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The Alternative Fortean Times
(beware of imitations) http://www.combat-diaries.thewhyfiles.co.uk Panzerben's Combat Diary 16 for January 2004
Google Records Three Million
Hits
Happy New Year to all those insane enough for Last
Thoughts in these Last Days
Above, we see two typical Fortean field reports; on the left, Believers use an unusual form of Trojan Horse smash their way into the HQ of Wigan Skeptics Unlimited, the HQ of Fact Versus Fiction being on the extreme right within the Biograph cinema. On the right is an already famous vision of the 2004 New Year’s Eve Party at the House of Panzerben. These two visions belong to that series of rigged self-deceptions called the real, this being at any time a series of changing approximations. Upon seeing these two motifs, those who are too sane for thought and far too well adjusted to be intelligent will initiate the boxed game of automated denial schedules: they will point out the impossibility of the perspectives, the utterly absurd nature of both events, the “impossible” shoe on the left, and the equally “impossible” Frog the Alien dancing with Patricia Farson on the right. They will think of toys and paintings, games and tricks; they will not conceive of all thought being a series of endless rehearsals, some partial and undeveloped acts being more deep into creative conspiracy than others. In this sense, both depictions represent (ah, how we love that word!) a celebration of a victory over the Magonian ledger-clerks (those sorcerers of banality) who would betray all the sacred paths of the heart, all the mystical hallucinations of transcendent escape. After that, you will all be ready for your Combat Diaries New Year Gift Box. Press here to download your presents in a single file, which includes selections from previous Combat Diaries:
1. Deconstructing the B-29 Colin Bennett2. The Latex Princess Colin Bennett3. Another One that Never Were Alan Goss-Custard4. Fortean Times and the New Cromwellians Patricia Farson5. New Criteria of Diagnosis Carole Smith6. Roswell Reverse Engineering Bill Sherman7. Memetics Jack Hardy8. The Great UFO/Crash Retrieval Syndrome Betty Baxter9. Microchip Implants Luukanen-Kilde
Contents of Combat Diary 16:
Chapter 1: Television & The Hive Mind Mack White Chapter 2: Pro-Semitism Julie Birchall Chapter 4: The Zombie Within Margaret Werheim Chapter 5: The Stupefaction of a Nation Manuel Valenzuela Chapter 6: Atlantis: New Light on Old Legends Andrew Darlington
Meet the Team of Panzerben: I have not repeated the staff bios this month because of the pressure on bandwidth. The bios are available on the previous Combat Diaries.FORTWATCH Patricia Farson (our very own Jewish Princess) is taking some time off to complete another chapter of her revolutionary new novel, Memoirs of a Fallen Programmer. A section of this appeared in the previous Combat Diary 15 as the The Doll Killer. Meantime she is still working on her exposure of the virtual (and secret) take over of the Fortean Times by Magonia magazine. Patricia has received much praise, publicity, and not a little Ufological notoriety for her article Fortean Times and the New Cromwellians that appeared in Combat Diary 12. Memoirs of a Fallen Programmer. This novel is unique, quite different from the usual pastel-shade pre-electric Guardian crap about Jack and Jill in Hampstead, or bleating knitting-pattern thoughts from the print-frocks (and that’s only the men) in Bloomsbury. Warning: approach with caution. INVESTIGATIONS
Dr. Betty “Shackster” Baxter from Darkest Knightsbridge, said to be the greatest computer hacker since the great Fred Klaxon of Wakefield (RIP), who disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Her article, The Great UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome, in Combat Diary 14, has aroused much interest throughout the world. She is now hard at work in her Faraday cage on the next episode Journey Into MJ12. Warning: being fifth on the CIA kill-on-sight list, she is well protected.
DEFENCE AND SECURITY Sidney in pensive mood Cyril on night patrol
Still continuing his analysis of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Sidney has been joined by another security staff recruit, a young psychopath from Streatham who has of late abandoned his Ph.D thesis on Charles Fort for a life of subsidised adventure in central London. Some say we have the most erudite security staff in Britain. Of this, more later in the Combat Diaries of the Alternative Fortean Times. Warning to sceptics: do not try and break into the House of Panzerben, if only because the above staff are not yet fully trained. Domestic
Elmon Siedlitz
There have been some serious developments on the kitchen front. Elmon has decided to form a rock group with his partner Siedlitz. After advice from an agent on concept development, the first photographic proofs of suggested transformations are now available. On the left is the first still of a suggested form for Elmon’s possible transformation into a Star. Centre is a similar suggestion for Siedlitz. The suggested name for the group is RCubed, or Retro Rock Revival. Both are extremely excited about the possibilities, which usually means trouble. We are all tense and expectant in the House of Panzerben. This pair serve three fine meals a day in our house to 8 people, assisted by Deaf Meg and her alcoholic daughter, lance corporal Kathleen. late of 4th Armoured Brigade domestic staff. Watch this space as their promotion tour of Retro Rock Revival gets under way, and we are all down to fish and chips in the House of Panzerben. Meantime, there is much intense speculation as to whether the valiant pair will agree to have the rather drastic surgical operations recommended by their agent, Mr. Vor Trekker, seen here in a very grainy Security Services shot from a hidden camera.
Since the suggested operations are illegal, our future stars have to go to the South of France where such things are understood, and new biotechnology is available. Mr. Vor Trekker has offered our pair an impressive medium-cost self-financing scheme, although his fees, expenses, and commission charges are rather high, and have to be paid upfront.
RETREAT, COUNSELLING AND CONFESSIONS
Another unique facility of the House of Panzerben.
George Shenston, and his assistant, Mavis Powell (middle, above) are in charge of all Pelican Rescue Duties. They have been joined recently by sister Margot Fontez (right, above) who came originally as a belief-casualty. She is a dropped-out professional shrink from Nottingham, and will no doubt have a lot to contribute. We do hope that this splendid trio will continue to run the Panzerben Rescue & Reform Scheme for UFO & Parnormal Unbelievers (environmental grant applied for). Margot Fontez will specialize in taking good care of our unique collection of fallen manic-depressive nail-biting po-faced pelicans, dazed and confused rationalists, and all those who suffer from exposure to deadly fundamentalist doll-radiation from the wide-screen Nikon, this being the only alien invasion that counts. The full story of this community-conscious unit will be told eventually in the Combat Diaries of 2004. 24-hour emergency service for Confessions from casualties from all the sceptical chapels is available. Camp beds are reserved for difficult moments of doubt about the Real. Cold Turkey isolation, hot cocoa and sick bowls are available free of charge for all crises of belief in Fact and “concrete evidence.” Special care facilities are available to treat the nightmares of garage-rationalists, boot-and-barn skeptics, and the fear of the over-educated, fallen left-liberals, and any other suchlike who come to the House of Panzerben for holistic relief. George and Mavis have now proved that they are strong enough to cope when crises of Belief occur and Magonians try to snatch back fallen pelicans, as Christians try to snatch back converts who have wandered into infamous "cults" and have to be replugged into the wide-screen Nikon immediately, as if it were a life-support machine. Our thanks and greetings go also to others too numerous to mention who pour in and out of the House of Panzerben seeking comfort, shelter, and what little treatment and advice is ours to offer. These faces cannot be shown due to many issues and considerations and mishaps extraordinary. These mainly involve Social Security, Probation officers, Social workers, the banks, the police, the judiciary, psychiatrists, the Law, alien abductors, Men in Black, the Security Services, and in certain cases Parents, film & TV producers and parents. Many of these young escapees are suffering from bad liberal burn from the everlasting idiot’s lantern, and conversations about gear boxes, DIY, sport, and something called the Economy. Unfortunately we have to hand back many of those who have made it successfully over the perimeter wire, if only to see living screens that offer better viewing and in most case at least, have no license fee. All live within a square mile of the Martyr's Memorial, Portobello Road, and only leave it on pain of death. Come night, and we all pull the beautiful devastation over us like a magical cloak of forgetting. Watch this space, and send your articles, books for review, cartoons, poems, ideas and letters to combat-diaries@thewhyfiles.co.uk Panzerben briefs his assault squad prior to a raid on the skeptical HQ at Brentford Leisure Centre Your Editor Sayeth Well we wish all Combat Viewers a Happy New Year, and give thanks to all our contributors. This month the theme of Combat Diary 16 is Media and Mind Control, and we have four chapters discussing this from many points of view. The first thing to note about TV is not the indifferent quality of the programmes, but their level of frequency. Such a high dosage of image-concentrate indicates accelerated mutation. But into what? Like many highly complex things in Nature, this TV image structure is based on fairly simple clusters of thematic organization. All soap operas for example, are thin to the point of being childish, and they constitute a kind of doll programming particularly for adults of a low mental level.
But the phenomenally high rate of injected repetitions is surely a mystery. It might be imagined that a far lower rate of programmatic repetition of the same soap faces year after year would be quite sufficient to produce the human zombies that sit on settees obedient to the signal-injection hour. For all the world the “audience” acts like a B-feature character in itself, holding out a forearm for mindless “entertainment” like a terminal junky. This is cool control. Hot control is wasteful and destroys individual and collective consumer-hatcheries by the million. It is also expensive and frequently morally repugnant. But the disadvantage of hot control (bombs and guns) is that it destroys the customers. What is the object of television? To produce human beings who are so processed that they are almost identical as regards their emotional life, their psychology and their insatiable lust for the toys in that doll s house called television. Perhaps these countless images of showroom dolls constitute the only alien invasion that counts. One thing is sure. No one will object to being entertained. As such, effective modern resistance is almost zero. This theme of implicit psychic control is continued in Television and the Hive Mind by Mack White, The Stupefaction of a Nation by Manuel Valenzuela, and also George Shenston’s elegant story, The Lantern Slide Girl, Part 1 of which is here included. The original title of this story was No Economic Causation, but I persuaded George Shenston (an incurable historical romantic) to change it to Lantern Slide Girl, and keep the former as a sub-title. His idea is (as we shall see in Part 2) that images and the making of images govern history, but conventional historians make little of this kind of alchemical formation. They much prefer the lower-case demonological lists of facts and figures that constitute the outer circles of the modern hell, those sand grains piled on sand grains that make up those houses of cards called rationalisations. The railways as journeys in time, technology, and consciousness are Shenston’s secondary theme. John’s image journey to find his lantern slide face is a journey into infinity if ever there was. Both Israel and America are having a hard time at the moment. The Rense site alone pours out Hitlerite hatred against Jews, and when I say “Hitlerite” I am choosing my words carefully. I think that one of few good things about Britain at the moment is that no British-based site of any significance would broadcast such fascist hatred and evil against such a specific group of people. To try and form a core of resistance to this kind of thing, we include here Julie Birchall’s article Pro-Semitism. See you all next month! Colin (Bad Man) Bennett
Politics of the Imagination (the life, work, and Ideas of Charles Fort) given Anomalist Award for Best Biography, 2002. Foreword by John Keel. Looking for Orthon (the life of George Adamski, UFO visionary extraordinary) “Bennett probes the innards of 20th century society with an intellectual and literary dexterity seldom encountered in popular works on UFOs.” Foreword by John Michell.
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