Vic Socotra – Page 210

November 7, 2020 Vic Socotra

Roman Revolution and a Sunny Day

(Rome’s first Emperor, Augustus (63 BCE – 14 AD), ruled for over 40 years; expanding territory and establishing many institutions, systems and customs that would endure for hundreds of years). What a week. What a year! I stepped out on the back deck to inhale my first lung of Marlboro tars this morning and saw […]

November 6, 2020 Vic Socotra

The Mouse That Roared

( Screenshot from the Hollywood production of The Mouse. I think they had a big cannon, too!) That may be the only partly political note in this- the reference to the old musical comedy millions of us in the Boomer generation recall from middle-school dramatics. It was one of those shows that featured great costumes, […]

November 6, 2020 Vic Socotra

Life & Island Times: Georgia

Editor’s Note: Events down in the Great State of Georgia caused Marlow to look at his music collection for a compendium of song titles about the indomitable Rock of the South. Part of the family last spent time there for the Battle of Peachtree Creek and a small business in derailing trains. The subsequent walk […]

November 5, 2020 Vic Socotra

Life & Island Times: Rufus

Editor’s Note: Marlow contributes this to a wild week, and I found it resonating. I gave a presentation at a business meeting this morning about likely impacts of all this not to the Republic, but to employees planning on committing to work with the prospect of potential street violence. This morning, I said it was […]

November 4, 2020 Vic Socotra

Swamp Postcard: Election!!!

Sorry- this is rushed and a bit late. I am election addled. I don’t know about you, but I took my opinions to bed early. I thought it unlikely we would have a new presidential designee before morning, and that was confirmed through the hours I twisted my quilt around me and dreamed of a […]

November 3, 2020 Vic Socotra

03 November 2020 Editor’s Note: It is Election Day, and the madness that has gripped the nation this strange year will transition to something else. Some organizations are calling for civic disturbance here in The Swamp, effective 4:00 EST, and that could go on for a while. So, with the realization that things will not make sense for the duration, it seems appropriate to turn to noted author Point Loma for his observation about the nature of things. Sometimes even dumb stuff takes a lot of planning. We may be seeing a lot of it. – Vic Author’s Note – I’m a little behind on my creative writing as I had an unexpected out-of-town house guest last weekend that threw my schedule for a loop, and otherwise having writer’s block on a project at work that I can’t seem to get my heart into. In any event, I wanted to get this our pre-election as I have a harsher piece warming up for what comes next. Monkeys Flew Out of My Butt Screen Shot 2020-11-03 at 8.28.57 AM.png The Infamous F/A-18 HUD Video – Is it Real? Has any sentient being on the planet not seen this by now? When the Pentagon created a UFO Task Force (or called UAP – Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) back in August, I noted it with interest. Obviously, there is something going on here that can no longer be hidden or covered up in whatever manner – although I suspect that it’s probably an Area 51/Men-in-Black, missing evidence type of operation which has nothing to do with extra-terrestrials, whomever they may be. It does have all of the dripping deliciousness of a conspiracy – which is stock in trade in American political discourse these days. Sort of interesting that the Navy has the lead in this effort – which suggests to me that they were the ones that screwed whatever up and now have been given the unenviable task of doing damage control and making the whole thing go away. Good luck with that. In addition to conjuring up the Roswell incident in 1947, there is also the other-worldly involvement of the USS NIMITZ – the subject of time travel in “The Final Countdown” and a focus on strange goings on in the SOCAL operating area to the point that a commercial company is planning to focus all of their satellite imagery resources in the off-hand chance that they will spot something. It makes sense to do that, since there are now so many eyes in the sky that it’s hard to take a leak in public without someone watching, and catching you on video in the act – and then posting it on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram for the rest of the world’s vicarious pleasure. Then, a friendly police drone will descend from the sky and hand you a citation for polluting the environment and thereby contributing to global warming and climate change. Is this a great country or what? One train of thought (okay, mine) thinks that it all could be just one major prank, which we in Naval Aviation have been known to perpetrate on an unsuspecting humanity from time to time, like Crop Circles in England. Of course, I’m referring to the Sky Penis over Okanagan. Screen Shot 2020-11-03 at 8.28.38 AM.png A Paean to Good Crew Planning. I know a lot of people lacking a sense of humor didn’t like or appreciate this – I thought it was fucking awesome. If you really know and/or appreciate what it took to plan an execute something like this, then you are on my clue bus. And if you got upset about it, then fuck you. I was always amazed at the lengths we would go to just to screw somebody over. I used to tell my air wing bubbas: “If you would put as much effort into doing your real job as you do in perpetrating slams on each other, then this would be a truly great operation.” So, this Growler air crew had to do the research, study the weather for the right contrail conditions, determine where the air space would allow free maneuvers, plan the mission profile so as to have some gas to dump into the air stream, be able to control the flight schedule to take advantage of the right weather window and accommodate whatever bullshit reason this mission had to be flown, and then execute it while not laughing your asses off. In the old days, this would have been blow off but that was the old days. I think the only reason that the flight crew did not have their wings pulled or otherwise put in hack was that it was a mixed gender aircrew – reportedly the Growler ECMO was female. That defeated the narrative of toxic masculinity and made it a Naval Aviation thing. And besides, it had to be a penis – what could be more recognizable? No one would have even noticed a vagina as a work of sky writing art. We haven’t had this much fun since hell, Tailhook ’91. So, the idea of this whole UFO/APU thing being a massive hoax can’t be discounted – even one conceived and executed to hide something else. And if it is just the pilots involved in tweaking the sensibilities of the world, then it is huge. Back in the day, we would plant stories into the intel traffic all of the time just to see who would pick up on them, and how long the half-life of a joke lasted before it circulated the planet, and the attendant wonders (and intellectual laziness) of circular reporting on the part of peers. The more time your rumor or purely made-up story was breathlessly repeated as “news” then life was good. Now, there are all kinds of prohibitions on doing that sort of thing now. Yep, everyone has lost their collective senses of humor, if not their minds. So whatever it is, it’s not aliens from the Planet Zorax, or some other ungodly uninhabitable place in the Solar system like Mars, Titan, Ganymede, or even Uranus. If evil aliens really wanted to enslave us or eat our brains, they would have already done so…Hey! wait a minute???? Screen Shot 2020-11-03 at 8.28.21 AM.png Another Point of View “It’s important to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.” Carl Sagan Dr. Masters makes some interesting and even compelling arguments on why whatever we are seeing is not extraterrestrial in origin, and in fact may be ourselves out of another future time doing anthropological and biological research on living specimens, or just entertaining themselves. His term for our inheritors is “extratempestrials” – people out of time. He has many explanations, mostly rooted in hard science but also speculative as why this may be so. The scientific rationale is understandable if that is what our successors are trying to understand – where they come from and how they got there despite our best efforts to the contrary. So, killing us would not be in their best interest – and if they did want to do that, they would have already. Of course, we all may wind up speaking Chinese, but I digress. the book itself is a good read but has enough science and technical jargon that makes it one of those you have to put down from time to time to figure out just what he meant. Nonetheless, it is entertaining in a high-brow sense, given the brouhaha surrounding the pandemic, the Chinese world takeover, and the impending election and all the shenanigans and hijinks sure to follow. And if it true, it means that, somehow we will have figured out how to survive all of the mass hype, disease, and hysteria. And it they are doing if for entertainment value, as if every future humanoid or hominin has a time machine at their disposal, image if you will the following dinner time conversation that could take place in the 43rd Century: “So Blaylox, what era or event do you want to visit tonight?” “I’m partial towards North America in the 20th Century. People were so theatrical and operatic back then. They took themselves and their causes way too seriously.” “How about 1945, so we can watch the first atomic bomb go off in WWII, or maybe the Kennedy assassination – never get tired to that Lee Harvey Oswald character. What would you like to do Hortix?” “Those are sort of boring and old hat – what say we visit the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, so we can watch the meltdown of America in just one day.” “That sounds good dear, all of that violence and blood – it should be fun. We will have to be careful about where we go since they’ve just set up that UAP Task Force – there will be eyes everywhere. I’ll warm up the Rolex (imagine if you will that watch brands evolve into time machines, just like Porsche and Lexus).” “I’ve got a better idea – we’ll get the neighbors to go with us and if someone gets noticed, we’ll just do some formation flying over some major city, make time warp jumps around the U.S., go take formation photos with the International Space Station, and totally distract those morons.” “Good idea – we don’t want to get caught like Uncle Alixious did back in 1947 near Roswell. That was a total fooking disaster.” “We’ll just have to be more careful. There will be a lot of people out there with loaded guns, looking for a good time.” “I’ll pack the chicken salad and the brie, and a good bottle of Happy Hour White.” “You know, I wish that place they called the Willow Bar was still open in 2020 – that would have been the place to watch a disaster of biblical proportions.” And if you can believe this, then monkeys flew out of my butt. I remain your faithful servant. Copyright 2020 Point Loma www.vicsocotra.com

Editor’s Note: It is Election Day, and the madness that has gripped the nation this strange year will transition to something else. Some organizations are calling for civic disturbance here in The Swamp, effective 4:00 EST, and that could go on for a while. So, with the realization that things will not make sense for […]

November 2, 2020 Vic Socotra

Arrias: Loyalty

Editor’s Note: It is clear but chill down on the farm. Breathtaking beauty, oblivious to our antics down here on the still-green ground. Today, we share the penultimate day in the national election carnival. It has been spectacular. Vote if you haven’t. God Bless America. – Vic Loyalty What is loyalty? And to whom or […]

November 1, 2020 Vic Socotra

Life & Island Times: Arrangements

Editor’s Note: It is the Fall Back Morning, and a certain jet-lag or all of us is common. Marlow has provided us a perspective on larger issues, which is welcome, like the Oregon health official who gave the weekly COVID briefing in clown-face. The other news is predictable, doubts swirling about the latest hysterical or […]

October 31, 2020 Vic Socotra

Willow Halloween

Willow Halloween Party 2013 Oh, OK. So we were sitting on the back deck overlooking the pastures. The raging waters of the recent hurricane remnant have retreated. I wondered if there was anything to give out, just in case tricker-treaters showed up at Refuge Farm. The general consensus was that none had been observed in […]

October 30, 2020 Vic Socotra

Whitecaps in the Pasture

(This is not the water in our boundary stream. It is, as many things in this strange year, an accurate depiction of something else, even if not factually correct. The sentiment is completely accurate in this digital capture, even though it is not as loud). I can’t see whitewater rushing down the narrow gulley that […]

Author: Vic Socotra