Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 177: Mountain Oracle Radio, Vol. 2 (w/ special guest Ken Layne)

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

Ken Layne of Desert Oracle Radio stops by to talk to us about a really weird year in human history; about the monoliths and the importance of symbols; and about how Kurt Russell was the pilot who initially reported the Phoenix Lights. Buy Ken's book: https://www.amazon.com/Desert-Oracle-Strange-American-Southwest/dp/0374139687/ Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

That was so off. Can we do one more? That's fine. That's like the old white guys at the senior home going to start an R&B band. You ready, boy? It is my dream. It always has been.

The final stage of Medicare for all. That's right. That's right. Well, I mean, speaking of old white guys, like I have to record in this reclining chair now because I've... Bad back? Yeah, I have ruined my... I have to go to physical therapy now.

I've ruined my back so badly from podcasting. No. You're not old enough for that. I know. Is it just from sitting a lot? Did I say what I said? See, the thing is, every time we record, I record on my couch, and I'm perched on the edge, and I'm hunched forward.

Yeah. And so it completely fucks up my hips in my back and so i mean it's bad we're not meant to sit on our ass our whole lives as it turns out i'd stand up to write and work and the only time i sit down is when i'm recording yeah um well i mean let it be known that terence ray of the Trillbillies is the first to ever have an occupational. What would it be like occupational disease or injury due to podcasting? Yeah. Podcast ass. It's a growing problem. Podcast. You have that diminished gluteal syndrome.

That's what's got half of it. Yes, exactly. Frankly, you ain't got much to give, my man. That's true. I didn't have much to work with to begin with. Oh, shit. Well, Ken, welcome to the show. This would be your third appearance, technically. Oh, well, Ken, welcome to the show. This would be your third appearance, technically.

Oh, my God. Three times. Thank you for letting me screw up your show so often. I certainly appreciate it. We need all the help we can get screwing up our show. So we always welcome you on. screwing up our show so we we always welcome you on um yeah we had last time we had you on um in a conversation uh was a year ago it was at the very end of last year oh god the before time yeah i mean it's really weird to think about but um at that time we had talked about omua mua

and it's really hard to resist the urge to think that maybe something was opened up some portal or something was opened up by that visit who knows uh yeah it was I mean we live in such a dumb time where we're not allowed to recognize signs and symbols. And so we just have to act like all that's irrelevant. Oh, well, weird space visitor came, dropped right by Earth, and took off as fast as possible. And we barely saw it as it was headed to Jupiter. And we don't know what it is. And nobody knows what it is to this day.

And the head of the uh astrophysicist department thinks it might be the space people coming and we're just like what are you gonna do what are you gonna do and because what we're supposed to do is repent right right that's you know start sacrificing stuff right right you know like uh um i don't know maybe elderly members of the senate that's that's a good place to start yeah um this is uh kind of the big news well there's a few big news items of the day but i mean i woke up to so you're in california right ken i am i'm in far i'm in eastern california um so that would mean that

your senator is one diane feinstein right she's one one of our uh one of our our two charming senators we have here um yeah the i guess the big news today is um there's a big story out in the new yorker about how apparently her cognitive decline is like far worse yeah she thought lindsey graham was kamala harris you know that's what happened there. She got in trouble for that. But as she was saying, if you're going to hear her, you know, Kamala, congratulations. Oh, my God.

There's, and listen, I am no stranger to cognitive blips because my mind has become to mush. But if you look at the standard bearers of the Democratic Party, there's been just a few too many of those cognitive blips for comfort. You know, I think about Joe Biden calling his granddaughter his son that had passed on the campaign. It's like, I don't know about that. Only he could see the ghost. That's the thing.

Like Macbeth or something. that's the thing like mcbeth or something she's got a lot of of home state opposition so there's lots of people anxious for her to you know move into the sunset and she should have done it last term obviously but uh as long as i remember politicians including the the mayors and governors where I grew up in New Orleans, whether they were senile, alcoholic, drug addled, whatever the case was, you did not expect too much from them cognitively. cognitively doesn't bode well does it that we have to treat our senior statesmen statesmen statesmen and women basically like they are uh you know nursing home patients you know they're just pretty much too far gone and we kind of just have to nurture them and i mean you treat them like you know bob hope at Hope at the military Christmas special. Yes.

As long as he can stand there for 10 minutes and read this joke that's not funny. You know, he's an institution. Yeah. Hopefully, though, I saw so much dumb stuff yesterday. People saying, like, we need to have a, you know, age limit for old people being in this or that and it's uh um it's it's ignorant of of all previous history right well i mean in power they don't want to leave right right right right now they'll find a way to stay i mean that's isn't that the whole point it's yeah it's the point for yeah it's it's so who knows and and i'm sure she wants to pick who takes over for her which in california you know we don't want her to pick who's going right

over we would like someone who's vaguely progressive yeah well also somebody that could probably operate a motor vehicle would be nice to you know pick their successor that'd be good yeah or even a telephone that's right yeah i well i mean this is also the same week that... It's just like you get these daily reminders that the overlords are... You know, they're on their way out physically. I mean, this is the same week that Louie Gohmert... I don't know if you guys saw this, but there's that clip going around of him losing a tooth mid-speech.

That is beautiful. Every one of these motherfuckers are like jeff goldblum in the fly i mean it's just like just deteriorating before our eyes and i don't mean that in an ageist way i just mean like maybe you should you know take a few steps back sure because obviously with age like with so many other variables in life, it doesn't necessarily decide whether you have, you know, competency later in life that they make a big deal out of this. Dr. Fauci, you know, America's sexiest hundred year old man. They do this whole thing. It's like a kind of pornography.

You know, he gets up at 4 10 a.m he doesn't eat until 8 p.m and it's a you know a cup of raw beans or something and because he's so dedicated to medicine yeah that's what it is yeah i read that and i'm like yeah dude you need a an assistant you don't need to be doing all of this stuff all day long yeah i mean i like the form of government that is like okay i think i'm i think i'm fine with putting an age limit on legislators but i kind of every society needs its council of elders right i mean yeah because the elders can teach us all kinds of things um but they may not have our best interests in mind somebody who's 87 may not have the same view of the future as someone like me a 33 year old and so who has podcast ass? And so... Stricken in his prom.

Yeah. Yeah. So, like, you know, maybe we need to have legislators who are a little more keyed into the future. But we can have a council of elders. I'm fine with that. You go... Yeah, like witch hats and long robes and they they meet under the Capitol Dome at midnight every equinox or whatever. Yeah, and they read from like the book of the dead

or something that they have to read. Oh, it'd be beautiful. Yeah, I'm fine with that. Put it on C-SPAN. Just doing some entry-level witchcraft on C-SPAN. I'm sure like Robert Byrd knew some ancient witchcraft. Absolutely. My man used to wear a hood, but a different kind of hood.

Yeah. And also, preferably at this council of elders i don't want to have uh 87 year olds that tell you know group of seven or eight kids that they're concerned that the planet's not going to be inhabitable in 10 years to go to hell you know well so yeah so i mean there's been a few so yeah so the news this week we had yeah the the in the New Yorker about Feinstein. We had Gohmert's teeth falling out. I mean, this comes on the back of those pictures from McConnell looking very weird, you know, over the past couple weeks. Very bluish.

Oh, with the sort of corpse hands. Yes. Mummy hands falling out. Yeah. Yeah, they really are sort of corpse hands. Yes. Mummy hands falling out. Yeah. They really are kind of falling apart before our eyes. And then you got Giuliani. Yes, yes. That's what I was going to say next.

Like the shit coming out of his ears and everything. Wow. That's like, we all have experienced that with certain older relatives where it gets kind of, you're not sure if anybody's getting anything out of going to see him. Yeah.

It's all very, I mean, like I've been thinking this week, it's been very prevalent in my mind, at the forefront of my mind, that if we were going to, oh, I don't know, overthrow the government, let's say we were to have a revolution, now would be the time to do it. I mean, honestly, we really don't want to wait for the next crop of young, you know, wet behind the ears earnest um efficient killers in office we don't want we don't want to wait for the turnover i mean right now is the perfect time to do it like because you know it's it's everything's just decrepit everything is um rotting from the inside both institutionally but like literally also physically i mean if you look at these people they are physically rotting in front of your very eyes but they are in a sense a sort of living embodiment of of the the internal rot and collapse of of america's institutions yeah our our you know our infrastructure despite many weeks dedicated to fixing it is collapsing

you drive down the roads and it's uh you know in california that used to be our big thing what are we doing in california well we build immense like 35 lane freeways with spaghetti loops and everything yeah you drive around and it's all falling apart and we're supposed to be the wealthy state in this country yeah you're the blue state yeah yeah where's the money going well i guess it's all going to the same 10 people uh who who were doing so well during the the pandemic yeah so the the physical breakdown of these people seems i can't remember if we've talked we probably have because i always go on about this but i feel that we're very much in a a very symbolic uh visual age where words really don't matter uh the written word in particular i think is part of what what is behind podcasts doing so well where we're kind of clumsily saying what we otherwise would have written but words aren't really believed by anybody, including the people writing them.

Right. And emojis, which are pictographs, the first form of written language, work so well because they get rid of the ambiguity and bullshit of written language. Yeah. Kid, you're not really doing a knockout job promoting a book, but you have coming at this point.

What I mean is, when you buy this book, Desert Oracle, MCDFSG, Nature Essays, ISBN 978374, etc., what you're getting is a lot of pictures there's a lot of pictures in this book here's a picture of Marty Robbins dressed up like a outlaw of some kind lots of pictures, icons so if you're

tired of words too get this book or just get like an Etch-a-Sketch or something and go at it. But it's, I mean, it's true. And it's worse in America because almost all public language is in bad faith. Yeah. And pretty much universally, it's like you don't listen to, say,

a political leader or a business leader for the truth you listen to see what their message is to you if you support them and to your enemies if you don't support them right and that's the entirety of it and so so we just, we don't have, it's, an example of it are these monoliths. You've been following the monoliths? I've been following the monoliths. I've seen the monoliths. The monoliths are a really blatant symbol of our failure of verbal and written communication. Right.

Because they don't say anything. They're a symbol, but it's a symbol that means something to us, especially when we see it in that original context of that pillar of shiny material in what looks like some ancient canyon. It's in Utah, near Bears Ears, actually. ancient canyon it's in utah near bear's ears actually uh what it used to be in bear's ears before the administration chopped it up and people just respond to it in a in a instinctual way yeah yeah you're right it's like you see it i don't know maybe it's because of other sort of pop cultural inputs maybe like space odyssey or something like that i don't know, maybe it's because of other sort of pop cultural inputs,

maybe like Space Odyssey or something like that. I don't know. There is just something about a large object that is uniform, top to bottom, that is very arresting, I suppose. I mean, we've been doing it long before we had language. The stone circles, the Egyptian monuments. Right. Around the world, we have standing stones,

and they're all meant to convey the same thing, a sense of power and eternal cycles of life and whatnot. And're unadorned you know they're stones in a circle yeah you're right you're you're absolutely right it is very interesting to think about because it feels like as a society now we don't have those i don don't know. We do have those, but we don't have them in the way that we used to, I guess. Yeah. I think that what you're saying, though, is it's coming, that that form of communication is coming back in a way. Is that kind of what you're saying? Do you think that that's true?

It is. I think we should just replace everything with stone circles. Wouldn't that be good? And monoliths. I'm with you 100%. We should argue over it. What are some of the theories about the monoliths, like their origins, where they come from,

and all that kind of stuff? How should we feel about the monoliths, Kev? I think we should enjoy it you know that's about all you can do with something like that is so i've been in political media for a long time before i mostly got out and the the time between the presidential election and late January when the new people come in has always been a time where the national news desk sort of relaxes. Right. It's kind of in our seasonal internal calendars that we know every four years we can kind of ignore the news and not worry so much and try to enjoy the holidays and whatever. And that's where these odd stories always kind of spring up and kind of change our focus so the last election at the end of 2016 that's when the new york times came out with their ufo front page stuff yeah right at the monolith yeah it's like

is this there's always some kind of story that that feeds some some deeper kind of archetypal needs when the the political people are taking their holidays right yeah you know and we need it you're right it does feel like um well i don't know what were you gonna say something tom i don't want to cut you off oh no i was just gonna say that that uh the Amu Amu story kind of came to tell. I think the 2018 primaries around there. Yeah, the midterms. Yeah. Midterms.

I'm sorry. Yeah, the midterms. And I can remember getting ready to go into this Thai restaurant in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and I just heard your episode of Desert Oracle, and nothing was the same for me. I've said there, everybody said they're ordered, and I just, I can't get it together. I'm like, but a mua mua. They're looking at me like a crazy, I was like, no, they don't know what it's made of. It's a cylinder. It's a space cylinder. Yeah, and we still don't and we finally just had to you know go on go on with our lives you know like uh because it's it's it's not like uh a acceptable answer to everyone is forthcoming

you know the astrophysicist can't even agree on the nature of the object itself can't agree if it's an asteroid a comet or something else did you guys see kind of on this note did you guys see a few weeks ago there was this news headline i think it kind of fits in the same time frame you're talking about ken post-election there was this headline they tried to do like a 2.amua 2.0, but it was, you know, janky and fucked up. The headline was like, comet in our solar system worth $80 trillion billion or something like that. Oh, yeah. Did you guys see that? Yeah, but they're going to do what we call on this planet rare earth minerals.

Right. Our phones to ruin all of our lives we need a lot more of this stuff so if we can go mine this asteroid the idea is that they can like cut chunks out and drop them onto earth that'd be funny if it dropped onto Silicon Valley. That's right. We could get that locket back. Sure, we don't know what happened. If it made me rich, I would be okay with it being dropped in my front yard. Just landing in my front yard, a massive pile of rich space rock. Dead carrier pigeon or something. They could do that to distribute wealth across earth just

blow the thing up right in it that in the earth's atmosphere and whatever lands you get to keep well i mean with with our luck and uh both sharing the wealth and in resource exploitation, we'd cut the rocks the wrong size and they'd kill us all. Right. You're absolutely right. But, you know, I hate to make it gloomy. I was trying to agree with the the positive nature of these mystery stories. You know, last year we had a mystery story that did go briefly national, but it was kind of too much for people. It kind of faded out.

Over the Great Plains, we had thousands of people seeing these mystery drones. Yeah, I messaged you about this recently. They were. It started seeing these mystery drones yeah i messaged you about this recently they were yeah they were it started it started just about a year ago is when it got crazy um it started in northeastern

colorado rural flat part of colorado and radiated out and what people were seeing and these you know these these were not confused confused Airbnb guests who had never been outside and seen a satellite or whatever before. These were people who live on farmland in the great plains and know what, you know, know what they're used to seeing. And what they were seeing were these grid patterns of what they called drones um and they were flying there there would be anywhere between like six to about a dozen of them flying in a uh uh equidistant space line about 300 feet over the ground and 300 feet is not far

you know you can you can see what's there if there's something to see. If a plane flew over you at 300 feet, you'd have a heart attack. Yeah. And they the people who saw these things had various theories. They thought that it seemed to be like something was doing some sort of surveying or grid. So they started saying maybe it's China trying to survey the Great Plains. It could not. They look at a map. You know, it doesn't make much sense.

And why are they flying at night? That's something you'd want to do in the daytime. It's hard to fly at night. And the FAA says you're not even supposed to fly commercial drones at night because it's unsafe. And this was happening in freezing ass Midwestern weather, high winds. Nobody ever saw one take off. Nobody ever saw one land. And it gets weirder. Some of them would chase or pace sheriff's cars, big rigs on the interstates, farm trucks. Others, after people were outside looking at them and freaking out, would go inside. They'd come down and shine the lights in the people's houses. Oh, my God.

Yeah. Holy. And this wasn't like fringe stuff. You know, the Reddit subreddits about aliens or whatever this was the denver post did the best steady coverage of this because it was that much of a hysteria so they had they sent reporters and photographers they got close-up pictures of the things flying right overhead and if you know UFO lore, they look like black triangles. Right. White light in the middle, red lights on the end, and silent or with kind of a humming.

Makes your hair stand up, like static electricity kind of stuff. Right. So when they stopped, they stopped when the first cases of the Rona arrived in the united states as far as we knew at the time yeah so i looked at that i mean am i the only idiot out here who's ever read like a carl young book yeah this this was a a symbol of something, a terrible kind of intruder that was coming into the heart of America and was going to mess everything up. Yeah.

And I wonder if there were similar signs and omens because there's a worldwide pandemic, obviously, in other places. And I've gone kind of looking around to see if i could find like you know did china have a bunch of weird stuff happening in late october or something it's hard to tell because i i can't read the the the few ufo site there's ufo sites are not really tolerated in china really because they breed suspicion and paranoia. But there are a few, but I can't read them. And so I don't know.

That is so interesting. It's like UFO sites are almost encouraged in America. I mean, in many ways, we live in a culture that very much encourages you. Well, I don't know. Maybe not at the same time. You're right. you're right you're right and and it has been american policy it has been pentagon policy and uh intel agency policy since the robertson panel in the 1950s to encourage lunatic ideas about UFOs. Right. What it does is it marginalizes the people who see them.

It marginalizes the people who consider them a threat. And it sort of sweeps the issue under the rug. Yeah, it deflects criticism from the Pentagon's military activities and basically gets you onto other you on to other you know chasing down other avenues you know if you're not if you're if you're if you're looking into the ufos you're not looking into the star wars missile program or um you know selling guns to contrast or whatever yeah right right which was the 80s situation very much right The U.S. military involved in every possible dirty thing. Also building through our aerospace contractors like Skunk Works, Lockheed,

McDonnell Douglas, mostly in California, in the California desert, building all these fantastic things, stealth bombers, stealth fighters. And so now and then there's a case of a prototype of the B-1. Not the B-1. What the hell is the stealth fighter designation? I don't remember. The jet stealth version. One of those crashed around Death Valley in what's called the Supersonic Corridor,

which is public land that connects Groom Lake Area 51 with Edwards Air Force Base. So they can fly real fast and low there and not get complaints. And if something crashes, they can go pick up all the pieces. It's not like in a outlet mall parking lot, you know, something crashed there and it got around locally. And this was back when we still had active UFO groups like move on with volunteer investigators in every County. And so stories were fed to the UFO people that there were all these sightings system, kind of like close encounter style UFO. Yeah. So that you'd see those monitoring this stuff because all the aerospace spies

follow up all the UFO stuff for signs of, you know, those monitoring this stuff, because all the aerospace spies follow all the UFO stuff for signs of new projects, new stuff, and just to muddy the waters. And so then it's just like, oh, it's another nutty thing. We don't have to go comb the desert to see if we can find the motherboard from the stealth fighter. Well, I mean, in some cases, the history of this is very fascinating. You talk a little bit about this in your book.

I wanted to get you to talk a little bit about one of the characters in your book that you talk about a lot. There's some overlap here between military technology, rocket missile technology, and the occult. I think that finds its best expression in Jack Parsons. Who was Jack Parsons? What did he do? What was his connection to the occult, and what was his job?

Jack Parsons was a self-taught rocket genius. Self-taught rocket genius. He, along with Werner Von Braun from Nazi Germany, are kind of fathers of modern rocketry. And a lot of these pioneers were these kind of self-taught savants who figured things out. And technology was was evolving so rapidly during those times that you could come in and be not much more than a high school dropout or whatever and get yourself into this world. Right. Parsons loved rocketry. He was a futurist in that sense but he was also an occultist and he was a student or a disciple of uh alistair crowley um the the great beast the great satan the most wicked man that ever lived.

That's right. That's right. I think that came from the Hearst newspapers in New York. Ah, okay. And then he had the great Satan that came from the Fleet Street tabloid press, I believe. Or I might have those backwards. But he encouraged the stuff. Yeah.

He wanted to be notorious. So a lodge of the O.T.O., the the the black magic lodge that he started from the ruins of the old Golden Dawn, which was a romantic era British European occult group that Yates was in and all these other people. He had a big house, a big old like craftsman mansion in Pasadena on South Orange. And it was sort of the bohemian headquarters for Pasadena in the 40s. And he had all of his interesting buddies buddies including science fiction writers who were into the occult and his best buddy at the time they even shared you know wives and such uh was uh l ron hubbard interesting right they lived together as roommates in this place um leading up in the world war i and after World War II,

or maybe only after World War II. There's good histories on this. I'm not prepped with the dates on this. I'm sorry. It's a general era. We got you. The most important thing that they did, occult-wise,

is they went out and did this ritual called the Babylon Working in the Mojave Desert, just outside of what's now Edwards Air Force Base. cult-wise is they went out and did this ritual called the Babylon working in the Mojave desert, just outside of what's now Edwards air force base. I think it was still called Murrock at the time, um, where Chuck Yeager made all his jet, uh, speed or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And they did this ritual, uh,

that was supposed to open a dimensional portal and let these spirits come in, these sort of spirits and entities and intelligences that Crowley had encountered at the Great Pyramids in Egypt. And he drew this one lamb, which looks just like your classic E.T. with the big head and the little slit for a mouth and no nose, etc. And they they thought it worked because one of the things that they summoned was the the the whore of Babylon, the red haired harlot. War of Babylon, the red haired harlot. And this this artist who had a long career in in the sort of Hollywood avant garde, Marjorie Cameron, showed up at the house on South Orange in Pasadena and said, hi, I hear you're doing the magic rituals and stuff. I'm interested. And so L. Ron and Jack Parsons are like, it worked. He has red hair. So it was supposed to bring in this new age, this new age where the Crowleyan thing that doesn't get mentioned much

is that he really was sort of a utopian. And he was strong on the belief that every man and woman becomes stars, not like Hollywood stars. But of course, it's a nice twist that it happens kind of in that in that realm in L.A. Yeah. But because we're made out of star dust right sort of a reverse of carl sagan yeah yeah exactly so uh that's who parsons was parsons blew himself up in his garage um there are conspiracy theories about you know whatever happened but he was kind of in decline he was so eccentric that the the rocketry institution that that he was one of the primary creators of the jet propulsion lab ended up becoming caltech part of caltech and he was sort

of shuffled off because he was too weird. And he ended up working on special effects for Hollywood movies, doing explosions and things like that. And he had a lab in his garage and he was playing, you know, playing with rocket fuel in the garage. So maybe it's a grand conspiracy, but it wasn't like he was working on something real hot that was coming up he was just trying to get by l ron hubbard stole his boat right right took it to florida with all of his money i think too right yeah and and the and the horror babylon wow what a coup i just watched the master the other night truly it was incredible the what the master oh man paul thomas anderson it's a great movie oh i've never seen that yeah yeah it's unreal oh really it's great um no uh

it's a very compelling story right right? Like this idea that something happened, something very maybe supernatural or powerful or whatever happened and released demons or spirits or something bad into the world. into the world i mean i'm just finishing a a third rewatch of twin peaks and it very much feels like david lynch takes the position that that event was the atomic bomb um that that was the sort of event that unleashed so much you know misery and in in you know hurt and pain into the world i don't know yeah it did and as it's uh and there's been this uh uh this this this idea that 1946 47 was the the the the move into the the age of of kind of rapid self-destruction. And it certainly has felt like that during my time on this planet. Yeah. Because the first stuff I remember was mutually assured destruction, acid rain, love canal.

Yeah. love canal yeah the the oil embargoes and people park for two nights outside the gas station everything so it it does i mean of course every era has its disasters and stuff but it's it seemed like a kind of rapidly escalating fallout from a new international order based on nuclear war. Yeah. Speaking of, you know, just as a sort of side tangent, I think David Lynch and Mark Frost are both very interested in Jack Parsons, right? I mean, I think isn't that kind of whole mythology behind the return, the third season? There's two parts of return, the third season. There's two,

there's two parts of this. As I understand, there is Lynch who doesn't like to get into these details and likes the, the, the, the symbolism and the, the visuals and is less concerned about what the, the narrative threads are.

And there's Mark Frost who writes these books that are kind of companions to Twin Peaks that weave in all of these supernatural and conspiracy and UFO stories into that world. conspiracy and ufo stories into into that world and some of this stuff got into the show in um the second or third second the second season i guess yeah definitely i've had a hard time watching those i didn't like them at the time they're rough they're pretty rough yeah the creators left yeah like okay what what is this show is it a soap opera right right is it like strangers with candy it was like that for a while uh and they they they lost the the the plot but they did involve this air force colonel or general or something, Bobby's father.

And he's working at some sort of station that's supposed to be picking up, you know, E.T. like SETI transmissions. Major Briggs. Yep. Yep. Briggs. And there's a boy. I just upgraded his military career, didn't I? Right up to general. We got a general in 20. And there's a point where they try to find the source of these signals. And the source is not space.

The source is the forest. Right, right. So this kind of loops back to the kind of transdimensional portals opening up and the evil or whatever the hell coming through. Yeah. And these are ancient ideas, too. Right, right. I mean, honestly, throughout the pandemic, I've found myself warming up more and more to the idea.

I mean, Lake Lynch is very fascinated, I think, by sort of breaks in reality and just sort of holes you can fall into in that other things come out of into the world. And I mean, I don't know. I could talk about this forever. It's totally tangential. But there was there is a connection with jack parsons um but i i wanted to talk about like you know why include him in the book what what is it about characters like parsons and a lot of these other stories that you're trying to what is the thread you're trying to sort of weave through them in this sort of tapestry uh that you're presenting of the desert? The thread with these people,

whether they are people who come out and dedicate their lives to preserving the desert, like Minerva Hamilton Hoyt, who was the kind of John Muir, not kind of, she was the equivalent of the John Muir for Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Anza Borrego. Artists, whether they be musicians or fine artists, dancers, whatever, there's all these characters who are drawn out to the desert because the life of the city, the life of the civilization, while they need it for certain things, they can't access the connection with the divine or the devil or whatever it is. Because you've got to be in a quiet place for that.

You've got to have space. You know, everybody always, if they're a prophet prophet a magician a madman you know charles manson did the same thing they need the serenity and the quiet because a lot of these people a lot of artists a lot of occultists uh and a lot of the people who have done what we consider great evil and who have these occult tendencies as well, they are what in old societies would have been seers or shamanistic tendencies. And when you have that, you're bombarded by everything that happens around you. So you get on a subway and you can't turn off all the other people and all their problems and their pain and their thoughts and their perversions and everything. And you're kind of assaulted all the time by the psychic noise. So to free yourself from the psychic noise, you got to go to the woods.

You got to go to the mountains. You got to go to the desert. You have to get away from people. So like as Yates wrote, your mind becomes still like a pond, and then the spirits can can uh uh can can cause ripples right because otherwise it's it's waves it's choppy so the so it's it's my personal argument for beyond climate change beyond extinction crises why we need these spaces and this public land. Because without it, the people who are supposed to do these things can't do them.

And our society gets progressively more neurotic and anxious and insane. So coming back to the monoliths, whoever did that first monolith, that's a magic act. Because that released a tremendous amount of anxiety and tension worldwide, like overnight. Because suddenly everybody's like, oh, I don't't know i don't even know what to call this of course you don't we've forgotten how to respond to such things right um and we can recognize the delight at least but it's very difficult to stop before we have to try to explain it you know oh i think it must be such and such from this gallery because this artist died and he made these things and da-da-da.

And it's our habit these days, but we don't know how to just be in dumb wonder. Yeah, it sucks all the wonder and magic out of life, those types. Disenchantment. yeah yeah the great the great poison of modern life yeah okay which of of all these stories i mean i mean you wait from la llorona which is now a major motion picture to uh your spade coooley story, which should be in the Smithsonian or something. Which of all these stories, all these madmen and shamans and ghosts and ghouls and gods, which is most near and dear to you that you actually,

for the uninitiated, say that the first time Desert Oracle listener, where should they start? For the uninitiated, say, the first-time Desert Oracle listener, where should they start? I think one of my favorites in the book is about the Phoenix Lights of 1997. Yeah. Because there's a lot of that stuff in one tale there. The Phoenix Lights, for people who haven't heard about it or didn't experience it

tens of thousands experienced it was a night-long episode of enormous things at very low altitude all over arizona in a line. They started south of Las Vegas and kind of covered the whole state and then disappeared into Sonora, Mexico after crossing Tucson. And it, uh, uh, it really shook people. Um, and this happened in a, in a big city. It happened like in the hours after work when people were out doing things, shopping. It was dark. It was March that it happened.

And a lot of the elements that we see in these responses to spectacular and inexplicable things happen there. And one of the best is that the governor at the time, Fife Symington, once the story went national and the kind of hysteria was picking up again in Phoenix, he called a press conference because the national media had come to Phoenix. What's going on? Even though it was like long over by then and he comes out and he says uh well we found the culprit and he's got a couple of arizona cops march out one of his aides with like a halloween alien costume on oh my god and the press is like

it worked. It totally deflated it. It's like the air went out of the whole thing. The national media went home. Yeah. And you were free to ignore it and free to laugh at it. Ten years later, he goes on Larry King on CNN and says, I actually saw it. It was a mile wide.

It was hovering in place over the Phoenixoenix mountains preserve right behind my house he saw it and he just stood there he was an air force pilot you know and he stood there looking at this thing he's like it doesn't add up it doesn't make any sense it it had no aerodynamics things don't't float. You know, gigantic, seemingly solid things. The width of the mountain range. And he watched it in wonder. He got on the phone personally with the Luke Air Force Base Knight officer, whoever was in charge. And they're like, we don't know what it is.

One pilot reported it to the FAA. And as soon as he reported it, he forgot it. He and his son were in a private plane and they're coming into Sky Harbor and he's piloting. And his son says, Hey, what, what are those? And he was entranced by them. And he said, I don't know. It was a V-shape of giant lights between him and the airport. He gets on the radio. Is there any traffic there?

Nope. You want to report something? And he's like, okay, I'll report it. So he reports it. He instantly forgets the entire thing. Like a year later, he walks into his house and his wife is watching a TV show about aliens, you know, like ancient AOs, the UFO hour or whatever. His wife is Goldie Hawn because he's Kurt Russell. And he's like, hi, honey, I'm home. And he's sort of listening while he's doing whatever. And suddenly he hears the announcer on the TV show say the tail number. Here's the

tail number of the pilot who reported it. And he's like, that's my tail number. That's my plane. So he goes and gets his log books. And and sure enough that's when he had dropped his adult son off in phoenix because he had a girlfriend there or something and he completely forgot about it what so yeah yeah there's uh when he was promoting one of these uh space movies he did i don't know a year or two ago or something he's on a uk morning tv show and talks about that was the first i'd ever heard about that that's amazing oh my god 23 years ago you know it was kurt russell so you sometimes the people who experience these things are kind of icons in our life.

Yeah. And it just usually doesn't come out. But when when I was a kid, you heard about Jimmy Carter's close up UFO sight. Yeah. Heard about Ronald Reagan in a plane between L.A. and Sacramento, I believe, going over Bakersfield by the Sierra Foothills. They see one and it paces them. And, you know, he was public about that. You had Shirley MacLaine writing books about UFOs and everything.

And I don't know. It seemed like people got ashamed of it for a while yeah but it's i like those stories that it's like okay it doesn't have to be like some lunatic in the in the desert uh who spent a a year in an old miner's hut until you know she went mad and started seeing the spirits and whatever it can happen over a over a big city on just a regular night with people out driving on the interstate. Yeah. Yeah, Ken, I'd messaged you maybe about a month or two ago after some similar lights.

In my opinion, they looked very similar to the Phoenix lights, which you can find both of these on YouTube. But there were some lights that appeared over Hawaii in late October. And the videos I thought were pretty astonishing. And the only thing I can find, I mean, you know, every time one of these videos comes out, which I agree, there's something that's very powerful about them because they're experienced by many people. This isn't, you know know this isn't something that one person experiences i mean if you if you can just imagine what it must feel like to be in a in a large city while something massive dark but with a few lights you know blinking here and there moving over your city i mean that is an just an incredible feeling a very um thrilling and terrifying feeling um but i saw this thing

about how the lights that appeared over hawaii in late october someone said that it was like a rocket from a re-entry from like a chinese rocket in 2008 it's just like that doesn't it makes no sense i mean yeah you know what i mean Like anybody who doesn't even have any sort of scientific literacy can see that that is not what that is. Yeah. This thing looked like a spaceship out of like Battlestar Galactica or something. Yeah. It was ridiculous with all kinds of little lights blinking inside of it and a very defined shape. all kinds of little lights blinking inside of it and a very defined shape you know a kind of uh

like battle cruiser from star trek shape i mean it was ridiculous it was almost too much it really was it was very um overwhelming watching it in many ways that was very i don't know so it yeah these things happen they continue to happen we tend to shrug them off because we don't have a system anymore to deal with this. If we were in, say, the Roman Empire or ancient Japan or something like that, you had priests and magicians and their job was to interpret these things. Right. Or you'd see like that. and you're like, all right, let's go talk to the wizards and see what they say. And they're like, we got to start planning different crops. Okay.

Right, right, right. Well, I mean, yes, you have the ones that interpret it, but then you have the people that also catalog it. And that's what you're doing, right? And you're adding a sort of system of understanding to it. And that's why it's important for people to look at your book and to listen to your show. That's why I listen to it anyways.

Well, thank you. I do try to kind of build a structure where all this stuff fits in naturally. Because I do think it all fits in naturally. You know, it's all the parts of us that the Industrial Revolution tried to stomp out of our souls. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it never works. Right. right you know you kill one thing but something else comes up you know and this is a another conversation and i'm gonna have to say

goodbye shortly because you know who i i gotta go talk to a ufo guy next nice very nice yeah is uh but the um i've been in my house. Nobody wants to talk to me for a year. And now, you know, the book comes out. I got like three days where people want to talk to me. It's going to be over and I'm going to be like, you know, looking at my Christmas tree alone next week. I'll remember you all very fondly in my time of holiday loneliness. you all very fondly in my in my time of holiday loneliness uh the the the the the the the the lack of of structures for us to develop and explore

these things is what causes things like q anon right yeah there's a people need spirituality they need magic they need belief and stripped of the eternal forms that we had of that going back to our nomadic beginnings you you make you make a religion out of anything. You make it out of lottery tickets. You make it out of drug gang deaths. You make it out of some used car salesman who's running the country for some reason. It's because it's there.

It's something to work with and other people know about it it's like you know i could go well i know a lot of weird people but even so i only know a handful of people that i could talk about things like jack parsons and interdimensional portals and that kind of stuff with but if if I want to talk about national politics, oh, everybody's got an opinion about that. You're exactly right. So that becomes a framework to fill other needs. Yeah. I agree.

And once again, that's why I listen to your show, and that's why I encourage everyone else to go do the same. If they want to buy the book, Ken, where should they go buy that? What should they type in? You should go to your local bookstore. This is unlike my magazine, which is a real half-assed endeavor that you can find at like 24 stores in the world. This is a real publisher. It's MCD Books. So it should be in the nature section of your bookstore. And if you're not going physically to your bookstore,

go to their website and mail order it through there. And that way you have some money go to your local business instead of, you know, JB up in Seattle. Maybe you'll still have a bookstore next summer, you know, when things maybe are better. So you can do it that way. If you don't have a bookstore around at all, just type Desert Oracle into your surveillance device, and it'll come up on all the online booksellers. And the magazine you can get from our website, which is DesertOracle.com.

Great. I mean, I have not finished the book yet, i am reading it right now and i really am i just came today i keep i keep putting in the frame but i forget we're not you know we're audio but we're seeing it that kid you know it reminds me of what you guys are talking about that's yes it is a symbol in many ways. Well, thank you. I hope you like the rest of it. There's a bunch of stuff that's never been in print in there, so that's why I feel like it's a real book

and not what in publishing they call a bind-up. Right. No, it certainly is. Well, Ken, thanks so much for coming on the show. We have a blast every time you come on. Yeah. Oh, I love to do it. I love listening to you guys.

And I hope you all have a merry winter solstice and great conjunction coming up on December 21st. Jupiter and Saturn are going to come together. And I think the last time it happened, we also had a great plague. It was 800 years ago. Oh, my God. Interesting. Hopefully we pre-got the plague and this is just. Hopefully.

Hopefully. Because we have that, you know, just on time economy now. That's right. So we're a little ahead. But, yeah, that's coming up. So make sure and go out and look at them it's gonna uh that that's supposedly what was over uh um bethlehem that that influenced the nativity story as well wow really wow yeah um sure what night is this pregnant not yet okay well yeah keep an eye out you know okay this may be the year oh man um well all great

uh omens warning signs uh and other um ephemera from ken lane as always. Thanks so much, Ken. We are looking forward to the next time we get to talk to you. Thank you. May the great Satan and our Christmas Lord bless the Trillbillies and all of theirs. Thank you so much, Ken. We appreciate that.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Thank you.