Belated Happy X-Day

Editor’s Note:  I thank JasonPitzl-Waters for reminding us all of today’s significance.

JR Bob Dobbs (C) The Church of the SubGenius

UPDATED: CHROMOSOME DAMAGE! A RANDOM CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT ANTON WILSON

Courtesy of The Frogweb:

JN: In your second volume of autobiography, Cosmic Trigger II, there is a hint of resignation. You say that you would like to be shot into space and listen to Scarlatti. Have you given up on mankind?

RAW: The book was an attempt to present different sides of my personality as they’ve developed in time, and so you get the past mixed up with the present. The past does not always unfold chronologically. It’s the same with ideas – some I held for a long time, some I held for just one afternoon. The book’s an attempt to show that there is no consistent ego. It’s a Buddhist book. So the resignation was just a mood that George Bush Senior put me in around the time of the Gulf War.

Everybody has an area of belief and an area of scepticism –

CSICOP’s dogmas are as rigid as anyone else’s

Blather.net’s Map of the Weird

damien wrote for Blather.

“For the last eleven years (yes, that’s eleven) we here at Blather have been keeping track of every lake monster, UFO sighting, satanist, pornographer, ghost, exorcism, banshee attack, ABC sighting, religious quack, police state action, alien abduction and friendly neighbourhood Kangaroo that we can scribble down in this here site. But the truth is, there’s such an abundance of these bloody things that keeping track of them has become somewhat problematic. Until now.

So allow us reader dear, to present ‘Blather.net’s Map of the Weird’, a first public presentation of what will become an ever-growing, all-encompassing cartographic apocalypse of filth, depravity, smut and forteana.”

Read more.

Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal [ CSICON ]

From Robert Anton Wilson‘s site:

Wilson describes himself as a “guerilla ontologist,” signifying his intent to ATTACK language and knowledge the way terrorists ATTACK their targets: to jump out from the shadows for an unprovoked ATTACK, then slink back and hide behind a hearty belly-laugh.

– Robert Sheaffer, The Skeptical Inquirer, Summer 1990

Dublin, 1986. I had given a talk to the Irish Science-Fiction Society and the question period began.

“Do you believe in UFOs?” somebody asked.

“Yes, of course,” I answered.

The questioner, who looked quite young, then burst into a long speech, “proving” at least to his own satisfaction that all UFOs “really are” sun-dogs or heat inversions. When he finally ran down I simply replied,

“Well, we both agree that UFOs exist. Our only difference is that you think you know what they are and I’m still puzzled.”

An elderly gentleman with blonde-white hair and a florid complexion cried out in great enthusiasm, “By God, sir, you’re right. I myself am still puzzled about everything!”

And thus I met Timothy F.X. Finnegan, Dean of the Royal Sir Myles na gCopaleen Astro-Anomalistic Society, Dalkey, sometime lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin, and founder of the Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal.

In fact, Prof. Finnegan signed me up as a member of CSICON that very night, in the Plough and Stars pub over our ninth or tenth pint of Ireland’s most glorious product, linn dubh, known as Guiness to the ungodly.

Now I hear that Prof. Finnegan has died, or at least they took the liberty of burying him, and I feel that the world has lost a great man.

The Commitee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal (CSICON) , however, lives on and deserves more attention than it has received hitherto. Prof. Finnegan always asserted that the idea for CSICON derived from a remark passed by an old Dalkey character named Sean Murphy, in the Goat and Compasses pub shortly before closing time on 23 July 1973.

Actually, it started with two old codgers named O’Brian and Nolan discussing the weather. “Terrible rain and wind for this time of year,” O’Brian ventured.

“Ah, faith,” Nolan replied, “I do not believe it is this time of year at all, at all.”

At this, Murphy spoke up. “Ah, Jaysus,” he said, “I’ve never seen a boogerin’ normal day.” He paused to set down his pint, then added thoughtfully, “And I never met a fookin’ average man neither”

(About Sean Murphy nothing else appears in the record except a remark gleaned by Prof. LaPuta from one Nora Dolan, a housewife of the vicinity: “Sure, that Murphy lad never did any hard work except for getting up off the floor and navigating himself back onto the bar-stool, after he fell off, and he only did that twice a night.”)

But Murphy’s simple words lit a fire in the subtle and intricate brain of Timothy F.X. Finnegan, who had just finished his own fourteenth pint (de Selby says his fifteenth pint). The next day the aging Finnegan wrote the first two-page outline of the new science he called patapsychology, a term coined in salute to Alfred Jarry’s invention of pataphysics.

Finnegan’s paper began with the electrifying sentence, “The average Canadian has one testicle, just like Adolph Hitler — or, more precisely, the average Canadian has 0.96 testicles, an even sadder plight than Hitler’s, if the average Anything actually existed.” He then went on to demonstrate that the normal or average human lives in substandard housing in Asia, has 1.04 vaginas, cannot read or write, suffers from malnutrition and never heard of Silken Thomas Fitzgerald or Brian Boru. “The normal,” he concluded “consists of a null set which nobody and nothing really fits.”

Thus began the science of Patapsychology, Prof. Finnegan’s most enduring,and endearing, contribution to the world — aside from the computer-enhanced photos of the Face on Mars with which he endeavored to prove that the Face depicted Moishe Horwitz, his lifelong mentor and idol. This, of course, remains highly controversial, especially among disciples of Richard Hoagland, who believe the Face looks more like the Sphinx, those who insist it looks like Elvis to them, and the dullards who only see it as a bunch of rocks.

Read more.

Life in outer space? Japanese Astronomers hunt aliens.

Yoko Kubota for Reuters reported:

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s biggest astronomical observatories are teaming up for an unprecedented quest to find out whether there is life in outer space.

The project, led by Japanese astronomers, will bring together a dozen or more observatories from all over the country to study one star that researchers see as a potential home to an extraterrestrial civilization.

“Everyone wonders at least once in their lifetime whether space is infinite and whether aliens really do exist,” said Shinya Narusawa, chief researcher at Nishi-Harima Astronomical Observatory in western Japan.

Read more.

The Invisible Web Series 2 Episode 6 (15): Chica: The High Cost of Audio

(C) Barbara or Rob Harris ?

While combating audio nightmares and the lack of meals, Alexandra Chica Bruce, a long-time writer for DisInformation journeys through time and space (three-time zones to be exact) to shoot on various subjects in the second part of our story on Retro UFO 3. Who is Chica Bruce? Where is she currently? How did Chica get involved with DisInfo? Why is she Beyond the Bleep and Beyond the Secret? And what is her role with RETRO UFO 3, not your average UFO convention? We talk about those subjects and wine on this episode.

Listen or download here.

Retro UFO 3, Not Your Average UFO Convention

Chica Bruce’s official MySpace Page

Alexandra Bruce’s official FaceBook Page

BEYOND THE BLEEP~!

The Invisible Web Series Two Episode Five (14): The Last of the Space Rangers

The Invisible Web Series Two Episode Five (14): The Last of the Space Rangers

(C) Barbara or Rob Harris ?

In the first of a two part miniseries on the events to occur at the Giant Rock in Landers, California on April 26 and 27, 2008, Captain Adam GoRightly of the Starship Psychopath returns valiantly to the Invisible Web in a race against time. What is Retro UFO 3? How did Captain Adam meet Louise Lacey and Chica Bruce? Who is RUPERT THE ANTi-CHRIST, Presidential Candidate? Where has Adam been since last time and what path shall he take for his future? Another exciting episode on the Invisible Web. Stay tuned for the second part of this cliffhanger with guest Chica Bruce on an upcoming edition ~!!

Listen/dl to Adam’s previous sojourn to our podcast.

(C) Rupert?

Retro UFO 3, Not Your Average UFO Convention

Get Inside the Head of Adam GoRightly

Untamed Dimensions~!

Rupert the AntiChrist!!