. Kevin Costner is my second cousin, once-removed.
57. Yes, THAT Kevin Costner.
58. No, I have never met him, and don't expect to.
59. My first boyfriend was my first cousin.
60. Our parents did not object, even though I was only maybe 14, he was in the Army, and then there was that cousin part of it.
61. It was never consummated.
62. I have (or used to have) between 30 and 35 first cousins. I don't really know a lot of them.
63. I have lost touch with most of my relatives, and have to google them to see if they are still alive.
64. I do not believe in the existence of races of people, just the human race. The rest of it is simply inherited traits and family resemblance.
65. I am not romantic in the typical sense.
66. I dislike being given flowers as a romantic gesture.
67. I also dislike those serious romantic cards. Go for humor!!
68. My mother was going to marry me off to a Greek boy when I was 13 so he could get a green card.
69. It didn't happen only because the US govt. said it wouldn't work.

Fangirl

70. The Harry Potter character I relate to most is Luna Lovegood.
71. I would be sorted into Ravenclaw.
72. I would NOT try out for Quidditch.
73. My Simpsons character is Lisa Simpson.
74. I qualified as a real-life Lisa on lisasimpson.net
75. My Lord of the Rings character would be Frodo.
76. My first celebrity crush was John Lennon,
77. followed shortly by Brian Jones.
78. Both died prematurely, one was murdered and the other was probably murdered.
79. In real life I hate violence and weapons, esp. guns...
80. ...but in movies and TV I like action, fantasy and Sci-Fi.
81. My first concert without a parent was Herman's Hermits.
82. I went to school for awhile with Dan (Hoss) Blocker's daughter, Danna. It was in Greece. She looked like him.
83. I also went to school with Shawn Colvin in Carbondale...
84. ...and in Sarasota with Pee Wee Herman. I didn't knowingly meet either of them at the time.
85. As a kid I was a huge fan of the Mercury and Gemini astronauts.
86. I have lots of books on the Kennedy assassination.
87. I also have lots of books on UFOs.
88. Marty Robbins held me in his arms onstage when I was a toddler.
89. When I met Chuck Berry at 16, he put his arm around me and grabbed my butt.
90. Rare concerts: I saw Jimi Hendrix at the Atlanta Pop Festival.
91. I also saw Janis Joplin there...
92. ...and Duane Allman with the Allman Brothers.
93. I saw the Rolling Stones from front row in 1969...
94. ...and King Crimson with Greg Lake.

This and That

95. I have never voted for a Republican.
96. I don't eat or wear animals.
97. I'm an INTP, and strongly introverted and intuitive.
98. I was a Christian until 10-12 years ago.
99. I am now an atheist, and attend church as a Unitarian Universalist.
100. People who need people are NOT the luckiest people in the world.