Happy Birthday Flying Saucers!

Today is the 66th anniversary of the reporting of the Roswell Incident and I would like to throw my 2 cents out there on the subject. While in the Air Force I had the unique opportunity of visiting the alleged crash site and the pleasure of visiting the Roswell museum commemorating the event. I am and will always be a believer in extraterrestrial life, I just don't believe everything I hear.

I first heard about the Roswell incident when I was 8. My parents had a set of Time/Life books that collected stories of the unknown and unexplained, so of course me being the nerd I was/am, I read the entire collection probably 100 times until I memorized every story and fact. It was science fiction that actually happened, so it laid on that thin line between fiction and reality for me.
Years went by and I continued to absorb any information I could find on the Roswell incident, flying saucers, and alien abductions. Unfortunately all that research paid off and it managed to convince me that what happened in Roswell WAS in fact just as the RAAF and FBI said it was...a downed weather balloon. But I always hold a glimmer of hope that it wasn't.

You see what most people don't realize is that the nation was in the grips of "flying saucer" mania at the time. The word and concept had just been introduced to the American lexicon 12 days earlier by Kenneth Arnold and the press. Despite the events in Los Angeles on February 25th 1942, no one had ever uttered the word "flying saucer", at the time of the "Battle of Los Angeles" no one was worried about aliens, they had the Germans and Japanese to worry about.
Bear with me as I try to hash out the series of events that led up to Roswell.



First are the events of February 25th 1942 or the "Battle of Los Angeles":

As we all know from our history books; America had just joined World War II 3 months earlier. So tension in America was high, imagine how you felt after 9/11 now crank it up to 11. People were on edge and rightfully so. But what most don't realize today is that this was never labeled as an "alien incursion" until some years later, after the events of Roswell. The press, at the time, tried its best to create panic and a new enemy but people had REAL worries on their minds.
Now it is interesting to add that during WWII many allied pilots reported seeing balls of light that seemed to follow and toy with the pilots. The french pilots later began calling these "Foo Fighters"...yes that is where Dave Grohl got the name for his band.
Whether they actually saw something or it was just their nerves we will never know for sure. But even today most UFO sightings are reported during war time or around military bases.

Secondly we have the events of June 24th 1947 and the story of Kenneth Arnold:

Kenneth Arnold was a well respected private pilot and the father of the term "flying saucer"; due to his description of what he saw and the medias non stop use of it. It is also important to point out that the events took place just 12 days before the Roswell incident and after the story hit the press hundreds of stories from around the world began to come out. A few even corroborated Arnolds own experience. But what is really odd about the whole thing is that Arnold was involved with another UFO sighting 3 days prior, not as a witness but an investigator, which was referred to as the Maury Island incident.

Whether it was mass hallucination, or a secret military aircraft hundreds of reports came from in coast to coast with it peaking on July 7th 1947; when a New Mexico farmer reported something otherworldly crashing on his farm.
For nearly 2 weeks during the summer of 1947 the world was gripped with anxiety over flying saucers, hundreds of reliable eye witness reports and photos show that something weird was going on in the skies of Earth and continues to this day.
So until we know for sure; keep an open mind and your eyes to the sky because you never know what might be waiting for you.

Sometimes I hate being right..but not this time.

I've been telling my wife, ever since we watched the season closer, that John Hurt is an older version of the 8th Doctor...& it appears I was right.

During the royal visit, costume designer Howard Burden, seems to of confirmed it for me.

"There was a gap between Paul McGann playing the Doctor and Christopher Eccleston, when we didn’t see a regeneration, and John Hurt will fit into that gap. He is a past Doctor, not a future Doctor."

The Telegraph 

So John Hurt is the 8th Doctor after the Time War but before he regenerated into the 9th. Which makes more sense to me than any of the other theories out there, especially if you're like me and believe that the Doctor has been showing the signs of PTSD, after the Time War the 8th probably gave up being the Doctor and on life in general.
But that's just my theory. What do you think?

Score!

I was down at my local Rhino Records the other day and found these sweet gems in the $1 vinyl bin. I've wanted Kansas: Point of No Return for awhile and I was lucky enough to get the Ghostbusters for my GB collection. Although I do like the sound of vinyl, I don't own a record player, I've just always liked the album art for Point of No Return and plan on having them framed.
Now if I can just find Hotel California I would be happy...for the time being.