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'...time is just memory mixed with desire'

Posted by daev

De Selby, Hunter S. Thompson, Irish UFOs and more! '...time is just memory mixed with desire' - *The Part You Throw Away*, Tom Waits

IRELAND AND ECHELON
Irish magazine *The Phoenix*, May 5, 2000, Vol. 18 No. 9, Pgs 20-21, published an article on Ireland's connections to the global spy business:

'The abolition of Ireland's neutral status has been accelerated by a secret agreement with the American and British governments - without even a nod in the direction of the Oireachtas or the Irish public - to join a state-of-the-art, global telecommunications spying apparatus. This is revealed in a special European comission report on the Anglo-American integrated, world-wide network of electronic initelligence collection platforms (120 satellites and ground stations) code-named ECHELON. It produces military, political and economic intelligence by intercepting telecommunications and clandestinely plundering computer files.'

Read the rest of the article at:
Ireland joins Echelon

BLEDDY UFOS
One of the various reasons why there has been a lack of material of a paranormal nature in recent Blather issues is due to the lack of any actually coming our way. However, the first Irish UFO stories in *months* has been brought to our attention by Luis R. González Manso in Spain, who forwarded a report found in UFO Roundup", Vol 5 Nr.14, 6 April 2000.

According to the report, John H., a factory worker in West Belfast, claims that his car was lifted off the ground by a UFO, and subsequently 'experienced six hours of "missing time"'. (We would tend to wonder that if one has experienced missing time, is it really missing?). Rather than repeat the entire report, we recommend checking out the full report, as was posted to the UFO Updates Mailing List:
UfOMind

H. Patricia Moore, our Northern correspondent, has some thoughts on the matter:

1. This amazing event clearly did not interest the local media at the time. I could find no newspaper coverage of the event.

2. According to the Met. Office, on Thursday evening 23rd March, there were strong winds blowing from the South East that night, with light rain and drizzle. Cloud cover was quite heavy and low.

3. JT at Armagh Planetarium advised me that three planets would have been visible in the sky on Thursday 23rd March from 8.30pm, weather permitting - Jupiter being the brightest, with Saturn and Mars - both fairly faint. The moon rose at 11.30pm that night and was in the South East.

4. John H is rather shy about his name, and indeed details of the garage where this allegedly happened are rather scant.

5. Leaving the premises without paying for the goods received is not a good idea, particularly in an area which employs local 'community policing' rather than the more usual state police.

6. Confusion is the order of the day. Although John says he is travelling to Dublin, he never mentions the Westlink or the M1 - the main arterial route South from Belfast. He also claims to have stopped on a hillside road off the M3. The M3 is about 2 miles long and is entirely concentrated within the City boundaries, not only that, but there isn't a farm, an animal or a country road anywhere near it, unless you count the pigeons [aviculture as opposed to agriculture, I suppose].

7. Belfast is largely covered by security cameras - roads, car parks and shops included. With his admitted erratic driving over the M3 and M2 between 8.30pm and 2.30am, I'm surprised John was not approached by Traffic Police.

8. A frequent phenomena of night-time aerial lights is the illusion of 'following'. A dark background with no visual reference points creates this. Don't believe it? Check it out next night you are passenger. As the vehicle travels along the twists and turns of a road the moon will appear to be following [or leading you]. The huge distance of the moon relative to you and your vehicle and the lack of visual clues increase the sensation. Also, car headlights glancing off overhead lines can create a most peculiar, almost eerie effect as if there were 'lights in the skies'.

9. Belfast Harbour Airport is only a few miles away from West Belfast, and quite close to the M3. Landing aircraft approaching with headlights on, seen through cloud cover can be rather bizarre. The bright moving patch of light, no sound and a lack of visual perspective contributes to the overall 'eerie' effect.

10. The header of the article indicated that John was hijacked by a UFO - however John makes it clear that he chose to drive away from the petrol station; he made other choices later in his story.

11. John never indicates that the object came near his vehicle. It is always in the sky, or following him. Between the hours of 8.30pm and 2.30am there are plenty of vehicles and people about who would notice an egg shaped alien if it was in or close to a car in this city. It's our national pastime in Ulster - taking notice of what other people say/think/do.

12. A 24 hour shift seems excessive [unless you are a junior doctor!]. There are minimum and maximum hours in many employments these days. If John really did a 24 hour shift he must have been exhausted afterwards, and very tired people are known to hallucinate. This raises the question whether John knew before he went to work that he would be doing a 24 hour shift. If he knew in advance then he could have taken a taxi, for safety reasons. Driving after 24 hours with no sleep is dangerous.

13. Since John was 6 hours late coming home, did his wife report him missing? The story doesn't tell us.

14. Does John take a drink? Is John on medication of any sort? The story doesn't tell us.

de Selby: Eccentric Visonary or Crackpot?
by Will Jones, BS, DdS (1)

[Wherein Mr. Jones expounds upon that other great Patron Blatherskite of Blather, the great polymath de Selby, late of the Vico Road, Dalkey, Co. Dublin. More on de Selby can be found in Flann O'Brien's *The Third Policeman* and *The Dalkey Archives* (http://www.hellshaw.com/flann ) - daev]

Two reasons are primarily responsible for M. de Selby's lack of wider acceptance in the latter part of the twentieth century. The foremost reason is that de Selby was a visionary--a man ahead of his time--much as was DaVinci in his age (2). Many of the ideas and theories that deSelby expounded could not then be proven given the limited technology of his time. With the advanced technology of today, however, it would be child's play to prove many of them and I throw down the gauntlet of challenge to any who would, once and for all, subject de Selby's theories to the sophisticated scrutiny of Modern Science. A scrutiny, I believe, that would vindicate this much maligned man.

Secondly, de Selby (like many of the great geniuses) was hopelessly eccentric. I submit that his various eccentricities gave him a reputation among the scientific community as being a "queer duck," an "addlepate," and a "screwball." It is a well-known (and well-documented) fact that scientists can be quite cruel to those of their fellows who do not kowtow to their current, popular, scientific "beliefs." Think of the ignoble griefs to which Galileo was subjected for saying that the earth moved around the sun. Think of Isaac Newton! (3) The embarassing sketches of roofless houses and houses without walls, for example, that appear in de Selby's Country Album (p.1,034) are explained by the redoubtable de Selby apologist, Le Fournier, as "doodlings" that de Selby did as he pondered "some point of difficulty" and which then became mixed in with his other writings. When he came across these "doodlings" later, he mistook them as sketches he had made for dwellings and wrote several pages of explanation concerning them (4). Further, his "tent suits," meant to eliminate, at once, both houses and clothing may yet come into fashion. Once these eccentricities are recognized, however, and excised from his body of work, what remains will stand eternally as a tribute to his true, if somewhat unconventional, genius (5). (For more on de Selby and his "Boswell," Flann O'Brien, see: http://www.hellshaw.com/flann)

1. Distinguished de Selbyite. Conferred upon me by the International de Selby Society for my treatise, "Darkness or 'Black Air?' A Closer Look at de Selby's Theory of Nighttime."

2. For further remarkable resemblances between the two men, read my scholarly discourse: "DaVinci and deSelby: One and the Same?" A striking similarity (if one ignores the difference between "Da" and "de" which are pronymically identical anyway) is that each letter of "Vinci" is just a few alphabetical spaces above the letters in "Selby," (3,4,2,1, to be precise, with "y's" and "i's" being equal) suggesting, perhaps, that DaVinci's genius was slightly greater than de Selby's. Or it may simply be coincidence.

3. While no ignoble grief ever happened to Newton, still it never hurts to think of him now and then.

4. Le Fournier, in de Selby--l'Énigme de l'Occident says of this incident: "In no other way can one explain so regrettable a lapse." Literally hundreds of aprocryphal stories of de Selby's odd eccentricities abound.

5. In addition, some small men with petty minds have suggested that de Selby, like Shakespeare, was a hoax... and his body of work produced as a "prank" to gull the dim-witted. I think not!

HELL'S ANGELS
*Hell's Angels*, Hunter S. Thompson's first book, published in 1966, is a highly involved, almost endearing, but highly critical account of the civil chaos, the police hysteria, political polemic and media hyperbole that trailed around after the Northern California motorcycle gangs of the mid-sixties. Rather than assuming the distant stance of the 'objective' journalist, Thompson spent a lot of time partying with the Angels, going on 'runs' (mass bike rides to various locations over holiday weekends) and just hanging out, talking about everything and anything.

He was never a member - he was always under suspicion for being a writer, he didn't ride a chopped Harley Davidson (He rode a BSA, which he totalled one night, and almost himself with it), and he certainly didn't (un)dress the part. Despite this, whenever Thompson was at any mass meeting, he seems to have been between two stools - his association with the gangs almost got him strung up by local vigilantes, while he was always conscious of the Angels' potential for violence. Things came to a head when he was beaten up by them in 1966.

Throughout the book, Thompson does well to draw a comparison of the extremes of 1960s America - here was the button-down collar American Dream, the Norman Rockwell assumed innocence of post-war utopia... confronted with their worst nightmares: smelly, dangerous *bearded* madmen on gleaming bikes, licentious anarchists, people without a future - The Hell's Angels. Things were changing:

'It may be that America is developing a whole new category of essentially social criminals... persons who threaten the police and the traditional social structure even when they are breaking no law... because they view The Law with contempt and the police with distrust, and this abiding resentment can explode without warning at the slightest provocation.'

Without every apologising for their behaviour - the rapes, or the riots, Thompson in his own singular gonzo style, does a convincing job of getting close to the soul of the biker outlaw, exploring the history and social status of 'white trash', and the influences that make them what they are.

'They are urban outlaws with a rural ethic and a new improvised style of self-preservation. Their image of themselves derives mainly from celluloid, from Western movies and the two-fisted TV shows that have taught them most of what they know about the world they live in. Very few read books, and in most cases their formal education ended at fifteen or sixteen. What little they know of history has come from the mass media, beginning with comics... so if they see themselves in terms of the past, it's because they can't grasp the terms of the present, much less the future. They are the sons of poor men and drifters, losers and the sons of losers. Their backgrounds are overwhelmingly ordinary.

Hunter S. Thompson is a pleasure to read, whatever the subject, but he's all the more enjoyable when rapping on about his own experiences. A damned fine read, Dr. Duke.

*Hell's Angels* is available from
http ://www.blather.net/bookstore/thompson_hellsangels.html



Posted by daev at June 10, 2000 12:06 PM