Fortress of Solitude

I visited The Wizard's "Fortress of Solitude" (aka his rented storage garage) the other day. Man, it was chock full of gadgets and gizmos and curios of all kinds, most of them probably dating back to the 50s and early 60s.

There were old radio sets, scientific instruments, a couple of old computers, some aerial reconnaisance cameras, and boxes--lots of boxes. Also of interest were crates containing huge vacuum tubes. Some of these I recognized as Coolidge or X-ray tubes. What I was interested in, however, was the computer I saw him using back in the 70s when I first met him. The one that had the GUI, and a mouse! Didn't find it on this trip, but there are plenty more boxes to look through.

Of course I brought my Geiger counter. You can't be too careful when examining devices that made their way up through the atomic age. It seemed that everyone was nuke-crazy, and couldn't wait to be the first to come out with the first atomic-powered coffee maker (don't laugh there really was one on the drawing boards) or home nuclear reactor. And of course Theo was in on the craze for awhile (as were many scientists of his time who wanted to be at the cutting edge of things), until the ugly realities of fallout and radwaste and M.A.D. reared their collective heads.

Anyhow I made a point of separating anything that set off the meter into one corner of the storage unit. Thankfully most of the items I found were only mildly radioactive. The only item that worried me (it was emitting around 200-300 mr/hr) took a while to find because it was so small. I had to move several boxes, and of course it was at the bottom of a big stack of them. Inside a nice little wooden box were several vials, each of which contained a small bead of metal in solution. There were a few other assorted radioactive sources in the bigger box as well, and it's a good thing that I had my counter, because there was no label on the box indicating radioactive material. I shall have to contact someone regarding the proper disposal of these items.

By the way, don't get a radiation detector because you'll worry yourself silly testing all the items in your house (as I did) and getting alarmingly high readings off of the most seemingly innocuous things.
Theo, who worked within the defense sciences, went nearly mad in a similar fashion back in the 60s. He had all kinds of equipment designed for precision measurements of radiation, and was worried sick about the fallout swirling around the atmosphere from above-ground tests performed by China, Russia and the U.S.
He would test all of the food he brought home from the supermarket. He said that much of the world's soil contained trace amounts of fission products, thanks to the clouds of fallout that soared up into the jetstream and were carried to every point on the globe. He was afraid of radionuclides working their way into the food chain.
He told me once that he found a head of broccoli emitting 30 rems (5-600 rems will kill you)! He surmised that it must have come from one of the "downwind" states such as Utah or Colorado.
He stopped drinking milk (the cows, he said, ate fallout-dusted grass), and gobbled iodine pills like candy. He told me that iodized salt was unheard-of before the 50s and 60s testing. He said it was the government's way of getting it into our diets so that we wouldn't absorb the radioactive kind.
He almost went stark raving mad, because he felt there was no escape. As a result he joined many of his colleagues in supporting the Test Ban Treaty, and felt a little better once atmospheric testing ceased.
Still he would get furious at the French when they would test in the Pacific in the seventies, or when India began testing, because we, living in California, would get a hefty dose if the winds shifted the right way.

Myself, I think that man will eventually evolve and get used to fission products, even the non-soluble ones. It's just that in the interim thousands of years between now and that time, man will have to deal with a lot more cancers, I'm afraid.

Checkered Demons?

Eddie and I were talking just the other day about Men in Black.
Not the movie (which I enjoyed by the way), but the actual phenomena reported by more than a few people (Google it if you want to know more...John Keel's Mothman Prophecies is a fun book, way better than the crappy movie which bears its name).

Eddie thinks the guys who were looking for me at the trailer park were MIB.

Myself, I highly doubt it. In fact I accused Eddie of trying to cover for some of his wackier friends who take this stuff way too seriously and may have come looking for me in order to start a new religion or something.

He ignored me of course and proceeded to relate a long conversation he had with Dora, my ex-neighbor. Apparently Eddie had taken it upon himself to interview the one person who got the best look at the visitors (having spoken to them face to face as she did).
He quizzed her for about an hour, and said a few things stood out, that to him, were classic hallmarks of any MIB tale:

1) They drove a really old car that looked showroom-fresh.

I stopped Eddie right there. There are plenty of vintage auto freaks in Orange County with money to burn, so what?
"Yeah but who restores a Checker?" Eddie quickly replied.

Checker the cab maker? Well, I've seen stranger things. A Checker would not be my first choice as far as classic cars go, but okay, what else?

2) Dora said their skin resembled "polystyrene," or smooth scar tissue.
Hmm...the Burn Victims' Classic Checker club paid me a visit and I missed it?

3) They didn't act or speak like "normal folks," in Dora's own words.

Okay, come on. This is Southern California, folks! I've hung out with people like this (except for the Checker part), and you cannot make a determination of otherworldliness based on these criteria.

However, the information set my fertile imagination in motion, and I was reminded of folklore about the Devil wearing checkered clothing...

A Great Loss

I apologize for the lapse between postings.

It's been a hard, extremely draining couple of weeks.

My dear old friend Theo, aka The Wizard, has finally passed from his life on this earth. I spent every day at his side these past couple of weeks, and although he slipped in and out of consciousness the last few days of his life, we did manage to have some great conversations together, and with his consent, I tape recorded most of them (I will attempt to transcribe some of these tapes and share them here with you). I felt a desperate need to try and capture as much of his humor, wisdom and unique personality as I could before he left us.
He also wanted me to pass on a message to my readers, a simple one, but one he hoped would put some things into perspective for a lot of people.
Here it is:

Dear friends,

I want you to enjoy your lives. Life is meant to be enjoyed. A great philosopher once said, "don't sweat the small stuff." It is so easy to get one's self caught up in petty little dramas that eat up time and brainpower, and take your focus away from the really important things.

Parents, show your children that you love and appreciate them; cherish them, because life (especially childhood) is fleeting.
Children, love your parents and stop blaming them for all of your life's miseries.

Stop listening to and giving your money to the professional nay-sayers who broadcast doom and gloom every day.

Treat yourself now and then.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Have lots of safe consensual sex.

Eat the foods you enjoy, but within reason (and health considerations)--be nice to your body and don't overburden it.

When confronted with a task that looks seemingly impossible, I have found that it is better to attack it head on and start chipping away at it rather than sit and tell yourself that you cannot do it. Push wherever you can and something will eventually give, just keep pushing.

Don't wrap yourselves in the self-righteous cloak of your suffering. To be human is to suffer--no one can claim a monopoly on suffering (except the Third World).

Drink lots of water, appreciate that you can obtain it readily.

Be civil to people, but don't worry and obsess over whether they like you or not. Who cares? If you are being the best that you can be anyhow, what more can they expect?

Remember that this period in human history, with all of its evil and calamity, pales in comparison to the extreme suffering visited upon this earth millenia ago by passing comets, geological upheaval and plague. Enjoy this brief respite!


Yours,

Theo

Folks, please pardon the somewhat preachy tone, he just wanted to help.

By the way, Eddie and I inherited quite a few things from Theo, some of which you may find intensely delightful and interesting. Eddie took possession of Theo's immense book collection, while I was bequeathed a large storage unit of items I have yet to inventory. More to come on that later...

Oh, and I adopted Theo's cat, Tesla.

As I type this, I am listening to a beautiful musical piece called "Longing for Daydreams" by Holger Czukay. I highly recommend it.

Well I am all moved in to my new place. I can't wait to tell you about some of my new neighbors, but it'll have to wait 'til the next entry, I am exhausted. Also I want to tell you what Eddie found out about the mysterious visitors who came looking for me at the trailer park...

Love and Light,
Timetraveler

Catching My Breath

Aren't I the paranoid one?

Turns out my flight from the trailer park may have been a little hasty.
As soon as I could, after I left, I put some inquiries in to some buddies "on the inside."

After a few days of checking, they could find no evidence of any official operations against me. In fact a couple of them laughed at me for having the delusion of being more important than I actually am.

So now I feel like a total fool for having run away like that. Not only did I scare myself silly, but I had to throw away some dear possessions, all because of some strangers coming around looking for me. What in the world would somebody want with a drunken old slacker such as myself anyhow? The only thing I could think of was my Almanac (which will stay well-hidden all the same).

That being said, I've decided to stay in SoCal after all.

I got an apartment over the weekend, a charming old Polynesian complex that appeals to the incurable romantic in me (although I won't divulge where it is this time ;) ). It's got plenty of verdant foliage, and a pool surrounded by huge tikis illuminated by colorful floodlights. A veritable haven, it is liquor store and strip club close.
I look forward to summer nights beside the pool, steaks sizzling on the grill, my brain pleasantly fogged with tropical drinks...

Speaking of the Almanac, Eddie read my blog for the first time the other day, and scolded me for my use of the term. What would you have me call the most prized relic of my youth, Eddie?
Yes I have seen "Back to the Future" several times, and no, you're right, it is not a sports almanac; rather it is a guidebook and catalog of nearly all of the temporal nodes placed on this Earth, as well as a few of the Russian ones and a couple on the moon. I say nearly all because my tattered copy is the 1966 Varo edition, which of course is woefully out of date. It doesn't list the improved C and E models introduced in the late sixties and early seventies, nor the ones scattered throughout our solar system.

Hah! They're shaking their heads now, Eddie! You satisfied?

Eddie is one of those guys who babbles on about how "Information wants/needs to be free," or some other similar BS. He never considers the consequences of someone placing detailed instructions on how to build your own bomb, or desktop fusor, or LSD recipe, etc. on the internet. I've met some of the very people who should never get ahold of said "free information"-- mentally unbalanced types who are bored with ordinary reality, who are just waiting for the next big thrill.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if my mystery visitors are some friends of yours, Eddie.

Could you look into that?

I hope to be posting more regularly, now that I am not running around with my tail between my legs. My connection should be up in the next few days, my new ISP tells me.
Thank God! I am tired of mooching bandwidth at Starbuck's already...


Cheers!

A Little History

I first met the Wizard back in the early seventies, through a mutual friend.
My father operated a sheet metal fabrication shop in Artesia then, and I would help out now and then.
Dad would employ various drifters and other assorted guys as well, some good, most bad. Employment never lasted beyond a few weeks, and then the guy would move on to God knows where.
One of those hires, though, would change the way I looked at things forever. His name was Ed, and he was the one who introduced me to the Wizard.
Ed was this intense little guy in his 30s. He would rattle on about free energy devices, Tesla, and something called the Bourke engine. I was fascinated. I had never heard of any of this stuff. My young mind ate it up.
At about this same time Deadman came into the picture. Deadman was some aerospace industry veteran who died and left a bunch of interesting hardware behind. It fell into the hands of one of my dad's shop neighbors, who in turn asked if my dad and I would take it off his hands.
He brought over a small truckload of stuff to my dad's shop, and my dad, Ed and I sat for a couple of hours poring over boxes of vacuum tubes, aircraft parts, and other various bits of unidentifiable hi-tech gimcrackery.
Ed was beside himself. Spit flew from his mouth as he jabbered excitedly and pointed at the boxes of gear. "The Wizard would love this stuff! Especially THIS!"
He held up a 2' x 3' bakelite panel festooned with switches. I thought it looked cool too but of course I wondered who this "wizard" was. Ed could see it in my eyes. "Let's take this over and show him! You wanna meet him? He's got a lot of cool shit! And he knows everything!"
Well I was hooked in. We bade my dad farewell and climbed into Ed's VW bug and drove off to meet the Wizard.
It was quite a drive. The wizard lived in El Segundo, in a cramped little cracker box of the type mass-manufactured right after the war.
The Wizard answered our knock and greeted Ed warmly but squinted at me suspiciously. But he let us both in anyway. He looked like the pictures of Howard Hughes in his last days (the sketches were in all the papers back then)--middle-aged, skinny, but with a huge unruly shock of hair and unkempt beard.
He led us through a dimly lit maze of ceiling-high stacks of newspapers and boxes, back to his bedroom, which resembled something like Frankenstein's laboratory. There were electronic devices and control panels choking the small space, and the air was thick with ozone. But the picture that always stuck with me all these years was that of his home computer.
You heard it right. He had a home computer in the early seventies, before anyone else. Not only that, but he had a couple of monitors hooked up to the thing, and a graphical user interface there on the screens! He had a mouse, too, not like the ones we use today, more like a metal box with pushbuttons on it. He also had a lightpen, which he waved around like a wand, jabbing at the screens as he mumbled to Ed. No wonder he was called the Wizard.
When Ed unwrapped the bakelite switch-panel and presented it to the Wizard, the Wizard locked onto it with some intensity, but that quickly faded as he announced dismissively, "early computer input device. They were programmed by laboriously inputting numbers on these rotary switches. Don't need 'em! We use this now." He pointed to his keyboard. Ed, dejected, handed the switch-panel over to me.
Nevertheless, the Wizard spoke of all sorts of forbidden and esoteric knowledge that day. My small brain reeled with the revelations:
"They're deploying the TRB-3 now! They've gone to the moon and back in under ten minutes!"
"Reality is multi-dimensional! You and I and everybody else pass through multiple dimensions every day and don't even notice it!"
"Of course there is time travel! The government's had the capability for years!"
And that, my friends, was my first visit with the Wizard. I couldn't wait to visit again...

Fishing Trip

Greetings, friends.
I've been out of town on a "fishing trip" the past few days. No I didn't catch anything, but I did visit the Wizard, who's been ill for a couple of years. It's just a matter of time (sorry Theo if you are reading this); I think his days are numbered. He's got at least 20 years on me, god save him. At least he's got plenty of morphine.

Upon my return to my beloved abode yesterday, I retrieved a note affized to my front door. It was from Dora, my neighbor. Apparently some suspicious characters were skulking around, looking for Yours Truly. With an awful feeling in my gut I unlocked the door, worried about burglary and the like. I did a quick assessment of things, made sure the almanac was still in its hiding place, and determined that no one had broken in. Good thing I have nosy neighbors...

Later Dora followed up on the note, showing up at my door, babbling excitedly about the visitors' "funny car" and "strange behavior." The most excitement poor Dora has seen in a while I guess. I poured her a couple of glasses of good Scotch and let her bend my tired ears for a pace. I wasn't supposed to be drinking that stuff, but there it was, and besides it kept the rising panic at ground level. Later I thanked her by sending her off with the rest of the bottle. I never saw her move that fast to her trailer before!

I am so tired of trouble, and am almost regretting starting this blog, because I am positive that my big fat mouth has betrayed me yet again. I have gotten soft and sloppy in my old age-- I guess it was pretty stupid to reveal where I live. I haven't heard anything from these guys in years, and now bam! They show up at my doorstep.
Well to hell with them. There isn't much they can do to me anymore, except steal the almanac, except guess what guys, I hid it again, and you will never find it this time. And I won't be where you think I will be next time you come looking. I have, as they say, moved on. Mobile!

More to come later...

Where do I start?

Shall I start with my first meeting with the Wizard, or the story of my life?
Heck if I know right now. I'm woozy with fever and can barely think straight, let alone type.
Suffice it to say that right now I decided to share my life's adventures with everybody because I don't know how much longer I have to live on this earth. Not that I feel that I am dying anytime soon, mind you, but I am 57 years old, living in a stinking trailer park in Garden Grove, and I have an alcohol problem (to be quite honest).
Besides, everybody's got a story to tell, don't they? Who was it that said there are heroic tales to be found in even the most mundane person's lives?
The earth is a strange and wonderful place, and I am here to say that there is more to reality than you and I could ever believe, and that the human senses, however amazing, hardly show us the whole picture. But I got to peek behind the veil for a brief time, and you can make what you will of what I saw.
True or not, I hope at least it will be entertaining...