Sunday, December 25, 2016

Ramblin’ With Ray


(From Ray X X-Rayer #129)

© 2016 Ray Palm    25 December, 2016


Saturnalia greetings from my monastic cell. Actually on a day like this monastic tomb would be a better descriptor. There seems to be no one else around in this apartment building. I would be away myself but all my friends are busy with their families. As for me -- family -- what’s that?

Friends are important, at least the ones who count. There are also “friends” like those who compose 99.9% of your Facebook account.

An eXample of “friends”: I’m sitting at a table with a group of people I know, my seat between two women. The two women are discussing an upcoming show at the local planetarium. Being the helpful sap I am the use my Android tablet to get the information they need, location and show times. I mention I haven’t been to the planetarium in some time. Before I could say anything more one woman speaks right pass to me to the other one, asking if she would like to go. They make arrangements to meet up. I no longer exist.

So much for my social life here in Plattsfuck, NY.

For the most part no radio or TV lately for me. No special happy shows, movies, or music to remind me how isolated I am. I’ll glance at Google news in case something has happened like the world has blown up. (I hate it when no one sends me a memo about such events.)

Today I will pass my time writing another edition of my zine. I’m taking a break from buggy Windows 10, using a Chromebook and Google Docs. I would use Chromebook more often but there are certain programs like GIMP photo-editor missing from this OS. The available photo-editors on
Chromebook don’t offer the features I need.

Also this time no fancy layout or graphics, just text.

This edition will be one long essay. Back in the day when I was concerned about filling up space with my paperzine I would just add a few disparate thoughts under the title Ramblin’ With Ray.

Looking over the year I’ve produced a record number of issues with this ezine, 15 counting this one. Part of the reason is that I’m no longer tolerating the hell that is paperzine production, not dreading the effort of printing and snail mailing. Also I keep each edition short, much easier to manage.

Besides helping me get through long days of isolation this ezine provides a distraction when I need it. At the beginning of the year I was the health care proxy for a terminally ill friend. I had to make decisions for him when his mental capabilities were severely diminished. I don’t regret saying no to chemotherapy; radiation did nothing to help.

Maybe I’ll get through 2017 without any friends dying. Of course we all anxiously await the dawn of a new age starting on January 20th. This time around instead of brown shirts it will be red caps. The marching morons greatly value narcissistic sociopathy. They will keep making excuses or ignoring the facts right up to boarding a one way rocket to Venus.

* * *

Since the sun was out I took a break from this laptop to get some exercise and soak up some free Vitamin D. Of course in the dead of winter a sunny day can be deceptive, no cloud cover to control radiational cooling. That means being stuffed inside a protective parka, the vitamin D only entering through my half-frozen face.

I would prefer to live in a healthier climate but present circumstances don’t permit it. (If you’re tired of this downbeat writing send me money for my relocation fund. Or just read another zine.)

I brought along my camera which necessitated the removal of my gloves to take a shot. Frostbite nipping at my fingers. At least no one else was out walking around and only a few cars passed by. Empty streets with a lot of crows flying around. Maybe this will be the scene after the Orange Buffoon triggers World War III.

Anyway the temporary desolation today facilitated my photography. No one around to question my actions. I take shots of offbeat subjects, e.g., a glittering crushed soda can on the sidewalk. One time I was taking an image and a drunk hanging around a nearby bar asked me if I was some sort of artist. As opposed to him being a worthless piece of shit.

Moving on...

Time to review a couple of books that I’ve skipped through or skimmed, not completely read. I’m not one of those reviewers who pretends have finished a tome from cover to cover. I have a lot of half-unread books and articles so I have to prioritize my reading. Also with my partially damaged-by-winter-over the years brain my retention sucks and reading an entire book means more info that will get dumped for new info.

“The Hippie Trip” (1968) by Lewis Yablonsky provides a look at the then thriving flower power movement. Backed by his PhD in sociology Prof Yablonsky forgo armchair research and hit the road to see first hand what was happening, man. While approaching the “hippie world” with an open mind he discovered not everything was all flowers and sunshine.

At one commune some alpha male criminal types were like wolves among the hippie sheep. As Yablonsky observed no police, no safeguards against predators.

The Prof was also concerned about hippie parents giving their young children LSD to share in the psychedelic experience even though the young minds weren’t developed enough to handle the “turn on.”

Yablonsky: “In another situation I spent some time with a four-year-old who had been given LSD. The child seemed psychotic. She stared bug-eyed and from time to time jumped around in circles emitting sounds of stark terror.”

Note that Isaac Asimov referred to LSD as chemically induced psychosis.

“The Hippie Trip” includes a glossary of drop-out lingo. Here’s one for the comic books fans: “Clark Kent hippies: part-timers who live mainly in the straight society; weekend hippies.”

"One term not included in the glossary is “selective relating.” Only when it suited them did some hippie parents take care of their children. The parents were too busy getting high or tripping to be be bothered with child rearing.

Compare “selective relating” to the term yuppie parents used: “quality time.” Children got a few minutes of attention because their materialistic parents were too occupied making money and getting to the top. The excuse was quality counted more than quantity.

Chapter Fourteen is devoted to an interview with Charles E. Dederich -- "Chuck" -- founder of the Synanon movement. Yablonsky had examined the drug treatment program in a previous book (“Synanon: The Tunnel Back” 1965.) Yablonksy praised Chuck for being the genius who had helped thousands of people overcome addiction.

Chuck was among a group of ex-alcoholics given LSD in 1957 as part of a UCLA medical experiment. He stated his LSD experience had a profound positive effect on his life, leading to the creation of Synanon. Yablonsky spoke with him about concerns over excessive LSD use by hippies.

If you look up Synanon online you’ll find out how the group went from a drug treatment program to an alternative community to finally becoming a church -- actually cult is more appropriate term. Criminal cult. Mind control. Violence. Terrorism.

Synanon didn’t like one attorney who won a suit against the church. To show their displeasure Synanon followers put a rattlesnake -- minus its rattler -- in the attorney’s mailbox. He ended up hospitalized for six days.

The criminality resulted in Synanon collapsing. When he was arrested Chuck was drunk on his ass.

So much for LSD as a spiritual panacea.

Let’s switch from hippies to hepcats.

“The Voice of Eros - The Second Volume of the Pulse Creation Series” (1958) collects some of the writings of Ernest L. Norman, co-founder of the UNARIUS educational and scientific group. (Are there rings around it?)

For those who tuned in late the UNiversal ARticulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science tuned in late great personages such as Nikola Telsa, Sha-tok (Jesus of Nazareth), and Kung Fu through the clairvoyance of Mr. Norman. When he joined the celebrity club in the great beyond his wife Ruth took over until she deplaned from the earth plane in 1993.

There’s some interesting info about Ernest L. Norman on the back cover (About the Author.)

“Any attempt at a thumbnail biography which would accurately and fully portray the life of the author would be a gross disservice; sufficient to say the future history of the world will unquestionably prove the author to be, without exception, the greatest outlet of interdimensional cosmic knowledge the world has ever known; for he has indeed proven beyond the any question of doubt that he works with and from a higher world…

“This history resides in the many thousands of life testimonials of his students and although He makes no claim, they all know him as ‘the man of Galilee!’”

Yes, but I’m more humble than you are.

Now the personages from beyond Mr. Norman channeled were really aliens.

Apparently they physically dropped into our world to help out a bit and after their visits continued to provide help through channeling.

But if the words are spoken through Mr. Norman then how did he ever claim to be the author of this book? He would’ve only been a messenger. But he and his wife Ruth claim copyright on all writings supposedly repeated from our alien minders.

Anyway, getting back to the hepcat angle…

In Chapter 45 Robert Browning is bloviating through the ether about storehouses of knowledge on another world. Where? I don’t know, I only skim read this stuff. His nagging wife Elizabeth lurks in the background.

During his tour he comes to one particular center:

“Now we have finally arrived into the great hall of the huge section which is devoted to various types and forms of music. Don’t expect to see jive or bebop here. This type of music is strictly, as Elizabeth said, a degenerative form which is born out of some psychological principles of rebellion in the minds of the younger generation on the earth plane.”

How L 7, daddy-o.

Since Mr. Norman could get the dope on the future from his alien contacts I wonder if during his lifetime he targeted for ostracism death metal, punk or rap. Probably those music types generate bad vibes in the ether, man.

Maybe I’ll share some more wisdom from the Voice of Eros. It all depends on how much perusing I accomplish while sitting on the porcelain throne.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

How To Krampus Your Kid's Style For eXmas



How to lick bad manners with a disobedient child.

     Hey Mom and Dad, it's that time of year.  Let the psy op begin.  Time to unleash that Elf on the Shelf doll and mentally coerce Johnny or Janie into proper behavioral mode.
     For those parents who somehow never heard of Elf on The Shelf learn and join in the eXmas fun.
     The Elf is an anorexic doll around ten inches tall clad in a red and white outfit that evoke's Santa's sartorial style.  He can be placed at various locations in your home such as on top of a bookcase but only do this under the cover of night when the tiny one is in a sugar-induced coma.  Changing locations gives the impression to the young sucker that the Elf is alive.
     You tell your victim the Elf is a scout from Santa.  The Elf's assignment: keep on eye on children in that home.  At night the Elf flies to the corporate HQ at the North Pole (right next door to Superman's Fortress of Solitude), to report to Santa how well-behaved a child has been.  Of course it's the same threat once used directly with Santa: Behave or if Saint Nick knows you've been naughty no toys for you.
     Santa both nice and mean?  A little one can't grok the dualism.  It's like with God: the Great One can be fatherly and share love or he can be sociopathic and strike with eternal damnation.  What to do?  Well, have some another guy to sluff the bad stuff on.  Satan is really the meanie and if you fall for his wiles it's your fault, not dear old God.
     With Santa the negative aspects can be projected on the Elf on the Shelf.  A kid can blame the Elf for ratting him out.  His anger is directed at the Elf, not the Elf's boss.
     Besides getting your brat to behave it also trains him to accept the police state that Donald Trump will institute.  (This police state will prevent snide comments about Donald's small hands.)
     But there are limits to this psy op.  Occasionally a child isn't intimidated by a creature so much smaller than him.  How many parents have experienced an elfen backup with their toilets?
     When that psy op is blown it is time to go for another one, a tradition harking back to the early days of eXmas.  Put Krampus on the job.
Krampus is the original other guy to take the blame for Santa.  Like Santa he dates back to pre-Christian times.  (Once again evil paganism has been subsumed by a good religion.)
     Nothing says mind control more than a humanoid half-goat monster with a lolling tongue way longer than Gene Simmon's cow-tongue enhancement. 
     Just have the little naive one look at the computer at the Krampus images you've found through Google and tell him, "See, he's real."  If drawings don't work then show him photos from Krampus celebrations around the world, people dressed in demonic costumes and makeup.  Such events take place from Austria to Canada to even the USA (including Dallas, Texas.  That figures.)
     You can even buy a Krampus doll and then nocturnally relocate it around the home  to show Krampus is alive and watching.  Tremendously more impressive than that pussy Elf.
     The downside to all of this is when your child is old enough to realize you have been lying to him about Santa, Krampus, and Elf on the Shelf.  But isn't it worth the resentment to toughen him up to other lies that will be exposed, e.g.., the deception that the USA is a democracy?
     Feeling guilty about such cruel manipulation of a trusting child?  Don't worry.  You'll have plenty of time to atone when you wake up in hell.  : )

PHOTO: Anita Martinz - Perchtenlauf Klagenfurt

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/15501382@N00/312666589/


Thursday, December 01, 2016

Your Father’s An Earthling, Your Mother’s An ET



Need some SF artwork like this?  
Dom Monet, lifeonsaturnmusic@gmail.com .  
https://www.instagram.com/thedom1945/

Usually stories of visitor abduction and alien-human hybrid babies are told by women.  [1]  But sometimes men end up doing their part for ET experimenters.

There must be something about local councillors in England.  Adrian Hicks of Winchester City witnessed high strangeness one day back in 2004.  He saw an alien woman wearing a white ballet dress walking down the appropriately named High Street.  [2]  He held off for a few years before publicly announcing his experience.  Hicks had his own website (apparently it’s now dead) where he discussed all sorts of conspiracies such as Majestic 12 hiding the truth from the public about visitors. [3]

More recently there’s been the case of councillor Stimon Parkes of Whitby. [4] Like councillor Hicks Parkes has his own website discussing conspiracy theories and his unusual encounters with beings not of this earth. [5] Unlike the Winchester councillor Parkes claims he had fathered a hybrid with an ET female.

Parkes explained on a TV interview show that he engages in intercourse with an alien female four times a year.  His mistress is a mantid, a species of ET with mantis-like features.  Her name is Cat Queen and with her he sired a love child called Zarka.

Parkes is the father of three terran children.  He says his wife is upset with his extraterrestrial extracurricular activity.

But aliens don’t promote procreation with just the upper class.  Meng Zhaoguo also fathered an alien-human hybrid child when he lived out in the hinterlands of China working as a lumberjack. [6] One night Meng saw an object crash to the ground.  When he approached the impact point he was suddenly hit by something – “Foom!” to use his word – and he blacked out.

Later he found himself in bed at home, no idea how he got there.

A few nights later Meng had a sexual encounter but not with his wife.  He floated above his sleeping wife and copulated for 40 minutes with an alien woman.  When asked by reporter Michael Meyer to draw his unearthly sex partner Meng came up something that resembled a hirsute Michelen Man, the rubbery mascot of the Michelen tire company.

Whether or not the alien woman had radial treads didn’t matter.  Meng was told he was the father of a human-alien child.  (Apparently – in a contraceptive sense – the rubber didn’t hit the road.)

Usually such experiencers are met by public ridicule.  But not Meng who found himself befriended by others.  His fame allowed him to make connections and move to a city where he became employed a boiler and steam pipe maintenance man.  A better gig that swinging an ax all day.

Maybe one day Simon Parkes and Meng will be able to visit their children at an intergalactic nursery aboard a mothership invisibly circling the earth.



[1] Busy Time For The Mothership Nursery - https://efanzines.com/RXXR/RXXR-115.pdf

[2] http://xrayer.blogspot.com/2010/02/councillor-and-tutued-et-councillor.html

[3]  http://xrayer.blogspot.com/2010/02/councillor-and-fatally-flawed-timetable.html

[4] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2343983/Whitby-Councillor-Simon-Parkes-tells-ITVs-The-Morning-I-lost-virginity-alien-holographic-age-FIVE.html

[5] http://www.simonparkes.org/

[6]  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-meyer/chinese-lumberjack-alien_b_6986618.html

This Story Bugs Me




Back in the early days of comic books there was some “borrowing” going on as various companies ground out stories for a hungry market.

Over at Chester/Centaur/MLJ -- or whoever that week was the publisher -- there was a character called Dan Hastings.   An athletic type, all-American.  He worked with a scientific genius with a beautiful daughter.  The daughter joined in – basically she got captured – in Dan’s adventures.  When an intergalactic menace arose Dan hopped into his rocket and off he flew into outer space.  Gee, was this character a cheap knockoff of a popular spaceman featured in newspaper comic strips and movie serials?

Dan’s adventures can be found online via scanned copies, free to read on screen or to download for later perusal.  [ https://archive.org/details/webcomicuniverse ]

In one adventure Dan fights giant bugs from planet Plexis (is that near Solar?) in Dynamic Comics #10 (1944).  The ending is irritating, not a proper denouement.

The story involves “the child in danger” motif to the extreme.  Children of top Earth’s scientists are being attacked by boll weevils on super-steroids.  In the opening scene a baby is playing and a “hideous giant bug” stabs the innocent one with its nose lance, pinning the baby to the floor.  The parents rush into the room.  To their horror they find their offspring has been reduced to a baby skeleton.

Later at another top scientist’s home two children, brother and sister, are in bed but before they fall asleep a strange creature attacks.  In one panel we see the boy being speared by another giant bug, a close up showing the victim getting shafted in his gut. 
Mom and Dad rush in but each kid is just a pile of bleached bones.  Sorry, sis didn’t make it.

In another heartwarming scene a girl – another top scientist’s child – is kneeling by her bed, saying her prayers.

Her message to God is memorable: “I want to thank you for making me so pretty.  But daddy says you need brains in this world.  So could you please give me some.  Amen.”

Apparently God doesn’t like little girls reinforcing male chauvinist stereotypes so a special visitor arrives.  It ain’t her guardian angel.

In the next panel the girl is on her feet but not for long.  In silhouette we witness another colossal schnozzola shafting, right through the gut.  Her reaction: “Yaaaaaa!”



Time for Dan Hastings to get on the case.  Consulting with Dr. Zarkov – oops, Dr. Carter – Dan learns that all the victims of members of the Academy of Science. 

Arriving just in time he saves one child by punching the nose off the giant bug.  The critter’s reaction: “Arkkk!”  The bug flees and Dan tells the child’s father – a top scientist, of course – to “get your ray-visualizer machine going.” The ray-thingamajig tracks the bug to the planet Plexis.

On Plexis we meet the mad scientist behind the attacks: Dr. Strange. (No, Marvel/Disney, you’re not entitled to scream copyright violation.)  Apparently Dr. Strange is POed at the Academy of Scientists for outlawing him because of “his insane practices.”  That means he can’t join in the Academy’s reindeer games.

His latest insane practice: add a company of chemicals and – PHOOF – instant giant bug monsters.

Knowing that Dan Hastings is on the way the Strange has his giant bugs capture Dan’s squeeze, Dale Arden – uh, Gloria Carter.  Somehow they transport Gloria through outer space sans ill effects despite the fact there’s no air and lots of radiation out there.

After landing on Plexis Dan knocks the nose off another mutant boll weevil.  He tells the bug: “Here’s something worth arking about.”

In the mad doc’s lair Gloria is tied up to a pillar. Dr. Strange says he’s going to inject her with his special dissolving serum, the same juice his bugs use to reduce kids into skeletons.  Our hero crashes through a window (without any cuts), ready for action, wearing his bright red onesie.  The mad doc gets ready to hit Flash Gordon – I mean Dan Hastings – with a bottle of his nasty serum.  Dr. Strange holds the bottle over his head to launch it.  But Dan stops him by throwing an object that looks like a potato masher at the glass container, breaking it.  The serum spills over the villain, doing its skeletonizing stuff.

Or does it?  We never see what has happened to Dr. Strange.  Dan and Gloria run off and then blast off, reciting the usual denouement clichés in Dan’s rocketship. 

I checked to see if the story was a reprint.  Through some digging I located what appears to be the first publication of the story in a scanned copy of Scoop Comics #2 (1941).  Comparing the two versions I noticed minor artistic and coloring changes were made with the reprint.  But the original story still had the same ending.

If the villain was reduced to a skeleton why would that be less shocking than the bare bones of his child victims?  Maybe the freelance comic book staff loathed children, toiling in a sweatshop studio while putting out crap for bratty kids.  Some of them could have been married with crying babies at home, no more marital relations, pitiful men reduced to uxoriousness.

Another explanation pops up with a one page text story included in Scoop but not reprinted in Dynamic.

It’s been said if a comic book publisher wanted cheaper second class mailing rates two pages of text had to be included in each issue to meet postal regulations.  Usually the text pages were black print on a garish yellow background to make it less appealing to read.  It’s also been noted that these text stories were hardly ever perused by readers who were attuned to the words and artwork format, the art by itself telling most of the story.


The text story, “The Return of Dr. Strange,” opens right after the ending of the illustrated story.  Dr. Strange is dissolving, a victim of his own serum.  Dan and Gloria run off without making sure the mad doc is really dead.  (And you thought villains were stupid this way, capturing the hero in a death trap and then just leaving, never assuming the hero might free himself.)

It’s explained that while Dr. Strange was dissolving he managed to grab some of his bug monster creating serum.  This saved his life but transformed him into a feathered  monster.  Dan faces the mad doc on earth.  This time he kills off Strange’s dreadul new form by using acid again.

In the text story no children are dissolved and killed.  Apparently the one page limitation excluded such fun family entertainment.

OK, the editor decided not to show Strange dissolving in the word-and-art version, keeping the villain’s true fate as a surprise for the text story.  But this still could’ve worked with just one panel showing the dissolving villain looking kinda mushy in silhouette.   After all it wouldn’t be as bad as seeing children brutally stabbed by giant pointy proboscises.

Without witnessing the graphic comeuppance of Dr. Strange his child victims are exploited, stuck with the dirty end of the proboscis.

Does that lack of a proper anti-climax bug you, man?

*  *  *

 Sweet dreams, little ones.

How many nightmares did this crap induce in impressionable young readers?