Friday, July 27

"Mrs Buttle are you alright?"

Terry Gilliam's Brazil

Pat Tillman's cluster of three bullet holes in the forehead from about 10 yards away meant the "evidence did not match up with the scenario as described," according to an army medical examiner in 2004 we're just discovering. But the story now goes that he was asking for it:

It has been widely reported by the AP and others that Spc. Bryan O'Neal, who was at Tillman's side as he was killed, told investigators that Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!" again and again.

But the latest documents give a different account from a chaplain who debriefed the entire unit days after Tillman was killed.

The chaplain said that O'Neal told him he was hugging the ground at Tillman's side, "crying out to God, help us. And Tillman says to him, `Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God's not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling -'"

Pinned under hostile fire, Tillman goes George Patton on a cowering comrade and gets fragged for his overwrought bluster. And yet: "No evidence of enemy fire was found at the scene. No one was hit by enemy fire, and no government equipment was struck."

It's all so very Lindsay Lohan. She wasn't driving: "it was the black kid." And the pants she was wearing with the cocaine in the pocket? "Those aren't my pants!" The thing is, when it's the military that's drunk and barreling down the freeway, boasting "I can do whatever the fuck I want," it can.

Also:

Adding to Iowa's surfeit of weirdness, Burlington City Council candidate Keith Jacobs reports "an oval-shaped craft about 50 feet long and 40 feet wide, with a blue light on the bottom cruising about 400 to 500 feet above the ground. It had no identifying marks, no wings, no propellers and no means of propulsion such as rockets or jets."

"I would say it was some sort of antigravity device," Jacobs said. "About four seconds was all I got a glimpse of it, and it shot off fast."

The craft sped across the sky in a northwest direction, descended slightly revealing a black or dark gray checkered top, then curved west and shot off in the direction of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, Jacobs said.

(Mention of the ammunition plant reminds me that Mothman's favourite haunt was a WWII munitions dump, called the "TNT area.")

And another sighting from the UK, with photo and video at the link: "a couple were mesmerised as seven red lights flew silently and at great speed above their house in the early hours of the morning":

"There were seven lights flying fast over the house. Two of them were flying round each other. They were flying very close together, closer than planes. They were going so fast I couldn't focus on them.

"I ran inside and got my camcorder. I thought they could be helicopters but when I zoomed in I was scared to death. They were glowing red in the middle. I'm a very logical person. We are not into the paranormal at all. I thought people would think we were barmy if we said we saw UFOs."


No one moved; Thor's whirling hammer slowed, then dropped. In the silence, Chris knew his left femur had shattered - along with most of the bones in his hands - leaving him perched on one leg. Yet his sole regret was that he could not emulate an aged Jew he had heard spoken of by some concentration camp survivors.

Standing in front of the grave he had been forced to dig for himself, the old man never begged, or cried to the SS, nor slumped in despair. He just turned from his murderers, dropped his pants, and said aloud in Yiddish as he bent over, "Kish mir im toches."

As more guards rushed to grab his arms, Chris met Thor's icy gaze.

"Kiss my ass," he told the towering Aesir. "I don't believe in you."

- David Brin, The Life Eaters