Well, let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. Mr. Ramon Watkins, alias Prophet Yahweh, summoner of UFO's (on camera, no less), has come up lame. Yeah, I know, no surprise there. He gave a deadline of July 15 for him to summon a spaceship over Las Vegas. Well, he took until the very last minute to cancel out, giving the excuse "it was the media who broke the covenant." Then, came this little news flash from his PR:

MEDIA ALERT: Prophet Yahweh, Seer Of Yahweh, Will Call Down UFOs For Radio And Television News And Talk Shows In All 50 States Of America, One State At A Time. Beginning August 7, 2005, Prophet Yahweh, Seer of Yahweh, will start his "50 State UFO Summoning Tour 2005." During this time, UFOs will appear on Prophet's signal for radio or television news and talk shows to film and photograph.

Prophet Yahweh is now calling on all radio and television news and talk shows to allow him to come to their cities and summon sightings for them to document.

Don't let Prophet Yahweh be blacklisted because the powers that be don't want humanity to find out that UFOs are real.

Give Prophet a chance to summon real UFOs for your cameras like he did for KTNV ABC TV-13.

Call today and get your station on the list of those Prophet visits and summons sightings for.


And about his failure, he said this:

"The spaceship would never have appeared if I was not filmed calling it down. This is what the space beings wanted. They wanted me captured on film with their spaceship so everyone would know that these beings have chosen me to speak for them and no other person.The space beings kept their end of the bargain by sending a real UFO, on my signal, that was documented. But, Las Vegas media refused to film me calling down the spaceship. That's why it never happened."


Uh huh. I still don't know how he did what he did, but now I just don't care very much. Maybe we'll find out in the future, but he just can't be trusted, no matter how it comes out. Am I surprised? Oh, hell, no. Just disappointed in a turkey.

Now, on to other items.

In the August, 2005, issue of Fortean Times, on page 4, there is an article about a "rooftop madman of Santa Fe" in Argentina. The article says the entity is similar to Springheeled Jack, of Victorian London. The article is in part as follows.

"Eyewitnesses claim he has glowing red eyes, although he never shows his face. He stands 2m (6ft6in) tall, has long wavy hair, dresses entirely in black and wears a cape and a balaclava. He has been seen scaling sheer walls or leaping from one darkened rooftop to another. These phenomenal leaps can be up to 5m (16ft) high and 10m (33ft) long. He howls like a beast or cries like a child as he dances on the rooftops. A resident of the El Arenal district claimed to have fired 17 times at Roofman without the bullets having the least effect....
"During heavy rain on 28 February, Roofman jammed the door of a car containing seven armed vigilantes ready to hunt him down....
"While [a woman] was bathing her youngest nephew, she said, Roofman had pressed his face against the bathroom window, showing his claws menacingly."

According to the article, hundreds of sightings have been reported. Is this entity a variation on Mothman, or is it a metahuman? There are many more questions than answers.

Lastly for the week, there is a report out of the Ukraine, mentioned in Pravda, of a boy who can attract spoons and forks to himself. This little human magnet is named Misha Dulnyavka. Evidently, Misha can feel a force when he is sticking metallic objects to his face. The full article is here:

http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/360/15744_magnet.html

This boy really does seem to be a metahuman. What is really interesting to me is that so many metas seem to pop up in the former Soviet Union and its old satellites. More than likely, if these people really are metas, it is due to the difference between their cultures and ours.

Well, that's all for this week. Tune in again next week for a new installment.

My buddy and I have been talking. And we have a theory.

For superpeople, metahumans, to become a part of ordinary day-to-day life, several things have to happen. First, and obviously, metas must exist in the real world. OK, that’s a given, but I had to include it at the top of the list. Second, the meta’s ability must be manifested rather than latent; it can’t be hidden. Sure, that SEEMS obvious, but it’s not so simple, as we’ll see as we go.

There are so many factors that can keep a meta from manifesting. The person has to have a talent that is obvious enough to actually show up, at least from time to time. If the talent isn’t obvious, the person will never become aware of it. He or she will never be aware that something out of the ordinary is going on. Then there is the fact that the person may not have what it takes, whether it’s intelligence or mental stability or whatever, to make any use of it; it may just be relegated to the status of “just another weird thing that happens every once in a while.”

Then there’s the way the person is programmed by his peers and by society at large. We are all programmed by those around us, whether they do it intentionally or not. That is the function of society, even in its most benign form. Let me give you an example from my own life.

When I was in high school, I think it was my junior or senior year, I had some olive drab coveralls. You know, those outfits that are long-sleeved and long-legged, one-piece, that zip up the front and cover everything you have on but your head, hands, and feet. Coveralls. So anyway, I had some in olive drab; can’t remember where they came from. I also had a pair of olive drab workboots that I had bought myself; I really liked those boots. Wore them all the time. I also had a navy blue trenchcoat-style raincoat. For a few days, I took to wearing them together to school, with the trenchcoat draped over my shoulders, just experimenting, trying out new things, trying to stretch my boundaries. Overall, just trying to be openly different and seeing what people would do. Basically, I was, for the few days I tried it, a pariah. I didn't exist, to anybody but my best friend. Everybody else pointedly didn't notice me, at least to my face. After those few days, thoroughly dissatisfied with the results of my experimentation, I went back to what I had always worn, and reverted to the stereotype I had been branded with. Society won. I had been successfully programmed to fit in.

People are always being programmed to fit into the slots provided by society. And ONLY into those slots; we don't get to pick any slots that society doesn't approve. And this goes on from the day we are born until the day we die. Now there are good things and bad things about this. The good part of it is that this is the root of how we make people abide by morality and laws and taboos. Without societal programming, we would have absolute anarchy and probably have killed ourselves off as a species. It's also common to many animal species, as well; look at a wolf pack. The bad part is that so many geniuses are stuck in dead-end jobs, miserable, and will never achieve their potential. I know of one guy I went to school with, a brilliant guy, wound up working at the local steel mill because he just couldn't get out of the "life slot" society had stuck him with.

The rest of the bad part is that metas regularly accept the slots they are given, and never ever even TRY to push past it. They are brainwashed, yeah, I said BRAINWASHED, into believing that they are no more than other people tell them they are. "Superheroes are impossible, so you must be crazy." And the meta believes it. More than that, even if the meta accepts that he is different, he will never ever step up to the plate and get noticed, because he is so well-trained to NEVER be more than mediocre. This is the greatest crime of our world. And it happens every day.

We are all trained to be just be what we are told is acceptable. We accept being less than we can be. We accept being less than we really are. And here's the thing, the sinister, insidous thing.

To really have progress, to really make things better, we need examples to follow, people we can look up to. We NEED heroes. Icons. Oh, society provides those heroes, those icons, by the dozens. But those heroes, those icons, direct us to follow society's commands; they only allow us SOME of the possibilities. No superpeople allowed. Why? Because metas are dangerous to the status quo. Let me say that all in caps. METAHUMANS ARE DANGEROUS TO THE STATUS QUO. So they get stomped on every time one arises. Whatever happened to the German Superboy? The Russian girl with the x-ray eyes? They have completely disappeared off the radar. The status quo requires sameness. The trouble with having everybody the same, is that nothing grows. When nothing grows, everything finally dies.

Metas are antibodies. We need metas to have a vital society. We need peaks and valleys. I'll even explain why. Rain falls on a completely level landscape. Where does it go? It just lays there. We need mountains before we can have rivers.

Otherwise, we will all just lay there.

"Feel no shame for what you are..."
(line from the theme song to the "Dead Zone" TV series)

Yes, we need metas. More than that, we need metas who are willing to stand up and be noticed. We need icons, examples, to rise up. And here is where society prevents that. You cannot be a legend if you only live half a life. To be all you can be, you must be fully alive. You must be willing and able to take the risks that come with being noticed and different.

Why don't we see metas helping out in places like the Twin Towers or the London Underground? Because they are all programmed to never step up.

STEP UP.
YOU ARE NEEDED.