SALAZAR presents a short Skateboard vid Featuring Alien, Nate Lacoste, Bradley Sheppard, Stacy Gabriel, Nate Roline, Desmond Hoostie, Chris Connolly, Mike Klinkhamer, and Rob Rickaby.

I shop for you (it’s not time wasting if I do it as a public service, right?).

You’re going to have to excuse the rather frightful poster if there ever was one. It is however entirely relevant to its morbidity, Pandorum definitely lives up to the hype of its horror, especially with a tagline such as ‘Don’t fear the end of the world. Fear what happens next.’ The German/American sci-fi horror was one of the better films I’ve had the pleasure of seeing within the last couple of months, and definitely worth a look at. But why?

Pandorum is one of those fist-clenching, mind-warping, jump inducing films where you are literally on the edge of your seat for a good minute at a time. Directed by newcomer Christian Alvart, whose only earlier works include ‘Curiosity & The Cat‘ and ‘Antibodies‘, but who will also be directing the upcoming ‘Case 39‘ featuring Renée Zellweger. Filming staff also includes Paul W. S. Anderson, director and writer of ‘Alien VS Predator‘, and Jeremy Bolt, both the producers of the ‘Resident Evil‘ trilogy. Stick AVP and Resident Evil in a blender and what do you get? Pandorum. Throw in a little sprinkle of ‘Sunshine‘, and you have the complete movie smoothie. However, was it a good idea to put all of their eggs in one basket? I’m afraid it wasn’t entirely. Many gamers are calling it a Dead Space wannabe.

The plot of Pandorum, a rather nice one at that for sci-fi fans, is set around the human race overpopulating the Earth. As a result, the first sleeper ship to head for Earth’s replacement, Tanis, holds 60,000 humans, except as the film opens up… You can’t see any of them. It is notably a unique blend of psychological thrills combined with action packed sequences filmed in classic, sci-fi grated-floor corridors. At times, Pandorum forces you question your OWN sanity, and explores some of the deep-rooted fears within its viewers. Specifically some of the more frightening fears which often take host, such as; a fear of the dark, loneliness, claustrophobia, lack of memory and it definitely plays upon those fears throughout the film. However whilst it was excellent in provoking thought, it was not exceptionally well constructed, despite the fact there was a plot (unlike most films these days!). This, alongside its lack of publicity, marketing and such may have been why it didn’t even make half of it’s $40 million budget.

A good film if you’re a sci-fi-aholic, or even if you enjoy video games, harnessing a strange familiarity to a first person shooter. However if you’re not that into chasing and racing in space, this isn’t the film for you. A possible DVD buy.

You’re going to have to excuse the rather frightful poster, if there ever was one. It is however entirely necessary in its morbidity, Pandorum definitely lives up to the hype of its horror, especially with a tagline such as ‘Don’t fear the end of the world. Fear what happens next.’ The German/American sci-fi horror was one of the better films I’ve had the pleasure of seeing within the last couple of months, and definitely worth a look at. But why?

Pandorum is one of those fist-clenching, mind-warping, jump inducing films where you are literally on the edge of your seat for a good minute at a time. Directed by newcomer Christian Alvart, whose only earlier works include ‘Curiosity & The Cat‘ and ‘Antibodies‘, but who will also be directing the upcoming ‘Case 39‘ featuring Renée Zellweger. Filming staff also includes Paul W. S. Anderson, director and writer of ‘Alien VS Predator‘, and Jeremy Bolt, both the producers of the ‘Resident Evil‘ trilogy. Stick AVP and Resident Evil in a blender and what do you get? Pandorum, throw in a little sprinkle of ‘Sunshine‘, and you have the complete movie smoothie. However, was it a good idea to put all of their eggs in one basket? I’m afraid it wasn’t entirely. Many gamers are calling it a Dead Space wannabe.

The plot of Pandorum, a rather nice one at that for sci-fi fans, is set around the human race overpopulating the Earth. As a result, the first sleeper ship to head for Earth’s replacement, Tanis, holds 60,000 humans, except as the film opens up… You can’t see any of them. It is notably a unique blend of psychological thrills, which at times forces you question your OWN sanity, combined with action packed sequences filmed in classic sci-fi hallways. Pandorum explores some of the deep-rooted fears within its viewers. Specifically some of the more frightening fears which often take host, such as; a fear of the dark, loneliness, claustrophobia, lack of memory and it certainly plays upon those fears throughout the film. However whilst it was excellent in provoking thought, it was not exceptionally well constructed, despite the fact there was a plot. This, alongside its lack of publicity, marketing and such may have been why it didn’t even make half of it’s $40 million budget.

A good film if you’re a sci-fi-aholic, or even if you enjoy video games, harnessing a strange familiarity to a first person shooter. However if you’re not that into chasing and racing in space, this isn’t the film for you. A possible DVD buy.

]]> http://jwzm.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/random-picture-of-the-day-3/ Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:12:04 +0000 jwzm http://jwzm.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/random-picture-of-the-day-3/

Crazy

Another happy accident.

I call him Charles.

Is finally released today in theatres! So make sure you go see the sequel to Blue Harvest.

]]> http://skywaymechanix.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/skyway-mechanix-%e2%80%93-episode-12-part-16/ Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:23:54 +0000 Rick Hawthorne http://skywaymechanix.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/skyway-mechanix-%e2%80%93-episode-12-part-16/ http://estereotipos.net/2009/11/24/placas-e-cartazes-o-homem-do-planeta-x/ Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:29:44 +0000 Marcos E. Pereira http://estereotipos.net/2009/11/24/placas-e-cartazes-o-homem-do-planeta-x/

Wow. Great movie, just for the simple fact that someone was capable of making a film without stupid things jumping out at you like those youtube shockers and things of that nature (we’ve all encountered the maze or color test I’m sure)

This has by far been one of the best paranormal movies I think I have ever seen. It’s no wonder this $25,000.00 budget movie made uber millions! This movie takes you through a view of the other side, which if you’ve never experienced a paranormal event, it gives you a pretty good idea of what types of things you could expect. Footsteps, scratching, knocking,  inhuman breathing through EVP (electronic voice phenomenon). I have heard of people being disappointed in this movie and that is probably due to the fact that they’re so used to having something leap out at you with some wacky film effects and lots of LFE going on.

Paranormal Activity gets a 5/5 in my movie rating book for thrills and suspense. This movie exemplifies how a paranormal thriller should be! Honestly, I did not even want to look at my monitor in full screen because I was completely suspecting some wild looking demonic figure to just pop out in front of the camera to make me have to put on my Depends =P.

The boyfriend however was a serious douche who just made everything worse, to all you kids out there interested in playing with a Ouija board or spirit board, DON’T DO IT! Take it from someone who has had numerous paranormal events in his life and has certain abilities. Pissing off an inhuman is definitely something you do not want to do….The ending was a disappointment to a point, I wish they wouldn’t have shot Katie at the end, I know that’s kinda the point, but still, could have made it longer and shown the after effects and stuff, ah well, I just know what I would’ve liked to have seen ending-wise.

Feel free to leave your comments!

Josh

Traduction: “Un   MIG21 Lancer Roumain volait à 6500 mètres à 800 km/h quand il a été frappé par 4 objets volants non identifiés. En raison de la vitesse de l’avion, la caméra à bord de l’avion ne montre que 4 des objets pas très distincts… Les  services de renseignements Roumains ont été priés de fournir une aide technique …. “

analuisacid – Témoignage de Víctor González (traduction) – “Lundi 9 novembre, j’ai observé une luminosité très rare parmi les nuages,   plus tard j’ai perçu que la lumière émanait d’un objet qui se déplaçait lentement dans le ciel. C’est passé au dessus quand je suis allé à pied à l’école de mon fils (pour le récupérer).  Puis j’ai emmené le garçon chez ma belle-mère, comme chaque jour, et suis suis retourné à l’atelier. Il s’était déjà écoulé 30 minutes et l’objet était toujours en vue. Puis j’ai avisé mon père de sorte qu’il sorte le  télescope. C’est ainsi que je l’a enregistré, vers 14:30 heures, en ajustant au télescope une caméra de vidéo de zoom optique 40x. Cela a duré longtemps, de 2 à 3 heures de l’après midi, jusqu’à ce qu’il pointe du nord-est au sud-est. “

Editor’s Note: This is part III in a series  of posts on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby.  For part I of the series, scroll down or click here.  For part II, scroll down or click here.  As mentioned before the first post: I reveal many plot points from these films, so please watch them before reading.

In my previous posts on Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, I touched upon some of the ways in which these films exploit the uncanny feelings we experience in relation to our own bodies, as well as how these films may have a comment on the ways in which contemporary power structures terrorize and appropriate the female body.   In this continuation of the larger discussion on Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, I am interested in investigating how these films might also be mining some horror from the inherently uncomfortable disconnect we all have between our minds and our bodies.

In support of this notion, I will posit that the eeriest things in life are not often the things prowling around outside your home at night, nor are they the things coming down from outer space to apprehend unsuspecting sleepers, and certainly they are not pitchfork-wielding goblins reveling in a fiery orgy of sin below the earth.  On the contrary, the eeriest things in life often originate within the confines of our own skulls.  Throughout our history, we humans have made a habit of projecting the weird things going on in our own psyches outwardly, thereby attributing anomalous or unsavory behavior or phenomena to demons, witches and the like.  For instance, Mary Beth Norton makes a compelling argument in her 2002 book In the Devil’s Snare, that the Salem Witch Trials toward the end of the 17^th Century can be largely attributed to the anxieties and other psychological ramifications of frontier life, and specifically the fear of Native American attacks on European settlements.  The dark-skinned men lurking in the unfamiliar forests, along with the constant bloodshed that was inherent to that time and place, created a fear that was coupled with an already-present collective belief in witches, demons and unknown evils lurking in the shadows.  While these settlers did have actual danger prowling outside their homes, they were not aware that the reach of Native American influence reached through the walls of their homes into their minds, leading to irrational behavior and decision-making.  Those weren’t demons in the woods, those were people tired of being slaughtered and otherwise molested by strangely-dressed white people.

The point is that our own minds are the source of our greatest terrors.  And historically, as with the Salem Witch Trials example above, it has been  much easier to explain away the most uncomfortable or undesirable aspects of our lives with a little bit of supernatural belief and magical thinking.  The most powerful of these supernatural belief systems are the monotheistic religions which, although they are very much thriving to this day, are much more difficult to accept absolutely than they were, say, 500 years ago.  Magical thinking was a pat way to explain away events and circumstances that otherwise were baffling or anxiety-provoking.  With scientific knowledge skyrocketing in the latter half of the 19^th Century and through the 20^th Century, it became much more difficult to blame everything on witches, angels, demons and god(s).  In this vein, both Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist share a subtheme of religious faith and the loss thereof.  Father Karras, the central priest character in The Exorcist (although not the “Exorcist” referred to in the title), is wrestling with his own loss of faith.  Father Karras resides in a slummy area of Washington DC, with poverty and squalor constituting his day-to-day world and, along with this, he shares his small apartment with this ailing mother, who eventually is forced to move into a mental institution brimming with the psychologically anomalous.  Karras finds it difficult to rectify these realities with his Catholic beliefs and the demon possessing Regan exploits this fact.  In Rosemary’s Baby, one scene has the camera conspicuously linger on the April 8^th, 1966 cover of Time magazine.  The cover simply features the question “Is God Dead?” in bold red letters over a black background.  This was an actual cover of Time that was attached to an article that stated that the age of religion was essentially out the door.  Rosemary herself, when asked by Roman if she is religious, states, “I was brought up Catholic, but now I don’t know”.

Both films take as their setting a 20^th Century backdrop that is turning more toward medical, scientific and psychological knowledge to assist with problems of the body and mind instead of relying upon supernatural paradigms.  Until recent modern history, many of us have told ourselves stories about the ethereal soul and its dominion over the base, corrupted body.  The soul is said to be made of otherworldly material that is unfortunately tainted by the fleshy, gooey spaceship that it must possess in order to traverse through our inherently dirty world.  If one begins to accept the idea that we – every part of us – are of this world and then supplants the soul idea with this way of thinking, then the means by which one thinks of oneself and the world becomes dramatically altered.  This paradigmatic shift would be seismically uncomfortable, and it is my contention that Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist place themselves firmly in the fault line created from just such a shift.

In his wonderfully entertaining 2007 film The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema, Slavoj Zizek shares some of his thoughts on modern cinema from a philosophical perspective that is rooted in the ideas of famed French psychoanalytic thinker Jacques Lacan.  In his film, Zizek pontificates on Ridley Scott’s Alien and claims that this film derives its power, particularly regarding the iconic scene in which an alien baby hatches from the stomach of its human host, from the idea that humans are essentially alien intelligences with a human body as a host.  We humans are uncomfortable in our own skins because of a fundamental disconnect; we tolerate our bodies, but we must also misrecognize our bodies as something different from ourselves in order to get by.  This disconnect is much easier to handle when one has, for instance, the Christian notion of the soul which advises comfortingly that there is no need to worry, that it’s right to fear your body, and that it’s really okay that you will die someday, for everything will be taken care of because your personality is actually not of this world to begin with.  For psychoanalysis as well as for Christianity, we are essentially ghosts inside a machine, or aliens inside of spaceships.  Christianity tells us that our alien souls will someday rejoin the Mothership (Fathership?)  in the sky, whereas psychoanalysis offers no such happy ending.  For psychoanalysis, life is weird and then you die.

Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist generate some wonderful creepiness by interjecting antiquated notions of Soul/Body and Good/Evil into a modern, scientifically-advanced setting.  One can have every priest and psychologist on call, but life will never cease to be strange.  It’s unfortunate that this basic concept is lost on many contemporary horror filmmakers.  These filmmakers spend too much time on computer graphics and convoluted story lines and not enough time looking into the mirror and contemplating the stranger staring back.

Note: I’m thinking there’s one more post on these two films on the way.  I’m thinking the next post will be about domestic spaces and antagonistic furniture in Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist.

Something that I had meant to convey in my last post was that I have done terrible things in other lives, only some which I remember. I know this because whether I remember them or not I’ve had to address the karma and timeline issues that these incarnations have created. I won’t be focusing on or shying away from that kind of life in this post, but I wanted to make the point that I haven’t always been the hero, tragic or otherwise. As for why my other selves did these things, each case is particular and unique, but generally speaking, when you walk into darkness to change it you take a big risk of getting damaged, caught up in it and manipulated, sometimes for a long time.

One of the first lives I ever remembered came to me as a dream when I was a child. In the dream I was an even younger child and I wandered a great grassland under a clear moonlit night sky. Time lost all meaning and dawn never came. After such a long time I found a sodded hatch in the ground. It opened and I saw the first warm light of that life. It came from a lamp’s flame down in the earthen chamber below the hatch. The people who lived there took me in. They looked human and I realized that even though they looked different than they do now they were my family of my present life. Seeing them also allowed me to realize that I was different. I had the head of a buffalo and a human body. I lived with them for some timeless time, and I was happy because I was not alone. Still, something weighed on me, some responsibility that I had not yet understood. One day my family became very afraid and huddled in their little earthen home. I climbed the ladder and lifted the hatch out into the eternal night. A different night greeted me. The moon and stars faded, no blue velvet curtain of night. Just blackness, and a single piercing red star. There was a beam of red light, then nothing. As a child in my present life I bore the same weight that I felt the buffalo child carrying. It was a terrible weight that said “you are responsible for the world.” The buffalo child was there to heal that world in some way, but the red star cut that short. Being only a child he thought that the red star was what he was supposed to prevent, but he had no way to do that. It took me a long time to release that crushing weight and to realize that it was not meant for this world or this life.

I remember a life of darkness. I was bound by a negative intelligence, a malign force, though I thought that I was the one who controlled it. I remember dragging the girl into the centre of the torch lit chamber by her bound hands, into the circle we had made. I tied her to the peg in the floor. My spiritual brother of that life began to speak the words, half from the old books and half made up and we smiled madly. The king sat, uneasy, but we knew we had made him see this was the only way. I pulled the knife from the cord at my waist.

I remember an endless, predatory life. I was ageless and indestructible. I hunted the small screaming, mewling creatures of my barren valley. In another life I would have know them as human. Their stones and fists broke on my skin like rain. Only my own kind could hurt me and there was only one other left. We hunted each other as well because my kind knew no other way. Eventually the memories grow dim, faded. I don’t remember what happened.

I just remembered a life long, long ago, when I was very different. We lived at the forest edge of a great plain, me and my kind. Insectile beings, like wasps, with wings and bright yellow skeletons. We hunted small creatures in the woodlands with our talons and mandibles, but we were equally tied to the plains. Once every four or five years the females of our nest would fly out and find one or two massive buffalo like animals. They would chase the animals and subdue them with a chemical their bodies produced. When the animals were unconscious the females would lay their eggs inside them, like parasitoid wasps. The females would stay with them until they awakened and recovered enough to be safe from other predators, then they would leave them. After several years the growing young would begin to make a chemical that we could all smell. The whole nest would fly out at this this time to find the animals carrying our young. When we found them many of us would descend upon each of them and kill them in the sacred way that our ancestors had given to us. When they were dead we would free our young from their bodies. The young emerge as small predators, but have no mind like their parents until many years later. It was part of the ritual that the young had to find there own way back to the forest where they would hunt and live until their minds came to them and they could live in the nest. On their way many would be killed and eaten by other predators. This is part of the understanding between the spirit of our people and the spirit of the animals that bear our children.

Read this on Bugg’s Blog

Check out this video I found on YouTube.

I stopped working on this about a year ago. It’s based on a combination of the suits from Alien, and Armageddon. Click through to see how detailed I got.

“Jeunet’s film thus finds a way of grafting two apparently opposed
or contradictory modes of reproduction onto one another. Cloning
suggests replication, qualitative indistinguishability, whereas
hybridity suggests the cultivation of difference, a new creation. In
Alien Resurrection, cloning engenders hybridity; even genetic replication
cannot suppress nature’s capacity for self-transformation and selfovercoming,
its evolutionary impulse. This film does not, then,
overcome Alien3’s attempted closure of the Alien series by resurrecting
either Ripley or her alien other – as if continuing (by contesting)  David Fincher’s theological understanding of the alien universe;
for (as Thomas’ sceptical probing of Jesus’ resurrected body implies)
the religious idea of resurrection incorporates precisely the bodily
continuity that cloning cannot provide. The title of Jeunet’s film
thus refers not to a resurrection of the alien species, or of that
species’ most intimate enemy; it rather characterizes its hybrid of
cloning and hybridity as an alien kind or species of resurrection –
as something uncannily other to any familiar religious idea of
death’s overcoming.”

Stephen Mulhall, On Film

Read this on Bugg’s Blog

Dr. Luchezar Filipov, deputy head of the Space Exploration department within the BAS, told reporters that “they (the aliens) are here right now, among us”. He said that, although there is little awareness of their presence, they are conducting surveillance and research on Earth.

Aliens live on Earth and are in constant communication and interaction with us, Bulgarian scientists told Novinar, quoted by Dnes on November 23 2009. It was even claimed that some alien species were present during a media statement in which they had answered more than 30 questions put forward by Bulgarian Academy of Science (BAS) personnel.

The scientist said that they are not hostile in any way; on the contrary, they are friendly and willing to help us. Unfortunately, due to our lack of evolution and development, we are unable to conduct any coherent form of conversation with this superior life form. “They want to help us, but the problem is that we don’t know what to ask of them once a contact is established,” Filipov told Dnes daily.

Filipov reckons that it will be impossible to try and track extraterrestrial life with our current radar equipment, or through the usage of radio telescopes. Apparently, the aliens were “categorical” that any future means of contact between us and them would be conducted through mental power and telepathy.

“The aliens are very critical of our immoral behaviour and our destruction of the environment. They say that global warming is attributed mainly to infrastructural engineering. Additionally, they are very skeptical of our use of cosmetics, and artificial insemination because this is ‘unnatural,’” Filipov said.

According to Filipov, his team of scientists are currently analysing the answers to their questions from the interactions with the visitors. The scientists aim to have a coherent “strategic plan” pertaining to questions which they will put forward to the extraterrestrials. The next anticipated “meeting” is said to be in the spring of 2010, Dnes said.

The Fourth Kind is a science fiction/horror/thriller which was directed by Olatunde Osunanmi and stars Milla Jolovich.

The film is a documentary reenactment about ‘abductions’ that occurred in Nome, Alaska. Since the movies release Universal Studies has admitted that the ‘actual events’ and back-story were just the part of a guerilla marketing campaign.

At the beginning of the film it starts with Milla Jolovich saying that parts of the movie contain ‘real’ footage, audio samples and people. The film shows a mixture of reenactments and ‘old’ footage.

Im not really sure what to make of this film- i went to see it feeling unsure of what to expect. The film is engaging and keeps the audience interested but at the same time i felt it was hard to believe that it could be genuine. Parts of the footage were very creepy and proves that you dont need a big budget and special effects to scare an audience.

Parts of the footage seemed real but in some parts it became conveniently distorted and not fully visible. After seeing the film in decided to do some research to see if i could find out- mainly just speculations, people saying that it’s all fake and Dr.Tyler doesnt even exist.

So overall its worth seeing if you like films like ‘The Blair Witch Project’. It’s absorbing, disturbing and creepy but will most probably leave a lot of viewers disappointed and confused.

Film Rating: 6.5/10

I didn’t watch the American Music Awards last night because I’ve better things to do with my time, which may or may not mean whipping up an epic amount of cheese grits and an entire box of Brown ‘N Serve sausage:

That’s for me to know and you to endlessly ponder.

Anyways, apparently I’m going to have to make more of an effort to tune in to these third-tier music awards programs because the clips I’ve seen from last night’s American Music Awards are all sorts of ridamndonkulousness.  In some instances, such as Lady Gaga’s performance, I don’t really find this particularly shocking:

While I’m always delighted to see what Lady Gaga will do next, I’ve long ago accepted that it will indubitably be completely batshit insane.  As a result, I can’t say fashioning light-up tubing into something resembling the exoskeleton of the creature from Alien is her most mind-blowing achievement.  Personal preference dictates I stick with either The World’s Gayest Homage to The Warriors or this little head exploder, but I’ve gotta give her points for outfitting a violin player in pig play gear.  I really don’t know what to do with that, so snaps for the nightmare fodder.  Lady Gaga is clearly dedicated to this whole Monster thing, but not nearly as dedicated as Adam Lambert is to becoming my favorite person on Earth:

Oh shit, girl.  This performance deserves a slow clap for how bound and determined he is to destroy the innocence and eyeballs of legions of American Idol fans.  He’s taken his post-Idol success and used it to recreate the post-apocalyptic S&M number from Showgirls?  GENIUS.  I’ve already been enjoying For Your Entertainment far more than I can rationally explain or properly articulate, but this performance just seals the deal.  And that kiss that’s got everybody’s tongues wagging?

I’m not worried about the whole guy-on-guy part because duh, and also because that was less a kiss and more like Adam Lambert making like Hannibal Lecter and eating that dude’s face.   Wanton displays of homosexuality for the titillating sake of shock value are very different than wanton displays of cannibalism for the titillating sake of shock value.  Let’s get it straight, people.

But I digress.  My point is that it’s quite clear what now needs to happen: Lady Gaga and Adam Lambert must tour together.  I’m pretty certain that their combined flamboyance might be the Hadron Collider of Homosexuality, a tour capable of tearing a whole through the space/time continuum and teleporting audiences to Planet Unicorn, but is that really such a bad thing?

No, I think not.

 Hooray! My second eShort, “Assassins,” went up at www.echelonpress.com. This time around, the short story is classified as an “Adventure” tale even though it is set in the future on a planet far, far away. And more than a science fiction adventure, this story could be classified as a Space Western!

Hmm. Does this mean I have a stagecoach rattling along a prairie trail? No, but I do have a bus driven by a reluctant hero rattling down that same prairie trail (only it’s on Konur Prime instead of in South Dakota or Kansas). Does that mean there’s a chase scene? Yes, and the get-away horse is a big-rig truck. Does that mean there’s a damsel in distress? Yes, she’s a failed genetically altered ”experiment” who is running for her life from an assassin with her pet singing opossum. There’s even a saloon and gambling establishment run by a red-headed woman. And I took the cover photo in Colorado at Garden of the Gods that stands in for The Canyons on Konur Prime.

A little more about Space Westerns. These stories take advantage of the character-types, challenges, and situations typically found in traditional westerns — only they take place in the future on frontier planets or “along the trail” between planets.  A recent example of a Space Western is the television series, “Firefly,” and its movie offspring, “Serenity.” But the spirit of the Space Western was really rejuvenated years ago by movies like ”Star Wars,” “Alien,” and the ”Star Treks.” For those interested in learning more about the genre, read the informative article on the subject by N.E. Lilly at www.spacewesterns.com While you’re there, you can check out a story of mine, “For the Good of the Settlement” (Archive story #25) or look at my comments about the genre in an article on writers published during the 1st year of the magazine’s existence.

Whether “Assassins” is called an adventure, science fiction tale, or space western — it’s a fun read. If you’re a writer — why not try and write one? And a note to you readers, ”Assassins” has a gun fight by the train tracks at the story’s end between the good guys and the bad guys! (But I’m not telling you who wins).

Fifth through eighth graders created these aliens and painted them with fluorescent paint. Fluorescent paint can be found in most art classrooms around the country but not many people know how or when the paint was invented.

Check out The Day-Glo Brothers: The True Story of Bob and Joe Switzer’s Bright Ideas and Brand-New Colors to learn the story of two Berkeley brothers who collaborated to make paint glow under ultraviolet light. They used their mother’s new kitchen mixer to combine chemicals with alcohol, shellac and other ingredients to form the paint. Unfortunately, one time they didn’t clean the mixer right away their mother made a very colorful cake. They went on to experiment at home creating better mixtures, and now we see day-glo paint in Disneyland, on billboards and many other places.

So next time you see day-glo paint you can tell your parents about the Switzers!

Tribù: Che dobbiate affrontare cavernicoli, feroci tuareg o maya coperti di tatuaggi che per lo più significano insulti a vostra madre, il rispetto delle minoranze è uno dei vostri obblighi di eroi. Quindi onorate i vostri avversari esotici e le loro armi esoticamente inutili perdendo quella mezz’ora in più a sgominarli. E non fate quelli che si fanno beccare a polverizzare un patrimonio mondiale dell’Unesco e poi sanno dire solo: “Vabbè, era mezza ziggurat coperta di erbacce, io ho salvato il mondo però”.

Umpa-Lumpa: Originari di Umpalandia, sono fastidiosi nani colorati. Utilizzati per lo più come operai specializzati, all’occorrenza possono diventare temibili soldati. Attaccateli con velocità, restate in movimento e non lasciategli iniziare una canzone.

Vegani: essere umani che ospitano parassiti alieni provenienti da Vega IV. La presenza dei suddetti parassiti altera il metabolismo impedendo all’ospite di assumere proteine animali, cosa che il Vegano giustifica con un improbabile discorso etico. Un cheeseburger ben assestato basta e avanza a sgominarli tutti.

Warlock: maghi guerrieri incappucciati, spesso appartenenti a sette medioevali. Versati sia nell’arte della magia che in quella della guerra. Possono utilizzare tutte le armi e tutte le magie dei maghi e dei chierici. +5 al tiro salvezza contro il soffio di un drago. Per sgominare i Warlock armatevi di bazooka, ci sono buone probabilità che non ne abbiano mai visto uno.

Xenomorfi: Alieni con la testa allungata, triple mascelle retrattili e acido al posto del sangue, sono considerati la razza più letale della galassia. Assicuratevi di aver portato almeno 1 lanciagranate, 1 lanciafiamme, 1 mitragliatrice pesante, tutti legati insieme col nastro isolante. Per il finale tenete da parte 1 testata nucleare.

My wife and I drove up to Ventura and attended Dr. Roger Leir’s presentation on alien implants. Dr. Leir was also my guest last week on Acceleration Radio and I posted his interview from The Alien Interview book in its entirety on this BLOG site last week.

It was a great presentation filled with some very startling evidence. Dr. Leir went to a house where a person had claimed to be abducted. They conducted tests and found high levels of radiation in the back yard around an avocado tree. The dirt in the back yard ignited in spontaneous combustion. How’s that for off the charts strange?  The most chilling artifact that his team found was when they searched the house using an ultra-violet light. On the wall of the bedroom were two hand-prints of a four-fingered entity. The owner of the house allowed them to cut that section of the wall out in order to preserve the evidence and have it analyzed. Talk about a smoking gun!

Unfortunately, the UFO “conference” was poorly attended with about 25 people, including the four techies who ran sound and recorded the event. One would think that with the kind of evidence that Dr. Leir presented the room would be packed. Dr. Leir had a metallurgist analyze the objects that were taken out of people who had claimed to be abducted. While his presentation was extremely technical and beyond my pay-grade, the conclusion was that the material found and removed in the abductees, contained Nano tubes which are capable of carrying electrical and other information. The object that Dr. Leir removed, broke apart during the surgery, but later after it was re-submereged in a vile filled with the patients blood, Dr. Leir discovered that it began to reassemble itself! He also mentioned the interference that happens when he has appeared on radio shows. You may remember that when he came on Acceleration Radio the first time we experienced a high degree of interference,  so much so that it was almost impossible to understand his answers to my questions. At one point Dr. Leir asked how many people in the audience had been abducted. Out of the 25 people in the room about 8 people raised their hands. He then asked how many had seen a UFO and just about everyone had their hands raised. Dr. Leir isn’t sure where these entities originate from. He’s open-minded about it saying that they could either be extraterrestrial or inter-dimensional. I’m going to present my theory to him, as to why I believe they are inter-dimensional beings and that they are, to quote Jacque Valee, messengers of deception!

I want to close today’s post by saying that I applaud the work of Dr. Leir. He is a pioneer in the field of this very important research. His work proves without a reasonable doubt the following phrase. “While we may disagree as to what the cause of the UFO phenomena is, we can agree that it is real, burgeoning and not going away. Here is a link to his site.

www.alienscalpel.com

I have an anouncment!

I will be appearing on Coast to Coast with George Noory on December 2nd for all three hours! We will discuss Maitreya and the supposed re-emergence of the Star of Bethlehem. Also, new information on the Shroud of Turin!