CHAMELEO: THE AUDIOBOOK!

Your deepest wishes have been answered!  Yes, CHAMELEO is now available as an unabridged audiobook!  Like an overpaid CIA agent, you too can eavesdrop on eight and a half hours of pure, unadulterated National Security madness while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway!  It's like freebasing fascism!  Click HERE for further info!

J. Edgar Hoover vs. MAD Magazine!

I suppose this shouldn't surprise me at this point, and yet somehow it does....

What follows are the first few paragraphs of Jake Rossen's 7-8-15 mentalfloss.com article entitled "When the FBI Went After 'Mad' Magazine":

"In a memo dated November 30, 1957, an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation identified as 'A. Jones' raised an issue of critical importance: 'Several complaints to the Bureau have been made concerning the "Mad" comic book [sic], which at one time presented the horror of war to readers.'

"Attached to the document were pages taken from a recent issue of Mad that featured a tongue-in-cheek game about draft dodging. Players who earned such status were advised to write to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and request a membership card certifying themselves as a 'full-fledged draft dodger.' At least three readers, the agent reported, did exactly that.

"Mad, of course, was the wildly popular satirical magazine that was reaching upwards of a million readers every other month. Published by William Gaines, who had already gotten into some trouble with Congress when he was called to testify about his gruesome horror comics in 1954, Mad lampooned everyone and everything. But in name-checking the notoriously humorless Hoover, Gaines had invited the wrong kind of attention.

"The memo got several facts incorrect: Mad had switched from a comic book to a magazine format in 1955, and it was Gaines’ E.C. Comics that had 'presented the horror of war' in other titles. Despite getting these crucial pieces of information wrong, Jones didn’t hesitate to editorialize: 'It is also of interest to note that…it is rather unfunny.'

"The agent recommended the Bureau’s New York offices 'make contact' with Mad’s headquarters to 'advise them of our displeasure' and to make sure 'that there be no repetition of such misuse of the Director’s name.'

"Less than a week later, the Feds entered the hallowed hallways patrolled by Alfred E. Neuman."

To read Rossen's entire article, click HERE.

F.W. Murnau's Head

It's not every day that you wake up to discover that F.W. Murnau's head has been pilfered from his grave.  Murnau, needless to say, was the director of the classic silent film, Nosferatu (1922), an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula.  Further salient details on this ghoulish story can be found at Variety HERE and at The Guardian HERE.  (Note the "possible occult motive" mentioned in the latter article.)

Mystery Explosion in Rhode Island

Things are certainly heating up in H.P. Lovecraft country....

Here are the first few paragraphs of Patrick Anderson and Katherine Gregg's 7-11-15 Providence Journal article entitled "No Clues:  Salty Brine Beach Reopens Sunday After Explosion":

"Salty Brine State Beach reopened to the public Sunday despite no word from investigators into what might have caused an explosion that injured a woman Saturday.  

"The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management announced late Saturday night that the beach would reopen after investigators from that agency, the Rhode Island State Police Bomb Squad and the Rhode Island State Fire Marshal's Office finished combing the sand for signs of what caused a 50-year-old woman to be thrown from her beach chair. 

"No evidence of an explosive device was found and officials declared the beach safe.

'The on-site investigation is now complete, and there is no reason to believe there are any public safety concerns related to today's incident,' said Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management Director Janet Coit in a news release. 

"The off-site investigation into what caused the explosion is now being conducted by the Fire Marshal's office, said DEM spokeswoman Rayna Maguire Sunday morning.

"The popular beach was evacuated Saturday after a 'ground disturbance' — accompanied by a loud boom — stunned beachgoers and landed a woman in the hospital.

"At around 11:20 a.m., the state bomb squad was called in to investigate the reports of a possible 'explosion' near the rocks at the beach. 

"By late afternoon, however, investigators had no explanation for the boom that rocked the popular beach on a glimmering summer day. Officials were still combing the rock breakwater in the evening. Terrorism was not suspected and there was no active search for a suspect, officials said.

"'Something did happen but we are not sure ... exactly what,' said Larry Mouradjian, the DEM’s associate director for natural resources, in an interview shortly after 3 p.m."

You can read the entire article by clicking HERE.

Further news reports on the mysterious Rhode Island explosion can be found HERE and HERE.

Long Beach Fireball

Based on the reports of at least 27 observers (one of them being my wife), a mysterious fireball slashed its way through the California nights skies early Sunday morning (July 12, 2015).  According to my wife, who observed the phenomenon at around 12:25 AM while driving her car down 7th Street near Recreation Park in Long Beach, the fireball was yellowish-orange in color, far brighter than the full moon, and descending at a 250 degree angle.  What follows is an excerpt from my wife's report filed with the American Meteor Society:  "It looked so close that I actually slowed down to brace for impact.  We have an airport nearby so I thought maybe it was a plane on fire at first, but it was round, and didn't look man-made.  I thought for sure that it was going to crash into the neighborhood nearby.  When I didn't feel anything hit, I rolled down my window and turned down the radio.  I didn't hear anything, but I swear I could smell some sort of burning scent in the air."  Alas, there were no other cars—and therefore no other witnesses—driving down 7^th Street at that same time.  Still, one can read over two dozen corroborating reports (from a plethora of surrounding cities as close as Carson, CA and as distant as Phoenix, Arizona) at the American Meteor Society's website by clicking HERE. 

It's intriguing to note that the fireball appeared to approach from the west (i.e., from the Pacific Ocean and nearby Catalina Island).  Though my wife certainly doesn't believe she witnessed something paranormal in nature, nonetheless it's worth noting that for decades researcher Preston Dennett has chronicled reports of mysterious fireballs emerging from (or descending into) that approximate area of the Pacific coast.  Indeed, such reports predate Dennett's involvement in the UFO field, extending at least as far back as 1956.  I refer you to Dennett's article "UFOs in the Ocean," Chapter 11 of his 2005 book, UFOs Over California.  For many years, the repeated sightings of such fireballs have been inextricably linked to rumors of a fully functioning UFO base located beneath the waters of the Pacific somewhere between Long Beach/San Pedro and Catalina Island.  In that regard, I recommend Dennett's 2006 Fate Magazine article, "Is There an Underwater UFO Base Off the Southern California Coast?," which one can read by clicking HERE.  

If one studies the 27 eyewitness reports mentioned above, one will immediately see how the fireball apparently flew from Southern California all the way to Arizona within a very short period of time.  Right after my wife told me about her sighting, I (half-humorously) played her my DVD of Jack Arnold's 1953 alien invasion flick, It Came from Outer Space.  When she saw the opening shot of the meteor (which is inevitably revealed to be an alien space craft in the film) streaking across the sky, my wife said, "Yeah, it pretty much looked exactly like that."  Where does the fireball land in the film?  Arizona, of course (the fictional town of Sand Rock, to be exact), the precise location where the sightings of the 7-12-15 fireball abruptly ceased.  Yes, it seems the line between reality and schlock science fiction grows thinner and thinner every day....

If you would like to read more about the phenomenon of "mysterious fireballs" and their connection to UFOs, read the chapter entitled "The Harvesters" in George Hunt Williamson's classic 1953 UFO book, the wonderfully titled Other Tongues--Other Flesh.  You can read Williamson's entire book by clicking HERE.