not a pest

So I’m just going to stop blogging now.

What’s happening is this: I post something about the surveillance state online, and the next day or shortly thereafter, “pest control” trucks start showing up next to my house, or parking right next to my car in an otherwise empty parking lot.

Today another pest control truck pulled up right beside me (rather quickly) as I was getting in my car with my groceries, and the driver got out (talking on a tracker), walked half-way to the grocery store, did a 180, and turned around to get back in his truck.

Of course you say, “don’t be so paranoid”, or whatever, but that’s the whole point of plausible deniability. But it very much feels like a threat, and so… fine. You win. Maybe I am your enemy. Or maybe the truth is your enemy, and so your enemy becomes anyone who speaks it.

This is what it’s like living in the surveillance state. It’s called a chilling effect. It’s not good for the free flow of ideas, or innovation, or anything positive for humanity.

But rather than take these posts down, I’m going to leave them up. I suppose I’ve said what I needed to say, and I don’t think they’ll kill me for just this.

I’ll keep all my future thoughts about the world we live in to myself and my close friends and family.

There it is.

saying it like it is

okay, so hello there. It’s me again. So like, our governments are totally spying on all of us, all the time. We all know this is happening, right? It’s like, some kind of joke? But it’s not, because it’s serious, and this is what awful, terrible, human-massacre-style governments have done in the past, and are doing today.

And it seems to me that the US government just wants us to pretend it’s not happening. As if privacy wasn’t a thing that should be respected, or that there wasn’t an actual amendment in our bill of rights telling us that we the people are to be secure in our persons and houses and papers against unreasonable searches and seizures.

As if spy-craft weren’t a form of warfare.

It just seems like suddenly the people are the enemy, and the government has secretly declared war against us.

I mean, that’s what it *feels* like.

It feels like this quote from Josef Mengele: “The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

Only that guy was a psychopath. Is it guys like that who have risen to power in my homeland? Or should we just start calling it the fatherland now?

So… I don’t know. I didn’t grow up with a father, and I was bullied a lot at school. And maybe I’ve got an out-sized anti-authoritarian streak in me. But for those of you out there that did grow up with fathers, and you’re going along with this whole spying on the population thing… do you consider yourselves at war with your fellow citizens? Are you just following orders?

Is there going to be another holocaust because everyone has been lulled into thinking that the shit that is happening to us is not really happening?

So I’m just out here, saying, you know, yeah, this is really happening. I don’t think we really *don’t think* it’s happening. We just can’t seem to figure out how to talk about it.

Anyway. So if you are in the government, or if you are the government, and you’ve secretly declared war on me and my fellow citizens… then I would like to publicly and unabashedly declare peace on you. I am not your enemy, and you are not my enemy. We are all on the same side.

Here’s a better quote. This one is from someone who wasn’t insane:

“World peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew… Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred and emotion. We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.”

Peace be with you.

not much to say

Sometimes it’s just good to get things off your chest. Whatever that may be. I think writing can do that. Writing in a journal helps. But when you write in a private journal, it’s like keeping a secret. Writing things down can help you to clarify your thoughts. But it’s when you share them that you feel a sense of relief.

Sharing thoughts with the internet is a whole other deal. I mean, this is the kind of thing that can get you killed. I think that’s what I’m really nostalgic for. From the early days of the web, there was this pervasive *optimism*. It was like we were living in two different time periods at once. On the one hand, it was “the wild, wild west”, because there was very little regulation, and it seemed like you could stumble upon anything, at any time, and it was both liberating and a little scary. We even started calling ourselves cowboys again.

On the other hand, we were absolutely living in the future, where practically every day, week, year, we were seeing new technologies, and demonstrations of those technologies that no one had ever seen before.

I guess what it really was, though, all of it, was freedom of expression.

People were expressing themselves in new ways, and the ways themselves were new.

It seems to me that we’ve definitely lost something… Or maybe I’m just not looking in the right places these days. Or maybe I just know too much.

Maybe it’s not actually the early days of the web that I miss, but the early days of myself.

I was certainly more optimistic back then.

And it’s not that I don’t like what the web has become; it’s that I don’t like what I’ve become.

I don’t know where we go from here.

they think we’re stupid

Do you believe the official story? Because I sure as hell don’t.

Let me blockquote you some Wikipedia, from the September_11_attacks page:

“Three buildings in the World Trade Center collapsed due to fire-induced structural failure.[110] The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. after burning for 56 minutes in a fire caused by the impact of United Airlines Flight 175 and the explosion of its fuel.[110] The North Tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m. after burning for 102 minutes.[110] When the North Tower collapsed, debris fell on the nearby 7 World Trade Center building (7 WTC), damaging it and starting fires. These fires burned for hours, compromising the building’s structural integrity, and 7 WTC collapsed at 5:21 p.m.“

Need I say more?

blah blah blah

Blah. Blah blah blah, blah. Blah blah blah blah, blah blah, blah blah blah. Blah blah.

Blah. Blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Blah, blah blah, blah blah blah, blah. Blah blah, blah blah blah blah.

Blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah. Blah blah, blah blah blah. …

Blah. Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah, blah blah, blah BLAH!

Blah. Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Blah blah, blah blah blah blah? Blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah.

Blah. Blah, blah blah blah, blah blah, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Blah?

Blah blah. … … BLAH!

Blah blah. … Blah blah. …

Blah blah. Blah. … Blah?

the way out

I don’t know. It’s probably too much to ask for, but I have to ask anyway, right. Everybody be cool. This is global thermonuclear war.

In a way, the world has already ended. The world we used to know, before any of us were born. Now we have this world. Philip K Dick referred to it as, “The Black Iron Prison.” It’s a good name for it.

And poor PKD, he actually got a glimpse of what lies beyond it. Somehow something touched him and showed him a different world, a way out of the prison. I commend all of his writing to you, but especially V.A.L.I.S. There’s a lot of truth in that book, and I feel a strong affinity with the author. I’d like to think we’ve both been touched by the same thing.

Only I haven’t seen a way out of the prison. I’ve seen other worlds, but only in my dreams.

And since I’m not dreaming, and since you’re all sitting there on the other side of this mirror, I’m just going to ask you to please put your weapons down.

I don’t think you can really do it. But I have to ask. I guess you’ve grown too attached to them. You think you need them. Or something. But if you’re afraid of what might happen without them, then I’m afraid of what’s going to happen with them.

I’m afraid you’re going to use them. And I’m afraid you’re going to get us all killed.

So please, put them down now, before it’s too late.

The way out of the prison isn’t through violence.

If it were, we would all be free by now.

Peace on Earth. What do you say?

the newly dark age

Communication is hard. It’s harder when you’re talking to a one-way mirror. Is it?

Part of the sadness stems from how close a world without war actually is. I mean, it isn’t like we don’t have a choice. We do have a choice, and we simply have to stop choosing to go to war. Why don’t we?

My present best guess is that war is just another ritual we celebrate that we’ve forgotten the purpose of.

“We’ve always done it this way.”

Have we?

Who are we?

And who are we to say?

the evidence

The above photo is of a megalithic construction in Peru. It illustrates a form of construction that was common throughout the ancient world. Large blocks cut/formed precisely to fit together without the use of mortar.

The Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, which is a small remainder of the “Original Temple”, exhibits a similar characteristic.

The method for building these types of walls has been lost. That much is certain. And what it implies is that there is a discontinuity in our recorded history.

My generation learned about “The Dark Ages” in elementary school. Part of my thesis is that we are now living in a “New Dark Ages,” whose darkness, or better, occlusion, has entirely to do with the disconnect between the ancient cultures that existed on earth within the past few millenia, and our current age of jets, skyscrapers, and computers. The official story is rarely the true version of events, and is much more often a fabrication that obscures the truth while serving the aims of some geopolitical power. One of my favorites right now is how the pyramids in Egypt are supposed to be the tombs of the ruling class.

Once you reach a certain age, you’re either complicit in the monstrosities and fabrications, dead as a result of them, or you are, like myself, extremely compromised yet somehow miraculously still alive. You can accuse me of “black-and-white” thinking on this one, and you have, but all I can say to that is, “look around.”

See you next (life)time?

The second thing

Okay, so the first thing with the red circles overlapping in the sky was cool, but the friend I was with didn’t have her glasses with her. She couldn’t see it.

The second thing, though, was with a few friends, and we all saw it.

It was a clear night, we were either seniors or juniors in high school, and we were walking along the train tracks that run through Chico. One of us said something like, “What’s that?!” and pointed into the sky. It was hard to make out, because the thing was entirely black and moving very slowly. What I remember most about it was that it appeared like an upright rectangle, and it would block out the stars as it passed in front of them.

We didn’t get to watch it very long, as it soon passed behind some trees and was gone. Maybe 30 seconds max. I think we all just kind of stopped in our tracks and thought something similar to, “that’s definitely not a plane.” It had no lights, and was so black that it made the sky look a dark blue in comparison.

The strangest thing about it that I remember is that when it passed in front of a particular star, the star blinked out, then on, then out, then on again. Almost like there was a giant window in the center of the rectangle, or that it was shaped like a giant arch.

That would have been in 1996, or 1997. I’m sure we told everyone we knew about it at the time, but, it’s just one of those things. Probably a lot of people decided that we were making up a cool story. If you didn’t see it, or haven’t seen anything like it, it’s going to be hard for you to believe. But if you did see it, or have seen something like it, it’s the kind of thing that will change your whole worldview.

We’re not on this planet alone. I know that. And all this time and energy we’re spending to make a living in some sense is just going to waste. I can hardly pay attention to the news or politics anymore. It’s just so much mental masturbation and ego gratification. There’s an entire universe out there, and we are hardly aware of it. What we’re mostly aware of is ourselves, and we can’t seem to get out of our own way for long enough to see what’s on the horizon. I’d say we spend far too much time looking up, looking down, and looking across, and not nearly enough time looking *out*.

breaking down problems (and aliens), part two

This one is just going to be entirely about aliens.

The major part of it is going to have to wait, but I can very quickly share a personal story of my first impression that there was something out there.

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I was laying in a field with a friend, watching the stars, and I saw something unexplainable.

From two sides of the horizon, I saw two small red circles in the sky, moving very fast from one end of the sky to the other.

It was apparent after a couple seconds of watching them that they were on a collision course, since they were about 30 degrees apart, each on a linear trajectory towards the same point in the sky. Long enough for me to wonder, “I wonder what will happen when they meet?”

Well, they were moving so fast, that they quickly overlapped in the sky almost, but not quite directly, overhead. Nothing happened when they crossed paths, except that it became obvious that they were both the same size, and circular, and they formed one faint, red circle for a brief moment. Then they just continued to move to the opposite ends of the horizon from where they began. I think the whole thing lasted between 8 and 10 seconds. I have no idea at what altitude they might have been, but they seemed to be at least cruising altitude of a passenger flight. I had no idea then, but if I had to guess now, I would say they were moving about 4-5 times as fast as a fast jet, so maybe between 800-2000 miles per hour. Then again, the farther up the lights were, the faster they would have been moving, to cross the same amount of sky in the same time. They could have been much higher up, and moving much more quickly.

That was the first thing.