From October 19, 2014
This is one of those news stories that just sits there thumbing its nose at everybody.
As reported by The Daily Mail, the pilots of Airbus 320, descending to land at Manchester Airport, were “stunned” when a flying man zipped past their airplane at 3,500 feet ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2798083/is-bird-plane-no-s-passengers-flew-macclesfield.html ).
No, they did not see a flying saucer. They saw a flying man. They estimated he came within 100 meters of the plane. Nobody saw a parachute, a balloon, a wire, or a magic carpet. We are not told whether any of the passengers saw the flying man, who was in view only “fleetingly,” the pilots said.
Don’t you love this story? It’s better than the one about the guy who attached a multitude of helium balloons to his lawn chair and went way up into the sky and freaked out airplane pilots and passengers. That turned out to be true. But doing it with balloons is one thing. Just being a flying man with no visible means of support or propulsion–well, that’s another.
Don’t bother to suspect those Airbus pilots of lying. Handing in a report that you saw a flying man at 3,500 feet is not a resume enhancement. I’m surprised the pilots mentioned it at all.
But what does it mean? Who was the flying man? How did he get up there–or was he just on his way down from somewhere else? Was he really flying, or just falling? But radar checks failed to pick up any sign of anything up there other than the Airbus.
Where is Charles Fort when you need him?
I was going to try to make a hypothesis about this incident, but it’s just too strange. We’ll have to wait until a lot more flying men are seen.
Somehow that’s not a thought that makes me comfortable.
From April 16, 2014
M.R. James was the best ghost story writer of all time, and among his very best stories is Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad. It’s been published innumerable times in various anthologies.
What’s it about? Well, I don’t want to spoil it for you. Let’s just say it’s one of the scariest ghost stories ever written.
You can also watch it on youtube. Whistle and I’ll Come to You is a 40-minute adaptation of the story, made in 1968. It stars Michael Hordern (he plays Marley in the famous Alistair Sim version of “A Christmas Carol,” Scrooge) as a university professor on a short vacation by the sea.
Hordern gives us a character who is the epitome of the academic fat-head–there’s no fool like an intellectual fool–so in love with his supposed intelligence, so convinced of his vast superiority over everybody else, that he can’t even talk straight. To display his own cleverness, he twists and mangles every straightforward question put to him by anyone.
His vanity leaves him totally defenseless against the horror that is to come.
On one of his rambles, he finds an old grave partially exposed by erosion, and in it he finds some kind of metal cylinder. When he cleans it, he discovers it’s a whistle with a Latin inscription on it that says, “Who is this that is coming?” So of course he blows the whistle, and finds out.
I mustn’t tell you any more of the plot. If you enjoy a really good scare, you gotta see this!
It’s a short film, beautifully shot in black and white. One version has a very nice music track added by a fan. The original does not. Both are excellent.
By the way, there’s no sex, no blood ‘n’ guts, no cussin’ and swearing, no bodies flying all over the place.
It’s a very quiet little film, and it will creep you out but good.
I did finish the accountant’s stuff today, but that was it.
Truly, I don’t understand why I can’t have more than one day in a row where I feel alert and productive. Maybe all the stress with the drugstore sapped the little bit of energy I do have.
I don’t feel like I am getting sick or anything like that, but it is really tiresome to be so low-energy all the time. I am pretty sure that it is from being so very out of shape.
I had a really nice chat with Lee’s former editor. She too, is just about housebound from the weather. Everybody’s patience is wearing thin from it. We’re just not used to it.
There is always hope for tomorrow.
God bless everybody.
Patty
Both this video and Citizen Kane show scenes of subway cars full of people with owls. But then I haven’t seen Citizen Kane in a long time and I might be confusing it with some other classic film.
All the other animals in this video have fur instead of feathers.
From November 11, 2018
From November 8, 2018
As a reporter, I used to cover a township in which the Republican Party, for all practical purposes, did not exist. But it didn’t matter. The township’s Democrats had split into two rival factions that made anything that went on before it look like a love-in.
It’s possible we may see that, in the not too distant future, on the national scene.
On one hand you’ve got the Far Left Crazy crowd, spawned by that old serpent, Bernie Sanders–out-and-out socialist. Indeed, the long psychotic episode that is liberalism has brought this crowd into an embrace of preposterous and suicidal policies–“open borders” and “transgender,” to name just two. Knowing no civics at all, they think their capture of a majority (not a very big majority) in the House of Representatives will empower them to do all sorts of things–erase the borders, repeal the tax cuts, bring back Obamacare in all its glory, impeach the president, vice president, and anybody else who gets in their way–which the Republican Senate can effortlessly stop them from doing.
Unable to get their way, their frustration will reach the point where it must erupt. And before it blows, they’re going to aim it at somebody.
On the other hand you’ve got the older, Nancy Pelosi, Mask of Sanity Democrats, wedded to the slow, incremental transformation of America into a socialist hellhole. Don’t laugh–incrementalism has gotten them very far. They’ve learned that the best way to go about their business is to painstakingly bamboozle the American people. And in the meantime, the legislation they can’t pass… wait for some Democrat judge to rule it into “law.”
The problem with this is, it takes time: and meanwhile, Donald Trump is appointing federal judges and the Senate is confirming them. This drives the younger rats crazy. They burn to attack with teeth and claws–but the Mask of Sanity faction is in their way.
Look for the thing to blow sky-high in 2020, when the Far Left Crazy has some Open Borders wacko to nominate for president–with a transgender running mate–and the Mask of Sanity cabal sinks him or her or xer with some dirty tricks so they can run Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or some other living fossil.
Gonna be some major fun when that happens!
From June 9, 2021
One way to enslave people is to shackle them with guilt–guilt for this, guilt for that, blame people living today for slavery that ended 150 years ago, or 300 years ago, whatever. Mark Rushdoony calls it “An Old Strategy.”
https://chalcedon.edu/blog/an-old-strategy
The important thing to remember, Mark points out, is that “manipulation by guilt… is anti-Christian to the core.” Why? Because Jesus Christ is our salvation. Because Jesus Christ removes our guilt. He has already atoned for our sins. We do not have to obey The Party or Dear Leader to pay for what we’ve done. Christ sets us at liberty; the sentence has been lifted.
P.S.–Now I’ve got to re-read R.J. Rushdoony’s The Politics of Guilt and Pity, published in 1970–but reads like he’d written it today. Well, you can say that about a lot of his work, can’t you?