Flies

Flies. Real world ones. Westworld ones. Sfx ones. Political ones.

via GIPHY

via GIPHY

Silence of the Lambs

Iowa Police Killings: A New Aurora

Aurora & 70th crime scene.

Two Des Moines/Urbandale, Iowa, metro-area police officers were shot and killed in apparent "ambush style" attacks early Wednesday, November 2, 2016.

At about 1:06 a.m., police from Urbandale and Des Moines departments responded to a report of gunfire at the intersection of 70th Street and Aurora Avenue.

Merle Hay & Sheridan crime scene.

At about 1:26 a.m., a Des Moines police officer was shot near the intersection of Merle Hay Road and Sheridan Avenue while responding to the scene where the Urbandale officer was shot. The Des Moines officer was transported to Iowa Methodist Medical Center, where he died.

Both officers were gunned down in their patrol cars.

As of 7:30 a.m., police identified Scott Michael Greene as a suspect in the fatal shootings. Police said he should be considered armed and dangerous. He is 46, 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing about 180 pounds, with brown hair and green eyes. He was last known to be driving a blue 2011 Ford F-150 with Iowa license plate 780 YFR. The truck has a silver-colored topper with a ladder rack, police said.

A man named Scott Greene, who matches the description of the suspect, recorded himself protesting against police, as he was being kicked out of a football game in Urbandale, Iowa, on October 14, 2016. He reportedly had been holding American and Confederate flags in front of African-Americans, and had formerly been in trouble for calling a neighbor the "n-word."

He was captured Wednesday morning. Near the G-Trail in Redfield, Iowa. That's correct. Aurora. Redfield. (http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2016/11/02/scott-michael-greene-convicted-combative-2014-encounters/93157528/)

Aurora (dawn) is a familiar moniker in the twilight language name game, especially since the Aurora, Colorado (red dawn) shootings of 2012. Now we have the combination of Aurora + Red(field) again.

Jennifer Lawrence plays Aurora Lane in Passengers.

Sheridan means "wild" or "wild man" to some. The more standard origin states it is from an Irish surname which was derived from Ó Sirideáin meaning "descendant of Sirideán". The name Sirideán means "searcher" in Gaelic.

Merle means "blackbird" (via French, from Latin merula).

Des Moines traces back to the French, being a city "of the monks."

The way to the meaning of the word Iowa is through the Ioway. Ioway is the French transcription of Ayuway, which is what the Illini and Meskwaki called the tribe. The roots of this word only get more twisted. Ayuway is actually an alteration of what the Dakota called the tribe: Ayuxba (AH-you-khbah), which is believed to mean “sleepy ones.” Ayuxba to Iowa: the “sleepy ones.”
The Ioway tribe do not refer to themselves as the Ioway, but Baxoje (BAH-kho-jay), a name believed to come from what the Otoe called the tribe. The Otoe and Ioway sometimes camped with one another. Once, the Ioway camp was covered in ashy snow. The Otoe called the group baxoje, “grey snow” or “ashy snow-heads.” Source.

Iowa is part of the disputed route of the oil pipeline, the subject of a First Peoples protest, which is mostly not in the news.

Stand with Standing Rock has become the protest call.

Westworld: The Shade, Time Travelers and Aliens

In HBO's Westworld, the Shade are viewed by the "hosts" (i.e. the robots) as a netherworld reality.

The Shade is the name that the tribes outside of Sweetwater have assigned to the amusement park's technicians, the guys in hazmat suits.

Hector...explains that the masked monster is a "shade" who walks between worlds. The shade was apparently "sent from hell to oversee our world," confirming Maeve's sanity.... Source.

This is all science-fiction, of course, but appropriately alerts Forteans and synchromystics to the continued awareness being brought forth to the television audiences of aliens, outsiders, and others being introduced into our culture.

Travelers in space suits, aliens all, may be distance journeying people from faraway or merely time travelers from our future. Who knows?

It is true that folks in gear to protect themselves may only look like aliens to us on another time-space plane.

None of this is new (excuse the time-referenced word), except as found in this current series from HBO. As recently as Rob Szarek's Huffington Post article in 2013, or in some passages in Jerome Clark's ufo books, discussions of time travel and aliens are in evidence. 

Talk of Japanese Dogū being aliens is old hat to ufologists too.

What I merely wish to state is that HBO's Westworld is a new entry into our future programming within our modern society's point of view. Curiously. We are being prepared for something.

As to the Maze, that's another cup of tea.

And clues in red snake tattoos, that too will be for another time.

In the meantime, let us ponder that one person's alien may be another person's neighbor.

(While aren't any of these - above, the Shade doll - commercially available? Is this Westworld wooden doll based on a real kachina? Am I the only person who feels the "need" to have one for Museum display?)

Kachinas are definitely seen as travelers between this world and another. But what other world is that? Discussions of kachinas as aliens, of course, is nothing new.

November 7, 2016: The Fortean news website Daily Grail has joined the roundtable on this with "Alien Abduction in Westworld?"

Precursor to Creepy Clowns: Ronald McDonald

Could the precursor to 2016's Creepy Clown Epidemic be an icon of clownish food-aligned pleasure, Ronald McDonald? Could this imagery have become more creepy via social media? Was it in our consciousness before the first 1981 Phantom Clown sightings? Was Ronald McDonald the setup for Stephen King's IT?

When on Tuesday, October 11, 2016, the McDonald's Corporation acknowledged that it will henceforth be "thoughtful in respect to Ronald McDonald's participation in community events" as a result of the "current climate around clown sightings in communities," it became obvious that the overlap was not imaginary.

Ronald McDonald was created in 1963 as a human figure in a clown costume who ate hamburgers (allegedly by Willard Scott, who played TV's original Bozo).  It was Coco the Clown who originated today's costume and makeup in 1966, according to Wikipedia. But the industrial art use of this imagery goes further back that Willard Scott.

The plastic lifesize sculptures of Ronald McDonald, apparently, came on the scene earlier, in 1962, according to the authoritative site by Topher, who

identified five large 3-D statues. A 6-foot tall standing Ronald with his right hand waiving. A four-foot seated model with hand on chin. A four-foot kneeling model with both hands on his thighs. The life-sized sitting model which is pretty common today, and the 7-foot standing statue of Ronald holding McDonald's food items which is still being manufactured.

The advent of the Internet has caused the employment of the Ronald McDonald statues in a variety of compromising poses. The most frequent one photographed is the seated figure.

The seated Ronald was manufactured by Dutchland Plastics Corporation, out of Ootsburg, Wisconsin, for Interior Systems (Fond du Lac, Wisconsin). The life-size statue has been in production since 1992. The mold design is a three-piece cast aluminum mold, but the manufacturer runs the part as a two-piece mold. The part has extensive undercuts. Through 1997, over 3,000 statues have been ordered since production began. The materials used include rigid PVC and HCFC blown urethane foam. Dutchland Plastics won The PVC Award (a trade award) in 1997 for their work.
Original versions needed to be retrofit to prevent to a child's head from becoming wedged between Ronald's legs. Source.

Ronald McDonald is a trademark of McDonald's Corporation. The fair use of the following photographs is for the editorial purpose of examining a sociological and psychological phenomenon that has made use of these normally corporate-aligned sculptures. Public outsider art has been created from seemingly harmless statues.

Of course, a satisfied Ronald McDonald appears in social media too.

While, meanwhile, other statues have been used to frighten, as well, or mystify.

Then danger strikes and is punished.