F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

fpdorchak

Nuthin Like Cracking Open A Tall Cool One…

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First thing in the morning.

You know what I’m talking about, right?

A tall, frosty glass…

Full of your favorite, full-bodied brew…

First thing in the morning, you know, to get you going…

Iced tea.

What were you thinkin?

I am a fan of the iced tea. A fan of Lipton’s black tea.  (but, full disclosure:  I get absolutely nothing from Lipton in promoting their beautiful brew, nor am I paid spokespeep for their wonderful product in any way, nor do I get any kickbacks whatsoever from Lipton–I just love it!)

Sure, there are other brews I love out there, especially the Starbuck’s and your basic Earl Greys and all (BTW, making the Starbuck’s at home is not like what you get in the store; don’t know what they do to it, but it is different…), but on a daily basis, during my morning writing hours (note I do this first thing in the morning, by the way), I usually down a couple tall glasses of the stuff. Just love it, I do. Sure, it sends me to the rest room a couple extra times throughout the day, but it’s worth it.

But it doesn’t stop there…I drink at work, too. Yeah, I do, I’m not ashamed to admit it. It’s the cheap stuff from a screw-top glass container, not at all like the fresh-brewed bev I get at home, but it gets me through the day, you know?

Now, my point here is that after having read Michelle Black’s post on the history of absinthe, such discussion on anyone’s “devotion” to any alcoholic beverage always interests me cause I don’t drink (….wine–love that line!), so I try to substitute something similar in my life so I can better understand it. And I don’t drink alcohol for any religious, moral, nor any other reason other than it just doesn’t interest me. I’ve had a few over the years, but first and foremost the taste of alcohol (if you can call it that) is a turn off.  Really, all you millions of people out there love that? The second issue is the aftereffects of a night of drinking. Don’t need any of that, neither, thank you. Perhaps I’m just too practical in that way. But, in any event, I don’t partake, so in an effort to try to understand the feverish devotion so many ads and commercials portray, I try to insert something that I am particularly taken with:

After a long day on the job site, what better way to end it then to crack open a tall cool one. Lipton black iced tea!

Yes, after exploring the world over, jumping out of an ice fishing hole with fish in my teeth, and making love to over 500,000 women, I like nothing better than to relax with Triple XXX Earl Grey over ice!

It’s Super Bowl night, so invite over your best buds, buy an acre of meat pizza, and pop open some Liptons!

Ah, now, I totally get it!

Well, not really, but in my continued effort to try to better understand all you devotees out there, I’m gonna go sit out on my deck and pop open a tall cool one, and contemplate this little conundrum a bit more….

An Infant’s Laughter

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Okay, now this is probably going to be a weird post coming from me, but yesterday I was sitting in a tire shop awaiting repair of a damaged tire (working on a manuscript while I waited), when in comes a mother with her twenty-something daughter, and the daughter’s infant daughter. The twenty-something was quite talkative, as most twenty year olds can be, but then the two of them get to playing with the twenty-something’s infant daughter–which got the infant to laughing.

Yeah, and it was here that I was taken right out of what I was doing, out of my world, and began actively listening to this child’s pure and unbounded laughter as I worked on a manuscript involving death and destruction. Now, of course I’ve heard plenty of infant laughter throughout my years on Earth, but in this one instant, this one moment in time…it really hit me in hard-to-define way, like all goodness in the world had suddenly converged….

It was so pure.

So crystalline.

So untouched by any of the ills of the world.

Most likely every mother reading this is nodding knowingly and going “Oh, yeah, you got it….” And it’s not like this has never been considered by me, but sometimes even the everyday sounds we all hear take on more depth, more resonance, an indefinably weird and heightened clarity that it’s like there is zero distortion in what we’re hearing or seeing…that the particular sound or sight was created just for you. No one else. That this particular sound has a message, and you’re finally getting close to metaphysically getting it….

That’s what this laughter sounded like.

It sounded like the joy and exhilaration and playfulness of life was trying to reach out and shake me…to let me know that, yes, it is still here, the joy, exhilaration, and playfulness of life…that no matter what else is out there, no matter how bad other things can be, there is also this.

The uncorrupted, unadulterated (pardon the pun) delight of living…the thrill of breathing, the pleasure of existing…in the moment and happy and blissful and amused by just being.

I don’t know the age of the infant, don’t know at what age actual wonder sets in to the developing infant mind, and I never saw him or her…but for that one moment in the microcosm of that tire shop, the unfettered joy of that infant’s laughter caused much more than just a physical smile. I felt the playful energy in that infant’s laughter and soul pick me up and shake me silly.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s what we all need every now and then–and perhaps a little more in today’s times…to smile…a deep, soul-affecting, blissfully elated smile.

The Best Writing Advice Ever!

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Well, I’ll be damned!  I thought I was the only one who thought this way! There’s at least one other person out there who thinks the same.

In the February 2011 Writer’s Digest, on page 23, is the article “25 Ways To Improve Your Writing in 30 Minutes a Day.” There’s some great stuff by a couple people, notably one from David Morrell, whom I met and sat by at a dinner at the PPWC a few years ago, about “Flow” (the first of 25), but also one by Art Spikol (whom I’ve never met…), #9, “Word Choice.” Mr. Spikol said that he doesn’t “like” rules for writers, except for one:

Don’t bore anybody.

Just Because Everything Can Be Faked Doesn’t Mean Everything Is

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Apparently the UFO sighted at Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock is…a hoax.  That’s fine, it doesn’t bother me. After the explanations offered in the analysis of the shot (which is all I ask–that someone do some serious analysis on these kinds of things), I can see it being a hoax. But what kinda fascinates me is how people get so emotionally polarized over this stuff. Why is that? Look, either something is or it isn’t. How can any of us make off-the-wall conclusions–in either direction–without informed investigation?

And why are we all so quick to dismiss incidents as hoaxes or because hailed as hoaxes, and get in people’s faces when they want to believe in their validity? Where is all this emotion coming from? There’s nothing wrong in wanting to believe, but why all the outright righteous vitriol?

Many get upset because they don’t believe objects can maneuver like what has been shown, hairpin turns, etc. A couple years ago, I read Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion.  I’m the first to admit I can’t spit back most of what I read there, it’s been a heckuva long time since I’ve messed with any hardcore (university level) physics, and certainly not at the level this book works through, but I could (for the most part) see and follow what was being presented, even intuitively follow some of it from the old College Days, and it was mind blowing. See my previous post on this subject (and check this one out, too), but herein are explained the fields of subquantum kinetics, and electrogravitic propulsion. Area of physics explored at least back in the 1920s. The Coandă Effect, even. And (according to this book) these craft have already been developed or are currently under development.

It is subquantum kinetics and electrogravitic propulsion that actually do explain how objects can maneuver “as they’ve been observed” and not liquefy their occupants–if there are any occupants (we assume they’re manned craft, but they might not all be…).

As best as I can relate it, here’s the short answer from Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion:  the direction of travel is polarized through ionization (the direction of travel is preceded, perhaps better described as “enveloped” by, a cloud of positive ions, and the trailing direction in negative ions), using an extremely high-voltage power source. The positive charges are constantly and immediately replenished to replace those charges leaving/dispersing from the ion cloud. The short answer (and, again, no, I can’t whiteboard this, am just trying to relay it as best I can) is that this creates a gravity well/gradient in the direction of travel, kinda like riding a wave, where the object travels into the well/gradient. As the book says and I really have to restudy it, this wavelike distortion of the gravity field is similar to a surfer riding a wave, and the physics of it is that it pulls on all particles of the object-in-question (i.e., matter) in this system equally–which means that the ship and all its contents are acted upon equally by the force of the object’s travel, like a “local” gravity. The ship and its occupants would feel no more G-forces than what is currently felt standing on Earth. A local gravity field has been created in and around the ship. Such “impossible” maneuvers have now become possible….

Sheesh, hope I did that explanation justice.

And there are other methods of propulsion that behave similarly, like microwave and electromagnetic propulsion. And while their movement is not as “clean” and gravitationally unhindered as electrogravitics, there are some dips and banking involved in these methods of propulsion during travel. Personally I always wonder if such propulsion would not be affected by weather, and I don’t see how not, after a certain point, i.e., high winds, but I’m not a propulsion/aerospace engineer.

From the abovementioned book, I also pull the following quote:  (from page 77):  “...the biggest deterrent to scientific progress is a refusal of some people, including scientists, to believe that things which seem amazing can really happen.”

People are people.

To this I add:  if we knew everything, we’d know what these are.

And…

Just because everything can be faked doesn’t mean everything is.

Sounds like “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you,” huh?

So, yes, all images can be tricked, but that doesn’t mean all images are tricked. We have to use reason.  Yes, the physics does seem to go contradictory to what has been traditionally taught in schools (including universities), and yes there will unfortunately continue to be perpetrated hoaxes, but don’t be so quick to judge one way or the other. There are sciences and engineering going on out there no one is supposed to be privy to, for at least one very good reason (national security), and this stuff is not being taught in schools and universities most likely for the same reason, at least according to this Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion.

Okay, so, let’s review:

Objects have already been developed that do travel as portrayed by traditionally sighted UFOs.

Just because everything can be faked doesn’t mean everything is faked.

And if we (each and every one of us) knew everything…we’d know what these things are.

So…show of hands:

Who knows everything?

Soul Survivor – The Case Of James Leininger and James Huston, Jr. Part 2

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Well, once again, it didn’t record. I’d gone in to check on the recording midway through and found no recording, so I hit the record–but it turns out I only taped the show’s conclusion, so did not see the rest of the show. I went back into OWN TV guide and watched all I could find on the show, but it seemed incomplete. I did not find the conclusions segment for the Leininger session.But, I’ve been following this for some ten years, and have read the book. So, I’ll press on.

At the conclusion segment Indre said: 1) it’s easy to interpret a child’s behavior through our own beliefs, especially behavior that doesn’t make sense, 2) Ann (James Huston, Jr’s sister) wasn’t reminded of her brother through James Leininger; she didn’t feel connected, but she could see there might be some similarities, 3) it was hard for Indre to believe this stuff based on everything she knows about how memory works.

Knows.

Apparently, she has left no room for growth? No room for, gee, maybe there’s something science missed? Again I bring up the wave and particle theory of light argument. Just because something behaves one way, does not mean it cannot behave another way!

Yet when Randall and her were talking with Bruce and Andrea Leininger, Indre admitted to having been taken by what was presented:  1) James Leininger’s use of the term “drop tank” at two years of age, 2) flying nightmares and his kicking feet up into the air as if trapped somewhere, 3) James telling his parents about the Japanese had killed him, 4) that he flew a Corsair, and 5) Natoma. Natoma Bay, the WWII aircraft carrier.

And, from the book (and from a previous post of mine), here is a list of some other examples of areas James exhibited similar behavior:

—Shouting “Airplane crash! Plane on fire! Little man can’t get out!” over and over at two or three years of age.

—Knocking the props off every toy airplane he was ever given.

—Insisting on familiarity with Corsair aircraft.

—Signed his name as “James 3” on all his drawings, which were of aircraft strafing and bombing runs.

—Mimicked the act of putting on a leather flight helmet before he’d ever seen one (in this life).

—While still in diapers, corrected his mother about what she thought was a “bomb” was actually a “drop tank.”

—Naming the G.I. Joes he got the names of dead friends of James McCready Huston Jr.; G.I. Joes that also just “happened” to look like these dead men.

—Correcting documentaries about incorrectly identifying a Japanese aircraft being shot down as a “Zero,” when it was really a “Tony.”

But, I’m sure he got all those terms from a Sponge Bob TV show. OR passed a stranger uttering “drop tank,” “Natoma Bay,” and “Tony, not Zero!”….

So I ask this: what’s the more unreal? That the behavior presented clearly portrays something about aircraft and another time, or that a child can just make this stuff up and there’s nothing to it? And if children can just “make this kind of stuff up”–where does it come from?

Or…as Occam’s Razor is applied (and be careful how you apply its actual definition, lest you incur the immediate and vengeful wrath of skeptics galore…), perhaps the best explanation is a past life. It seems to me that it’s obvious this is the case, but “obvious” doesn’t prove anything, and yes it is my own belief. But just because it is my belief, that doesn’t make it false or any less valid. Scientists believe in electricity and magnetism, and I don’t see anyone taking issue with them or those beliefs.

Oh, right–because those beliefs are true. There’s evidence.

So, all the previously mentioned “evidence” is not true?

No proof.

But the proof is the evidence.

I know, I’m getting into dangerous ground here, there are different ways to explain everything, but I don’t want to write a book on this, right now, just a blog post to get people to thinking.

 It also seems to me that applying every other argument that “he’s just a boy, playing” is more of a reach. The past life explains everything without leap, except for the “reach” of believing in past lives itself…while the young James’s coming into contact with this material from his environment raises more questions than it answers–how did he come into contact with this stuff, and where–and he “just happened” to catch just the right terms that seem to “go together” for a WWII pilot, and not, say, purple dinosaurs? Why not throw in firetrucks and Sponge Bob into these rants? Why were they just about Corsairs and drop tanks?

Isn’t this exactly how past-life evidence might present itself? How perfect is your memory, what if there’s some kind of “reincarnational filter” that prevents total recall, and how can you expect even past-life memory to be perfect?  How much more “perfect evidence” do you all require?

People are going to believe what they believe.

Soul Survivor – The Case Of James Leininger and James Huston, Jr

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Tonight, on the OWN network, Miracle Detectives, will air an episode about James Leininger, now 12. His is a fascinating story about a child who, at the age of two, began having nightmares and conscious knowledge of having lived and died before as a WWII fighter pilot (Navy Lt. [j.g.] James Huston, Jr.). James began pointing out aircraft and talking about things a two-year-old would never know to talk about. Take a look at the Soul Survivor website, blog, and book (which I read). And please see my previous post on James, where I discussed all of this and reviewed the book–and received a very kind comment from James’s father, Bruce. Also please check out the Institute for the Integration of Science, Intuition and Spirit (IISIS) website.