Sunday, January 15, 2006

The Lucky Hunter

Here's the latest by Ginger Snap, based upon an idea by yours truly, Ray X.



Thursday, January 12, 2006

So THAT’S What Happened To Glenn Campbell


Did the men in green finally scare him off from Area 51?

I first heard about Glenn Campbell years ago when I stumbled across an issue of his zine, The Groom Lake Desert Rat, while “surfing the Web,” to use the phrase of that day. The zine dealt with Area 51, the secret base in Nevada where it’s been rumored the US government is testing ET technology back-engineered from crashed UFOs. And if you find that difficult to believe, how about whispered tales of aliens living at the base, helping primitive earthlings build their own flying saucers?

With such material, Campbell could’ve peddled it as the shocking truth and made some extra money, cashing in on the resulting sensationalism. To his credit, he only dealt in facts, saying that he approached the ET stories as modern myths. The determination of whether or not the stories were true was beyond his resources.

I was disappointed when Campbell ended The Rat with last issue dated November, 1997. Then in January 2000 he froze his Area 51 section at www.ufomind.com, leaving it open to bit rot.

Campbell was no longer Area 51’s Number 1 goadfly. No, he wasn’t scared off. Despite encounters with “cammo dudes” – security guards wearing green and brown camouflage – Campbell was determined to learn as much as he could. But one day he decided he had pushed his penetration into the mysterious base at Groom Lake as far as he could. It was time to move on to other things – mainly, being a family man.

He shut down his base of operations in a hinterland town called Rachel and moved to Las Vegas where he and his wife ran a bookstore. The couple became foster parents to an infant and for six years they raised her, looking forward to adoption. But that’s when Glenn ran into difficulties with another governmental bureaucracy: family court.

The biological mother was given a couple of chances to raise her daughter, only to end up being drawn back into drug addiction. Sometimes phone calls to family services were never returned. The situation became really problematic when Glenn and his wife split. Each one made accusations about the other, another factor that only complicated a complex bureaucratic mess even more.

All of this led Campbell back to what he does best: writing about his experiences with the Web as his medium, making us aware of something that shouldn’t remain hidden. At his site, www.FamilyCourtChronicles.com , Campbell provides a look into a system that needs fixing. His site isn’t just about his own situation; he documents what is happening to other families.

Unlike the base at Groom Lake, penetration into the world of family court was easy. While he never uncovered the truth about UFOs at Area 51, Campbell has finally entered a world alien and unknown to the average citizen – unless that citizen is sucked into it. Campbell acts as an eyewitness to the daily goings-on at the Clark County Family Courts and Services Center, providing praise and criticism as he sees fit.

On his page, Cast of Characters, Campbell introduces us to the various people involved or connected with Clark County Family Court. His description of one reporter who covers the court is short but sweet: “Whenever Bach writes about any substantive issue, you can pretty much be guaranteed she will miss the point. I think she should be restricted to ‘happy’ stories.” At the same time, he will praise someone on the court staff who helped him when he was dealing with his own case.

And then there’s his Glossary page with his personal take on various terms and names. For example, here’s his definition of Crazy:

“The non-politically-correct term that we should never use to describe the mentally ill. Instead, they are ‘clients with mental health issues.’ As a practical matter, calling them crazy only makes them more so, as in: "Crazy? You want to see crazy? WELL I'LL GIVE YOU FUCKING CRAZY!!!!!"”

So Campbell is back at slicing away with his keen causticity, striking some nerves along the way.

And so far the cammo dudes haven’t shown up.



[Sources:

“An eccentric's struggle for truth” By Molly Ball December 18, 2005
Las Vegas Sun (newspaper) < http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/
sun/2005/dec/18/519837904.html >

www.FamilyCourtChronicles.com]