lotsa weird stuff in the news today.   first off, roswell is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the supposed UFO crash. the local residents of Roswell are getin' miffed by all the "UFO enthusiasts" (i'll call them costumed lunatics) being drawn to the small town. I don't blame 'em, all these weirdo "X-file" fans that live in their parents basements coming out into the real world. As you probably know, back in the summer of '47, the government claimed that it had reclaimed a crashed "flying disc", then the next day retracted that statement and said it was a weather balloon. The about-face by the government led many to believe (about 30 years later, I might add) that the creepy ol' us gov't did indeed find an alien spacecraft, complete with aliens, and hushed the whole thing up 'cause they wanted the technology. ('scuse me for being brief, but im sure y'all know the story, ad nauseum) I've been vaguely interested in the whole deal, i've read some studies, watched some shows, I've even met Dr. Stanton Freidman on one occasion. (interesting story there, ill go into it at a later date). My reason for writing about Roswell? Welp, ive read a lot of evidence for both the existence of a recovered UFO and info to the contrary, and, in my humblest of humble opinions, I do not believe that a spacecraft from another world crashed there. Theres just more information leading to a rational explanation than to aliens. Ive heard two stories; one I cant remember where, the other I just read in TIME magazine. The cool one I read (not in TIME) was that the object involved in the crash was actually a russian spy satellite. The thing (again I apologize that I dont remember what it was) had proof that the then-USSR did indeed launch a satellite a few months previously, and had data saying that the satellite fell out of its orbit and plunged to Earth on the same date(s) during which the whole mess came about. The TIME story said that it was a balloon used in two-fold experiment; one part was testing a method of detecting russian missiles, the other was a test of high-altitude human impact. They attached crash dummies to the balloon and droped 'em. (cool, eh?) Evidently the air force's test dummies at the time resembled small blue humans with no hair. Freaky, innit? This was where the idea of the "Greys" came from, with backwards '40's roswell natives seeing the dummies and shiny silver balloon wreckage. sorry to burst anyones bubble there, but I doubt it was aliens. But the belief in aliens is a necessary psychological device; because we've become disillusioned about the existence of religious deities, we make the rumours of aliens into a belief, as powerful as any faith, that there is/are superior, benign entities, and that life will become better.   next slide please   seems that Steven Seagal is now a lama. or something. yes, the star of such religiously uplifting epics as "Hard to Kill", "Glimmer Man", and "Under Siege" one and two, has been declared a "terton"; someone with the abilities to perceive the root of Tibetan Buddhism, by Penor Rinpoche, the Supreme Head of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism.   hmm.   theres a deep meaning here, but i cant see it   and finally, The Prodigy were also in TIME magazine. The gist of the article was that the good ol' prodge would bring techno into the mainstream. The article went into some depth on how techno really didnt do what big record companies thought it would do; raise sales. It has a limited (and enlightened and damn fucking cool, in my opinion) audience in the states. The article was interesting, with the prodge not liking the "techno" label applied to their music, since their style is more a mix of hard-core, punk, and electronic music, than the purely electronic techno "coming out of germany". It was an interesting read, mentioning the new album coming out soon, and the cool-but-overplayed firestarter single. But one thing really irked me; nowhere did they mention their second album, Music For The Jilted Generation! thats the album that *I* have, and I like it. Come to think of it, they didn't mention The Prodigy Experience, the first album, either. ah well.   one final note; this will be the last thing I write for my page until its actually online.   rock on