BS: The Great Airship Mystery

Subject: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 30 Oct 11 - 03:25 PM

November 17, 1896—Sacramento, California – Residents report a mysterious bright light in the evening sky about 1000 feet up. Some say a large dark shape could be seen behind it. Some said they could hear the sound of singing coming from the craft. One witness, R. J. Lowery, a street railway employee, said there were two men inside the craft working bicycle pedals and heard a voice issue a command to increase elevation to avoid hitting the church steeple (must have been a damned high steeple). The light, said Lowery, was mounted on the front of the craft, which he said was cigar-shaped, and had paddle wheels on the sides like a Fulton contraption. Another witness, George Scott, was an assistant to the Secretary of State who went up to the capitol dome with several others to get a better look and claimed the object had three lights and was a large oblong in shape.

Two nights later, Colonel H. G. Shaw was riding his buggy through the countryside when he came upon a most singular sight: a large craft, 125 feet long and 25 feet in diameter, with a metallic or shiny hull, pointed at both ends with a rudder at one end. There were no ports or openings, no markings, no exterior features as lights or struts.   Three beings covered from head to foot with a fine hair, exited the craft somehow and approached Shaw making a strange "warbling" noise. They stood in excess of seven feet. They examined his buggy (no report on how Shaw's horses reacted) and then attempted to force Shaw from his buggy into the craft but gave up when they realized he was much heavier than they. The beings returned to their craft and sped off. Shaw felt they were from Mars. His story is classified as the first known alien abduction…or attempted abduction in this case.

The mystery light reappeared over Sacramento on November 21 and was also allegedly seen by thousands of witnesses as it made appearances over Folsom, San Francisco and Oakland on the same night. It moved against the wind and one witness, Jacob Zemansky, who watched it through a telescope, claimed the light was an electric arc-type of intense brightness which bobbed as it flew rather than moving in the straight line. The craft took a half an hour to cross Sacramento and was observed by hundreds including the deputy sheriff and the district attorney. In San Francisco, hundreds more saw it including the mayor and they watched as it shone its searchlight down on the rocks over the beach scaring the seals.

A San Francisco attorney then claimed he was representing the man who had built the airship. The flights were not publicized to avoid possible theft of his ideas. The attorney (whose last name was Collins) stated the 150-foot-long object had two 18-foot canvas wings and a bird's tail also made of canvas for a rudder and could carry 15 passengers. He claimed to have seen it demonstrated for him and that it flew under perfect control. Unable to substantiate his claims, Collins faded from the public eye. Another lawyer, a former attorney-general name William Henry Hart, then claimed that there were, in fact, two airships, each could carry four men and a thousand pounds of dynamite and that they would be used to bomb Havana. Hart too faded from the public eye when he failed to substantiate his claims.

Nothing more was heard of the airship through 1896 but on February 1, 1897, an airship appeared over the town of Hastings, Nebraska and was reported in the Omaha Bee the following day. On the 5th, it was reported over Invale and on the 16th it was over Omaha.

The stories became more absurd as sightings continued. One man in Arkansas stated that the occupants of the airship told him they were on their way to Cuba with a Hotchkiss gun to "kill Spaniards." A witness in Texas said the occupants told him they were descendants of the Twelve Lost Tribes of Israel. The Albion Weekly ran a story that an airship appeared inches away from two witnesses and then disappeared and was instantly replaced by a man who showed them a device that could shrink the ship so that he could carry it in his pocket, which he then showed them. The St. Louis-Dispatch ran a story on April 10, 1897 concerning a witness's sighting of a grounded airship in Springfield, Missouri. The witness, W. H. Hopkins, said the craft was 20 feet long and eight feet in diameter with three propellers and was occupied by a beautiful nude woman and nude bearded man. They seemed to indicate to him that they were from Mars.

By April 11, the craft was reported over Chicago and a photo was taken of it although it could be anything.

Airship?

On April 15, the craft was over Kalamazoo, Michigan where it was reported to have exploded with a very loud report. Yet, the next day, the Table Rock Argus ran a story of a sighting of an airship that carried "many passengers" and that among them was a woman tied to a chair being cared for by another woman while a man with a pistol stood guard over them. The craft was gone before police could arrive.

A few days later, the story of Alexander Hamilton of Leroy, Kansas emerged and became famous because UFO nuts latched onto it like bulldogs. Hamilton claimed that on the night of April 19, he heard a commotion amongst his cattle and went out to investigate. He saw a large airship hovering overhead which had a red cable lowered around a bawling heifer that was stuck in a fence. When Hamilton tried to free the animal from the fence, the airship then lifted off with it. He described the occupants as so hideous that they gave him nightmares. Of course, Hamilton then claimed he made the whole thing up in order to win a Liar's Club prize—the affidavit containing the admission being recovered in 1982.

Some time after this, the story of the airship that hit Judge Proctor's windmill in Aurora, Texas came out. The pilot of the craft was killed and mangled in the crash. His body was buried in Christian fashion in the local cemetery. Wreckage contained unknown "hieroglyphic figures" .    MUFON found the grave in 1973 but could not get permission to exhume it for several years during which time they claimed the stone marker and grave had vanished.

At the end of April, the mysterious airship(s) vanished and wouldn't be seen for some time but, by then, airships were common. Airships were not uncommon during the 1896-7 flap but this one would have been ahead of any known technology of that day. Remarkably, the sightings followed a general west-to-east drift in chronological order. Some think it was the planet Venus which was prominent in the sky during the flap and which faded considerably by the end of the flap. The problem, though, is that the airships were visible on overcast nights when Venus would not have been visible. In fact, the original sightings over Sacramento both occurred on overcast, drizzly nights.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 30 Oct 11 - 03:31 PM

What's odd is that this phenomenon kept repeating every few years only with more advanced craft replacing the earlier ones. By the thirties, people were seeing mysterious planes, ghost fliers as they were called. They flew in all kinds of weather and were seen in areas where airplanes were very rare (mainly in upper Scandinavia). They are never seen taking off or landing (I've read fairly recently articles from Britain of people being scared half out of their wits by a World War II fighter plane that comes in low over them as though it might crash. Where it comes from and where it goes is not known). Then it became ghost rockets in the 1940s that were also seen mostly over Scandinavia. They would fly silently and explode silently—usually.

In one case, a ghost rocket allegedly crashed on July 19, 1946 at Lake Kölmjärv in Sweden. At about a quarter of twelve noon on a very hot summer day, Knut Lindbäck and Beda Persson watched a dull gray object Lindbäck claimed was "two meters long and had a snub nose and a stern that was pointed" fall out of the sky and into the lake throwing up a huge cascade of water. Lindbäck also thought the object also had two small wing-like protrusions on the sides but could not be certain of this. "Everything happened so quickly," he said. Frideborg Tagebo was standing about 600 feet away from the point of impact and was jolted by the terrific explosion. "When the thing struck down," Tagebo said, "it was like a bomb had detonated." Tagebo's dog ran off howling in fright.

The Swedish military dispatched a company of soldiers under the command of Lt. Karl-Gösta Bartoll who arrived the next day and sealed off the area while the crash site was searched for about a fortnight (other sources say three weeks). Bartoll stated that the lake floor bore a very fresh deep gouge not only revealing but forcing up deeper layers of the lakebed. There was no doubt in his mind that a real object had fallen into the lake and exploded. He had two engineers check for radiation but none was detected. And try as they might, no trace of the object was ever recovered either.

The great aviator, James Doolittle and RCA president David Sarnoff even went to Scandinavia supposedly on different missions for different purposes but were later found to have been sent to see just how much evidence there was behind the ghost rocket phenomenon. Eric Malmberg, who headed the Swedish Ghost Rocket Committee, stated four decades later "if the observations are correct, many details suggest it was some kind of a cruise missile that was fired on Sweden. But nobody had that kind of sophisticated technology in 1946." There is a photo of an alleged ghost rocket taken in Sweden in 1946. The photographer caught it by accident and stated it lasted only a brief instant and therefore believed it to be a meteor. The Swedish Defense Staff to this day has no opinion:

ghost rocket?

Subject: BS: The Great Airship Mystery Pt II
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 30 Oct 11 - 09:06 PM

The ghost rockets overlapped the coming of the flying saucers in 1947 but once the saucers were firmly established in the public mind, the ghost rockets receded from the public mind. In the mid-70s, the entire Midwest of the U.S. was in the grip of a UFO flap that included ghost helicopters (some of them huge) that flew in all kinds of weather, phantom helicopter sounds but no chopper in sight, phantom jet sounds overhead but no jets, UFOs, phantom shooters and cattle mutilations—all things that have been known to have happened before in various times and locales but not concentrated in one area in one flap. The most remarkable thing about this flap was that it occurred mostly on military bases and installations—the sightings and encounters entered into official logs.

But the incidents keep repeating, replaying. As though we are supposed to get something from it but have not and so these mysterious flying Dutchmen will keep reappearing until we figure it out. Doesn't the crash of the airship at Judge Proctor's farm where they find a dead pilot and debris covered with mysterious hieroglyphs sound more than a little like Roswell some five decades later?

What intrigues me is not the standard UFO angle. I don't believe in little green men or gray ones either. There seems to be a mixture of fancy and fact to the point where folklore and reality meet in a kind of twilight zone, a nether region, where it is neither real nor false. We can call the photo of the airship over Chicago a hoax and maybe it is. But what if it is not? Then what is it? Surely the tales told by witnesses were literally incredible. Nude pilots, paddle wheels, people tied to chairs—who is going to believe any of that? And yet, the photographic evidence suggests there was "something" that people were seeing. As though it was a recurrent dream and, like images, in dreams, they come from nowhere and go nowhere. So then, who (or what) is doing the dreaming?

The mysterious oblong dirigible got reused during the flying saucer era as the ubiquitous "cigar-shaped craft" that populate many a UFO sighting as this one taken July 3, 1967 over Cumberland, Rhode Island:

Have a see-gar

If the airship of the 1896-7 flap is just a hoax made up by newspapermen (and some undoubtedly were) it becomes a bit problematic when explaining this photo taken in 1870 at Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. It is said to be the oldest photo ever taken of a UFO. But it generally resembles what people described in 1896-7 flap but almost 20 years prior:

Mt. Washington airship 1870

An enlargement of the object, which may bear a marking on the side. Some even say a swastika but you know how that goes:

Blow-up of Mt. Washington airship

What about popular music of that period? Surely, someone would write songs about the mysterious airships. I found a 1904 recording by J. W. Myers called "Come Take a Trip in My Airship" but it's hard to make out the words. All I can discern in the refrain is "Come take a trip in my airship and we'll visit the man in the moon." But by 1904, airships were common and the song may not be referring to the mysterious ones unless this is an older song.

And even before the 1896-7 flap, there was a wave of mysterious airship sightings in 1887 along the East Coast of the US even though real airships did exist during that time but the origin of these was never determined. And it keeps going back. In the March 27, 1880 edition of the Daily New Mexican of Santa Fe appeared this article:

At Galisteo Junction, the terminus of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, south of the territorial capital of New Mexico, the specter appeared. Soon after the arrival of the evening train from Santa Fe, the station operator and a few friends had taken a stroll along the tracks. Coming "from above them" in the sky they beard loud voices and, looking up, they were startled to see a "large balloon coming from the West"! Whoever was in the gondola of the balloon was talking in a strange language, "entirely unintelligible" to the people on earth.

The marvelous balloon was "monsterous in size," the newspaper said. More wondrous than its hugeness, though, was its design, for "it was in the shape of a fish." Painted on its sides were "very elegant" and "fanciful characters" of an unknown but obviously Asian language, which added to its mystery.

As the fish-balloon sailed overhead, its mysterious occupants dropped two objects onto the desert below. One was a "magnificent flower" made from a "fine, silk-like paper," and the other was an earthen cup, perhaps a teacup, with a blue design.

Sounds of music and of laughter drifted down from the fishballoon. In the cool of the evening air it fluttered there, like a cloud, for a moment. Then, as silently as it had appeared over the Sierra Colorado mountains, it disappeared. It simply sailed away. On the evening of the following day a "collector of curiosities" on horseback happened to ride by the isolated depot in the desert. He bought the silklike flower and the cup for a large sum of money. Being a connoisseur of curiosities, he was asked where, in his learned opinion, be thought the fish-balloon might have come from, and he answered at once, without hesitation, that the "balloon must have come from Asia."

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery Pt II
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 30 Oct 11 - 09:37 PM

The above tale of the fish-balloon is obviously fanciful. No one can seriously believe it. So these balloon stories are made up. But just when you think you have it, something pops up that makes you have to rethink your position. The Battle of Los Angeles would be such a something. It happened in the early morning hours of February 25, 1942 and it took six civilian lives.

No one knows what the huge, luminous object was that thousands of people saw. You couldn't help but see it since every searchlight beam in the city was trained on it. A photo of the actual object:

The Battle of Los Angeles

The smaller lights grouped around it are exploding anti-aircraft shells. It looks what but one witness described it as "a lovely pale orange." UFO nuts have raved about it for years but is this not yet another airship? Let's look at some facts:

Lights resembling flares as well as blinking lights were spotted near the defense plants and an alert was issued at 1918 hours (or 7:18 p.m., Pacific time). At 2223 hours, the alert was called off and, for the next four hours or so, all was calm and quiet. By 0215 hours on the 25th, anti-aircraft batteries were placed on "green" alert. Radar had picked something up over the Pacific 120 miles west of Los Angeles and moving towards Los Angeles County. At 0221 hours, a blackout was ordered as radar indicated the target was now only a few miles from the coast. Then the target seemed to vanish but suddenly reports of "enemy planes" began pouring in. At 0243 hours, "planes" were reported over Long Beach and "about 25 planes at 12,000 feet" were spotted over Los Angeles. At 0306, ground observers in Santa Monica spotted a balloon carrying a red flare. A Captain Molder of the 203rd Coast Artillery unit reported spotting a balloon through field glasses.

Suddenly, air raids sirens went off, anti-aircraft guns began blazing away, more than three dozen searchlights were playing over the dark skies, the streets were filled with air-raid wardens and a million frightened people running to and fro. The darkened streets were suddenly lit up like day. The object or objects continued to be fired upon until about 0415 hours. There was widespread damage due to anti-aircraft shells that had fallen to the ground only to explode then and when it was over, six people were dead.

Air-raid warden Raymond Angier recalled the cause of the disturbance quite vividly: "A formation of six to nine luminous, white dots in triangular formation was visible in the northwest. The formation moved painfully slowly—you might call it leisurely—as if it were oblivious to the whole stampede it had created…"

For this balloon to have created such a ruckus, its size must have been vast, enormous. And according, witnesses--it was. And the photographic evidence indicates something huge was in the sky over the city. There was something there. That something moved slowly, hung motionless at times. In other words, it behaved like a balloon.

This airship isn't quite as easy to write off as a fish-balloon from China. Again, we reach this area where can't say what's real and what's not real.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery Pt II
From: catspaw49
Date: 30 Oct 11 - 10:43 PM

After reading all four of your posts, I am forced to assume you have a screw loose..............

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery Pt II
From: BTNG
Date: 30 Oct 11 - 11:10 PM

He needs the attention, poor sod....

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 12:18 AM

I had to do it. You people are posting boring, crap threads and the same shit over and over. I just had to break the monotony. And now back to your regularly scheduled brainwahing...

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 01:15 AM

Proof positive!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Amos
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 02:39 AM

Great stuff!! A cross section of mass something or other !


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: SINSULL
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 10:13 AM

josepp - why not go somewhere where the posters meet your expectations? We people do not feel obligated to amuse you.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: BTNG
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 10:19 AM

joespp has been voted the least unfunny court jester of the decade. There's a lovely comfortable room awaiting him/her in the Tower.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 11:48 AM

Very interesting stuff, josepp. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about all of it. It's fascinating how many different interpretations will arise in a society about such alleged incidents, and how people interpret what they see (or hear about), based on the culture of the time.

By all means, continue introducing some new topics here. Pay no attention to the huffy old maiden aunts and distinguished gents who are sneering down their patrician noses at you, ruffling their metaphorical fans nervously in their pudgy fingers, sucking on their cheroots, and clucking in dismay over your unsolicited intrusions into their perfect little drawing room world here.

The "Battle of Los Angeles" is a fascinating incident, and one that remains unexplained to this day.....(kind of like the time that a 900-foot long nude effigy of Spaw was seen to float over Schenectady...a sight that caused a number of nervous breakdowns and at least one suicide!) ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 12:01 PM

A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was based on designs he had outlined in 1874[1] and detailed in 1893.[2] His plans were reviewed by committee in 1894[2] and patented in the United States on 14 March 1899.[3]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Given the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the term zeppelin in casual use came to refer to all rigid airships. Zeppelins were operated by the Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG). DELAG, the first commercial airline, served scheduled flights before World War I. After the outbreak of war, the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and scouts.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: BTNG
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 12:02 PM

why am I getting the feeling someone's been nicking plot lines from H.G. Wells?

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 12:04 PM

It sounds a lot like some of the Jules Verne tales to me. Not surprising, really, because it fits the mindset of the time.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 01:11 PM

Boring Thread Alert!!

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: BTNG
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 01:21 PM

well Jack no one's forcing to read it, are they?

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: BTNG
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 01:33 PM

GUEST,josepp's sources:

The War In The Air
H. G. Wells
written in 1907, serialized and published in 1908 in the Pall Mall Magazine

Robur the Conqueror (The Clipper of the Clouds)
by Jules Verne,
published in 1886 by Pierre-Jules Hetzel
(English translation 1887)


Frank Reade Jr. and his daughter, Kate Reade are also a possible source of material

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 01:38 PM

Aliens are already here. In fact, in a television appearance, someone commented on what was interpreted as his English accent. Someone else said they had always thought it was Australian and asked him where he actually WAS from, and as he was about to respond, they cut the sound.

HERE's a picture of him.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 01:43 PM

Don't ever give the little guy any grief, though, because THIS is his mean-tempered cousin.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: BTNG
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 01:51 PM

THIS is his mean-tempered cousin. Nope that's his mother, which is even worse!!

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 02:01 PM

A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was based on designs he had outlined in 1874[1] and detailed in 1893.[2] His plans were reviewed by committee in 1894[2] and patented in the United States on 14 March 1899.[3]




November 17, 1896 sighting- FOUR YEARS AFTER Zepplin plans were reviewed

"Airships were not uncommon during the 1896-7 flap but this one would have been ahead of any known technology of that day." Nope, it would not have been.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 02:04 PM

Actually, she's both. They're an incestuous species.

This is his father, which tends to explain a lot:    CLICKY.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 02:14 PM

oops- TWO years after review, # years after detailed design...

Definitely NOT "ahead of any known technology of that day"

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 02:41 PM

>>well Jack no one's forcing to read it, are they? <<

It was something you are obviously oblivious to. Humour. A comment on a thread started by the Mudcat's one and only authority on what is boring. The person who stated this thread.

Take the stick out of your arse and carry on.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 02:45 PM

...Started...

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: BTNG
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 02:50 PM

"This is his father, which tends to explain a lot"


yes....that would explain it...indolence at its finest!

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 04:03 PM

Hey! Don't make fun of Albert the Alligator, Don. He's a classic figure in Americana, a true son of the Okeefenokee, a reptile of honorable distinction.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: BTNG
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 04:06 PM

a true son of the Okeefenokee, a reptile well we know what his father was...but his mother...?

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: GUEST,999
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 04:08 PM

"I just had to break the monotony. And now back to your regularly scheduled brainwa[s]hing..."

In your case a light rinse will do.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: BTNG
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 04:27 PM

I've often found that when you don't find someone funny, you have no sense of humour, in my case I find Little Hawk and his creations (or is it reality?) hilarious Think Chongo the Chimp etc....you though...you're not funny, infact I'd go as far as to say that you weren't intending your posting to be funny...

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: GUEST,999
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 05:34 PM

josepp shot his own foot when he started a thread on there being no such thing as a B# or maybe it was Cb. He feels the site is meant to keep him entertained. He doesn't like things he reads here. Tough shit. Pfffffft.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 07:41 PM

////"Airships were not uncommon during the 1896-7 flap but this one would have been ahead of any known technology of that day." Nope, it would not have been.////

So how did this inventor mount a searchlight on this balloon? Searchlights existed by 1893 but they certainly weren't very widespread. They require a massive source of power that isn't portable. Moreover, the first searchlights weren't arc light. One witness saw the light through a telescope and said it was an arc light of intense power. Arc light searchlights weren't officially invented until 1918 by a guy named Sperry.

Searchlights weigh A LOT. So this balloon would have had a shocking capacity for handling weight. Then it was mounted at the prow of the ship by all accounts and yet could be apparently swung about at will. Then the heat generated by the light would pose a grave risk to a balloon and that's assuming it was even possible to carry an operable one aloft which it wasn't at the time.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 07:49 PM

///////The War In The Air
H. G. Wells
written in 1907, serialized and published in 1908 in the Pall Mall Magazine

Robur the Conqueror (The Clipper of the Clouds)
by Jules Verne,
published in 1886 by Pierre-Jules Hetzel
(English translation 1887)


Frank Reade Jr. and his daughter, Kate Reade are also a possible source of material //////

Thank you, BTNG. I've never read any of these but they certainly look interesting.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: BTNG
Date: 31 Oct 11 - 07:54 PM

Irony is totally lost on you isn't it GUEST,josepp ?

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 12:09 AM

A modest proposal, the josepp improvement


josepp's boring to non-boring thread ratio is by far the best in the history of this hallowed forum.

Arcane and silly topics, unfounded opinions, lack of content and epic cut and pastes. The man is a true expert in every skill required to produce the most boring of threads and does so prodigiously.

In fact here and now he has inspired me to suggest a very minor change in the format of the Mudcat Forum, especially below the line which will at the same time make the forum more user friendly and decrease the workload on the moderators.

Put the name of initiator of the thread in the thread title in the listing.

Do it like this..

BS:The Great Airship Mystery - G-josepp

A lot of people, instead of having their time wasted in opening the thread and releasing their resentment therein, could merrily skip on to the next thread. We should certainly call this the josepp improvement, since, judging from his propensity to start threads decrying the boringness of the threads of others, he is the one member most able to make best use of this proposed feature.

NOTE: Please, to the Humourically impaired, you know who you are, the preceding was written as satire.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: GUEST,999
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 02:32 AM

William Safire's work wasn't lost on me, Jack.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: catspaw49
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 04:14 AM

And I loved Sapphire on Amos and Andy!


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 08:19 AM

C'mon! That stuff wasn't boring at all. Not if you have an interest in unusual events and historical anomalies. There have been odd sights seen in the sky all through human history, and they were generally interpreted according to the cultural bent of the time.

When religions and mythic traditions dominated the world, they were interpreted as...

Angels
Gods
Demons
Ghosts
Storm Giants (Norse mythos)
Dragons

When science began dominating the world, they were more often interpreted as...

strange machines built by some mysterious inventor
extraterrestrials
beings from the "inner Earth"
enemy airships (in time of war)
secret government/military vehicles

When trash TV began dominating the world (circa mid-1950s to the present) they were more often interpreted as...

The Great Root Bear
Fred Flintstone
Ronald McDonald
Spaw's discarded underwear, borne aloft on the western winds...

I, for one, lament the passing of a time when people imagined heroic things in the sky and its replacement by the present sea of conventional dross, which comprises, I submit, the very ACME of boredom.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Midchuck
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 08:29 AM

The Greatest Airship:

P.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 08:47 AM

Neato! And definitely not boring.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: SINSULL
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 09:11 AM

Boring Auntie SINS still objects to "I had to do it. You people are posting boring, crap threads and the same shit over and over." No one here is nearly as impressed with josepp as he is with himself/herself.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: catspaw49
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 10:53 AM

Except for Hawk of course.....but then again he's impressed with Winona Ryder, Major Tom the psychotic astronaut, and a Dachshund...........and you don't wanna' know what he does with a shit flinging monkey!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 11:42 AM

Boring is certainly a matter of taste. I think most of us recognize that. I was simply trying, in a funny way, to move the bar a little closer to all of us seeing that.

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: BTNG
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 12:04 PM

The Hindenburg Award to josepp for the thread and to Jack the Sailor for his self superior attempts at trying to show he's the only one with a sense of humour. Exclusive to you Jacko...you're not

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: BTNG
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 12:28 PM

exclusive illustration of the Imperial American Airship Fleet on the eve of The Battle of Los Angeles

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: BTNG
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 12:50 PM

and this, the British auther, Michael Moorcock demonstrates that there may indeed been a great airship battle.....

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: SINSULL
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 01:21 PM

Spaw has another award he can drag out. Is The Little Pissant dusted off and at the ready?

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: catspaw49
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 02:54 PM

Hey Sins.....He is filled up and READY TO GO !!!


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: The Great Airship Mystery
From: gnu
Date: 01 Nov 11 - 03:16 PM

Preface... I am NOT commenting on the OPer.

JtS... I LIKE IT! Not the name of it - maybe "The OP Improvement"?