A Funny (Unelected) Face at the Capitol

          In September 2016 they began a multi-zillion-dollar renovation of the more than 100-year-old Oklahoma Capitol Building.

          One of the features of the décor was a baseboard along the walls, made from marble strips.  When they removed those strips in the hallway outside the basement snack bar, I noticed a fascinating shape in the spackle/wallboard.

          This photo was taken October 11, 2016.

          Can you see the smiling man with the goatee?  Here are a couple of clip art photos of men, rotated to match the baseboard photo.

Keep Smiling, friends!  See you next Monday!

         

Adamski Saucers

            As you should know as a pop culture fiend, George Adamski was one of the founders of the 20th-Century flying saucer “contactee” movement.  You may read my review of a book about his influence here.

            One of Adamski’s pieces of “proof” of his wild stories was a series of photographs of space ships.

 

            Above is the cover of one of his books, featuring an artist’s conception of the Adamski saucer.

            Many folks have debunked Adamski’s photos, attributing the object to a modified poultry incubator, a lampshade, and so on.  In 1957, researcher-cum-bomb-thrower Jim Moseley provided a mocking exposé of the pix.  A PDF of the mimeoed newsletter may be found here.  NOTE:  If the document only partially appears onscreen, it’s perfect when saved as a PDF.

            Another fine exploration/recreation/debunking may be found in a 2012 report by Joel Carpenter, to be found here.

            Imagine my amazement when I dined at a local Red Lobster at the end of 2016, and discovered one of the Adamski saucers doubling as a light fixture!

  

            So there you have it, Space Fiends.  Saucers are everywhere!

 See you next Monday.

 

CD Cleaning Discs I Have Known

            In the Olden Days of cassette players, the play/record heads would get dirty over time.  You would buy a Tape Head Cleaner.

            If you were really uptown, you would buy a Tape Head Demagnetizer.

            Of course, if you were a post-teen newlywed without a lot of bucks -- the way I was around 1980 --  you cleaned your cassette heads with a Q-Tip.  An illo from WikiHow:

            Beginning in the 1980s, we had the CD revolution.  A laser which reads music from a little silver disc?  What a concept!

            Turns out, dirty human hands tend to touch the PLAY side of CDs.  Eventually, some of that grime gets onto the lens.  This leads to bad reproduction and other problems.

            Enter the CD Cleaning Disc!

             This is my “original” one, bought from Staples.  This item has no CD front inser

            Yes, it’s more than five years old.  I kept it my car, because the factory CD player in my beautiful car needs it every eight months to a year.  CDs would skip, or alternately the CD-Text would be missing, on discs that I knew DID contain that info.  Evidently you can wear out a CD disc cleaner!

            After six or more years, I became very familiar with the format of this tool.  After a few seconds of cheesy soft-jazz music, a woman’s voice announces:

    “Thank you for selecting the CD Cleaning Disc to clean your CD player.  You can enjoy music while cleaning your CD player at the same time.  When you hear the high-tone beep sound, please forward the cleaning CD to Track Five.”

            If you check out Tracks One-Three, you hear the same gal talking in other languages.  If you are a good (English-speaking) camper, and forward the disc to Track Five, you hear a repeat of the cheesy music, then:

    “The cleaning process is now completed.  Please enjoy the following music.  Your CD player will work much better if you use the CD lens cleaner regularly.”

            Just for fun, I ripped this disc using EZ-CD Extractor (a great product, by the way).  These are the tracks and their factory labels:

STAPLES Lens Cleaner

01 - Intro - English language

02 - Intro -  French language

03 - Intro -  Spanish language

04 - Blank Track

05 - Outro - English language

06 - Outro -  French language

07 - Outro -  Spanish language

            I don’t know what’s in the blank Track Four, but it’s about 20 minutes long, according to the CD extractor program.  Also, Track Four was full of “errors,” according to the CD extractor.  It’s probably some sort of data track, not audio:

You can still buy a “STAPLES CD/DVD drive cleaner” that appears identical to my old one, at:

http://www.staples.com/Staples-CD-Drive-Cleaner/product_786397 .

            Well, after lo these many years, I had to buy a new one.  I went to Best Buy this time.

             This item has a CD case front insert, but no rear insert.

            When I opened it and popped it into my car CD player, I found that Track One opened with cheesy music.  This time, instead of cheesy soft jazz, I heard cheesy soft synth.  Then a voice asked me to FF to Track Two for English instructions.  Keep playing Track One, and you’ll hear the voice tell you (I guess) the same thing in different languages, directing you to various tracks.

            Fast-Forward to Track Two, and guess what you hear?

THE EXACT SAME WORDS

AS THE STAPLES DISC.

            Yep.  Different label, different music, different voice; IDENTICAL SCRIPT.  Of course, I can only vouch for the English version, but every word is the same, except that the INSIGNIA disc from Best Buy directs you to Track Nine.

            But the best thing about this item (besides its fine performance) is the humor used in creating the track names.  Yes, MusicBrainz has a listing for the INSIGNIA disc.  Check out the track title for Track Eight!

Silver Line - INSIGNIA CD Lens Cleaner

01. Introduction (0:36)

02. English Information (0:27)

03. German Information (0:34)

04. French Information (0:30)

05. Spanish Information (0:30)

06. Japanese Information (0:37)

07. Chinese Information (0:27)

08. Empty Track - Come on you're playing a CD-Cleaner! (40:05)

09. English Music (2:05)

10. German Music (1:54)

11. French Music (2:00)

12. Spanish Music (1:59)

13. Japanese Music (1:53)

14. Chinese Music (2:01)

            Like the Staples disc, the empty track was read as containing “errors.”  EZ-CD said the track was forty minutes long as I ripped it, but the resulting mp3 is only a couple of seconds long.

You could buy one here:

https://www.insigniaproducts.com/pdp/NS-HCL303/8026149

            So, even when your CD player skips, keep smiling while you’re playing your “CD-Cleaner”!

            If you want to hear the audio yourself for some April Foolish reason, w\here is a link to the audio tracks and photos:

CD Cleaning Discs

 See you next Monday!

   

Breathless Possibilities

Here's another selection of "mystery paperbacks."  That is, they're about the wonders or stupidities supposedly to be found in this unexplainable cosmos.

 Another of Brad Steiger's jaw-drop fests, reporting on actual things he might have heard that may have happened.

 From the files of Occult Review magazine, these tales of maybe ghosts and possible precognition will have you doubting either your worldview, or the writer's veracity.

 Veteran of the spooky overnight tale of boogeymen and saucers, Nebel can tell a story.  The racy implications of a foreword by Susann cannot be overestimated.

Biologist Ivan T Sanderson had a wide-range of interests and a laudably open mind.  Sometimes he was too credulous in evaluating the reports of others, but his dry sense of humor meld with the portentous possibilities of his speculations to make for an interesting read.

Note the cover comment by an earlier possessor of More "Things", written next to Sanderson's name.  Not the kind of blurb an author wishes!

See you Monday for this New Year's edition of ....

APRIL

FOOLISHNESS

"In My Dweams We Fwy"

So sang Joni Mitchell in "The Silky Veils of Ardor," the last song of 1977's double-LP Don Juan's Reckless Daughter.

  Dreams are often thought of as being one of two things:

• 1.      Refractions of the previous day’s thoughts and actions, while being filtered by the brain for dismissal or longterm storage
• 2.      Symbolic of conscious or unconscious desires, aspirations, or fears

.... let’s not get into the whole supernatural malarkey of dreams’ foretelling future events, shall we?

            Option 1 is simple observation.  Who hasn’t had something unusual or dramatic happen to them, which is often imitated crazily in a soon-following dream?

            Option 2 is our consideration for today, friends – specifically, dreams of flying.  According to one writer,

 ... according to Freud's 1953 classic, The Interpretation of Dreams, dreams of flying through the air reveal subconscious thoughts of sexual desire, while dreams of failing to fly (i.e. falling) through the air reveals thoughts of ... well ... eh  ... also sexual desire.

            Some people just have dirtier minds than others, I guess!

            (Quit looking at me.)

            I usually subscribe to the idea that many dreams of being able to fly are a sort of wish fulfillment.

            We wish for escape from a situation, or to be able to “rise above” life in general.

             Of course, we’ve always envied (from the ground) the perceived freedom displayed by birds, as they seemingly drift carefree, ’way above us.

            And other aerial things seem once-removed from the troubles of Earth, too.  In the words to one of my recent songs,

And I wish to fly

Ride in the sky

And never wane

Above my pain

            Nowadays, because of advances in visual arts and special effects, it’s a lot easier to imagine yourself flying.  We even envision ourselves as flying like any of a bunch of superheroes.

             When you’re a kid, this often involves Mom attaching a towel to your shirt with safety pins.

            Similarly, we can easily equate dreams of falling with a loss of control, or a fear that something bad is going to suddenly happen.

 * * *

            But, I’ve often had a somewhat different dream about flying, most recently last week.

          Many of these dreams begin with the joyful idea of being able to fly, just like the happy-flight dreams.  But then something bad takes over.

             You see, in these bad-flying dreams, I’m up there, but I can’t come down.  No effort of will, or arm-flapping, will get me coming down towards the ground, after I’ve left it.

             Sometimes it appears that I’m in danger of flying off into space.  Other times, I’m just suspended in a kind of limbo, disconnected from everything.

              “Disconnected from everything.”   In fact, that’s my best guess for the meaning of this dream.

            While I’m got plenty of family, friends, and people to love and to be loved by, nevertheless I think these dreams are inspired by the feelings of isolation sometimes experienced by just about everybody.

            Don’t you ever feel as if nobody understands you? or experience the “imposter syndrome,” in which you feel that folks wouldn’t like “the real you”?

            No matter what, I haven’t found away to banish worrisome thoughts or dreams, have you?  We’ll just have to be thankful when reality is way better than the dream we just shucked.

            “There’s no place like home” isn’t always corny.  Sometimes it’s a godsend!

            See you next Monday.