Friday, October 08, 2010

Secret Sun Picture Parade: The Falcon has Landed

UFOs continue to make the headlines, particularly these stories from China. My automatic reaction is to dismiss any sighting in the mainstream media as a hoax and/or a setup, but the story being circulated about military testing seems more than a bit off to me, as if the Chinese are trying to control the narrative by leading people to believe it's all some kind of test.


But why cop to running tests over populated areas near sensitive installations like airports? Maybe because the alternative explanation - that they can't control their airspace - is the least desirable interpretation of the incident. No gov't wants to admit that. 

Either way, I won't waste my time trying to parse all of this.

But while we're in Asia, let's look at this image, taken from this article:
From the X Files Dept: Did Japanese Spacecraft Bring
Back Signs of Extraterrestrial Life?


Japan's space agency has found particles that may be extra-terrestrial in the capsule of the space probe Hayabusa that returned home in June after a seven-year journey to an asteroid, reports said Wednesday. Scientists discovered minute particles that may be from outside Earth, the Yomiuri newspaper and Kyodo News agency reported.
We talked about the Hayabusa before. Let's get in the ol' Wayback Machine and turn the clock back to those halcyon days of, um, June 2010:
The Hayabusa (はや ぢさ?, literally peregrine falcon) probe was an unmanned space mission led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to return a sample of material from a small near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa (dimensions 540 meters by 270 meters by 210 meters) to Earth for further analysis. 
The Hayabusa spacecraft, formerly known as MUSES-C for Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft C, was launched on 9 May 2003 and rendezvoused with Itokawa in mid-September 2005. 
The spacecraft also carried a detachable minilander, MINERVA, but this failed to reach the surface.
The Muses and Minerva, eh? Nice touch. But the Peregrine Falcon? Why does that sound so familiar?

Oh, right.

When I was investigating the latest wrinkle in the Hayabusa saga, I noticed this annoying pop up ad, which had some interesting semiotics for the eagle falcon-eyed.

Horus was identified with Apollo and ancient is increasingly becoming identified with future, so it's no surprise that SyFy's website has an online game called Apollo's Arrow in which the player becomes Apollo, making sure his Pythia's can get a good whiff of those subterranean hallucinogenic vapors. What a fascinating game, and yet another interesting sync with my new book (hint, hint).

Speaking of hallucinogens... note the "connection to Cleopatra." Oh Yahoo, what would we do without you? 

Socotra was also connected to the Nestorians, a heterodox Christian sect that practiced ritual magic and reached deep into the Asia heartland.

Speaking of sun worship, got this in the mail the other day. Not sure what I can add here, the image speaks for itself. Don't you think?

Wait, I know what I can add - Star 99 is an Evangelical radio station. Check out "John the Raptist" there, and then decide whether to laugh or cry.

Changing gears, Yahoo also comes through with this little androgynous morsel: the Homecoming queen who's also the star kicker on her team.

Which somehow brings us to this; more Freudian follies from the Silver Age of Comics. This brings us back to the themes we snickered at explored in "Two and a Half Men." And hey, Robin? - that color of the rainbow is pink.

Early 60s Batman comics are truly the most insane (and I mean lithium insane, not' kooky' and 'wild' and 'crazy') stuff ever published. All the more so since they were still being drawn in that anachronistic "Bob Kane" studio style. They tried going sci-fi but it just came feeling like the shit that goes through you're head when you've woken at 5 am with both a hangover and a dose of intestinal flu.

UPDATE: How can you tell the UFO issue is heating up behind the scenes? When the media drags the "space brothers" crowd out of mothballs.

UPDATE: Patheos.com has selected Secret History of Rock 'n' Roll as a selection for the book club. Click here and join in.