dp1974
New Crowdfunded Graphic Novel Depicts the 1967 Herbert Schirmer Abduction
I got an early Christmas present last year: a package from Los Angeles cartoonist Mike Jasorka. Inside was the fruit of his efforts and my $20 Kickstarter pledge: December 3rd 1967: An Alien Encounter, a graphic novelisation of the strange case of Herbert Schirmer, a Nebraska state patrolman who claims to have been taken aboard an alien spacecraft.
I commend it to all wrong-thinking disinfonauts everywhere, for several reasons, but mostly aesthetic. The black and white panels occasionally splashed with dramatic colour ensures that the 50+ page book is a visually compelling artefact.
It also arrives with a CD, a word for word adaptation from the found audio of Schirmer at a 1970’s UFO conference in Florida, making it simultaneously an aural event (surely a first for a graphic novel, but fanboys will no doubt correct me). Finally, there’s the story: of Schirmer’s childhood upbringing that leads him to become a police officer, what happened that very night on duty and why even after countless ridicule, he stuck next to the unbelievable truth. Herbert’s heart-felt story speaks of his childhood upbringing that leads him to become a police officer, what happened that very night on duty and why even after countless ridicule, he stuck next to the unbelievable truth …
Guatemalan Mayans to World: 2012 is Not the End, and We Should Know
President G. W. Bush at a demonstration of a Mayan ritual at Iximche, Guatemala in 2007.
This breezy seemingly fluffy travel article in the Guardian just days before NYE that somehow got overlooked as the apocalyptic hysteria surrounding the Mayan Long Count date of 21 December 2012 reached a pots-New Year crescendo (for now).
In it, author Kevin Rushby reminds us that unlike the Atlanteans, the ‘noble savage’ and other imaginary creatures Mayan culture still exists and continuous with its more grandiose past.
When Rushby asks a local Guatemalan shaman about the end-of-the-world prophecy, he says, “It is the end of a 5,126-year cycle, that’s true, but there is no mention of the end of the world. People seem to have got that from the Dresden Codex (a pre-Columbian volume of Mayan writings now in the State Library of Dresden). But in that record there is no mention of 2012.” According to Rushby, “Some millenarian-minded…
Happy Amnesia, I Mean, Australia Day!
I am an Australian (for the time being: citizenship now being reviewed, I’m sure) and I endorse this message from Juice Rap News:
So, with prejudice and pride, let our freaky flag of racism fly over the crumbling ruins of indigenous history!
The ‘Strange Sounds’ YouTube Meme: Apocalypse? HAARP? Viral Marketing?
Footage recording bizarre mystery sounds of seemingly immense proportions emanating from the heavens (like the ones above) are being posted from multiple points of the globe but mainly in the Northern Hemisphere:
Speculation is rife as to their cause and nature and the story has been quickly spotted by the usual suspects …
Speculative Fictions: Scientology’s Tin-Pot Real Estate Empire and the Real Owners of the World
Yippee! We'll never have to pay tax on this building! Photo: Scientology Media (CC)
Business Insider pulls the veil aside a little on the vast global real estate portfolio of The Church Of Scientology, with 10 examples from the over 8,500 Scientology Churches, Missions and affiliated groups buildings in 165 countries around the world.
Still, Scientology is way behind the top five largest landowners in the world: Queen Elizabeth II (legal owner of about 6,600 million acres of land, one sixth of the earth’s non ocean surface, valued at £17,600,000,000,000); the Russian state (4,219 million acres); the Chinese state (about 2,365 million acres); the Federal Government of the United States, which owns about one third of the land of the USA (760 million acres); and the King of Saudi Arabia (553 million acres).
And not even in the same class as the more venerable Catholic Church, but of course Scientology hasn’t been able to take advantage…
Fortean 2011: The Weird Year in Review
Via WhoForted? – one of a handful of a new generation of bloggers (Mysterious Universe, Ghost Theory, The Secret Sun and Hidden Experience spring to mind) that do justice to the impish spirit of Charles Fort.
Some strange-lights:
- Paranormal polarisation
- The Mass Exodus of the Cynical Believers
- Bigfoot Overload
- The Biggest, Weirdest, and Best of 2011 – books, podcasts, paranormal reality series’
Make the jump and start making your preparations for this year’s Mayan-tinged weirdness …
Santa Claus: Dybbuk, Tulpa, Legend
FreakingNews.com
What is it about this time of year that melts even the hardest disinfonaut scepticism? Sure, Santa Claus might be the old shamanic magic mushroom cult incarnate repackaged to dupe us all into developing a Pavlovian response to the Baron Samedi of consumerism that he has now become, but I’ve always suspected the rabbit hole went down deeper.
And then I came across this blog post by paranormal researcher Jeff Belanger:
My friend Al told me he was struggling with telling his four-year-old daughter about Santa Claus. “It’s the only lie I’ve ever told her,” he said. I too have a four-year-old daughter and am currently in the thick of Santa Fever at my house, where we’ve been lauding Père Noël for the last three Christmases. He’s a legend I’m honored to propagate.
I study legends for a living. Monsters, ghosts, extraterrestrials, and ancient mysteries swirl around me like smoke from a smoldering campfire. If…
Stop! Mormon Time!
The MC Hammer mash-up of one of my all-time favourite Tube finds: the infamous and frequently taken down ‘Banned Mormon Cartoon’:
(h/t to Ectoplasmosis)
It works on so many levels: there’s the layer upon layer of questionable taste, to be sure, but it also nails the near-Docetic Christology of the LDS. It turn out that you really can’t touch – MORMON JESUS!
And it seems Mitt Romney could say the same about his bid for the White House …
Vale Kenneth Grant, 1924–2011: Grandfather Chaos and Flying Saucerer
Kenneth Grant by Austin Spare (c. 1951).
Finally unpacking the books bequeathed to me by my late ex-Freemason father-in-law’s estate has put me in a wistful mood. I just keep being reminded of how many 20th century disinformationists we’ve recently lost: John Keel, John Mitchell, Zecharia Sitchin — and a loss equivalent to the space filled by their contributions to occulture.
Stacking my now prized Golden Dawn collection turned my thoughts to Israel Regardie and so Crowley — and to his other spiritual son and former secretary, Kenneth Grant.
Both did a great deal to popularise modern post-Thelemic magic. I’ve got some fond ’80s teenage memories of coming across them all in the Psychology section (?) of my local library and reading furtively with one eye over my shoulder. It was the start of an endless study of esotericism.
So I was not surprised when I read that Kenneth Grant had passed away in…
