mgroves

Posts Tagged ‘weird’

Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”[*] But even before he showed his black monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey that bewildered primitive man, there were people who already knew it to be true. They wondered, perhaps the gods of old weren’t gods at all but ancient astronauts traveling on chariots of fire.

Along with Mel’s Hole, another recurring and popular topic on Art Bell’s Coast To Coast AM radio show was Planet X. In the 1970s, about the same time Mr. Clarke wrote his famous line, Zecharia Sitchin wrote a book called The 12th Planet. Sitchin , a student of languages and history, was a researcher of ancient Sumerian texts. His interpretation of these texts, western religion, and human psychology formed the basis of his 12th Planet theory.

It goes something like this:

There is a planet in our solar system called Nibiru. You’ve never heard of it because its unusual orbit around the sun only brings it within observable distance every 3,600 years. The planet is home to a race that the Sumerians called “Anunnaki”. Hundred of thousands of years ago they discovered the bountiful resources of Earth, in particular gold, which powered their technology; and rather than mine it themselves, they engineered a new race to do the heavy lifting. They gave this race an inherent love of gold so they would forever be drawn to its glimmering beauty.

It turns out it was man.

They left soon after, to return in thousands of years, to collect the fruits of mankind’s labors. But they didn’t leave without a trace. The old testament (Genesis 6:1-4) speaks of The Anunnaki as “sons of heaven” who bred with humans to form a race of supernatural giants: the Nephilim. These were the giants and heroes of myth: Goliath, and Sampson, and Hercules, and possibly Tony Robbins.

The next time this Planet X comes close to Earth in its 3,600 year orbit, conveniently, is 2012, which may or may not have already entered the banks of common knowledge as the next date of Armageddon, far worse than 1999 or 2000 because Mayans, far more than spear-throwing savages, predicted it centuries ago.

As a secular humanist I find the idea of ancient astronauts somewhat appalling. Humans didn’t need help inventing tools (2001: A Space Odyssey), building the pyramids (Chariots of The Gods, Star Gate), or inventing the microwave oven or Velcro (Men In Black). We do pretty good on our own. But it’s interesting to speculate. One of the things I like about LOST is my hidden room theory: there can always be a hidden room behind the hidden room. If man was created by The Anunnaki, who created The Anunnaki? If there’s a God, who created God?

There’s some speculation right now that Indiana Jones 4 (currently in production) will delve into the realm of ancient astronauts. I can’t think of a more fitting application of magic and technology.

Just about every animal in the world that can be eaten, has been eaten. If you told me that some obscure remote tribe considers panda toenails to be a delicacy, I would be slightly disgusted, but not really surprised.

Do you want to know what really surprises and disgusts me? From the below three creatures, pick the one that is considered a favorite regional dish in Louisiana and Texas.

1. Cockroaches

2. Scorpions

3. Crawfish.

If you guessed #3, you are correct. But frankly, all three are terrible choices that I find equally (un)appetizing. My wife, however, ordered two pounds of what is basically the cockroach of the sea, and ate them like they were the best thing of any kind ever.

Yeck.

You’re not seeing double. Brittany and Abby Hensel are conjoined twins. But unlike typical conjoined twins, who are either deformed or immobilized by their condition, these two function perfectly as two heads on one body.

Other than the grotesque shock you get when you see them for the first time, they’re attractive, normal girls. I imagine if one were to see them naked; other than a back like a Cardassian (damn me and my Star Trek references); it would look like a normal body: two arms, two legs, two breasts, and one genital region.

Physiologically, they have just the right amount of organs to sustain a two-headed body. They each have their own stomach, so they can get hungry or full independent of each other. They each have their own heart, which is much better than one heart working overtime to pump blood up to two brains.

They each have their own driver’s license too (and I imagine the photos look like a cropped-out ex-boyfriend on Match.com). If they were to ever be pulled over by a cop (excluding the fact that the cop would in all likelihood kill them on site as the first shot of a perceived mutant apocalypse) would they get one ticket or two? That’s a question they themselves pose in the Discovery Channel documentary Joined for Life. But I have a few questions of my own:

• Can one get sick but not the other?
• Can one of them draw a picture while the other writes an essay?
• If they’re intimate with a guy does it count as a threesome?
• If they’re raped, does the perpetrator get charged on two counts?
• They each control half of the body, so do they alternate wiping duties?

Although they’re forever cursed to have an asterisk on their World Hot Dog Eating Championship trading card, they seem to be happy, and fortunate given their odds. I hope they can find a place for themselves in the world… and hope they both agree on the place.

Somewhere in Kittitas County, in the middle of Washington state where the rain doesn’t fall as frequently as Seattle, lies a hole in the countryside, a modest nine feet across. But as locals will tell you, it’s quite a bit deeper.

For years they’d dump trash down the hole; truckloads of it; not just cans and diapers, we’re talking special pickup items, TVs and refrigerators and dead livestock. As the trash fell, they would wait and wait and never hear it hit the bottom.

One townsman will tell you about the time he threw his dead dog in, only to later see it resurrected. Another will tell you about the shadow he saw emitted from it like a ray of black light. Others will talk about their radios playing broadcasts from the past. And then there’s Mel Walters, who once owned the land, and probed its bottomless depths.

Mel tied a roll of Life Savers candy onto a fishing string and lowered it into the hole. When the line ran out he tied another, and another. He ran out of line at 80,000 feet and still hadn’t reached the bottom.

Before Mel could conduct any more research, the government had initiated a series of maneuvers to acquire the land for themselves. Mel used their payoff and moved to Australia. It’s always the government, man!

That story is baloney but it has its share of believers.

Between 1997 and 2002, Mel recounted this story on the late night radio show Coast To Coast AM, captivating a sleep deprived audience over the course of many episodes. But the area has been frequently searched and nothing deeper than a ditch has been found. To top it all off, 80,000 feet deep is over 15 miles. The deepest hole on record, on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, is only half as deep. And as far as fishing string goes, it would only take 15 spools, but the geothermal heat at that depth would melt the line.

Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, and author of Why People Believe Weird Things, says, “We’re anecdotal thinkers, so we accept things, particularly if they’re in the form of a story, even if it’s outlandish.” In the May 2007 issue of Wired Magazine, this quote is used in reference to the urban legends and good-luck stories propagated through email by naive mothers and wives (and I imagine some men but I don’t really have any data to support that).

It’s an interesting story. You want it to be real. Life is far too short to go without bottomless pits with magical powers.

A couple years later, Mel found another hole in Nevada, but that’s another story.