Fringe

Just finished skimming through a book called Everything Is Under Control, an encyclopedic tour of just about each and every conspiracy under the sun (and many from beyond it) by Robert Anton Wilson. I read it mostly in bed with the wife as she watched her fashion and entertainment shows and in between action in the Jets game Sunday. It was quick, somewhat interesting, somewhat chuckleworthy, sometimes chin-scratchingly plausible.

I enjoy reading stuff like this for the creepy campy factor. Now and then a book or a show on TV will legitimately give me the willies. I grew up on the stuff, everything from conspiracies to hominids and cryptids to space invaders. I even saw something mysterious in the skies one wintry night and wrote about it here. I absolutely love this stuff. I even wrote short stories about a mysterious giant ape-like critter and little silver men who attack a hillbilly fambly.

I used to be embarrassed to admit this, and to a certain extent with certain people I still am. After all, I like to consider myself reasonable, rational, modern. I spent a large chunk of my life studying physics and astronomy. The scientific method, in its purity, is a good thing, I like to think. So … what’s the interest in the fringe, LE? Here’s a Wilsonian thought: what if the guvmint got hold of your library card, LE, and discovered what books you’ve been checking out?

Hmmmm???

So let me clear the air. Here’s a couple of items of weirdity that I find interesting and just how far down the rabbit hole I’m willing to go for them.

UFOs. A UFO is simply a light or an object in the sky that can’t be identified. I saw one. I was unable to identify it. To this day I still don’t know what it is. But do I think it was a flying saucer? An alien spaceship? Well ... (long pause) ... no. As far as belief in extraterrestrial spacecraft goes, I’d have to say, no, I don’t believe in ’em. I’d like to, but I don’t. Probably has something to do with Einsteinian physics and the vast distances between stars. That being said, a civilization only a couple of centuries comparably older than ours, well, who knows? Such travel could be possible. I’d say there’s about a 5% believability factor here for me.

Sasquatch. Sasquatch! How I loved you as a kid! The Six Million Dollar Man episodes, the Leonard Nimoy In Search Of shows. I loved borrowing books from the library on the creature and reading them at night and getting all creeped out. Do I believe it exists? Probably not. For one thing, there ain’t never been a body. Heck, not even bones. I hope and wish and pray for some photos or films of one. To this day I love nothing more than checking out video of the monster (99.9 % are visibly faked) and becoming overrun with goosebumps. Believability factor: 10%.

JFK Assassination. For some reason I got into this about twenty years ago and I got hooked. Stone’s JFK (which I take with whole rocks of salt) cemented my interest. One summer weekend, alone, I spent two days researching the assassination. Then it kind of just fermented in my mind until about a year ago, when by chance I saw a new book on the subject at the library and took it out. Wham! Hooked again. I’ll post more detailed thoughts around the third week of November, but, yes, I do believe something happened that’s not quite what we were told. Bluntly, the Warren Commission is a whitewash. What actually happened I have no idea, but it seems to me that some theories are a whole lot more plausible than others. Believability factor: 95% (I left a little wiggle room here; I’m not immune to allowing Lone Gunman theorists to persuade me.)

Loch Ness Monster. Nah. I remember this was big in the Seventies and Leonard Nimoy had a couple of shows on Nessie and her counterparts throughout the world. Don’t believe it and it kinda bores me. From an ecological point of view I don’t see how a lake, no matter its size, can support some type of giant Jurassic fish-thing, and most of the “evidence” in the form of videotape just looks like waves. I’d need a video or picture of a big eelish neck poking out of the water, jaws agape, snarling and hungry, to be convinced by this one. Believability: 1%.

Abductions. This is a strange one, and very, very spooky to me. It creeps me out in a don’t-look-at-the-window-there’s-something-looking-in-at-you way. Now I don’t believe in alien abduction, particularly since all of these memories are recovered via hypnosis and that right there is fraught with problems (leading the witness type stuff). But I do believe something is going on. I’m interested in alternative thoughts on this. For example, intense sleep deprivation combined with other external stimuli can result in hallucinations similar to those in abduction scenarios. But I can’t believe that an alien civilization which can cross voids light-years across need to impregnate young women to keep their race from dying out. Sounds too 1930s SF pulp to me. Alien abduction believability: 2%. Something else going on: 98%.

Should you come across Wilson’s book (or others like it), it’s chock-filled with thriving ancient societies, occult forces, and more modern politico-economic marriages of convenience all vying to control the world. I could list them here, but I won’t, because even though I don’t give such conspiracy theories much plausibility, you never know, and I wouldn’t want to upset the wrong people …