New Trickster's Realm column at Binnall of America: "The Absurd Bits"

My new Trickster's Realm column is now available at Tim Binnall's BoA: "Absurd Bits" in Fortean Phenomena.

Reading one of my favorite esoteric Fortean authors Colin Bennett right now: Flying Saucers Over the White House; The Inside Story of Captain Edward J. Ruppelt and His Official U.S. Airforce Investigation of UFOs. I'm only just into it, but, as usual when I read Bennett, there is so much rich, juicy and insightful right on stuff it's exhilarating. It's almost too much, one quick brilliant statement after another. One of the numerous gems is the "psychosocial filter" as Bennett calls it concerning UFO (and, I'll add, paranormal events in general) witness experiences: It is an amusing feature of the Western mind that those people who have had a UFO experience of any kind are judged to be people least worthy of analyzing that experience.[Bennett] The witness is often treated as an afterthought, or even an embarrassment. And all is lost if the witness has things that clogs up that "psychosocial filter": The courts of "proper" debate rule out any odd, highly individualized, comic, or ludicrous or absurd elements. Here we see the most tragic-comic emblem of mankind's philosophy: get rid of the nutcases and there will be revealed the shining truth. [Bennett: 39]

Free Bigfoot Newsletter

Back in May, I started a very small and free Bigfoot newsletter: Bigfoot From (Outer) Space!  It comes out whenever. Meaning, I haven't done up another one since, but I think I'll have something soon. If you want to take a look it's on my Scribd page. Enjoy!

NICK'S FORTEAN PIC(S) OF THE DAY: The Creature of the Caves

A very excellent idea from Nick Redfern, who's started yet another blog: NICK'S FORTEAN PIC(S) OF THE DAY The blog features photos, images, book covers, etc. of Fortean delights. Fun, delightful and a nice contribution to Fortean history. Hail Fort and thanks Nick!

Ray Crowe Review of Valley of the Skookum

Ray Crowe reviews Sali Sheppard-Wolford's  <a href="http://www.bigfootencounters.com/reviews/valley.htm">Bigfoot: Valley of the Skookum.</a> Nice review!

Tessa Dick: "The Last Re-Write"

Tessa Dick has an article at the Blogging Authors site on writing: The Last Re-Write- Writers and Readers Meet - Write and Publish Your Book :: Blogging Authors

One of the biggest mistakes that novice writers make is considering the manuscript finished when they have reached the last page and typed “The End”. The story has come to an end, and the plot has been resolved, but the threads within the story nearly always need to be drawn together.

Lisa Shiel: Backyard Bigfoot

A couple years ago I reviewed Bigfoot researcher Lisa Shiel's bookBackyard Bigfoot: The True Story of Stick Signs, UFOs, and the Sasquatch,
which you can read at her site.

Tessa Dick Presents: It's a Philip K. Dick World!: California killed my Amazon store

This news has been posted in many places, including Tessa Dick's blog, about sales tax collection in California:

In an attempt to collect sales taxes from stores outside the state, the California government has decided that my association with Amazon gives them a physical presence in California, thus requiring Amazon to pay sales tax to California when people buy things from out-of-state merchants.

So Amazon has terminated all California affiliates. Of course, this means that our state government will not get the sales taxes, and they will lose a huge amount of income tax.

As Tessa adds, people like herself "the little people" are the ones getting hurt. Read more, including Amazon's response to their California affiliates, here: Tessa Dick Presents: It's a Philip K. Dick World!: California killed my Amazon store

Also see pigligpstick's blog on this.

Falling Skies

 After viewing the third episode, I'm done. I was done midway through the first episode, but hoped the show would improve. Obviously, it didn't.

It was worse than V, (the remake) but that's not fair to V, for V knew exactly what it was. V was "Murder She Wrote" with Reptilians, but that's okay. V knew that. It was predictable and very made-for-TV-ish but I liked it anyway.  It didn't take itself too seriously; just seriously enough, with all the earnest resistance fighters and the FBI suits and those lizard-aliens, and the comic book stuff, like the "soul shredder" machine.


Falling Skies takes itself too seriously. Their definite corny made-for-TV vibe, complete with hackneyed music, screams cheese all the way but it's clear the producers think that's a good thing. By the middle of the third episode I turned to my dear one and said "All they need is a slice of apple pie and a dog in this scene" -- the syrupy upswell of music and familial bonding was so damn potent. Good solid Americans fighting the fight against the invading aliens. The latter which are the only good thing about the show. Pretty cool looking multi-legged lizardish aliens called "skitters" kidnap children and use them for their own devious agenda.  (hmmm, echoes of the excellent Torchwood arc Children of Earth.)

Aside from all that, there isn't enough about the aliens reason for invading earth. Clearly Falling Skies intends to focus on the humans all the way and wants us to see things from their perspective, sucking us in to the human drama cheese first. But, except for a few vague throw away hints about the "skitters" and their robot thugs, we don't know where the aliens are from, why they're here, what their intents are. And what about the rest of earth? We can only assume all of earth is in the same boat as Anytown, U.S.A and our band of human do-gooders.



I found the show boring and insipid.



Falling Skies, TNT, Sunday nights, 8:00pm

AOL Hell: An AOL Content Slave Speaks Out

Very good article on the sleeze tactics of corporate greed and willfull ignorance. I "liked" their FB page to show support.

When it comes to an article, what AOL cares about is the title, and the “keywords” that will make the article more likely to show up among the top results on Google. You type phrases into “Google Trends,” and it suggests the most popular combination of words associated with that topic. You then stick those words into your title and first paragraphs. Rinse, wash, and repeat. The article itself was just ballast.

“LADY GAGA PANTLESS IN PARIS” is the example given in “The AOL Way” internal documents. That’s the best possible title. A buzz-worthy topic, a sexy result. It mattered little if Lady Gaga was actually pantless in Paris; it only had to relate somehow to the article as a whole. The entire title could be a come-on, a tease. It might well turn out that Lady Gaga was neither pantless, nor in Paris at the time. The important part was that the reader would click on those words to read the rest, thereby producing ad revenue for the websites. Words didn’t matter; stealing other people’s work also didn’t matter.

AOL Hell: An AOL Content Slave Speaks Out

Female of the Species: CFZ Publishing

Female of the Species: CFZ Publishing