My Neglected Friends

Not my friends in the non-blogger internet world, but my on-line friends. This is about them.

This is about PT also known as patchouli_troll, and Beau/crptidhunter, and so many more.

When I first got into the on-line world of UFOs and other paranormal things, I moderated or co-moderated a lot of Yahoo groups. (I still do but have pretty much ignored them.) Two people in particular that did this with me; in fact, were doing it long before I came along, were PT and beau, also known as cryptidhunter.

PT started the Yahoo forum Fortean Phenomena, and it was going strong for a few years. I’m not sure what happened, one of those Yahoo glitches, but a few years ago, that forum got sucked into cyberspace so PT had to start over. She did, with Fortean Phenomena Again, which is still going strong. Co-moderators are beau/cryptid hunter, myself, and ufoluvsscoobss, also known as PunkinPie.


Patchouli Troll (PT) and beau were very helpful to me years ago; encouraging and funny. PT lives in Oregon and we’ve been in contact a few times; and I truly consider all three of them friends.

I’m writing about them because since I’ve been doing all this blogging and writing, I haven’t been too involved in any of the forums; mine, or the ones they’ve started or that I co-moderate with them. I just wanted to give them a big thanks and a plug for their forums.

Before the blogging fury, there were forums, and the operators of these forums helped set the way for bloggers, I think. I know they did for me.

So PT, beau, and PunkinPie, and others out there, hello and Happy New Year!

Culture of Contact Interview with Jeremy Vaeni

Do I come out and finally acknowledge I've been abducted? Do I sound like Minnie Mouse or Ertha Kitt? Find out on Culture of Contact!

Lehmberg and Vaeni Podcast and Beer

Vaeni Interviews Alfred Lehmberg for Book of Thoth


Very cool, just listened to the interview of Alfred Lehmberg by Jeremy Vaeni on Book of Thoth. It’s great!

One thing that’s great is the appreciation of Lehmberg for Lehmberg’s sake that Vaeni has. Hmm, not sure if that makes sense. What I meant was that, as we know, there are many who don’t get Lehmberg, who don’t like him, who don’t take the time to try. Vaeni is someone who does.

What’s always neat, when listening to audio, is matching the person’s voice to how you’ve imagined they’d sound. Lehmberg pretty much sounded like I’d thought.

Jeremy Vaeni is truly great; and I’m not just saying that because he just interviewed me (to air Tuesday or Thursday on Culture of Contact.) He’s open, funny, honest, and very curious, as well as creative.

Fascinating interview, between two fascinating people.

http://www.book-of-thoth.com/book-of-thoth-podcasts.html#

Gender

Jeremy asked me about gender differences, and you’ll just have to listen to that interview for specifics. Mainly because I don’t remember what the hell I said. But after listening to Lehmberg, I had to laugh: he said (I’m paraphrasing) when someone sneers, he wants to eat their face. And I admit that I feel exactly the same way! But I’ve become passive aggressive; from getting into it with the skeptoid types, to just avoiding them. Unfortunately, this sneer trait goes beyond the skeptoids and there’s many a UFO researcher, supposed adults who should know better, who stoop to such tactics. I think both reactions may be gender based; the sneering, as well as the justifiable reaction of eating their face.

So I appreciate the face eating when I see it, and that’s one of the many reasons I respect Lehmberg. But me, I’m still in my avoidance mode, and just prefer to ignore those idiots.

But go Alfred! And all else who don’t suffer fools gladly.

UFO “Mavens” I’d Love to Sit Around and Have a Few Beers With

Alfred Lehmberg
Lesley
Tim Binnall
Jeremy Vaeni
Kithra
Nick Redfern
Richelle Hawks
Farah Yurdozu
Tina Sena
Snoopy the Goon

I don’t know if all of the above mentioned drink or not, but it’s the spirit of the thing that counts.

Me! On Culture of Contact!

For some reason, Jeremy Vaeni thought it'd be a good idea to interview me for a Culture of Contact podcast. Well, I know the reason -- he wants to out me as an abductee. You can find out if I admit it or not by listening to the interview, which should be available Tuesday or Thursday. I'll give an update when I know more.

I will say it was great fun, Jeremy is a great host/interviewer and I felt very comfortable. No doubt I came off like a bozo, but that's okay. I had fun.

Finding Paranormal References

Before I started writing non-fiction here in the UFO blogging world, I wrote a lot of prose, fiction, short stories, poems. My background is in creative writing; I was involved in public poetry readings, had my own little poetry rag going for a while, had some things published, editor of the arts magazine in college, creative writing workshops and programs, that kind of thing.

The other night I was going through my work, and came across a poem/prose piece I wrote a good ten years ago. Don’t worry, I’m not going to post the three pages of that piece here, but I found this stanza interesting:

All around our pink stucco house grow
gardenia, jasmine, honeysuckle,
I sit on the red concrete porch at dusk
and stroke the waxy leaves
of the yellowing brown gardenias,
crush the tiny twinkly jasmine petals,
lifting the tips of my fingers to my nose
inhaling and inhaling until I can’t smell anymore
I eat the crushed petals
I suck the juice from the honeysuckle
I hear crickets and freeway noises.
My mother and I look for spaceships in the night sky.

Where did that come from?

Then there’s this stanza:

I can taste the smoky scent of Natasha’s incense,
the tiny cones ashy red in the bronze turtle
that holds these foreign sticks of scents
I keep my gaze on the thin yellow line of light
that glows under the bedroom door.
I know if I do this long enough I will float through wood,
through Chinese red enamel,
past Wanda and Teresa and Nancy and Natasha
into the night, past the pine tree that guards our corner . . .
~ from The Mother’s Club, Regan Lee

I found it interesting I would include these paranormal/anomalous events in my childhood so causally in an otherwise not paranormal piece.

That last stanza refers to, of course, my many journeys with “them” -- the unseen but seen entities who came for me on many nights, floating me out the door and into the large tree on the corner, where I’d then go into their ship. It always stops at this point however: after I’m in the tree, and see their ship above me, waiting for me, that’s it. All I remember.

Orb Roundup

The holidays are almost over; New Year's is left. Hope everyone had a safe and good Christmas/Solstice holiday.

Blogs
In my ever expanding blog world, I have a new blog: The Skeptoid Zone.

I've been a lot more active on My Space with my OrangeOrb over there. I think I'll continue with it after all.

I really like what's going on over at Women Of Esoterica; having co-bloggers/authors is really nice. Lesley, Richelle and Kithra are great; I enjoy having the variety of articles and items.

Signal to Noise
Busy with various projects; including the next round in Daniel Brenton's Signal to Noise project. This one is about the Contactees. My second response should be up on Vintage UFO in a couple of days.


Gordon Kaswell
Gordon is an interesting person (UFO researcher and muscian) who's done unique -- and important - research on UFOs. There's much more to come on this, including a piece on him in a future issue of UFO Magazine.

Oregon UFO articles
Two items up on American Content on the Trent UFO case. I'm plugging this because it's a paying site; the more clicks, the more you get paid. With the .33 cents I've earned so far, I can finally retire in France. After all, we're all in the UFO field just for the money you know.

Books
Reading The Yowie by Tony Healy and . Still reading Captured! Both are interesting; The Yowie is very well put together and it's an enjoyable read. Recently finished Peter Guittilla's Bigfoot Files, which I enjoyed very much. And, still reading Red Moon, the book Daniel Brenton co-wrote with David S. Michaels.

Whatever it is you celebrate, have a safe and happy one!


Glitterfy.com - Glitter Graphics

Saucer Gossip and Silliness. . .

My recent item on: Saucer Gossip: A Bit of History and Silliness About the Trent Case

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/494571/saucer_gossip_a_bit_of_history_and.html

Picking Up On What Lesley Said . . .

Lesley has said something in her introduction for today about the media. In discussing UFO Magazine’s current issue (you can dowload it for free as a PDF) Lesley refers to the cover, which shows a female an a male news anchor.

The female news anchor Nichole is captioned as saying: “

When you think of people saying: “Oh, Hey, I saw a UFO,’ you kinda think of freaks. I’m not gonna lie to you.”

(First of all, Nicole dahling, you’re a newscaster. Or so we’re supposed to believe. Your sloppy speech patterns really need work. I mean honsestly: “kinda,” and “gonna”?)

This is what Lesley said:

Some people think ufologists should impress the media by not seeming so kooky, but when will the media impress me by not seeming kooky and sooooooooo damn lazy?

It’s time UFOlogy, instead of constantly complaining about the “sorry state” and whining about not being a part of the infrastructure’s party, get aggressive and demand that the media and science step up. They should be coming to our party. Both should get back to what they were trained to do: investigate.

German TV News on Chemtrails.

Video of a German television newscast that exposes chemtrails.

Silly UFO Dream:Knocking Penn Gillette Right on His Keister

I know, reading about other people’s dreams is usually boring. But this one was funny, silly, and I’m sure pointless. So of course I’ll share it with you.

Starts off I’m going to go on the Phil Donahue program to be interviewed about UFOs. Keeping with dream logic, it didn’t matter that Phil hasn’t his own show for a hundred years. Anyway.

I’m pretty excited about that of course. No pay, but they were going to give me a free make-over and I could keep the high end fashion dress and accessories they were going to put me in. Naturally I went for it.

The dresser/make-up artist, young, blonde, very skinny, very ultra cosmo hip, and snooty as hell, comes with me. She’s insisting I try on these god awful dresses. I keep telling her what I don’t like, and that’s what she brings me every time! I’m being nice but come on. Then she tells me I’m “being difficult.” I pull rank on her: "I’m the guest, dahling, and I’m old enough to be your mother, so stop being so defensive and believe that I’m not out to get you, I just don’t look good in yellow and really dahling, I abhor puce.”

I end up in a pretty little number, a bit young and girly for me but it’s all right.

Time for the show. Which takes place in a shoddy basement turned rec room kind of space. The audience is up above, surrounding us; like in an operating theater. Phil’s nice; both he and the audience seem geniunely interested in UFOs. But, I’m astounded, and pretty pissed, to see Penn and Teller there. WTF???!!!! I call the producers on their lying ways, but too late. Anyway, my ego takes over; I want to discuss UFOs, and here I am.

So I wax poetic on the topic, amazing everyone. Penn is sitting back in his swivel chair, feet up on a table, making rude noises at me the whole time. Finally he makes some stupid ass comment about the whole thing; typical pathological skeptic stuff. I just look at him. I mean, one hell of a great look full of dripping disdain that says it all. It clearly says “I’m not even bothering responding to that crap!”

The Look is so intense and all powerful it knocks him out of his chair. He mumbles something about never in his career has anyone shot him down like that, and he leaves.

The End

The Clowns in the "Sorry" State

A recent piece by Frank Warren inspired me to go off on one of my own favorite rants; that of the so-called “sorry state” of UFOlogy. As Warren says, underscoring Richard Dolan's point, the idea that there's a "state" of UFOlogy is inaccurate and misses the point. You can read Warren's piece here: What is The State of Ufology? Wrong Question!


I often rant against those who call for a “new UFOlogy.” What’s wrong with the old one? More to the point, what in the world makes those who want a “new” UFOlogy, a better or a different or a cleaner or a neater or a “more scientific” (oy) UFOlogy that anyone outside of UFOlogy cares?

Who says it’s “sorry?” Because we have the expected jokers around? The Raelians make the mainstream news, not the serious, interesting UFO cases that may also contain some evidence. (Other than anecdotal.) So?

What else do you expect from the mainstream media? They’ve always been cheesy, sleazy and exploitive, that’s what they do. I promise you, if we all got up some kind of serious, somber, clinical “New UFOlogical” whatever, no one would give a damn. We would, (some of us) but no one listens to us. And then there’s this: after a short time, it isn’t too long before this “new” UFOlogy will be perceived -- and possibly turn into -- a stodgy, rigid, snooty mini-infrastructure of scientism in its own right. Before that point thought, this "new" UFOlogy will be scrambling to be accepted by those they've decided long ago they need: mainstream science, academia, the media, politics. Wow, talk about idealism! But those institutions have turned their noses up at UFOlogy; a "new" UFOlogy will have to dance real fast and real well in order to be accepted. Which means, much of what makes UFOflogy the thing that it is will have to be discarded before this "new" state gets in the door. And at that point, of course, you don't have a real (authentic) UFOlogy, but you still have a very "sorry" state indeed. Irony!

Don't you find it ironic that a diverse,individual, subjective, elusive and contradictory phenomenon such as UFOs is persistenlty being forced into some kind of stable state where everyone agrees (pretty much) and the personal is silenced, or at least told to shush?

One thing wrong about screaming for a new UFOlogy or repairing its “state” is the belief we would do better without the clowns. First, we have to acknowledge that there is a clown like atmosphere to much of UFO and Fortean events, and it’s a natural part of the anomalous. There are many ways to deal with this, depending on the situation and where the clown antics fall on the UFOlogical clown scale. (New Age clowns, Contactee clowns, Bigfoot-UFO clowns, Abduction clowns, My Lizard Lover clowns, etc.)

We can ignore them. Call them on their stuff. Expose them for the lying clowns they are. But what if they’re not lying clowns? They could be clowns for a number of reasons, but not liars. At some point, it’s subjective. Trust comes in. Intuition. Meanwhile, we’re all distracted by trying to shove out these clowns, argue over who’s a clown and who isn’t, and the actual work isn’t getting done. We’ve been too busy chasing after those we’ve decided are clowns. Talk about a circus.

Then we get back to work, feeling smug and justified that we cleaned up the mess, only to realize more clowns have sneaked in. That’s the nature of the anomalous clown beast. You just can’t get rid of them. In fact, the harder you try, the more return. Like Sisyphus, once you roll that rock uphill, it just comes back.

The mainstream media and the pathological skeptics will never avert their attention from the clown side of things, for that would mean they have to admit there is something of value and truth to all this.

(Actually, the mainstream media at times slowly turns to the light; little bits of UFO reality get by and we experience a respite from little green men jokes by talking heads.)

We can learn from the clowns. Instead of chasing after them with brooms we can stop and just watch them for awhile. What are they up to, and why? Might turn out it was a waste of time, so what? Might turn out you learned something. Maybe that clown wasn’t just a lampshade on its head bore, but a true Fool leading you down a much neglected and magickical path. You could return from that journey with something of value to share with the “sorry state” of UFOlogy.


cut and paste if link doesn't work: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=46054

UPDATE: Colin Bennett: One More Thing

UPDATE: I think I am an idiot.
In something I found while looking for references to this non-issue (sort of) I found this incredible item on Micheal Wolf.
from Bennett's Combat Diaries: Ufology and the Outsider
I recommend it. It’s all about Micheal Wolf and a real smack down, not the least of which is between Stanton Friedman and Colin Bennett. But in it, this is what Colin Bennett says about the supposed homosexuality of Wolf:

How dare he have the cheek to ask about Wolf’s homosexuality, . . .

And this:

...Turing’s almost insane preoccupation with homosexuality?

Does that sound like someone who’s homophobic?
And so ends this little episode. If I'm missing something, I'm sure there are those who'll let me know.

So I suspect Bennett’s just being his usual off the wall self, and it’s us who get on our high horses and think he’s being anti-homosexual. I think.



I might be an idiot. (Yes, I know dahlings, some of you might be rolling your eyes and saying “Might be?!

I posted yesterday here on the Orb about Colin Bennett, and sighed over his homophobic nature -- that is, if he’s homophobic. Alfred Lehmberg left a comment:

What's up with this, Regan? Link?

So I went back to Bennett’s Combat Diaries site, and found this from his introduction to the site:

As with the above pictures, there may be material on this site which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, unfair, nonsensical, homophobic, nationalistic, plain silly, and many more things which make life worthwhile, including lots of pictures of naked women.

(text in bold mine)

And a link and image on the left menu bar with this title:
Lambeth’s Pooftah Piggies. (Pooftah, for those who don’t know, is the British slang for gay, er, fag. You know.)

And I remember something about how awful the gay agenda is but couldn’t find it.

After taking a closer look, I realized that it’s -- as I mentioned in my OP -- possible I’m not getting it. If so, I’m an idiot. Bennett, being the over the top theatrical writer that he is, (god bless him) could be, indeed, all tongue in cheek and sarcastic. He’s not homophobic, the other guys are.

Or, he is.(It's occurred to me I can just ask him.)

Either way, (one hopes he isn’t) I certainly apologize if I’m misrepresented him. If I haven’t, sigh. As I pointed out in my OP, while that’s too bad if true, it doesn’t detract from his brilliant points regarding UFOlogy, Forteana, and pathological skepticism.

Cut and paste if link doesn't work:
http://www.combat-diaries.co.uk/diary30/diary30.htm

Colin Bennett: Homophobic?

Bennett appears to be homophobic, so it seems. Too bad, since I really admire him. I like his political views for the most part, but more importantly, I love his take on Fortean matters and UFOs; and the skeptic world. He's about the only one out there saying what needs to be said about these topics. He's one of the few that even sees these things in such a way. Too bad he's also capable of being a dickhead when it comes to sexuality.

Which brings us to an interesting point, like actors, artists of all kinds, politicians, those we might admire, how far do we go in our admiration when it comes to knowing things about them personally? Remember how many people refused to watch Jane Fonda in anything because of her opinions on Viet Nam? Of course, that's hardly the same as being homophobic. Not even close.

(I keep hoping maybe Bennett's just being sarcastic and I don't get the joke.)

So do we stop reading Bennett because he's afraid of turning gay, or whatever it is about homosexuals that disgusts him so? No. I can admire his work on Adamski or skeptics or chemtrails, even while shaking my head at his paranoia and bigotry.

Jeremy Vaeni and Humor

Great interview with Jeremy Vaeni on Tim Binnall’s podcast. So much there; but one thing I want to touch on is a question Tim brought up about Jeremy’s sense of humor. I can relate, because I share that same sense of humor, that flip or facetious attitude towards life. And we’ve both been attacked for it at times.

Really, there are a lot of stuffy ol’ researchers about.

If you haven’t figured out by now that the Trickster, which is ever present in UFOlogy, has its mischievous side (and often dangerously mischievous), you’ll never get that humor aspect. Dahlings.

I don't agree with Vaeni on some things, (as he knows) for example, I have not, and will not, come out and say I'm an abductee.


But I like Vaeni, and encourage those of you who haven't taken him seriously or really looked at his work, do so.

If link doesn't work, cut and paste: http://binnallofamerica.com/boaa12.8.7.html
Image credit: Farah Yurdozu: http://www.jerrypippin.com/Jeremy%20Vaeni%20Theatre.jpg