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“All is Chaos under Heaven,
and the Situation is Excellent.”
Mao Tse-Tung
W ASHINGTON AND OREGON COAS T S
2001
OAIf
DAY
Behind the Times
abducted by aliens. Nothing (although I could be in
posthypnotic denial) has been implanted in any of
my orifices, no tissue samples have been scooped
out and no degrading sexual procedures inflicted on
me while my body was oddly immobilized,
although some nights I might have welcomed it. I
have no memories, even vague ones, of short gray
beings with large black eyes and questionable
agendas; there are no missing blocks of time that
cannot be accounted for either by friends,
immediate family or the authorities. I have had, in
short, no close encounters of any kind. I have not
had even distant ones.
None of which shakes my belief in
unidentified flying objects or, by extension, who or
whatever is flying them. I am, I admit without
apology, a consummate and congenital believer. I
have no trouble believing in unproven facts and
objects or events I may never see. I believe,
devoutly as a matter of fact, in things I know I'll
never see. I believe in electrons, although no one
has ever seen one, because 1 believe in the truth and
beauty of quantum physics. I believe in fairies,
which many swear they’ve seen, because I believe
in the truth and beauty of physical reality and the
swarming, pregnant world of possibilities we know
lies giggling behind it. I believe in alien life forms
because I believe the universe itself is alive, and
because the notion we’re the most intelligent life
form in an act of creation that’s been going on for
the first half of forever is, for anyone with the
brains of a crowbar, a real chuckle.
What becomes clear when you take the time
to look is that humans have been seeing odd things
in the sky for at least as long as civilization has kept
a diary. While our ancestors may have slogged
through life without the Discovery Channel and
Yahoo, they were not uniformly stupid and, even
for me, it’s difficult to believe every one of the
thousands of eye witnesses over the thousands of
years was a raving lunatic or a liar. Some of them;
absolutely. Many of them; possibly. All of them?
Not a chance. Indeed, after decades of prodding
and derisive laughter, the federal government now
admits there have been sightings that, okay, might
not actually have been weather balloons, swamp
Michael Burgess
Our conversation took a turn to the apocalyptic,
hardly a surprise. We’re of an age, my friend and I,
to have seen much handwriting on the wall; more
than a little of it darkly hilarious, filled with
portents of irony and merciless consequence.
Always something to laugh about. My friend
brought up evolution and wondered, not idly, if the
latest version of homo sapiens might not have
painted itself into a comer. If the driving engine of
evolution is variation, he wondered, doesn’t that
make homogenizing world culture a suicidal act?
As a social animal, do we or do we not need
difference, and the alchemical birth and rebirth that
comes of it, to become, not just all we can be, but
what we may just need to be in order to stay in the
game?
Does, for instance, the appearance of a
McDonald’s in Bombay and dengue fever in
Connecticut send the same signal as a canary
dropping over in a coal mine? Does gathering the
family around the cable’s burning bush to watch
Survivor make us more or less likely to survive
when, not if, push comes to shove? Does eating the
same food, drinking the same bottled water, reading
the same books, watching the same movies (even if
they’re films), listening to the same music and not
thinking the same unpleasant thoughts make us the
chosen species or the most likely doomed?
Culture is more than the reflection of a
group; it molds and determines the group’s
perception and definition of reality. We build our
lives, our hopes and our dreams on, not necessarily
the way things are, but the way we see things. If we
all embrace, or are embraced by, the same reality,
what happens when, once again not if, large scale
reality changes? Are we inventing the best of all
possible worlds or, like mildly suspicious, hard
partying salmon, swimming toward the turbine
blades of our manifest destiny? Should any of the
many unthinkably bad scenarios occur, will we
bend in the wind of large scale karma or snap like a
cheap plastic spoon?
Take, for example, invasion from outer
space.
Before we go further, you need to know this.
I have never, to the best of my knowledge, been
A
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DAYLIGHT TIME
BOLDTYPE
Okay, now this is getting serious W e are past the half way
point in the season and our beloved Cubs are hanging onto
first place in their division People arc beginning to notice
There is a quote "Despair is not the problem, I can handle
despair, i f s the hope that I can't handle " The Cubs fans
arc use to despair as well as abuse and ridicule, but hope
bnngs the fear o f disappointment once again Oh, please.
G o Cubbies'!
Okay, that was written before "The C n m e Dog" started
covering first Y es, w e would have preferred to have Grace
for the stretch run, but
and yes, he deserves Io be there,
but .w e work with the cards we have W hy are we trying
to remember "Casey at the Bat"? "Hope springs eternal
within the human breast?" Yep, that’s the line Oh. my.
I^ I P
P
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f t t E
F T E
p O
g J I
E d it o r , P u b lis h e r, J a n ito r :
the Beloved Reverend Billy I Joyd I lulls
(¿ ru ph ics E d it o r , P ro o ta n g , Luyoast:
Sally lackaff
'
U n c lr M ik e , B la m e i t on th e S ta rs ,
B e h in d th e T im e s : Michael Bulges*
M u s ic R e p o r te r a t L a rg e :
Peter “Spud” Sk-gcl
P ro fe s s o r L in d s e y : Peter I jndscy
Io n e ’s Gareden: June Kroft
Ix i w e r Ix - ft B e a t: Victoria Sloppicllo
L la m a S p it, P u b lis h in g In te r n :
Angela ( bync
F o u n d in g F e llo w n t L a rg e :
Bill Wicldand
Im p r o v is a tio n a l E n g in e e r: D r Karkcy*
W e b W o n d e r W o m a n , D is t r ib u tio n
D iv a , S u b s c rib e r’s S w e e th e a rt:
Myrna Uhlig
W e b M o th e r : I ia Lynch
B a s t P la y e r: Bill Uhlig
M a jo r D is tr ib u tio n :
Ambling Bear
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